Byte Back

A
theory-driven account of the stakes and knowledge-building practices of
the resurgent labor movement from organizers across the gig economy and
tech industry.

As
tech billionaires align with Trump, they are also launching a renewed
political and technological assault on labor. But it still takes workers
to make fortunes for the bosses, and collective action is again on the
rise. The rank and file are coming from the precarious new ＂gig jobs＂
and drawing strength from a new class of worker who does the jobs that
computers still cannot. Previously thought to be ＂unorganizable,＂ these
workers are part of a North American collective movement that is
reaffirming faith in collective revolutionary action with new forms of
organizing, new ways of association, and new ways of thinking and
recombining labor organizing and research.

To
capture this growing class consciousness as it happens, the Capacitor
Collective has conducted ten illuminating interviews with platform
workers who are also organizers committed to connecting old motivations
and new tactics in a text that shakes up the worker inquiry tradition to
imagine new ways to produce knowledge with and for workers.

Alessandro Delfanti is a professor at the University of Toronto.

Enda Brophy is a professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.