Digital Trespasses: Modern Labor in a Digital World
09.03.21
“American trade unionism is slowly being limited in influence by changes which destroy the basis on which it is erected. It is probable that changes in the law have adversely affected unionism. . . [but] over and above these influences, the relative decline in the power of American trade unionism is due to occupational changes and to technological revolutions. “
— George E Barnett, American Economic Association President, 1932
George Barnett spoke these words in 1932, but he very well could have said them yesterday. Labor was in retreat, beaten down by thirty years of Gilded Age politics, followed by the first Red Scare. The American Federation of Labor, America’s most popular labor union, saw its membership drop from 5 million in 1919 to just 3 million in 1933, and the Knights of Labor was so diminished it was, for all intents and purposes, functionally extinct.
Today, labor has reached a new low-water mark. Structural forces such as technological change, globalization, occupational changes, and an increasingly atomized labor force have combined to whittle union membership down to just 10.8 percent of the labor force, most of it government employees. National news outlets feel comfortable asking, “Do we need labor unions anymore?” and, in the wake of Amazon’s failed unionization attempt at Bessemer, many are convinced that Americans no longer have much interest in stodgy labor unions (actually, they do.)
This issue, as we celebrate the upcoming Labor Day weekend, we take stock of the 21st century labor movement today: its moral and political crises, its technological upheaval, and its latent potential for reform.
How Technology Upends Workers’ Privacy
One pain point that American labor has yet to grapple with is technology and how it has reshaped the modern workplace largely in favor of employers. Do employees have a right to a private life? Current “best practices,” at least when it comes to algorithmic management and smart surveillance devices, suggest otherwise.
The idea of having separate working time units distinct from a worker’s private life was developed during the industrial era, when contracts dictated a specific amount of time spent working in exchange for compensation. Bosses could steal a few minutes here and there by turning back the clocks (as they often did), but once the factory doors were ungated, free time began.
For many workers today, the distinction between private life and professional life has been obliterated (this was discovered by remote workers of all income levels during the pandemic, most publicly by Goldman interns). Constant accessibility via email, WhatsApp, and smart devices has translated to longer working hours (many of which go unpaid), dramatically expanded managerial powers to supervise employees, and unrealistic productivity metrics. In the US, remote work has a strong relationship to longer working hours: one national study (pre-pandemic) found that telecommuting has become “instrumental in the general expansion of working hours,” and that nearly 50% of remote work “essentially occur as overtime work.”
Amazon, perhaps most famously, has perfected the use of smart devices to track their employees’ movements and productivity. Workers say their days are “dictated by algorithms that survey their every move and dole out punishments when targets are not met, or workers go over their allotted ‘time off task.’” They are allotted two 15-minute bathroom breaks during their 10-hour shifts, which amounts to “mere minutes to navigate a warehouse roughly the size of Buckingham Palace and get back to work on time.”
Each warehouse employee is given an item scanner, a handheld device that tracks location, task completion rates, and “Time off Task” (TOT). Task completion rates change day-to-day, and employees are unaware of what the rate will be until they are notified of falling behind. Despite the unpopularity of such devices, Amazon continues to expand its surveillance efforts and has won two patents for wristbands which deliver “haptic feedback” to employees when they go off track. (Some less high-profile companies have simply cut to the chase and implanted microchips in their employees).
Beth Gutelius, research director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois Chicago, calls it “retrogressive innovation,” a practice that hearkens back to older forms of managerial control. “But with the addition of algorithms — the sort of monitoring and surveillance at scale — in the end, I think Amazon’s real competitive advantage is about its ability to surveil and monitor and nudge its workforce at scale,” she warns, “And the workers have little say over how close that technology comes to becoming an extension of their body.”
Patagonia Democrats & The Decline of Class Voting
Another glaring issue is the declining influence of labor in our political system. This came to the forefront in the past two presidential elections which saw the working-class vote splinter across parties. The Democratic party — once the anointed party of the working class — lost the vote of many union members, who felt increasingly disconnected from a party that largely ignored them in favor of courting “upscale cosmopolitan Republicans.”
According to exit polls, Hillary Clinton beat Trump by only 8 percentage points among union-household voters in 2016, a ten-point drop from the advantage enjoyed by Obama in 2012. In 2020, labor helped Biden win three industrial swing states — Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — formerly won by Trump (however, Biden won only 56% of the union-household vote nationwide — a tremendous drop from the 84% commanded by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964).
Jacob Remes, a professor at New York University who focuses on labor issues, is unsurprised at labor’s continued exit from the blue. “The Democratic Party decided long ago that the labor movement was an ATM, in which they could just withdraw money every four years, while also promoting unfair trade deals and not passing important pro-union legislation,” said Remes. “It is not surprising that workers in the manufacturing sector in particular have rebelled.”
Matthew Karp, a historian of the Gilded Age at Princeton University, describes the left’s new base as “Patagonia Democrats”: rich, over-educated professionals who have temporarily adopted a “mild dilution of Socialism” (as Marx would put it), primarily because it feels good and is fashionable. A vote is a vote, he argues, but this trend offers little hope for re-engaging the working class or achieving meaningful wealth redistribution through legislative avenues.
Politics, purportedly once an avenue for grand social change, has now devolved into a national spectacle, replete with selfie opportunities. “When the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol Building, it was apparently driven by no larger social vision than keeping its televised hero in the White House for four more years,” writes Karp, remarking on the shallow pursuits of modern politics. “Briefly gaining control of the House chamber, Trump’s champions sought not to take possession of the US government but to take selfies.”
The Alt Labor Movement
Even with a diminished union movement and lack of political representation, many innovative efforts to improve workers’ lives have appeared across the United States. These efforts — some by unions, some by non-union groups — represent an “alt labor movement” that seeks to meet the unique technological and structural challenges of the 21st century.
The Fight for $15, a nine-year long battle to raise the federal minimum wage, is arguably labor’s most successful effort in decades and will be gradually implemented in California, Massachusetts, New York (downstate only), New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Connecticut, and Florida. Many major cities, where the cost of living is exorbitantly high, have also followed suit. These victories were won not by prolonged strikes of the past, but by brief, day-long walkouts designed to attract publicity.
“Why try to shut down a McDonald’s when you can hold a sit-in at a shareholder meeting, or publicize the fact that the company’s help line advises cash-strapped workers to visit food pantries and sign children up for Medicaid?” reported The New Yorker.
Another path to reform is through the legal environment. The Clean Slate Agenda, a coalition of advocates, activists, union leaders, labor law professors, economists, and workers, drafted a comprehensive overview of changes to the legal environment that could facilitate another renaissance in labor.
One of their primary recommendations is to enable collective bargaining between unions and industries — not just unions and firms — since the current model incentivizes individual employers to fight unionization. They also believe that traditional labor laws need to become more inclusive, particularly of gig workers, domestic workers, and immigrants. Today, it is estimated that there are 5x more workers with no legal right to unionize than union members in the US. Many have placed their hopes in the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) act as a necessary first step. The law would weaken 28 “right-to-work” states (where unions are forced to take on free riders), but it is unlikely to clear the Senate.
The Lasting Power of Collective Action
One testament to unions’ potential power is the immense amount of capital and resources deployed by companies to defeat them. During the showdown at Bessemer, Amazon — already the equivalent of “Wal-Mart plus the CIA” — responded to the threat of unionization by requesting a police unit outside, speeding up the traffic light where union organizers spoke with employees, besieging employees with anti-union texts, and hiring a bevy of anti-union consultants.
Similarly, following California’s passage of AB5, a law classifying gig workers as employees in 2020, platform companies “paid through the nose to overturn the law” in one of the most expensive state proposition fights in California’s history.
“The things that unions do are needed now more than ever,” says Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Workers need an organization that they control to give voice and potency to what bothers them, from pay to protection of the planet. Call it a club, union, association, consciousness raising circle, whatever, it has to be a collective vehicle, and it has to give voice. That is what unions do, from 1821 to 2021, regardless of how the law applies or how the enterprise — public or private — is run.”
About Colbeck: Colbeck is a strategic lender that partners with companies during periods of transition, providing creative capital solutions to meet their evolving needs. You can reach the team at inquiries@colbeck.com.
