The technological changes in the sphere of production that we have witnessed in the last 10 years have been of such significance as to be called “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (Industry 4.0), thus an important step beyond the “Digital Revolution” of the late 20th century. Innovations such as robotics, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and the development of algorithms, all point in the same direction: that of reducing human intervention in the production process to a minimum. Indeed, fears have emerged that artificial intelligence will create a huge reserve army of labour. The working and middle classes worry that computers and machines will end up taking their jobs and this will leave individuals and families with no possibilities of earning a leaving for themselves. These fears are very real and create growing anxiety among workers. Nonetheless, human labour is still needed in many different moments in the process of production and distribution of the goods that we consume. Thus, we are now in a situation in which human and artificial intelligence interact, with the latter taking up the role that once was of the line manager in the Fordist factory – dictating the speed and quality of work required – in many “traditional” industries, or directly as a substitute for the employers, as it is the case in the uberised ones, such as food delivery. This situation has serious implications for workers’ rights as well as for the construal of their identity as workers. Indeed, “workers governed by AI […] often fall through the cracks of employment legislation both with respect to their employment status as well as protections from discrimination and unfair dismissal.” (Walker et al., 2021, p. 29). The issues of identity referred to above constitute a major problem for organising resistance to unfair practices in the “workplace”, but recently some new forms of organisation have started to emerge. A case in point is the attempt at organising the workforce of one of the most famous and powerful tech giants, Alphabet, which is the corporation that owns Google, among many other enterprises. Indeed, on January 4th, 2021 the new Alphabet Workers Union was launched to combine “the struggle for the soul of Alphabet with the broader working-class struggle in America and around the world” as the organisation states in its website (Alphabet Workers Union, 2021, p. Section Meet CWA). Issues of identity are addressed in the homepage of the union, with relational clauses (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) such as “we are empathetic workers”, and “we are technologists who trust each other” (Alphabet Workers Union, 2021, sec. Home), that attach emotions and feelings to the members of the Union. Using language that does not shy away from feelings is something unusual in the history of organised labour, so we could say that innovation in the production process has finally produced innovation in the language of union mobilisation and its communicative techniques. This paper aims at describing this new, emotional language of the Alphabet Workers Union as a form of resistance to the dehumanising rule of the algorithm. It is expected that, in the process, the anxieties and fears of the workforce will be highlighted and defined. At the same time, positive feelings and emotions attached to the re-humanising experience of pursuing a shared and collective goal are also bound to emerge. The corpus analysed in the paper is made up of texts belonging to different genres so as to fully represent the social practice of union organising in all its semiotic aspects, from the most public to the ones used for internal communication (Askehave & Swales, 2001; Bhatia, 2008, 2015; Martin, 2014; Swales, 1990). The ideational and textual aspects of individual texts are analysed in depth through Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), while the analysis of the interpersonal aspect, i.e. the way in which social relationships are enacted through linguistic choices, is undertaken through the ‘appraisal’ paradigm developed by Martin and White (2005) as a system that accounts for the use of “semantic resources used to negotiate emotions, judgements, and valuations” (Martin, 2000, p. 145).
Organising in the Industry 4.0: the rise of the "Empathetic Union"
Claudia Ortu
2021-01-01
Abstract
The technological changes in the sphere of production that we have witnessed in the last 10 years have been of such significance as to be called “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (Industry 4.0), thus an important step beyond the “Digital Revolution” of the late 20th century. Innovations such as robotics, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and the development of algorithms, all point in the same direction: that of reducing human intervention in the production process to a minimum. Indeed, fears have emerged that artificial intelligence will create a huge reserve army of labour. The working and middle classes worry that computers and machines will end up taking their jobs and this will leave individuals and families with no possibilities of earning a leaving for themselves. These fears are very real and create growing anxiety among workers. Nonetheless, human labour is still needed in many different moments in the process of production and distribution of the goods that we consume. Thus, we are now in a situation in which human and artificial intelligence interact, with the latter taking up the role that once was of the line manager in the Fordist factory – dictating the speed and quality of work required – in many “traditional” industries, or directly as a substitute for the employers, as it is the case in the uberised ones, such as food delivery. This situation has serious implications for workers’ rights as well as for the construal of their identity as workers. Indeed, “workers governed by AI […] often fall through the cracks of employment legislation both with respect to their employment status as well as protections from discrimination and unfair dismissal.” (Walker et al., 2021, p. 29). The issues of identity referred to above constitute a major problem for organising resistance to unfair practices in the “workplace”, but recently some new forms of organisation have started to emerge. A case in point is the attempt at organising the workforce of one of the most famous and powerful tech giants, Alphabet, which is the corporation that owns Google, among many other enterprises. Indeed, on January 4th, 2021 the new Alphabet Workers Union was launched to combine “the struggle for the soul of Alphabet with the broader working-class struggle in America and around the world” as the organisation states in its website (Alphabet Workers Union, 2021, p. Section Meet CWA). Issues of identity are addressed in the homepage of the union, with relational clauses (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) such as “we are empathetic workers”, and “we are technologists who trust each other” (Alphabet Workers Union, 2021, sec. Home), that attach emotions and feelings to the members of the Union. Using language that does not shy away from feelings is something unusual in the history of organised labour, so we could say that innovation in the production process has finally produced innovation in the language of union mobilisation and its communicative techniques. This paper aims at describing this new, emotional language of the Alphabet Workers Union as a form of resistance to the dehumanising rule of the algorithm. It is expected that, in the process, the anxieties and fears of the workforce will be highlighted and defined. At the same time, positive feelings and emotions attached to the re-humanising experience of pursuing a shared and collective goal are also bound to emerge. The corpus analysed in the paper is made up of texts belonging to different genres so as to fully represent the social practice of union organising in all its semiotic aspects, from the most public to the ones used for internal communication (Askehave & Swales, 2001; Bhatia, 2008, 2015; Martin, 2014; Swales, 1990). The ideational and textual aspects of individual texts are analysed in depth through Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), while the analysis of the interpersonal aspect, i.e. the way in which social relationships are enacted through linguistic choices, is undertaken through the ‘appraisal’ paradigm developed by Martin and White (2005) as a system that accounts for the use of “semantic resources used to negotiate emotions, judgements, and valuations” (Martin, 2000, p. 145).
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
