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Worker Resistance Within and Against the Platform Economy
March 6, 2018
A full day conference held at the Faculty of Information and co-sponsored by the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology and the University of Toronto Mississauga.
The conference focused on the role of digital technologies in re-organizing labour processes and emerging forms of worker resistance. Uber, Deliveroo, Amazon, Instagram, and many other platform-based corporations are experiencing worker refusal, unionization, organizing and struggle. While technology is used to intensify and subdue labour, it is also constantly met with resistance from workers who challenge the casualized and precarious work conditions of the digital economy.
NEW: Notes from Below Special Issue
PROGRAM
OPENING REMARKS
Sarah Sharma [McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology] +
Alessandro Delfanti [University of Toronto]
The Fairwork Foundation: Strategies for Online Platform Work
Jamie Woodcock [University of Oxford]
Platform Organizing: Digital Tools for Labour Recomposition
Enda Brophy + Seamus Grayer [Simon Fraser University)]
The Warehouse without Walls: A Workers’ Inquiry at Deliveroo
Callum Cant [University of West London]
When the Crowd Resists: mTurk Worker Struggles Against Amazon
Kristy Milland [McMaster University and TurkerNation]
Labour Against the Machine. Control and Conflict in E-commerce Warehouses
Alessandro Delfanti [University of Toronto]
“Can A Single Spark Start a Prairie Fire?” Connect the Dots in the Chinese Platform
Workers’ Tactics of Resistance
Julie Yujie Chen [University of Leicester]
Influencer Comment Pods as Co-operative Algorithm Hacking: Resistance Within
and Against Instagram Platform Labour
Victoria O’Meara [Western University]
Workers’ Inquiry among Silicon Valley Tech Workers
Tech Workers Coalition
Fighting White Power with Worker Power: Organizing and Visibility in Silicon Valley
Tamara Kneese [University of San Francisco]
FINAL ROUNDTABLE
Nick Dyer-Witheford [Western University]
Alessandro Gandini [King’s College]
Lilly Irani [University of California San Diego]
Kristy Milland [McMaster University and TurkerNation]
Moderator: Greig de Peuter [Wilfrid Laurier University]
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Brett Caraway, Nicole Cohen, Alessandro Delfanti, Karen McEwen, David Nieborg,
Rianka Singh + Madison Trusolino
PRESS
Disrupting the disruptors: U of T event looks at worker resistance in companies
like Uber, Amazon UofT News (March 2018)
