Your boss wants to use surveillance data to cut your wages
6 days ago
- #surveillance-pricing
- #algorithmic-discrimination
- #labor-rights
- Surveillance pricing uses digital tools and surveillance data to charge individuals different prices or pay discriminatory wages based on personal data.
- Key factors enabling surveillance pricing include monopolies, weak privacy and competition laws, and digitization ('twiddling').
- Algorithmic wage discrimination, such as Uber's system, exploits worker data to offer lower wages to those deemed more desperate.
- Surveillance wages are spreading across sectors like healthcare and retail, using data brokers to set wages based on financial precarity.
- This practice facilitates illegal price-fixing and can mask gender and racial discrimination under the guise of data-driven decisions.
- Legislative efforts, like in Colorado, aim to ban surveillance pricing, but face opposition from companies denying its use.
- AI aids surveillance wages by automating wage-setting, even if inaccurate, and allowing employers to claim non-collusion in price-fixing.