The Deadly Computer

The danger with computers is not that Amazon knows I like to read mysteries. Who cares? The problem is Kronos and related computer programs, according to Esther Kaplan in the March HARPER'S.

Today 62% of retail jobs are part-time. The great majority of these workers have no set days off or any regular schedule. What companies do today is put all their part-timers on call. If you want to keep your job, you can be called in to work at any time. It's two hours one day, four hours the next night. Where possible, computer programs measure each second and clock how fast you work. The faster workers survive. The work then speeds up. To keep their jobs the workers learn shortcuts, some of them counterproductive. Meantime, the worker can't schedule child care because her hours of work shift day by day, maximizing investor profits by cutting labor costs.

To keep their own jobs, managers (also measured by a computer program) force workers to finish tasks off the books. If managers can show that certain jobs get done and took almost no official worker time, the managers will survive the speed-up. In fast food joints, for example, employees may be required to work as much as 10 hours a week without pay, off the computer. 

This system exists because we allow it to exist. Because we don't support unions, the part-time employees are, for the most part, helpless.