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This project ‘Workers fight back algorithms!‘ will document the link between technologically mediated work intensification and workers’ health and safety. The project will be conducted under the auspices of Marta’s union, OZZ Inicjatywa Pracownicza. It will involve logistics and production employees at workplaces like Amazon warehouses in Poland, where she previously worked and continues to organize, as well as others located across Poland, where the union is present.
Firstly, the project will comprise research with workers to probe the nature of their work, the use of technology at their workplaces, productivity rates, data collection, surveillance, health concerns, workplace accidents, and psychological well being. The purpose will be to compare data and incite discussion about work intensity and its link to health and safety.
Next, the project will examine the legal tools available to workers to make their workplaces safer. These will include: the right to information about work processes, workers’ involvement in assessing health and safety risks, engaging government agencies to measure such risks, energy expenditure as a measure of unsafe work, shop stewards’ right to stop unsafe work, legal regulations on the collection of personal data, surveillance, and the right to refuse dangerous work (safety strikes).
A final aim of this project is to refine strategies that allow workers a voice on the job.
The findings of this research will be presented during an in-person workshop on workplace health and safety involving workers and experts.
Finally, the end result will be a published handbook for workers containing knowledge gathered throughout the project. A final aim of this project is to refine strategies that allow workers a voice on the job, to create the collective capacities to engage democratic processes off the job as well.
Updated November 2022
