Computing and Collective Action
About
Labor unions are a critical component of ensuring dignified working conditions for laborers. However, as a byproduct of neoliberalization American labor unions have been in a free-fall in terms of membership numbers. Drawing from sociological work on organized labor, we seek to analyze how labor organizers try to bring workers together, to act collectively, through digital communication technologies. Towards that end, we interviewed ~19 labor union members, who engaged in digital worker-to-worker organizing through tools like Slack or Discord focusing on how workers utilized and interacted with each other on these digital platforms. In this talk we provide preliminary results on this study along with some early discussions around developing useful technical tools for supporting worker-to-worker organizing.
Speaker
Freddy Reiber
Freddy is a third-year PhD student in the Computing and Data Science department at Boston University, and advised by the fantastic Allison McDonald. His work explores how power dynamics are shifted by technology with a focus on applying human-driven methods to complex issues. Currently, his projects are on 2nd order dynamics in digital spaces within labor unions and the motivations used by cryptographers for their research.