Fulfillment of the Work Games: Warehouse Workers' Experiences with Algorithmic Management

TL;DR

This study provides an in-depth ethnographic analysis of Amazon warehouse workers' experiences with algorithmic management, highlighting their resistance practices and the implications for understanding control mechanisms in automated work environments.

Contribution

It offers a detailed empirical examination of workers' reactions and resistance to algorithmic management in fulfillment centers, expanding CSCW insights beyond gig work.

Findings

Workers resist algorithmic control through 'work games'

Resistance practices are linked to broader control mechanisms

Understanding resistance can inform critiques of algorithmic labor systems

Abstract

The introduction of algorithms into a large number of industries has already restructured the landscape of work and threatens to continue. While a growing body of CSCW research centered on the future of work has begun to document these shifts, relatively little is known about workers' experiences beyond those of platform-mediated gig workers. In this paper, we turn to a traditional work sector, Amazon fulfillment centers (FC), to deepen our field's empirical examination of algorithmic management. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research, we show how FC workers react to managers' interventions, imposed productivity rates, and quantified objectification when subjected to labor-tracking systems in their physical work environments. Situating FC workers' resistance to algorithmic systems and metrics within the current CSCW literature allows us to explicate and link the nuanced practices of FC workers to the larger discourse of algorithmic control mechanisms. In addition, we show how FC workers' resistance practices are emblematic of 'work games'--a long-studied means by which workers agentically configure ("trick") their engagement within work systems. We argue that gaining a more nuanced understanding of workers' resistance and consent in relation to algorithmic management expands our ability to critique and potentially disassemble the economic and political forces at the root of these sociotechnical labor systems.