Capitalist labor relations always involve three distinct forms of surveillance

Evidence

Not only are workers’ conditions becoming more precarious, but their moment-to-moment activities are also becoming increasingly monitored. A large transformation underway is datafication’s role in changing how workers are managed, which entails an increasing degree of monitoring. As Larry Catá Backer argues, “Surveillance has become not only a technique of governance, but its substitute,” with assumptions and objectives beyond passive data collection. Extending beyond the workplace to all aspects of a worker’s life, this new kind of surveillance is very much a domain of the social quantification sector. Its evolution must be placed in the longer history of surveillance within capitalism, which, as Christian Fuchs points out, was already noted by Marx. Alongside the consumer surveillance, discussed more fully in chapter 3, and the mutual surveillance between competitors that is inherent to market economies, capitalist labor relations have—according to Fuchs—always been characterized by at least three types of surveillance: applicant surveillance, workplace surveillance, and workforce surveillance. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 227

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes applicant, workplace, and workforce surveillance as the three structural surveillances inherent to capitalist labor relations.
• XREF: Links to the reader’s attention/surveillance reading track — Backer’s claim that surveillance substitutes for governance is a rival-frame anchor.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 227