Page 28
Drawing on findings from a long-term ethnographic study of Uber drivers in California, I show that the values and norms embedded in both anti-discrimination laws and minimum wage laws discussed in Part I have become schema through which workers frame their work experiences as harmful. In defining the algorithmic payment structures as unfair and unjust, workers in
my research frequently complained of their low-hourly wages, despite the fact that they were not paid by the hour. In describing the harms they suffered, they drew on the language of anti-discrimination law, condemning not just
the variability of their income over time, but more specifically the variability of their income in comparison to other drivers. The fact that different workers made different amounts for largely the same work was a source of grievance defined through inequities that often-pitted workers against one another, leaving them to wonder what they were doing wrong or what others had figured out. This feature of algorithmic wage discrimination—because of its divisive effects—may also undermine the ability of workers to organize collectively to raise their wages and working conditions. In addition to complaints about the unfairness of the low, variable, and unpredictable hourly pay, workers made two other moral judgements about the techniques through which they were remunerated. First, as my research progressed and the techniques of algorithmic wage discrimination deployed
by on-demand firms both lowered pay and became increasingly obscure, drivers described the process of attempting to earn not through the lens of gaming, but through the lens of gambling. And second, they portrayed the algorithmic changes or interventions that prevented them from earning as they had hoped or expected as trickery or manipulation enacted by the firm. Vacillating between feeling possibility and impossibility, freedom and control, workers experienced algorithmic wage discrimination as a practice in which the structures and functions of the machine boss were designed to take advantage of them by providing the illusion of agency. As Dietrich, a part-time driver in Los Angeles said, “[It’s] constant cognitive dissonance. You’re free, but the app controls you. You’ve got it figured out, and then it
all changes.”
Drawing on these insights, I argue that algorithmic wage discrimination is a deeply predatory and extractive labor management practice—a practice
that preys on feelings of hope of vulnerable workers while limiting real possibility of economic certainty and stability.