The Tools of Management: Adapting Historical Union Tactics to Platform-Mediated Labor

• Published in: Proceedings of the ACM on human-computer interaction 2019-11, Vol.3 (CSCW), p.1-22
• Main Authors: Khovanskaya, Vera, Dombrowski, Lynn, Rzeszotarski, Jeffrey, Sengers, Phoebe
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2573-0142; 2573-0142
• DOI: 10.1145/3359310

At the same time that workers' rights are generally declining in the United States (US), workplace computing systems gather more data about workers and their activities than ever before. The rise of large scale labor analytics raises questions about how and whether workers could use such data to advocate for their own goals. Here, we analyze the historical development of workplace technology design methods in CSCW to show how mid-20th century labor responses to scientific management can inform directions in contemporary digital labor advocacy. First, we demonstrate how specific methodological tendencies from industrial scientific management were adapted to work in CSCW, and then subsequently altered in crowd work and social computing research to more closely resemble industrial approaches. Next, we show how three tactics used by labor unions to strategically engage with industrial scientific management in the mid-20th century can inform data-driven worker advocacy in platform-mediated work. Finally, we discuss how this history shapes our understanding of worker participation and the implications of using worker data for contemporary advocacy goals.