Building Worker Power in the Digital Age

This toolkit will have staying power as we confront an ever-changing landscape of experimentation on working class people with various forms of technology, enabling an entire generation of organizers, workers and advocates to fight for something better.

— Michelle Miller, Director of Innovation, Center for Labor and a Just Economy

The interactive workshops that make up this critical tool support innovation for resistance. We too are ever evolving and forever innovating, so thank you for providing a resistance pedagogy that meets this moment.

— Dr. Sheri Davis, Executive Director, Center for Innovation in Worker Organization & Faculty, Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations

Workshops in the Toolkit:

1. Worker Data, Worker Power provides an entry point for groups to talk and think about data at work.  Beginning from workers’ personal experiences, participants investigate how corporations use data to attempt to exert “power over” workers, and how workers and allied movements can generate collective “power with” to resist.

2. Mapping Our Data at Work introduces the concept of work that is performed by a “physical self” and a “digital self,” examining how data that companies use to generate profits at workers’ expense is created through workers’ physical labor.  Participants explore what types of workplace data they would be most interested in accessing to build their individual and collective power.   

3. Our Questions, Our Knowledge equips participants with concrete tools they can use to engage a wide range of work and technology experts and decision-makers—data scientists, software engineers, policymakers, and more.  Participants will leave with a method they can use to ask questions, participate effectively, and help hold subject-matter experts and decision-makers accountable, no matter what the setting.  

4. History of Data Capitalism and Worker Surveillance 101 reviews the history of data capitalism and worker surveillance in the United States, beginning from its origins in chattel slavery.  Participants will have the chance to draw connections between these historical examples and their personal experiences, including their family and community histories.  

5. The Tech Industry Supply Chain introduces the dominant corporations or “movers” at each key link in the tech industry supply chain, examining how power is consolidated in the hands of the few. Participants will reflect on the positions they hold in the Tech Industry supply chain, and the possibilities that can emerge from building networks of solidarity with other workers along the supply chain locally, nationally, and internationally.

6. Migration, Tech, and Workers’ Rights examines the role that immigration and migration play in today’s digital economy, which relies heavily on labor performed by workers living in or having migrated from the Global South for corporations headquartered in the Global North.

7. Digital Rights Are Human Rights explores the connection between digital rights and international human rights.  Using a “human rights circle framework,” participants will document the impact of digital rights violations on individuals and communities. They will also explore case studies of how workers and communities have successfully used human rights strategies to organize and fight for their digital rights.

8. Resisting the AI Extraction Economy, Practicing Our Futures highlights how our current systems of artificial intelligence, electronic surveillance, and automated management are rooted in an extractive industry model that degrades labor, the environment, and our communities.  After viewing examples of resistance by workers from around the world, participants will use image theater to create their own vision for technology and work that centers people, the planet, and cross-movement solidarity.