Managed by robots

November 9, 2024

Mike Phipps reviews Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work, by Craig Gent, published by Verso.

Despite the technical-sounding title, this is fundamentally a book about who wields power in the modern workplace. Gent dismisses from the outset the idea that robots will take over our jobs. “The fact is that, for most practical work, human workers are simply cheaper, more reliable and easier to replace than robots. Rather than being replaced by computers, it is instead the case that ever more workers are being managed by them, by virtue of workers being subject to algorithms.”

Algorithms are now the lifeblood of industrial innovation, contends Gent, affecting care providers, courier services, courts and much more. He looks in detail at the nature of this work and the increasingly invasive technology used to supervise it. Workers already wear ‘smart’ goggles to steer them around complex warehouses. Now Amazon has patented ultrasonic bracelets for use by employees in its ‘fulfilment centres’ that would electronically ‘nudge’ workers towards particular shelved items. Gent labels them “cattle prods-cum-manacles.”

Such technology is trumpeted as helpful to the workers: in fact, it is an aid to ever more controlling supervision of them and the intensification of their workload.

Organising workers in these environments is challenging, especially as many of the larger companies involved are highly adept at thwarting trade unions. Many of the bigger unions have either given up their attempts to get union recognition or else have gone for general agreements at the macro-level that do little to confront the daily exploitation of workers. Newer, smaller unions have tried to address these failings with mixed results.

Alongside the union-busting tactics of the companies, one challenge to organising is that increasingly workers begin shifts at different times and in different locations to each other and are required to stagger their breaks. This is deliberate. As Gent notes, “While attempts to stop workers talking are not novel to algorithmic management, there is a breakdown of sociality that is a by-product of the organisation of workflow for an algorithmically managed worker.”

One worker told the author: “‘I never had a job where I talk less.” Another said that despite more than meeting his productivity target, he was told off by a manager for talking. He described his workplace as “like being in the mafia… like a code of silence.”

Feedback to management is actively discouraged. Workers are repeatedly told to “trust the system” – something that is beyond criticism by mere humans. Consequently, it is not useful for workers to have broader knowledge of the overall logistical process of which they are part, and this ignorance is another aspect of managerial power. Deliveroo workers, for example, are not provided with an explicit performance target – only an email to say whether they achieved it or not. Equally, riders have no idea on what basis orders are distributed between them and whether that changes over time. Yet, from a trade union perspective, demanding greater transparency in how the algorithm works may be a distraction: knowing more about it may not reduce the exploitation involved.

Taking industrial action in such workplaces is also difficult, particularly if the algorithm is robust enough to fill gaps in labour, or redirect work processes to other locations in real time. Gent discusses ways in which workers can subvert the automated process, but many of these methods are individual workarounds and don’t embody collective action. He plays up  the significance of what might be called ‘organised slacking’, but this expression of alienation is a long way from the collective pride in one’s work that effective trade unionism can express.

Workers in these jobs are often highly atomised and the workplace prevents few opportunities to communicate. How much appetite do union organisers have for bringing workers together outside the workplace to help build trust – and would the workers themselves see this as useful, given the high turnover in such work? Can local authorities play a role in enforcing better health and safety at such workplaces, not just on a physical level, but in promoting the psychological wellbeing of workers in their jurisdiction?

More broadly, the business model of much of this exploitation is based on keeping the customer satisfied. But what if consumers stopped using these systems? This looks far-fetched. But Gent’s pessimism about effective workplace resistance suggests we may have to think the improbable.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, our culture of consumption, contributing to widespread commercial manipulation and alienation, is bad for us as individuals, as a society and as a planet. Increasingly people are exploited by financial institutions on the basis of their indebtedness; and meaningless, exploitative jobs are just another mechanism for wage-workers to service their debts. The system needs to be – and can only effectively be – challenged in its totality.  

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.