TIME TO DELIVER ANSWERS: transparency and explainability for algorithmic decisions at work
What if your boss was an algorithm? What would you do if your employer suddenly fired you or reduced your pay without telling you why? And without so much as giving you a reason when you ask why this happened?
Unfortunately, this is the reality for the many millions of gig workers worldwide driving or delivering for platforms like Uber, Deliveroo, Wolt, Just Eat, etc.
One of the main reasons for this is their heavy reliance on algorithms to manage workers. From hiring to firing to dynamically adjusting pay to allocating job, these systems affect all aspects of platform work and produce decisions that could make or break a gig worker's livelihood. Yet, there is limited or no transparency with regards to how these decisions are reached and how those algorithms function, leaving workers at the mercy of unfair or discriminatory decisions, with little means to challenge or at least better understand them.
To challenge this state of play, Privacy International launched a campaign against the opaque deployment of these decision-making algorithms by gig economy platforms.
With their current level of transparency, the algorithms on these platforms undermine workers' rights to dignity and autonomy. We call for gig platforms to provide better transparency and explainability around how their algorithms work so that workers can better understand how they're being treated and according to what parameters decisions affecting their work are being made. This is a crucial step to ensuring accountability and appropriate oversight of the technology governing workers' futures.
To that end, we have produced three demands for platforms to implement, including concrete and detailed examples of what best practices look like. Visit our demands below to learn more.