Algorithms at work. How do they change the labour marketplace and who is responsible?

Professor Dorothy Merecz-Kot and I are talking about algorithmic management and control of work, people avoiding work for the improvement and usage of algorithms, deficiency of legal regulations on the Polish labour market, hiring nurses by platforms and digital slavery.

Małgorzata Jankowska: Artificial intelligence, applications, algorithms... We are already saying that there is simply a digital world. Different from the real we live in. This naming creates a distance between these worlds. And abruptly you storm that distance and say, “People are behind the algorithms.” So, despite the full digital envelope, it's inactive man's decision, and the digital planet is his work?

Professor Dorota Merecz-Kot:

Yeah. And it seems to me that what mentality is represented by the individual creating the algorithm and the individual ordering it determines what the planet will look like.

We can compare this situation to architecture and construction. You can order a home to individual who can break 4 boards and combine a pair of bricks, but this plan will not be beautiful, functional, or stable. And so is the creation of applications of all kinds of virtual worlds.

It all depends on who does it and what ideas go through it. How far is he in his head to go into the future and think about the consequences of his work?

Just as there is simply a building law, it might be good to make the law of the digital world.

In addition to the approval of certain advantages of algorithms, the digital application of the world, there are besides criticism voices. Where do they come from? The constructors can't construct whether the procurers have specified goals alternatively than another goals?

The constructor will carry out the intent of the awarding entity. Everything depends on how we specify the mark and whether this goal is built with values. At a conference on platform work ["Platforms, algorithms and people – working in the digital world" “We found that the platforms do not talk much about values.

In fact, their goal is fast and easy business.

And easy business does not take into account the human origin in specified a way as liable business, which wants to care for the welfare of both workers and the environment in which it functions.

The platform algorithm creates specified a unusual situation that it completely does not give access to the owners of the platform. In the real world, we know who the employer is, and if we effort hard enough, we will scope that individual in an crucial case. Even if she wanted to avoid us. She's based somewhere, her desk, she's available for contact.

There is no transparency for platforms. I think it's very suspicious. If I have pure intentions, I realize the moral principles that govern this world, I have no reason or request to hide behind a machine: algorithms. I'm visible or visible.

Still rather recently, a lot and loud was in Poland about the fight against garbage contracts. And here we have the hiring by platforms, which, if you can say so, is more garbage than alleged colloquial contracts. Is platform work developing or decreasing? Is it only the desire for absolute profit from platform owners here?

I think that's a complex problem. Platforms boast that workers value flexibility and the chance to start and finish work in convenient terms. And that's part of the truth, due to the fact that for many people it's an extra job, for example, for students.

I know people who do serious, low-paid budget jobs, and in the afternoon they control to Uber to gain a modest national salary. They will emphasize flexibility.

However, those who, for various reasons, are trying to find economical stableness through platform work will not emphasize specified flexibility due to the fact that it is crucial for them to find income stability. For them, a occupation contract would be safer and more useful. Depending on who we ask, we will get the answer.

In my opinion, it might have been a way out of the way to accept the rule that

If you're studying, or if you don't have a occupation or a occupation contract, sign whatever contract you want for extra class. due to the fact that you have social benefits. However, if this is someone’s only origin of income, the employer should be obliged to sign specified a contract.

After all, no 1 forbids that the employment contract contains elements of flexibility. It can be formulated in any way. For example, you work 3 days a week and these are any days of the week. And if we call you to extra work, then you'll make more. These are issues of negotiation and knowing of the common needs of both parties. But who does this regulation not favor? The full platform business.

I'm sad about what's happening in our country. It seems to me that platform work has been developed rather powerfully for many years, and I do not see any government being politically curious in regulating this area.

Look at the Scandinavian countries. There, regulations apply and the same platforms behave differently from in Poland. So this is besides a question of the force countries exert on business. What is it? Are they afraid to exert this pressure? Or do they have any, sorry, lobbying benefits?

Let me give you a simple example. Among another things, we have studied the work of food suppliers in different countries, specified as Glovo. It was my surprise that in 1 of the countries, the Ministry of wellness had data on all those who supplied food. The investigation was carried out in a simple way: researchers had emailed all worker on the ministerial list, as these people had to have the equivalent of our wellness book of the wellness Department.

Has anyone in Poland considered that the food we get, though packed in boxes, is transported in a bag about which we do not know if anyone cleans it, erstwhile it cleans it, and what else it can carry. And yet we have the State Labour Inspection and the State Sanitary Inspection.

I imagine that if the wellness inspection had checked any of the food transportation platforms under the motto, "We are checking what couriers have in their bags," it would have been a beautiful kind of emphasis on maintaining certain standards. I think it's possible. There may be legal contusions, but I think it's the game regulation that counts, not any record.

Because the law is created to defend any ideas and always the explanation of the law should go in this direction to defend the values for which a circumstantial provision was created.

Now that we're talking about labour law, can workers' organisations do anything in this situation, whether it be trade unions or worker councils or any other?

I am convinced by what Marek Lewandowski of the Labour Confederation said at the platform work conference mentioned earlier. He stressed that we have archaic rules on the functioning of trade unions, which do not agree with what is presently happening in the labour market.

Chances for collective agreements, for akin options that be in another countries, he besides reads as weak.

Platform workers don't meet each other. They have no space to make a community. Neither does temporary employment encourage people to engage in anything.

Is there any way that the algorithms could be "captured"? In fact, they're not algorithms, they're people who make them up or who order them. What do you think?

I think so. I want the platform to distribute, measure work, contact my employees with their clients, and so on. And let's say that the government makes specified a requirement: you can usage an algorithm in a country provided that it incorporates local labour law into any scope. Then the algorithm maker would gotta read the rules.

Why would algorithm developers or platforms know anything about labour law in a country? There must be individual who will pay attention to this and then we will focus on this issue.

I guess it's just as easy to make a affirmative algorithm as the 1 that forces people to work for 12 hours.

I get the impression that during the conversation, but besides reasoning about the digital planet and about our real world, we rolled a circle. There is no specified thing as separate worlds: digital and real, or human. In fact, any of our negative qualities, our desire, any evil goals that we want to achieve, we no longer execute with the hands of another human being, as a kind of intermediary, but in a perfidious way we throw this mediation into the algorithm and say, “What a terrible technique.” Isn't that how it works?

I think that's how it works. If you can hide behind something, those who request to hide will be happy to take advantage of it. And another role, specified as philanthropist or philanthropist, can be played in another areas and there show your generosity. method as old as the world, only tools change.

If we look at Donald Trump's business career, we will announcement that he repeatedly performed specified volts, after which people went to the pavement and lost money, and he, like Phoenix of ashes, miraculously revived, carrying one more time a tiny cost or none.

One IT sector worker shared any reflection with me. There are companies where computer scientists, programmers operate according to moral principles and do not take orders to make suspicious algorithms. And there are companies that will take all occupation and plan whatever the client wants.

Let's go to the Polish yard. Where are we compared to another countries? What is the business force expressed utilizing algorithms?

Platform-related regulations depend to any degree on the level of unionisation in a given country and on how people treat trade unions, or even social, labour movement. Are these organizations needed for something?

When I talk to colleagues in countries where the union level is very high, I hear that there are any things that are unacceptable, whether it is platform work or not.

Although, of course, they besides have their grey region associated with migrants.

Our willingness to push workers and say "no" on various work-related issues remains comparatively low. It is good to see young people who are already very delicate in any areas to systemic abuse. And erstwhile they say that work is work, not life, I approve very much. due to the fact that it shows the real proportion.

At work, I can grow, I can enjoy my work, but I can't be all that a man has or the main point of reference. At least it's not worth it.

Interesting observation. I heard a akin conclusion late during the Mobbing interview: Z is more assertive than before.

They don't have the experience of parents who most likely got pissed off or wept over the soup at Sunday dinner. However, this experience is known from the family's message and they know its emotional taste, due to the fact that they experienced its mark, for example, in the form of the physical and emotional absence of the parent working in overtime. In a sense, they inherit this experience and they don't want something, but they besides didn't live in a time of labour deficit and this deep systemic transformation that we have luck or misfortune to remember.

Remembered experiences of parents, another people, and a small deficiency of experience of poorness or critical life situations, related to the shortage of labour on the market, make them little afraid and talk louder about their needs

Maybe you gotta bounce off another ground to decision forward, due to the fact that if we keep bouncing off the same ground all the time, we won't do anything new.

Back to the algorithms... possibly we should not spell algorithms in all the languages of the world, but influence those who have the benefit of creating or utilizing them.

That's right.

Algorithm has no morals. It's a clean set of numbers, codes.

He's like a rock. You can turn it in your hand with pleasure, but you can besides throw it at individual and do harm.

There are quite a few people who make large algorithms that aid a man in many spheres of life, in the conflict for health, for himself.

Algorithms won't hurt us. What matters is what we do with them.

Thank you for talking to me.

The material was created as part of the task Centre for the Support of Councils of Workers co-financed by the Government Programme for the improvement of Advisory Organisations for the period 2022–2033 by the National Institute of Freedom – Centre for the improvement of civilian Society