Worker Cogs
I began writing this article before the Covid-19 pandemic. It has long been clear that the constant attack on working people is not sustainable and that these are the very same people who have vital jobs that are keeping our society going, and for which they should receive adequate healthcare and compensation. The current crisis has laid bare just how bad these employer practices are, how much we depend on the people who do the jobs most often treated as cogs in the machine, and how badly our cultural and work systems are designed.
The commodification of workers has been happening for a long while, but the articles collected here show just how much working people today are seen as interchangeable cogs in a corporate machine. Treating people this way leads to worse results, terrible morale, human tragedy, and high turnover rates.
AI and robots are often touted as the next step to making work better and faster, possibly with many fewer humans involved. AI and machines are often good at simple tasks, yet the services and products people want involve complex platforms and sequencing of services far beyond the capacity of any AI.
This Harvard Business Review article Artificial Intelligence for the Real World shows that while many “moonshot” projects have been launched, AI has singularly failed at achieving lofty goals, though it has proven to be useful in more down to earth projects.
“In 2013, the MD Anderson Cancer Center launched a “moon shot” project: diagnose and recommend treatment plans for certain forms of cancer using IBM’s Watson cognitive system. But in 2017, the project was put on hold after costs topped $62 million—and the system had yet to be used on patients.”
At the same time, too often the simple tasks that AI is used for are inhumane, and damaging to both workers and society, as this article on Amazon's time-off rules makes clear.
Amazon Workers in Sacramento are Protesting the Company's Strict Time-Off Rules
“They just have a computer program that automatically fires people, no human oversight over what the conditions or concerns might have been.”
In conjunction, we also have the old practices of union-busting reinterpreted for this era, as Elon Musk takes to Twitter to threaten workers trying to unionize
Elon Musk broke US labor laws on Twitter
“These are known as unfair labor practices. And what is the financial penalty for this? There isn’t one.”
Instead, investing in your people seems to be the obvious alternative and yet as noted in the “The future of work will still need humans”, the majority of employers are not taking the time to make assessments of their workers’ current skills or taking the next step of investing in their people.
“The report reveals, however, that there is a distinct lack of understanding among employers today about the skills they have within their workforce. Just 48% of employees said that they had undergone any kind of skills assessment, which makes it difficult to accurately plan to fill whatever gaps might exist.”
From: The future of work will still need humans
Yet it is possible to implement new kinds of work practices that leverage the capacity of technology, keeping the needs of people central. This approach can also contribute to the crucial need to support workers’ growth, and re-skilling, to accommodate what will now be very long careers as birth rates decline across the globe.
For example, BMW began using technology that reduced physical stress for older workers whose decades of work experience made them invaluable to keep on the job. This approach also had an impact on younger workers; the very same machines that help the older workers pick up heavy objects also help younger workers by reducing stress on their bodies and therefore extending and improving their work lives.
