Power Tools: How Employer-Driven Automation Shortchanges Us All

Abstract

Much of our discussion on the "Future of Work" (FoW) focuses not on work, but on technology. Even when it does engage work, it merely decomposes jobs into tasks, denuded of the employment relations context that creates and sustains work. I submit that we examine the employment relationship drivers and consequences of workplace technological change, so we can account for the massive imbalance in workplace and labor market power, at least in the US. Only then can we acknowledge the real arbiters of technology's economic effects on work and workers—employers.

This book-in-progress synthesizes existing research on workplace technological change through an employment relations lens. I argue that employer hegemony comes into play long before the parties "negotiate" the pay-profit split in technologies' economic returns. Its consequences transcend distributional concerns, impinging on the value creation process itself. Therefore, the dire consequences of unfettered employer power with respect to technological change redound not only to the detriment of equity and voice, but to efficiency and social welfare, too. In the hands of unfettered employers, far from the widespread prosperity we would hope for, technological change effectively shortchanges us all.

I detail the forces that lead workers to "over-automate," beyond a point that maximizes even their own profits, let alone fairness and self-determination for workers. I also show that unencumbered employers wield technology toward permanent, structural changes in the employment relationship that move us further from widespread economic prosperity and further cement the existing imbalance of power. I conclude by offering a set of policies for shifting the operative paradigm away from one that disempowers workers and delivers inefficient outcomes. IT, robots, and AI can just as well be engines of widespread prosperity…as long as we don't let the machines or the policymakers forget who's boss.

Speaker

Adam Seth Litwin is Associate Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell's ILR School and serves as an associate editor at its flagship journal, the ILR Review. Over his 2022-2023 sabbatical, he's also served as the J. William Fulbright Visiting Professor of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia. Litwin's research, anchored in industrial relations, examines the determinants and impact of labor relations structures and technological change. As a technologist, Litwin also writes on issues involving technological change, work, and workers in the healthcare sector. He has published a mix of empirical and conceptual studies intersecting the areas of labor relations and technological change, in both industrial relations and medical journals, including the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Human Resource Management, Applied Clinical Informatics, and the International Review of Psychiatry.