Clocking big tech: the battle to own your data

Prospect has been working with a coalition of unions, tech specialists and researchers to develop new approaches to how we take control of our own data.

In July the beta version of one of those ideas – the WeClock app – was launched, but soon after Facebook decided to ban the app on its platform. Following discussions with the app developers, Facebook has now reversed this decision.

At Prospect, we have long been aware of big data and the need to secure the interests of our members when it comes to all the ways that algorithm-based software can be used at work.

Desktop spying

Indeed, many apps seek to put a “spy on our desktop” – and with more people working from home during the pandemic, the risk increases of employers also wanting to put a “spy in our homes”.

Google has invested billions in mapping the world and developing self-driving car technology, because it wants to be in a position to shape our technology choices when it comes to our mobility.

That means knowing where we go, how often we go there and how often (and where) we stop en route. This encroaches into our lives as workers as well as private citizens.

Facebook is not the only example – merely among the most egregious. Earlier this summer, the social media platform pitched that Facebook Workplace, its office collaboration project, would allow employers to control the content of group discussions by banning words such as “unionize”.

It later had to backtrack after complaints by its own employees and the US trade union organisation AFL-CIO.

Knowledge is power

Not least when it comes to the workplace, the data on which our choices are based belongs to us – or should do. Surveillance software undermines that principle and its very existence raises the need for accountability and worker involvement in decision-making about its use. Data needs to become part of our bargaining agenda.

This battleground reveals the rationale for Facebook’s initial decision regarding WeClock: its whole reason for being lies in hoovering up our data about what interests us, analysing that and then packaging it to secure advertising revenues.

Start-ups like WeClock enable workers to log their own working hours and overtime to protect themselves from being overworked and underpaid. Crucially that leaves control of the data entirely in users’ hands.

As Christina J. Colclough, who led the team behind WeClock, says: “In a world increasingly controlled by corporate data extraction and the analysis companies perform on this data, unions now have a tool that allows them to offer workers’ realities to the world.

“WeClock is designed for workers, by workers. Using the tool, they can gather undeniable evidence in their quest for decent work and the battle against unsafe, unfair and irresponsible working conditions.

“WeClock was developed by Guardian Project and is a self-tracking privacy-preserving tool we can be proud of.”

The more that apps opt for such an ethical approach, the more those users will understand how platforms like Facebook and Google operate.

And the more that people realise the importance of asserting their rights over their data, the more shaky these platforms’ way of operating becomes.

At work, Facebook’s monitoring software, Workplace, is a key tool it can sell to employers confronted with worker recognition campaigns.

Online activism

I doubt we have heard the last of Facebook Workplace. Lobbyist and employer consultant Rick Berman has said the pandemic has encouraged a “historic rise in labour activism”.

He warns that employees worried about exposure to the coronavirus have taken to Facebook and other online platforms to share their concerns about the workplace, giving union organisers greater access to disgruntled workers.

Worker recognition campaigns in the tech giants and elsewhere are certainly growing in the face of increasingly precarious terms and conditions.

In “building back better” after the pandemic, we need to encourage high-trust workplaces where managers are allowed to do their jobs by actively using their own people management skills.

Prospect will continue to articulate the need for better trust, accountability and transparency when it comes to monitoring and surveillance software in the workplace; and for data to become part of the bargaining agenda.

As our workplaces continue to change, our core commitment to empower our members to realise those goals remains steadfast.

More information

• “Algorithms at work: what we can learn from the A-level results fiasco”. Blog by Andrew Pakes, Prospect director of research, communications and organising.
• “We cannot let workers’ rights evaporate just because we’re working from home”. Blog by Andrew Pakes
• “Workers taking control of their own data” – introducing the WeClock app. Blog by Andrew Pakes.
• Six challenges for the future of good work: is coronavirus the crisis that reminded us we are human?  Blog by Andrew Pakes.
• Prospect research showing that half of workers do not know what data employers are collecting about them.
• The WeClock app is available for Android and iOS, including Apple Watch, and is free.