Data Rights for Workers

Abstract

Workers are subject to immense amounts of data collection on the job, and the algorithmic management tools built with that data can produce negative effects, including deskilling jobs, unstable work hours, reduced wages, and dangerous and degrading working conditions. Workers thus have significant interests how their data are collected and used, and yet they have been excluded from nearly all the recently enacted or proposed data protection laws. Their exclusion stems from data protection’s roots in privacy law and theory, which primarily focused on consumers as data subjects. Current data protection laws, even if expanded to cover workers, would provide little protection because those laws are framed by an individual consumer model of privacy that does not account for the distinctive ways workers are vulnerable to firms’ data practices. Traditional labor law protections are also insufficient to protect their rights because they fail to address a central cause of workers’ disempowerment today—the largely unrestrained collection and exploitation of their data by firms. Protecting workers’ rights will require legally recognizing their collective interests in data and providing robust channels for worker participation in decisions about how data-driven technologies are deployed. Empowering collective worker voice over data practices is essential to ensure that the gains from these technologies will be widely shared rather than just enriching a few