Digitalisation of Work and Resistance

Abstract

Workplace tracking, monitoring and surveillance are in the ascendant. This chapter looks at everyday forms of resistance and evidence of dissatisfaction emerging in the context of digitalisation in workplaces via first-hand accounts from workers in warehouses, offices and gig economy work; and examples of trade union responses. Workers’ concrete labour is now increasingly subject to abstraction and extraction as new ways to measure our previously unseen labour become apparent and more subject to commodification in the process. In warehouse and factory work, accountability is transferred to workers but data not transparent. In professional workplaces, a new employer prescription reduces any possibility for negativity and workplace dissent by highlighting wellbeing. But the outcome is the same: intensified control mechanisms over workers.