Platforms fragment workers through individualized scoring to discipline labor and lift productivity

Evidence

The concept of organizational fragmentation denotes that workers’ performances are intentionally individualized, as the platforms evaluate them publicly in order to subject them to a disciplining mechanism aimed at increasing labor productivity. … Meanwhile, drivers have to carry out deliveries fixed in advance by the subcontracting company that takes its orders exclusively from Amazon. This fragmentation due to the proliferation of different subcontractors produces a whole range of sanction-incentive regimes mediated by the dispatcher. — Donatella della Porta et al., Mobilizing Against the Odds, 50

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s disciplinary power in Zamyatin’s We and to the reader’s own work on platform solidarity in the Amazon-driver vs courier comparison — this is the exact mechanism that fragments before re-aggregation can happen. — connects to: Algorithms have absorbed managers’ organizational functions in platform work — Donatella della Porta et al., Mobilizing Against the Odds: Solidarity…, 49; The Bedaux system quantified and ranked worker efficiency to speed production — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1712; Platform work fuses data relations with labor relations at unprecedented scale — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 87 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Platform labor fragmentation is a deliberate politics of isolating workers across five dimensions #expands (0.92) — Donatella della Porta et al., Mobilizing Against the Odds, 47
• The Bedaux system quantified and ranked worker efficiency to speed production #expands (0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1712
• Platform work fuses data relations with labor relations at unprecedented scale #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 87
• Monitoring algorithms replace managers in enforcing work intensity #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 117
• Algorithmic management strips workers of any human authority to contest discipline #corroborates (0.78) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 119
• Enframing techniques proposed that individual effort could be measured and machine-coordinated #exemplifies (0.76) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 170
• Unemployment functions as a deliberate worker-discipline device #corroborates (0.74) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 18