Law, Code and Exploitation: How Corporations Regulate the Working Conditions of the Digital Proletariat

2021 ◽  
pp. 089692052110289
Author(s):  
Aitor Jiménez González
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Sociotechnical Systems ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Social Ordering ◽  
Means Of Production

Contrary to what orthodox Marxism claims, the article defends that the legal field has been a fundamental aspect of the capitalist social ordering, and an unavoidable feature to understand how dominated subjectivities are produced and exploited. Expanding Lessig’s concept of ‘code as law’ with Marxist scholarly, the article argues that digital capitalists are reorganising work and the labour force through a form of algorithmic regulation. The article states that algorithms – that is, digital machines – have become not only part of the means of production of the era of automation, but also the code by which capitalists are writing the conditions of existence and exploitation of the digital proletariat. The article bridges recent contributions on labour law, AI and algorithmic regulation with the latest Marxist sociological contributions analysing the relation of work and digital exploitation, opening with it new ways to understand how sociotechnical systems owned by corporations regulate the behaviour not only of the working class but of the wider citizenry.

scholarly journals Precarious or Protected? Evaluating Work Quality in the Legal Sex Industry

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 173-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Orchiston
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Industry Regulation ◽  
Regulatory Model ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Legal Sex

Decriminalising (or legalising) sex work is argued to improve sex workers’ safety and provide access to labour rights. However, there is a paucity of empirical research comparing how different regulatory approaches affect working conditions in the sex industry, especially in relation to venues that are managed by third parties. This article uses a mixed methods study of the Australian legal brothel sector to critically explore the relationship between external regulation and working conditions. Two dominant models of sex industry regulation are compared: decriminalisation and licensing. First, the article documents workplace practices in the Australian legal brothel sector, examining sex workers’ agency, autonomy and control over the labour process. Second, it analyses the capacity of each regulatory model to protect sex workers from unsafe and unfair working conditions. On the basis of these findings, the article concludes that brothel-based sex work is precarious and substantively excluded from the protective mantle of labour law, notwithstanding its legality. It is argued that the key determinant of conditions in the legal brothel sector is the extent to which the state enforces formal labour protections, as distinct from the underlying regulatory model adopted.

scholarly journals The Rolls of Oléron, Maritime Assizes of the Kingdom of jerusalem

2019 ◽  
pp. 129-137
Author(s):  
Marcin Böhm
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Safety Culture ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Maritime Safety ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Maritime Labor

The essence of this paper is to illustrate the genuine link between the norms contained in the medieval twenty-four first laws of oléron that have survived to modern times, binding certain legal solutions in the space over the ages. The Laws of oléron contain norms relating to contemporary maritime labour law. Certainly they are not a model fully reflected in the maritime labor Convention (mlC 2006). nevertheless, these principles can be an interesting starting point for discussions on the importance of decent working conditions and the lives of seafarers on ships from a few centuries perspective and the importance of maritime safety culture.

scholarly journals Working Conditions and Health of Leaders in Three Service Sectors

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-118
Author(s):  
Franziska Pundt ◽  
Marcel Lück
Keyword(s):  
Health Promotion ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Job Demands ◽  
Job Resources ◽  
Health Complaints ◽  
Musculoskeletal Health ◽  
Stress Theory ◽  
Service Sectors ◽  
Practical Implications

This study investigates the job demands, job resources, and health of leaders in three service sectors. The analyses are based on data of the 2018 BIBB/BAuA Employment Survey, a representative sample of the German labour force. The three service sectors trading, finance, and public services varied significantly in how leaders perceive job demands, job resources, psychosomatic health complaints, and musculoskeletal health complaints. Hardly any variation was found, however, in how demands and resources are associated with psychosomatic and musculoskeletal health complaints. These findings imply that service leaders’ perceptions provide sector-specific patterns of demands and resources, which are well reflected in stress theory. The findings further imply that there is no need for sector-specific theories predicting health complaints. The article concludes with a discussion of practical implications for health promotion in the three service sectors and the promotion of leaders’ health.

The Quest for Industrial Citizenship

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier ◽  
Karen Pastorello
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Immigrant Women ◽  
The State ◽  
Viable Solution ◽  
Italian Women ◽  
Working Class Women

This chapter explores the contribution of working-class immigrant women—another important but often underestimated group—to the movement. Working-class women touted the vote as a viable solution to wage woes and threatening working conditions. They did not need elite suffragists to empower them; working-class women transferred the speaking and activist skills they had honed in the labor movement to disseminate their suffragist convictions. In addition, many of the women possessed some of the same qualities suffrage leaders valued in their workers; being young and single, they had the freedom to travel the state and the ability to appeal to broad, working-class audiences. They compensated for class tensions by appealing to multi-ethnic voters as Irish, German, Russian, Polish, Jewish, and Italian women joined the suffrage alliance.

“We Strike and Win”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keona K. Ervin
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
Wage Cuts

In the Funsten Nut Strike of 1933, nut shellers shut down production to protest poor working conditions and wage cuts. A group of black working-class women positioned themselves at the center of Depression-era politics through the highly publicized, Communist-organized strike against the Funsten Nut Company. Among the most influential labor battles of its era, the strike carved out a space for black women workers in the growing and increasingly powerful radical labor movement, marking the development of that movement in St. Louis.

19. Labour and equality law

2020 ◽  
pp. 612-642
Author(s):  
Mia Rönnmar
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Flexible Work ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Worker Participation ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Eu

This chapter discusses a number of key EU labour and equality law issues. These include restructuring of enterprises; information, consultation, and worker participation; how national collective labour law is affected by the four freedoms; flexible work and working conditions; the EU and national labour law in times of economic crisis; and gender equality, comprehensive equality, and protection against discrimination on other grounds.

scholarly journals Surveillance capitalism and children’s data: the Internet of toys and things for children

2019 ◽  
Vol 170 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donell Holloway
Keyword(s):  
Economic Activity ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
First Time

This article discusses the positioning of children both as objects of economic activity as and subjects of market relations under surveillance capitalism. It looks briefly at the history of children’s engagement with the market economy from their engagement in the labour force during industrial revolution times; their disappearance from direct economic activity during the Romantic Movement; through to their emergence as both data sources and data consumers within a big data economy. It argues that this is the first time since children retreated from the paid labour force in the late 19th and early 20th centuries due to labour law reforms that their activities are of significant economic value, and that the emergence of Internet-connected toys and things for children will significantly amplify children’s position as data sources under surveillance capitalism.

Digital collaborative platforms: A challenge for both the legislator and the social partners in the Nordic model

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annamaria Westregård
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
New Economy ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Collective Agreements ◽  
Employment Conditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Security Regulations

This paper focuses on the specific problems in the labour and social security legislation as it relates to crowdworkers in the digitalised new economy, analysing their place in labour market, and especially in the collective agreements which are the standard means of regulating working conditions in the Nordic model. Sweden has a binary system where a performing party is as either an employee or self-employed. The law on working and employment conditions offers only limited protection to those on short, fixed-term contracts; instead, it is social partners that have improved crowdworkers’ conditions in some industries by using collective bargaining. However, there are no collective agreements in the digital economy, or indeed for platform entrepreneurs. The complications of the parties’ positions will be analysed, especially as platforms do not consider themselves to be employers, but rather coordinators of the self-employed. It is not only labour law regulations that are important to prevent precariat among crowdworkers. It is also very important that the social security regulations adapt to the new labour market as the social security legislation is an important part of the Nordic model.

Digital Platforms, Gig Economy, Precarious Employment, and the Invisible Hand of Social Class

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 597-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carles Muntaner
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Precarious Employment ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
Employment Conditions ◽  
Gig Economy

Digital platform capitalism, as exemplified by companies like Uber or Lyft has the potential to transform employment and working conditions for an increasing segment of the worforce. Most digital economy workers are exposed to the health damaging precarious employment conditions characteristic of the contemporary working class in high income countries. Just as with Guy Standing or Mike Savage’s “precariat” it might appear that digital platform workers are a new social class or that they do not belong to any social class. Yet the class conflict interests (wages, benefits, employment and working conditions, collective action) of digital platform workers are similar to other members of the working class.

Canteens and the Politics of Working-class Diets in Industrial China, 1920–37

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
SEUNG-JOON LEE
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
The State ◽  
Food History ◽  
Work Efficiency ◽  
Contested Space ◽  
Industrial Productivity ◽  
Industrial Health ◽  
Meal Service ◽  
Labour Disputes

AbstractThis article explores how workers’ diets and meal services at factory canteens became the nucleus of labour politics in Republican Shanghai, China's industrial heartland. At the heart of Chinese labour politics was a demand for the improvement of workers’ diets, particularly for adequate meal service, which was to be provided by management at a reasonable price—if not for free—at the workplace. The purpose of this article is not only to draw attention to a lacuna in Chinese labour history, but also to shed new light on the agency of workers in their labour disputes from the perspective of food history. No other issue provided a better opportunity to unite workers, labour activists, and so-called scabs than the issue of food. In the wake of labour disputes, industrialists changed their perception of the relation between industrial health and work efficiency. With the promotion of factory canteens, the Guomidang Nationalists also began to exert unsparing efforts to garner the growing political potential of the labour force. Therefore, factory canteens evolved into a contested space in which workers, management, and the state offered different visions of workers’ diets and industrial productivity.

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