‘Soft Authoritarianism’ in the Tech Workplace
Saturday, July 22, 2017, 4PM-6PM
Description
Initial success in union organizing is based on how well workers understand their position. In the new economy, tech workers must additionally explore how their experiences differ from more traditional narratives about work life and structure.
The tech industry, like ever other industry, oversees, indoctrinates, and arbitrarily rules over their employees; a private government. We may dig the perks–on-site dinner, shuttles, campus housing, visa support, inspirational murals on the walls–but our bosses are not giving these things away; in return, they expect compliance, efficiency, self-censorship, tech/non-tech worker stratification, and ‘hustle’, regardless of the consequences on worker well-being. Our discussion will dive into how this is happening, why this is happening, and how we can convince our co-workers that the ‘workplace government’ is not working in our best interest.
We will also discuss how, as tech eats the world, the governmental structures erected by the tech industry also infiltrate the working lives of those in other industries in the form of surveillance, workplace propaganda, etc.
Readings
- Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (New York Times, 2015)
- Where Despots Rule (Jacobin, 2017)
- Fuck Work (Aeon, 2017)
- The United States of Work (New Republic, 2017)
- Google is trying to solve employee housing crisis with modular apartments (The Verge, 2017)
- Data-Crunching Is Coming to Help Your Boss Manage Your Time (New York Times, 2015)
- 6 Software Tools for Monitoring Employee Productivity (Huffington Post, 2016)
- Tech Campuses as Cities: The Solution to the Housing Crisis? (SPUR, 2016)