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Worker Resistance Within and Against the Platform Economy

March 6, 2018

A full day conference held at the Faculty of Information and co-sponsored by the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology and the University of Toronto Mississauga.

The conference focused on the role of digital technologies in re-organizing labour processes and emerging forms of worker resistance. Uber, Deliveroo, Amazon, Instagram, and many other platform-based corporations are experiencing worker refusal, unionization, organizing and struggle. While technology is used to intensify and subdue labour, it is also constantly met with resistance from workers who challenge the casualized and precarious work conditions of the digital economy.

NEW: Notes from Below Special Issue

PROGRAM

OPENING REMARKS

Sarah Sharma [McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology] +

Alessandro Delfanti [University of Toronto]

The Fairwork Foundation: Strategies for Online Platform Work

Jamie Woodcock [University of Oxford]

Platform Organizing: Digital Tools for Labour Recomposition

Enda Brophy + Seamus Grayer [Simon Fraser University)]

The Warehouse without Walls: A Workers’ Inquiry at Deliveroo

Callum Cant [University of West London]

When the Crowd Resists: mTurk Worker Struggles Against Amazon

Kristy Milland [McMaster University and TurkerNation]

Labour Against the Machine. Control and Conflict in E-commerce Warehouses
Alessandro Delfanti [University of Toronto]

“Can A Single Spark Start a Prairie Fire?” Connect the Dots in the Chinese Platform

Workers’ Tactics of Resistance

Julie Yujie Chen [University of Leicester]

Influencer Comment Pods as Co-operative Algorithm Hacking: Resistance Within

and Against Instagram Platform Labour

Victoria O’Meara [Western University]

Workers’ Inquiry among Silicon Valley Tech Workers

Tech Workers Coalition

Fighting White Power with Worker Power: Organizing and Visibility in Silicon Valley

Tamara Kneese [University of San Francisco]

FINAL ROUNDTABLE
Nick Dyer-Witheford [Western University]
Alessandro Gandini [King’s College]
Lilly Irani [University of California San Diego]
Kristy Milland [McMaster University and TurkerNation]
Moderator: Greig de Peuter [Wilfrid Laurier University]