Event Cancellation Notice
LogOut 2! has been cancelled due to the unpredictable risks related to the COVID-19 virus crisis and in relation to travel plans for many international speakers. We apologize for the inconvenience. We plan to move Log Out! to fall 2020.
Friday March 13, 2020
International Conference
9:00 am - 6:00 pm
Faculty of Information, University of Toronto (140 George Street, Room 728)
Digital capitalism is a terrain of social conflict. Work is increasingly shaped by the technologies used to reorganize the labour process and devise new forms of value generation. Technologies that allow to decompose or outsource jobs make workers increasingly replaceable. New surveillance techniques are used to control and discipline workers, and despotism is on the rise. But a long cycle of struggles has shown that workers don’t passively obey the rules of the digital workplace.
Look no further than drivers in the ride-hailing industry in the streets of the world, domestic workers and freelancers in North America and Asia, food-delivery couriers in Europe and Canada, warehouse workers in urban peripheries across the globe, software engineers from China to California, or game designers and tech workers in cities across North America. The ubiquitous penetration of digital technologies in warehouses, workshops, offices, and app-based workplaces is met with novel workarounds and struggles. New forms of class composition boost solidarity and organizing in the digitally-mediated work environment. Workers log out from and subvert digital labour.
Building on the success of the 2018 edition, Log Out! 2 brings together researchers and workers to discuss how digital capitalism can be confronted and subverted.
SPEAKERS
Sareeta Amrute [University of Washington and Data & Society]
Sreyan Chatterjee [Vidhi Center for Legal Policy, New Delhi]
Nicole Cohen [University of Toronto]
Niels van Doorn [University of Amsterdam]
Silvia Masiero [Loughborough University]
Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya [University of California Berkeley]
Rida Qadri [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]
Greig de Peuter [Wilfrid Laurier University]
Winifred Poster [Washington University St. Louis]
Jack Qiu [Chinese University of Hong Kong]
Tanay Gandhi [Center for Internet and Society, New Delhi]
Noopur Raval [University of California Irvine]
Michael Siciliano [Queen’s University]
Jamie Woodcock [Open University]
WORKER ORGANIZATIONS ROUNDTABLE
Foodsters United
Vice Union
Tech Worker Coalition
Game Workers Unite!
Attendance is free. Please confirm your presence on EVENTBRITE
Please see the detailed program below.
The conference is organized by the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology with support from the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology
Organizing committee: Julie Chen, Nicole Cohen, Alessandro Delfanti, Greig de Peuter, Julian Posada, Brendan Smith
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CONFERENCE PROGRAM
8:45 am
Welcome + Coffee
9:15 – 9:30 am
Introduction
Sarah Sharma + Alessandro Delfanti
9:30 – 10:45 am
Jack Qiu
A Spatial and Historical Mapping of Labor Resistance in the Platform Economy
Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya and JS Tan
Collective Actions in Tech (2000 to Present): Historical and Current Trends in Employee Activism
Winifred Poster
Avatar Workers and Digital Union Organizers
11:15 am – 12:30 pm
Michael Siciliano
A (Potential) Labor Politics of Judgment?
Sreyan Chatterjee
Workplace Democracy in the Age of the Sharing Economy
Tanay Gandhi
Collectivisation and Domestic Worker Subjectivities in Gig Work
1:30 - 3:00 pm
Workers Organizations Roundtable Discussion
Foodsters United, Game Workers Unite!, Tech Worker Coalition, Vice
Moderator: Jamie Woodcock
3:00 - 4:00 pm
Rida Qadri
Driving Disruption: How Driver Spatial Strategies Become Algorithmic Resistance in Jakarta's App-Mediated Mobility Market
Silvia Masiero
Digital Platform Labour in Pakistan: Vulnerabilities, Voids and Solidarity Networks
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Noopur Raval
Vegan AI – On Ethical Consumption Narratives and Global Solidarity After Platforms
Niels van Doorn
At What Price? Wage Politics and Calculative Power Struggles in On-Demand Food Delivery
Sareeta Amrute
After Veillance
Wrap-Up
Julie Chen