Data and Democracy at Work offers an excellent analysis of the power relationship between capital and labor, focusing especially on how companies use the affordances of information technologies to gain a dominant position. The book is particularly useful for understanding the role that law and capitalism play in creating an environment that allows employers to surveil, displace and deskill workers. It also proposes various reforms for promoting economic democracy. In launching the book's agenda, Rogers identifies two fundamental tensions that define the modern workplace—legal realism's embrace of the potential for legal reform and the rather rigid structure of capitalism. In other words, the legal foundations of rights and responsibilities that undergird the modern work relationship are subject to challenge, but the overarching structure of capitalism limits the potential for change. In a strikingly hopeful tone, Rogers zeroes in on the legal dimension as the pathway for the restoration of democratic ideals that have since been eroded in the neoliberal American workplace.
The book's first two chapters are dedicated to synthesizing theoretical perspectives on technology, law and capitalism, which allows the author to set up the conceptual foundation for the central argument that legal realities and technological affordances combine to perpetuate the power of capital over labor in a neoliberal environment. The next three chapters situate these perspectives in discussions of companies such as Amazon, Uber and Starbucks and the final chapter explores various reforms. As part of the development of the book's rich conceptual framework, Rogers points to the concentration of what he describes as power resources on the side of capital in its longstanding campaign to discipline labor. He classifies power resources into “legal entitlements, control of data and technology, and capacities for collective action” (14). These categories are immensely helpful for understanding why the chips are stacked against labor in the digital age. Rogers goes further to challenge the legal conditions that have left capital in a dominant position over labor in the deployment of these power resources. He claims that the rise of an individual rights orientation as opposed to an industrial pluralist approach has eroded labor power. He addresses deunionization, contractualization, and fissuring, or the practice of “…classifying workers as independent contractors or …using subcontracting and franchising arrangements” (49), as outshoots of this individualized approach that is driven by the faulty assumption of parity between labor and capital.
In deconstructing the capital-labor relationship in the modern workplace, Rogers draws on foundational labor concepts such as Fordism and Taylorism, while also engaging with classical literature at the intersection of labor, technology and data studies. Citing interdisciplinary scholarship, Rogers produces a compelling synthesis of the existing literature, which contributes to the pedagogical value of the book. Rogers further grounds his analysis and arguments in various contemporary developments that exemplify capital's outsized power and labor's attempts to claw back some leverage in the work relationship. Specifically, he grounds the discussion of digital Taylorism in the “pervasive surveillance and time discipline” (58) to which Amazon warehouse workers and delivery contractors are subjected while using Uber as an example of algorithmic management.
The book explicitly engages with scholarship on law and political economy, technology and institutions, and the political economy of work and technology. Focusing on the intersection of these areas allows for the development of the book's thesis on the deployment of power resources. However, it comes at a cost—the limited treatment of cultural perspectives such as the protestant work ethic, hustle culture, aspirational labor and corporate ideology. As a result, the book is best read in conjunction with other scholarship that considers cultural dimensions in more detail such as Reference GreggGregg (2018), Reference DuffyDuffy (2017) and Reference HoHo (2009). Also, the book focuses on the United States with limited references to European labor arrangements, specifically Germany's co-determination model. The references prove useful for showing alternatives to the American arrangement but raise unanswered questions about other labor arrangements across the globe. Moreover, the author refers to “workers” generally without systematically addressing the idiosyncrasies of different hierarchies of workers or the boundaries of “the new working class” as specified in the title. This broad strokes approach is useful for a general understanding of issues at the intersection of labor law and data but raises questions about specific types of work that are better addressed by studies with more particular focus such as Reference LevyLevy (2023), Reference BulutBulut (2020), Reference GreggGregg (2011) and Reference HochschildHochschild (1997).
Besides advocating reform, Rogers takes care to put the stakes of capital's aggregation of power resources, especially in the control of technology, in proper context. He suggests that the anxiety around new technologies such as robots and AI have such serious limitations that extreme predictions such as an apocalypse or the complete replacement of human workers by robots is highly unlikely. He points to the high cost of some robots, poor answers of open AI, Tesla's still unrealized dream of self-driving cars and the need for human discretion in many job functions. Another issue he carefully contextualizes, which lends to the optimistic tone of the book, is the potential limit on the ability of companies to discipline labor without financial penalty. Comparing the financial performance of FedEx and UPS, he argues that companies such as the former may experience diminishing returns for squeezing workers, while their competitors such as the latter gain an edge in the labor market and overall financial performance. However, this is a very specific example, the outcome of which is probably driven by extraneous variables beyond fissuring. Nonetheless, as Rogers notes, the book could serve as a signpost for future research, and I imagine that researchers may be inclined to conduct systematic studies to determine causal relationships between fissuring and financial performance.
Data and Democracy at Work is a must read for anyone interested in how the rise of the data-driven economy has impacted labor-capital relations. The careful attention to explaining key concepts makes it suitable foundational reading in graduate seminars across various disciplines interested in labor. The proposed reforms—promoting worker organizing and democratizing workplace data governance—are also useful for policy experts looking to understand how to restructure the modern workplace to reflect democratic ideals.
