When Algorithms Hire and Fire

6 | International Union Rights | 25/3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0 When Algorithms Hire and Fire Take a second and consider whether you would you have your job, if an algorithm had been in charge of hiring you? Think about your financial records, your health file, your friends on social media. Are you a member of a trade union? Do you own a Fitbit? What are your shopping habits and what do you do in your spare time? And then ask, how would all of this affect your work life? Would you get hired, fired, disciplined or promoted? What seems like a bizarre question is in fact one that we all need to think about and react to. ‘Management-by-algorithm’ is spreading, and more and more data from many different sources is used in HR processes. Critically, across the world, bar to a certain extent in Europe, there are very few regulations in place that protect the misuse of workers’ personal data in and by companies. Trade unions must fill this regulatory gap and put workers’ data rights on the agenda to hold management and governments accountable and responsible. What’s all this about data? The recent Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal all too clearly showed the value of (personal) data. Its importance for advertising, profiling and marketing is so high that it is brought and sold for an unknown figure every year. In 2014, the value of data flows was estimated to be 2.8 trillion USD1. Now put that dazzling figure in relation to the fact that three years later in 2017, the World Economic Forum estimated2 that 90 percent of all data at that time had been produced since 2015. We can only imagine what the value of current data flows really is. We are leaving a data trail behind us all the time. From our social media profiles, our likes and posts, to customer service phone calls, visits to the doctor, use of our GPS or cash withdrawals from the bank. We willingly give away our names and email addresses when we log on to free Wi-Fi hotspots in cafes, airports or train stations and we more or less have become so accustomed to ‘free’ digital services that we almost get irritated when a mobile app costs a dollar. The thing is, nothing is free. What we have been doing and still are doing, is freely and oftentimes willingly giving away our location, habits, activities and opinions. In other words, we are paying with our data. But who is actually buying, reading, analysing and selling this data? The short answer is we don’t know, and we even can’t know. Insiders UNI has spoken to estimate that the big tech companies Google , Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Alibaba - own more than 70 percent of the world’s combined data. This concentration of what is such a valuable asset is putting these companies into an unacceptable position of economic, digital, social and even political power. Workers across the world have very few, if any, legal rights to demand insight and influence over the use of their personal data. We know of the existence of so-called data-brokers, firms that make a living out of buying and selling data. We know that companies are mining workers of their data. Do they then sell it? And if so, to whom? Who at the end of the day gets to know what your health file says, or how productive an algorithm or a company thinks you are? How is this data – which is apparently easily accessible to anyone who can afford to pay – being used by companies to manage workers? Surveillance, manipulation and algorithmic control Whilst our eyes have been slightly opened by the revelations of how data was used to target and manipulate voters such as in the US election and the Brexit result, politicians and experts afford very little attention to how data is used, and potentially misused, in relation to work. There is a sharp rise in the use of algorithms, data and artificial intelligence (AI) in human resources and productivity planning. Companies are popping up that offer AI solutions to cut costs on dealing...