What’s worse than a tyrant boss? That’s easy: it’s a robot tyrant boss.
Or, more specifically, it’s a tyrant boss using algorithmic management tools to track your every move and wanting you to work harder and faster. That’s the experience of many who work at Woolworths as reported by the Guardian, who are facing brutal consequences of a new efficiency framework including claims of increased risk of serious injury, mental stress and the looming threat of disciplinary action or even loss of employment.
Many have heard the horrifying stories of gruelling working conditions in Amazon warehouses worsened by automation, and drivers being forced to pee in bottles because of impossible efficiency expectations in the on-demand economy. This may seem like a far-off scenario for Australia, but it’s the same underlying profit motivation and fantasy of total optimisation behind the system in place at Woolworths.
These logics aren’t new. We can think back to the early 20th century and the rise of “scientific management,” or Taylorism – a process of breaking down tasks into minutely timed segments with the goal of increasing productivity. Going back even further, the roots of modern management and worker discipline can be found in US plantations, with many slaveholders sharing the modern-day obsession with data, measurement and maximising labour output.
These systems are inherently intertwined with surveillance, power and control. They are punitive and coercive not by accident, but by design.
Fears about losing jobs to automation have become commonplace, but according to United Workers Union (UWU) research and policy officer Lauren Kelly, who researches labour and supermarket automation, rather than manual work being eliminated, it is often augmented by automation technologies. This broadens the concern from one of job loss to more wide-ranging implications for the nature of work itself. That is, she says, “rather than replace human workers with robots, many are being forced to work like robots”.
In addition to the monitoring tactics used upon workers, supermarkets also direct their all-seeing eye towards customers through an array of surveillance measures: cameras track individuals through stores, “smart” exit gates remain closed until payment, overhead image recognition at self-serve checkouts assess whether you’re actually weighing brown onions, and so on. Woolworths even invests in a data-driven “crime intelligence platform”, which raises significant privacy concerns, shares data with police and claims that it can predict crime before it happens – not just the plot of Minority Report but also an offshoot of the deeply problematic concept of “predictive policing”. Modern supermarkets have become a testing ground for an array of potential rights-infringing technologies.
Lest anyone think that algorithmic management might be restricted to those working in supermarkets or factories: first, where is your solidarity? Second, many office jobs are also increasingly subject to processes of automation, with software assuming managerial functions such as screening job applications and providing AI-generated feedback, delegating tasks, managing calendars, tracking output and evaluating performance. This comes hand in hand with intensification of workplace surveillance such as mouse tracking, keystroke logging and webcam monitoring.
As if the push to work more in order to survive in the seemingly never-ending cost-of-living crisis wasn’t bad enough, the relentless drive toward technological advancement is only making it worse. Despite the many shortcomings of workplace automation, the myth of technological inevitability persists. It’s in the resigned sigh of a co-worker’s acquiescence that “it’ll happen eventually, better get on board”. It’s in the enthusiastic but misguided social media posts exhorting the ideal ChatGPT prompts to increase work productivity. It’s in tech billionaires relentlessly repeating that AI will replace all jobs, with belligerent obfuscation that their companies rely on out of sight, underpaid labour and are huge contributors to global wealth inequality.
But, as always, no technology is inevitable, and it’s important to cut through the hype and ask critical questions about the reality of these systems and who they really benefit. It seems unlikely that there will be a jobs apocalypse at the hands of AI and automation any time soon. But one of the lessons from the experiences shared by Woolworths workers is that these technologies are ready to be deployed by bosses.
Turning back to history, there is much to be learned from the politics of refusal embodied by the luddites, who were not against technology but against the way that it was being used by bosses for exploitation and personal gain. Today, the neo-luddite movement knows to question who ultimately benefits from a given technology.
Who does supermarket automation, efficiency frameworks and surveillance ultimately serve? It is certainly not the workers. It’s also not the consumers, who are treated as suspects while footing the bill for ever-rising food prices. No, it’s ultimately the corporate giants who profit and amass power. This latest story is yet another reason for that to come to an end.
Samantha Floreani is a digital rights activist and writer based in Melbourne/Naarm
