Today, the future of work looks increasingly like a digital panopticon. For instance, in many warehouses, workers are tracked by systems that monitor “Time Off Task” to the second.
Furthermore, generative AI is not just changing jobs; it is imperiling them, particularly for women. According to an analysis by the National Partnership for Women & Families, while women make up 47% of the workforce, they account for 83% of workers in AI-vulnerable occupations.
For example, nursing gig platforms have been found to pit essential workers against each other by offering shifts to those who bid the lowest hourly wage. Such techniques have been honed in the gig economy more broadly to algorithmically set different wages for different employees doing the same work.
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The architects of this renewal are already at work. In Washington State, the National Domestic Workers Alliance successfully updated the Workers’ Bill of Rights, extending protections to a workforce that is disproportionately women of color who have largely been excluded for a century. In New York, delivery drivers secured a minimum wage increase from $5.39 to over $19 an hour. In the South, coalitions are securing legally-binding Community Benefits Agreements to ensure that the green energy transition includes union contracts and local hiring. And AI Now is mobilizing communities across the American South and Midwest to challenge massive data center projects that threaten to increase local utility bills and harm water supplies without providing reciprocal local economic benefits. These are not just labor wins; they are democratic victories. They prove that when people have a stake in the economy, they gain a stake in the system.
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