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Emerging waves of struggles in sectors such as logistics, food delivery, journalism, and other platform-based sites of labour are showing how workers resist the casualized and precarious work conditions of the digital economy. Uber, Deliveroo, Amazon, Instagram, and many other platform-based corporations are experiencing worker refusal, organizing and struggle. Their algorithmic power is coupled with the material command over workers’ bodies, time and space. Yet while technology is used to intensify and subdue labour, it is also constantly met with resistance from workers. This will be key in future processes of liberation, as workers challenge the patterns shaped by the platform and unionize or organize for improved conditions, higher wages, predictable scheduling, and better benefits.

Speakers:
Enda Brophy and Seamus Grayer (Simon Fraser University)
Callum Cant (University of West London)
Julie Yujie Chen (University of Leicester)
Alessandro Delfanti (University of Toronto)
Niels van Doorn (University of Amsterdam)
Nick Dyer-Witheford (Western University)
Alessandro Gandini (King’s College)
Lilly Irani (University of California San Diego)
Tamara Kneese (University of San Francisco)
Kristy Milland (McMaster University and TurkerNation)
Victoria O’Meara (Western University)
Noopur​​ Raval (University of California Irvine)
Alex Rosenblat (Data & Society)
Tech Workers Coalition
Jamie Woodcock (London School of Economics)

(Full schedule TBA)

Faculty of Information, 140 St. George Street, Toronto, Room 728

Attendance is free.

The symposium is organized by the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology and its working group on platform labour. It is co-sponsored by the ICCIT (Institute for Communication, Culture, Information and Technology) and the University of Toronto Mississauga.