Veena: [00:00:00] On the one end, the companies are using surveillance pricing to determine how much we should pay for our food, and on the other end, they're using surveillance wage fixing to determine how little we might be willing to accept. If that isn't dystopia, I don't know what is

Alix: Welcome to Computer Says Maybe. I am Alix Dunn, and I'm here today with Veena Dubal, a kind of legend.

Veena: Oh, that's very kind.

Alix: It's true. Um, on legal protections as it relates to our current worker environment, I guess, and the kind of gig economy and the exploitation that we're seeing writ large across many different industries, and it has a big technical component, and we're gonna dig in both on the legal side and the history of some of these technologies and how, um, the, the law around it is building up, um, and also what we might, uh, need to put in place, both in terms of litigation, but also in terms of legislation to protect workers, um, in the future from this type of exploitation.

Before we dig into that, um, we were just talking before we started [00:01:00] recording about how many live lawsuits you have against the Trump administration, which I feel like is a really fun- ... maybe fun place to start before we dig into some of the histories of wage discrimination. What are you doing?

Veena: So, um, in, in my spare time, I'm the general counsel of the American Association of University Professors, and I actually came to this position 'cause I was really interested in how tech was going to impact higher ed, not just, like, through the use of machine learning technologies, um, and sort of generative AI disrupting thinking processes, et cetera, but actually, um, displacing graduate students who are doing grading, um, how, how faculty are having...

were being recorded all the time. Like, what's happening? W- how is this being fed into large language models? So I came into it with, like, this kind of concern, and then a month later, Donald Trump was elected, and, um, we have, yeah, 10 different... The AAUP has 10 different lawsuits against, um, the Trump administration, and I, I guess, like, the most critical ones for me [00:02:00] are, um, AAUP v.

Rubio, which challenges the ideological deportation policy that, um, we saw implemented in March, April, May of 2025 when we saw Rümeysa Öztürk kidnapped off the street and Mahmoud Khalil taken after an Iftar with his wife. Um, and we won. We went to trial this summer. They said non-citizens have... Judge said-- Reagan-appointed judge says non-citizens have constitutional rights.

Um, it was a huge win. Um, and then we have a number of lawsuits trying to protect universities, which are kind of doing a poor job of protecting themselves. Um, trying to protect universities from being strong-armed into, um, h- aligning themselves ideologically with the Trump administration. One great example is we have a wall-to-wall union lawsuit, so all the faculty associations, all the staff unions, all the graduate student union workers across the UC system, across these 10 campuses, have sued the [00:03:00] Trump administration In their attempt to use civil rights laws to get all of their demands met.

So they've essentially said, "Hey, you're in violation of Title VI," which is, um, you know, the civil rights law that was passed in 1964 to make higher education more equitable and accessible to, essentially to African American communities. They've said, "You're in violation of Title VI for violating the rights of Jewish students in the context of the, um, Palestine protests, and we therefore are going to pool all of your federal funding or big chunks of it, and we're gonna fine you unless you do X, Y, and Z, unless you say formally there are two genders, unless you say, 'Yes, we are going to have a relat- formal relationship with ICE,' um, unless you allow us to audit any number of hiring, uh, hiring, student admissions," I mean, any number of just really invasive [00:04:00] things that would fundamentally change this amazing public education system we have in California.

We sued and we won. It's been, like, amazing to see that faculty and students and staff wanna stand together to protect their workplace when their boss won't. Um, but also to see how these are essentially working condition issues that, um, that are really affecting how people live from day to day. So, you know, I've all long written about, um, about low-income workers, and my colleagues are now realizing that they're workers, too.

Alix: What a wake-up call.

Veena: Yeah.

Alix: I feel like, uh, so I'm not a lawyer, but I know sometimes when you win, it sets a sort of precedent or a cascade of other victories, but then sometimes it does not- Yeah ... because it's basically for that one plaintiff. Is this one, which one of those is this one?

Veena: Oh, so we're hoping it's the, the first- Yeah

that this is actually, and we think we're right. The, it seems like the Trump administration is not using this [00:05:00] tactic anymore, um, because they lost in our lawsuit at Harvard. They lost in our lawsuit in the UC system. I mean, they're still appealing both of these things, but, um, it's, I mean, I don't think any serious lawyer would say what they were doing is, is lawful.

Mm. It's pretty clearly unlawful. Um, and so I th- I think that we have stopped them in their tracks with regard to at least this approach. There will, there will be a, a myriad number of new assaults and techniques and tactics that they will employ over the next few years but we'll continue fighting. And the most wonderful thing that's come out of it, I think, is this coalition of people who are willing to stand together.

You know, to have janitorial, um, staff union members stand alongside, uh, faculty union members is really kind of, um, kind of unprecedented and remarkable.

Alix: Yeah, it's so interesting to see the kind of reconfiguration of- Realizing who is on your team that you didn't realize was on your team and maybe, [00:06:00] um, sort of new forms of alliances that are emerging right now, I think is actually really exciting.

Veena: The one great thing that comes out of being oppressed is-

Alix: The one upside. ...

Veena: is solidarity, you know, is finding very quickly who your allies are. Um, the, you know, so many beautiful examples of people standing up for each other. It really kind of gives me the goosebumps that I witness every day. I mean, I also wake up to, like, some new assault on- Wow

on, um, on things that I care about, people that I care about.

Alix: I think it's so interesting too that it's such an antidote to the nihilism that can come from it, and it feels very activating, and at least I feel myself having a deeply emotional response when I see people doing ev- everyday people doing, like, things that are, uh, shouldn't be brave, but they are in the, in the, in the current context, um, and doing it with each other.

There's something so animating, and I imagine... I don't know. Like, I feel like the other response can be sort of structural nihilism and- Oh, absolutely ... tuning out. And I think a lot of people think Americans [00:07:00] do tune out when this kind of stuff happens, and I think it's been really nice to see that that is not necessarily true.

I

Veena: agree. I mean, I've, I, like, am in tears almost every day over, over, like, the beauty of the kinds of responses that I see and engage in myself. And I think, especially I think if you study tech, there is so much room for, for nihilism. Like, just, like, it's very hard to imagine resistance, um, when all the money and power is concentrated in the way that it's become concentrated over the past 20 years.

And so to see that actually people are willing to Put their bodies on the line collectively as well as individually is really, really hopeful, and I really needed the hope.

Alix: Yeah, same. Same. There's something so asymmetrical and structural and abstract about technology and the concentration of power within the technology space that one of the primary solutions that gets proposed is to influence [00:08:00] those companies, which then sort of reiterates and reaffirms them as the center of everything.

As the center of power. Yeah.

Veena: Absolutely.

Alix: And I think it's really hard to figure out strategically how do you push back on that concentration of power without doing that very thing, and also that feeling of abstraction and, um, disconnection gets, I think, amplified when you're trying to resist it in a way that is aligned with how it operates.

Veena: Absolutely. When your, when your theory of change is really about, like, reinscribing power to the machine, and I mean the machine like the capitalist machine- Yeah ... not just like the-

Alix: Yeah ...

Veena: um, it feels a little helpless. Everything feels incremental. Um, it doesn't feel transformative. And yeah, there's something amazing about people just taking to the streets and saying, like, "No more."

Alix: Yeah.

Veena: Um, and you can imagine a kind of parallel world where-

Alix: Everyone did that?

Veena: Yeah.

Alix: Yeah. Totally. I think about it a lot right now. Yeah. Let's dive into... 'Cause I mean, I think these bigger political questions are in some ways downstream from some of the, like, smaller technical- Mm-hmm ... [00:09:00] things you've been working on for years on how technology and law affects workers, um, in these kind of new formulations of work- Yeah

and exploitations. Can we just go back, like- Let's say 10 years. Maybe it's not 10 years, but when did you start working on this?

Veena: Yeah, more than 10 years ago, actually. So I had no interest in tech, per se. Um- How dare you? Yeah. I, um, I mean, I went to Stanford and had a pretty, pretty, like, non-response to the or l- Ah

or, like, kind of grossed out response to everything around me when I was there in the, uh- The Hoover PCs ... the late '90s. Like, dot com, yeah. Yeah, no, totally. I mean, I was there amidst all of both, like, the dot com boom, and then the bust, and then another boom. But I... So I was working with low-income taxi workers.

Actually, after 9/11, I was very interested in people who were kind of out racialized as Muslim in the streets, how they were experiencing everyday violence, and, um, that led to my discovering that taxi workers actually have no employment protections. And I was like, how is that possible? How do you [00:10:00] work for 12 hours a day and go home in debt?

And- They're

Alix: entrepreneurs.

Veena: Yeah. They... I mean, the taxi companies were the first to figure this out, that if you misclassify your workers as independent contractors, you can de-unionize them. And so you had, like, vast de-unionization of what was middle-class work in the early '80s, and then it became immigrant work.

And then you had all these guys who were paying $150 a day to the taxi company to work, and then whether or not they took, uh, home any money was a product not just of demand on that day, but also how the state structured the industry. Like, the, the industry is structured by law, just like Uber today is structured by law.

The state set regulations with regard to prices, with regard to how many vehicles could be on the street at any given time. And so a lot of drivers were able to eke out a living, but it was precarious. Um, and so I started a taxi worker project, and we were actually fighting [00:11:00] medallion privatization in San Francisco.

And I was in these meetings, and taxi workers kept talking about how there were these unmarked cars that would cut in front of them in the hotel line as they were, like, dutifully waiting and following the rules. And I really kind of thought that it was kooky, and I said, "You know, we're wasting time talking about this.

Like, this is not on our agenda." Um, like, "This is gonna go away. Who is gonna get into a car with, um, without- With a

Alix: stranger?

Veena: With a stranger? In an unmarked car. I mean, this is crazy. Yeah. You know? Like, this is not... Nothing is gonna happen. This is gonna go away. Obviously, they're gonna enforce the law, and I was woefully wrong.

Um, but what this moment represented was not just the proliferation of Ubers everywhere and the displacement of all of these funds for public transportation and, um, and, you know, the collection of, of widespread collection of data on, like, hundreds and thousands of millions of immigrant workers, which it was.

All... It was all of those [00:12:00] things. But it also became this space of labor experimentation. We saw that it was Uber for this and Uber for that and Uber for dog walking and all these, like, different things that failed, and some of which succeeded, mostly in the, um, food delivery context, kind of is what we saw succeed.

Um, but as all of this, everyone's imaginary was, imagination was kind of lit around the possibilities of a new post-recession capitalism, this became a site of extraordinary labor experimentation. Like, we are all controlled now. We are hired in... By machine learning systems. We're fired by machine learning systems.

Our CVs are reviewed by machine learning systems. All this, like, remote labor control that, uh, middle and even upper middle income people in the world now experience, like, this was happening here, um, in these, in these new taxis, in these new, new tech taxis 10 years ago.

Alix: So I feel [00:13:00] like- I don't know. I mean, I think this is a really interesting lens of thinking about it, not just as a particular new form of employment.

Like, the... I think that it's super interesting to think about de- de-unionization is a really disturbing word that I don't know if I've ever heard used. Um, but this, this kind of collapse of standards around particular roles or, like, legal structures that were new. But just that it was a test bed for, like, a race to the bottom of exploitation- Absolutely

and, like, technically intermediated exploitation. Like- Absolutely ... I hadn't thought about it in that way.

Veena: It's... Like, I always think about how in the '90s we were all talking about Walmart, and how Walmart was, like, this horrible, awful employer, and they ha- they're engaged in all this gender discrimination, and they never gave anything more than they had to, so it was all the minimum wage all the way down.

And, um, and they were just so awful in so many different ways. And now basically what we're fighting for is to get back to Walmart. Oh, God. You know? Um- It's so... No. [00:14:00] It's so awful. It's so awful. But it... Like, that's precisely... Like, it was just represented- Yeah ... not just represented, but was such a transformation in the way that low-wage work, um, what it looked like, what exploitation- Yeah

looked like, how we thought of exploitation. And, you know, we don't say this in the US for various reasons, but in other parts of the world, um, scholars and advocates have called this slave-like work. There's a term slave-like in, I think, in kind of international law that people are referring to. But, like, you can imagine, how can you be so unfree that it's almost as though you don't- Have the ability to own your own time, your own body, your own, um, like your own future.

And that's kind of the world that this kind of work is creating.

Alix: I, I think that Walmart example's really interesting because, [00:15:00] uh, for a public that was that awake to that exploitation, like there was tons of discourse, there were tons of- Yeah ... like it was, it was commonly understood- Yeah ... that that was a problem.

Veena: Yeah.

Alix: To basically have the same structure but worse replace it, it feels like... I mean, one, it feels like there's a narrative case here about what innovation is- Right ... and that kind of permission structure of innovation is a tool for making people accept things that they wouldn't otherwise accept, but also this kind of like decentralization of the experience.

Yeah. So like everyone... Not everyone, but like people went to Walmart and- Yeah ... you like see people working in Walmart. Yeah. People don't see Uber drivers as... Like you don't go somewhere and see all the Uber drivers hanging out, which I think creates this experience where you don't actually conceptualize it as a, as a thing, as an employer, as like a concentrated group of people.

Veena: Totally. This is the fascinating thing about like the rating system that now exists across different jobs. Yeah. But basically, like when you are in an Uber, that person perceives [00:16:00] you as their boss because you are gonna rate them and that's gonna determine whether or not they earn money. And so the kinds of interactions that people have with their food delivery couriers or, you know, any other service workers that have been so atomized in the way that you describe, um, is necessarily one that's shaped by that power dynamic.

So you're not talking to, you're not whispering to the person who's checking you out at Walmart about how, you know, she's not getting enough hours or you're not like actually viscerally experiencing the exploitation because there's performance happening.

Alix: Yeah.

Veena: And that performance aligns with this kind of very sexy, discursive work that these companies and venture capitalists have done around freedom and independence and entrepreneurialism and, um...

And you know, they're responding to this real need and human desire to not be subjugated, to not have a boss. And there is something like very, um, [00:17:00] freeing actually about getting in your car or getting on your bike or just like going to work and not having to deal with The upfront racism, you know, the, the classism, the kinds of things that people feel interpersonally when they have a manager or a boss.

Or like with the taxi workers, they would always tell me what it was like to go to the garage to get their car and the shit that they faced, and how, like, actually how politicizing that was often. Because they experienced racism, they were talked down to, they were dominated in all these ways. So there's like something super powerful happening here where you have this triangulation between you- we as the consumers don't have to actually, um, experience the exploitation because they're performing for us.

We don't have to see it. Um, at the same time that these workers are kind of escaping something gross about the traditional labor market. Mm. [00:18:00] And at the same time, um, there is this, like, discourse that most people don't bother to interrogate about freedom and flexibility and independence and how awesome it is and how everyone's their own boss, and isn't that great?

And it's super powerful.

Alix: It makes me think about, um, you know that millennial trope that we don't like answering phones? No, but- Like, you don't like it when someone- I don't

Veena: like

Alix: to answer phones ... I don't like answering phones either. But I feel like there's this gap we allowed to emerge for tech companies to get into, which is basically like I, I, I will pay money to not have to be interpersonally engaged and entangled with a stranger.

Veena: Absolutely. Um- Especially when that stranger is an, uh, an immigrant man.

Alix: Yeah.

Veena: Or like anyone. Anyone.

Alix: Totally. Well, and I think that, that, that gap that we basically said we're not We're just gonna disengage from this human layer of things and use text- Yeah ... [00:19:00] or use, like, have it be intermediated- Yeah

essentially. Um, they just, like, got right in there, and they were like- So well put ... "We will

Veena: monetize-"

Alix: Monetize ... that little gap."

Veena: Absolutely. That's so

Alix: well put. And it's really dehumanizing- Yeah ... in this way that I think now we're realizing when you accumulate, you know, corporate control within that little layer, that it cuts us off from each other at such an extreme degree that it, it's, it's horrible.

It's so

Veena: well put. It's so well put. And it, and, like, the popularity of it, the fact that everyone... I mean, I too would rather, like, r- input my order than call a restaurant. I mean, I understand that. Exactly, yeah. Um, but the, the impact has, like, the consumer popularity of it has really shaped lack of regulation, you know?

Like, so many times I talk to really, you know, high up enforcement agents, you know, at the federal level, and they say things to me like, "We can't do anything 'cause these things are so popular." And I'm like, "Okay, but there are actually ways to regulate this so that the popular things stay and the [00:20:00] exploitative things fall away."

But the sense that somehow anything you do to touch this, like, s- super popular app or this super popular service is going to, um, uh, come back at you in terms of consumer rage is, like, the way that the US has governed tech- Yeah ... for the last 10 years.

Alix: Yeah. I think generally- That's untouchable ... like, the way the attitude towards monopolies has been so consumer focused rather than rights focused- Absolutely

in this way that's really-

Veena: From a legal perspective, not just from, like, an ideological perspective, but the sense beginning in the 1970s that actually, uh, we don't define a monopoly by its impact on, um, the market, but its impact on cons- Or rights ... or rights, but its impact on consumers, I mean, this was a massive shift.

Yeah. And there are a lot of people who firmly believe that, you know, um, it's okay to have a monopoly if it means lower prices.

Alix: I was reading a piece, um, recently by Izzy Lepowsky in TechPolicyPress, and she was calling out this [00:21:00] shift that's happening exactly on that, where essentially big tech used to be able to point to free products- Yeah

as the case to make when they, when people said, "You're a monopoly," and they're like, "Yeah, but we give you free stuff," and that's like, okay, right? Isn't that

Veena: great?

Alix: Yeah. Um, but now with the affordability crisis and also the capital expenditure on data centers and, like, the materiality of the infrastructure and the cost associated- Yeah

with it, consumers are starting to connect that, like, this is, you know, that, that free product- Yeah ... might be part of the balance sheet- Yeah ... but there's, like, a lot of other costs. A lot that comes

Veena: with it. Yeah.

Alix: Yeah. Um, and that that might be shifting a little bit, which I think is a really- I

Veena: hope so. I really do see it with the data center movements.

I've never seen- Yeah ... like, um, you know, rural America engage with Big tech resistance in the way that I've seen what's happening now in various cities across towns across the country. I'm, I'm hopeful about that.

Alix: Yeah. Me too. Can you take us down a little bit more of memory lane, um, of how law has changed around this stuff?

Veena: Mm-hmm.

Alix: I imagine some of it has enabled further exploitation- Yeah ... or has [00:22:00] cemented practices that shouldn't have been cemented, and some has been an attempt to correct for it.

Veena: Sure. So I'll... And I'll talk mostly about the US. Um- Yeah ... there's more hopeful stories elsewhere- ... that maybe we can get to, um- It

Alix: was ever thus.

Veena: Yeah. But, like, you know, unlike m- a lot of the Global North, the US is very unique in that we basically have no welfare system and haven't really had a welfare system since the '90s. And so all of the pressure, um, to, uh, uh, for any kind of semblance of having an economy that works for everyone is all on employment laws.

The idea is that everyone has to work, you know? And if you, um, if you work, things should be okay because we have this safety net at the bottom, and the safety net at the bottom is very precarious. You know, we haven't raised the federal minimum wage in decades, $7.25. Um, we have [00:23:00] this, like, unemployment insurance that we all discovered during the pandemic is woefully low.

We have worker's compensation if you're injured on the job, also pretty unsatisfying. Um, we have the right to collectively organize and the right to form a union. I mean, these are the basic kind of low-rung protections that we have. Um, and they were passed in these laws to get these, these protections in place were passed during the Great Depression when we had massive unemployment, uh, m- many, many people who were unhoused, lots of, of malnutrition, um, poverty, child death.

You know, it was a particularly dramatic time in the US. And for many, many years, you know, we, this was kind of it. This was great. Worked for people. This was like the, you know, in the 1950s, '60s, '70s. It's never worked for everyone. You know, domestic workers were carved out. [00:24:00] Agricultural workers were carved out, uh, which meant primarily that Black women and Black men were carved out of this, of these protections.

But in the late 1970s, early '80s, some sectors of businesses realized that they could get out from underneath this. And so this was construction, taxis, trucking, um, nail salon workers. In, in this space, you had a growing number of independent contractors, people who, um, businesses realized if they classify as Their own, you know, if they're entrepreneurs, then you can not have to deal with labor overhead.

And so, like FedEx was the original Uber actually. You know, it was these executives that came out of UPS, and they were like, "Hey, what if we don't have to deal with the teamsters, and we pretend like everyone's a small business person, and we put all the pressure on them to actually pay for their truck, to pay for their...

You know, if they're injured, to pay [00:25:00] for everything, and we just pretend we're the intermediary." So this was the case, and this was what Uber and Lyft and Instacart and DoorDash really kind of imagined themselves to be with the added novelty of the app. And they were s- you know, funded by streams of venture capital money that is unimaginable to me.

And so they could do this at the same time that they were paying workers a ton of money and paying... Or allowing consumers to pay very little. So in those first couple of years when people, kind of these apps became popular, it seemed like good work. Maybe this was a good, you know, a good alternative to the bus.

Um, and you know, those of us who were watching this were saying like, "This is not going to last. It's impossible. They're losing billions of dollars every year." And regulators wouldn't step in. Local regulators here in San Francisco wouldn't step in. SFMTA tried, but Mayor Ed Lee, uh, at the time really kind of tied their [00:26:00] hands.

Same with the s- California State. And so we had years and years and years, beginning in 2016, of litigation where the, the people in charge were like, "We're not dealing with this. Seems like it's okay to us. And so we are gonna let private entities litigate this out." So you had all of these efforts at a class action to try and get workers to be recognized as employees, especially as wages dropped precipitously, um, by 2016.

And Uber and Lyft and Instacart and DoorDash just paid, basically paid off all of these lawsuits. Like, they just said, "We're gonna settle." Sometimes they settled for more than they would have made at trial. They've ha- b- would've been had to pay at trial. Like, they just wanted these cases to go away, 'cause if they go away, there's no decision on the books, and they can buy time.

And this was

Alix: like- These were via forced arbitration? Or is this-

Veena: Um, so that was, this was- Okay ... before the f- the arbitration decisions came [00:27:00] out. So around the same time the Supreme Court decided these arbitration cases, um, that basically said, "If you sign an arbitration agreement, then this is, like, a bona fide arbitration agreement.

You cannot actually have your day in court." And so at the same time that these class actions were filed, um, and all of these cases were getting settled, the Supreme Court gave, you know, Big Tech another tool. And so people who did try and bring class actions, they got their cases thrown out, or at least sent to arbitration, sometimes mass arbitration.

And arbitration is just like private court. Instead of you're getting heard in a public court of law, you get heard by a private, private judge whose decision has no impact on anyone but you. So it- So it

Alix: sets no precedent ...

Veena: sets no precedent, doesn't make anyone change what they're doing, and that's been the case in the US for the last, you know, 10 years.

And so, you know, once the courts were no longer a site [00:28:00] of, um, hope, a lot of drivers, who at this time were organizing into these sort of pseudo unions, said, "Well, let's go to the state. Like, maybe the, um, the legislature can pass a law that finds us to be employees." And so in California, we had this very hopeful law passed, AB5, in 2019, that put into place a new definition or a new test for employment.

It said everyone is a de facto employee And if you, company, wanna prove that this person is not an employee, then you have to fulfill this three-part test. And the key to this test was that the worker has to be in a different business than the company. So if the worker is driving around and they're in a transportation business, and Uber is a transportation company, then this worker is an employee.

Uber immediately said, "Well, this law doesn't apply to us, but also we're going to challenge it," and they used the, um, [00:29:00] direct democracy system in California to put together this $223 million, um, campaign to get a law passed just for them. 2020, Proposition 22 passed, and Uber will say that, oh, Proposition 22 cemented their workers as independent contractors, but it did something different than that.

So if I am a plumber, and I come to your house, and I say, "Hey, Alix, like, I'll fix your toilet, but it's gonna cost $150," and you're like, "How about 100?" And I say, "125," and you say, "Fine. Deal." We've engaged in negotiation, and that's what independent businesspeople do. But what Proposition 22 did, among other things, was say that the working conditions and wages of Uber and Lyft drivers have kind of a default, um, that is written into the law, and this default most fundamentally changed how workers were paid.

[00:30:00] They said that workers were only going to be paid, um, when there was engaged time, so after a company allocated work to them. So I could drive around 40% of my day, never get allocated work, 60% of my day, never get allocated work, and that time just isn't getting paid. This was so different than the minimum wage when, like, the thing that workers, wage workers fought for, um, in the transition to industrial capitalism was the ability to sell their time.

Like, once workers were made fungible in the way that industrial capitalism made them fungible, once workers had as little power as they do in the modern workplace, they said, "Okay, well, the way that we want this structured, the way that we're gonna fight to have it structured, is that you're gonna pay for all the time that I work by the hour," and that's what the minimum wage is.

And Uber just like, Uber and Lyft and DoorDash and Instacart just totally disrupted this whole relationship [00:31:00] between security, time, and wages.

Alix: So if you're driving around And you get a request for a ride. You go, you pick the person up. It's when the ride starts that you get paid. That's right. So all the time you're hanging about-

Veena: Right

Alix: you're not getting paid.

Veena: And according to industry studies- Mm ... the time that you're hanging around is about 40% of the time. But, but, but critically- Even

Alix: that,

Veena: like- Yeah, I mean, that's-

Alix: Yeah.

Veena: But critically you'd never know. And so this is, this is one of the things that I started to observe. So when Prop 22 was passed, um, the system of how Uber paid workers went from a mileage and time to upfront prices.

And so how this calculation, how they made this calculation of upfront pricing was completely obscured. No one, you know, workers didn't know. They had even less control, [00:32:00] and they, the wages were super low, so workers really rely on bonuses. And workers would say things to me like, "You know, I'm, I'm, I need to get one more ride to get my bonus, and it's really busy.

I'm in downtown LA, people are clubbing, it's 10:00 PM on Friday. I see people waiting for an Uber. Why am I not getting a ride?" And why are you not getting a ride? Because they- Because

Alix: you're one ride away from getting your bonus and they want you to go home before

Veena: you get it. Exactly.

Alix: Yeah.

Veena: And so your time, that unpaid time, grows larger and larger and larger, and again, critically unpredictable.

Alix: And they don't care If you stop driving

Veena: No, because they feel like they have a, an endless surplus. As long as there is a weak labor market, um, and there are low-income immigrants who are willing to, who need to pay their rent and to eat, they... Workers are, you know, just, um, kind of, they're [00:33:00] fungible. They're always there and can be replaced.

I

Alix: mean, this gets into, um, questions of privacy also. 'Cause I feel like there's the amount you would have to know about a person to be able to effectively exploit them at this level

Veena: of spec- At this granular level? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting 'cause in the US we think about privacy through liberalism.

You know, it's all about consent, and as long as you consent to the idea that your body is surveilled at all times, then somehow that's okay.

Alix: Yeah.

Veena: But in the workplace, is... Could even there be consent? Yeah. Because you have to work to live. You have to work to eat. And so, yeah, people consent to having their app, like, surveil all kinds of things, including, like, how slow they brake or how fast they brake or how, um, you know, determine patterns over time.

Like, I- they, you know, Vena works for 10 hours until she makes 200- until she nets [00:34:00] $200. And, um, and then they combine all that stuff with existing data that they have, th- you know, from other data brokers about us. And who knows whether this information is, you know, really reflects our reality because it's all kind of cemented in time.

It is wild. Like, as opposed to your boss knowing nothing about your private life, these companies know everything about your private life and can use that information to predict how you will behave and to manipulate how you do behave. And we've known this for so long, you know? But it's the same Systems that where, where, uh, casino online gambling companies use, like, insights about human behavior and human psychology combined with machine learning systems.

It's the same thing taken, taken to the context of employment.

Alix: You, you used the word game- gamblification before.

Veena: Yeah.

Alix: What... Do you wanna say a little bit more about it?

Veena: Yeah. So it's interesting. Like, people who study this, uh, tech and work have used the term gamification for a [00:35:00] long time. Like- Oh ... and it's true.

Like, there are these efforts at resistance where, you know, maybe I'll start... I'll turn on my app right by the airport, and I'm more likely to get a fare and reduce my, uh, unpaid time. Like, there are these ways in which you try and game the system. Workers in my, like, long-term research, but particularly after Proposition 22 was passed, started using the term, um...

started saying they were gambling, actually. Like, that every day felt like a gamble. Some days you got really great earnings, and those days kept you going in the system. Um, and other days it just felt like, literally felt like a gamble. I mean, it was. It is effectively... It's a constructed gamble, um, constructed by the tech company- And the house wins

to always win. Yeah. Yeah, the house always wins. Yeah. That's right.

Alix: I don't know. It feels so connected to broader trends in the economy where everything feels speculative, unmoored from any sense of certainty or conservatism or control. And it just feels so disorienting, the degree to [00:36:00] which to earn a living, that there is no direct path anymore.

It's a, it's kind of a random construction of, like... I don't even... I just fee- of financialization, of, like, risk-taking, of, like, I d- of uncertainty, whether it's, like... It feels like layoffs are so normalized now that the whole, the whole structure feels-

Veena: Yeah, there's so little predictability. I mean, even so far as, like, uh, y- we...

Before this past spring, I think we all thought that having a federal job was pretty secure.

Alix: I know. This is... Yes, yes. I

Veena: mean, just like everything has-

Alix: The gold standard of, like, you go into that boring job but that you know, the one thing you know- It's- ... is that it will always be there.

Veena: Uh, you'll have a pension at the...

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I mean, everything. It's this, it's, it is this new approach to governance in the world, um, that I think has Been brought off on both by, as you articulated earlier, this ideology of innovation and the possibilities of, you know, real concentration of capital and wealth that has, [00:37:00] that have been made possible by machine learning system and systems, and so much experimentation that's happening around us.

Like- Mm ... you know, every- everything in the last election was about inflation and the price of, um, eggs at Kroger, and it turns out Kroger is also doing price discrimination. You know, they denied it- Oh ... and then there was like... But there was, um, there, this sense- Were they

Alix: actually doing surveillance-based price fixing?

Veena: That was, that was the implication on one of their earnings calls. Um, and- Okay ... we, we did see, like Wendy's was doing this, you know, um, offering like surge pricing, um, on their, on their food.

Alix: So bizarre.

Veena: And so if on the one end the companies are using surveillance pricing to determine how much we should pay for our food, uh, or how much we can pay for our food, and on the other end they're using surveillance w- wage fixing to determine how little we might be willing to accept, then we're getting squeezed on both ends in a way that like, I just...

I don't... If that isn't dystopia, [00:38:00] I don't know what is. Like how do you live? And we haven't seen like the full realization of these technological possibilities, but we're seeing them in like the edges. We've seen it for a long time with airlines. You know, the prices that I get are gonna be different from the prices that you get.

Um, but the extension of this to non-luxury goods like food and clothing is really scary. Um, and then the kinds of things, the kinds of wage discrimination practices you see in the gig economy, I mean, we think are now in customer service, in retail, um, in the logistics sector, in, um, in healthcare, in hospitality.

And this is not the world that I want to live in, and certainly not the world that we have fought for over the past 150 years of modern capitalism.

Alix: It feels like a- Rupture of the bargain that you accept lower quality so that more people can access more of [00:39:00] something, and that by so doing, we all benefit in some way.

And so if you're, if you're making it as cheap, as, as expensive as possible for a consumer, as inexpensive as possible for the labor costs that go into delivering that service, where is the m- money going? And it's like, I think the answer is kind of obvious. Yeah. But

Veena: like,

Alix: it's wild how much is being extracted from people.

Veena: There are these things that you, we see on social media about like how much a billion dollars actually are, is, and like how hard you have to work, how long you have to work to actually make a billion dollars, and-

Alix: Millennia.

Veena: Yeah. I mean, and it's so eye-opening even for me when I, you know, despite all, despite all of my l- many hours daily of thinking about this, like it is a lot of money to have a billion dollars.

And the reason that one person has, you know, m- I think now we're in trillion. Tr- does Elon Musk is a trillionaire? I didn't know that was even a- I reject ... I thought that was a made up word- Yeah ... until recently. Means that that money [00:40:00] is not in the pockets of each one of us. Yeah. Because it's, 'cause he's got it.

Alix: It's a zero-sum game.

Veena: And he has it because we don't have it you know? Yeah. Absolutely. But

Alix: I think this is, but I think this is the innovation frame. I think when combined with job creation trickle-down ideologies, if you combine those two things, you end up with this feeling that it's not zero-sum for a lot of people.

Like it feels-

Veena: Yeah,

Alix: yeah ... like it couldn't possibly. Yeah. Because if, if that's the case, then it's not fair structurally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like they've taken, we've, we've, we've been taken for a ride. Absolutely.

Veena: And I don't think a lot of people really want to- They don't want to recognize that, and there's so much deference to these guys, you know?

Yeah. Like such a feeling of like, oh, Marc Andreessen is so smart. I mean-

Alix: Yeah ...

Veena: there's a reason he blocks all of us on Twitter. I mean, he's not. Yeah. And, uh, Elon Musk is not a genius. And I think the like the making of them out to be these kinds of like-

Alix: Yeah ...

Veena: you know, modern day Einsteins that we [00:41:00] should all- Yeah

just like worship and follow is part of what it, a part of why there's like some kind of latent acceptance of this economy.

Alix: I think we also valorize people who are really good at exploiting the political and economic weaknesses of our system.

Veena: Hence Donald Trump.

Alix: Yeah, yeah. And we, we, we think that's like- There's something about it-

Veena: Admirable

Alix: that people like.

Veena: Yeah And when does... I mean, this is a genuine question. When does that happen? Like, I have three children, and sharing is something that we talk about- ... every second of our... Like, you know- Yeah ... not because I'm, like, a- I have

Alix: one child, and we have the same conversation.

Veena: Yes. You know, like, all we do is talk, like- Yeah

"No, you have to share that. Like, you're at the- Yeah ... park. No, you know, s- Jack, you need to get off the swing, the other kid is waiting." Like, sharing is such an aspect of, like, h- what you teach a child-

Alix: Yeah ...

Veena: growing up. I think about this all the time, like w- when does this transition happen where we go from, like, share- we wanna, we want our kids to share, to actually you wanna be, like, a [00:42:00] ruthless- The most

Alix: ruthless

jerk. Yeah.

Veena: And, like, y- we wanna... we admire the people that are ruthless jerks.

Alix: I think what's interesting though is sharing is a social process, and I feel like this disintermediation of the interpersonal exchange you have with a worker is a, actually a very similar, like, like, just extracting emotional skills of, like, dealing with other people.

It's a really similar- Totally. Yeah ... thing. Absolutely.

Veena: It's brilliant, and, and it's totally disrupted. Yeah. Yeah. We don't have it.

Alix: I think a lot about how I, I like knowing how to navigate and be comfortable in shared spaces, and know, like, the silent rules when you're in, like, a train car, and you, like, know the r- you know, you, like, know the rules- Yeah

and you know how to share space. Um, and I feel like American ideology, there's, like, a part of it that feels really allergic to having to do that.

Veena: Yeah.

Alix: And I think that's also part of

Veena: the- Absolutely ... problem. 100%. And you see that in all kinds... You see that physically in, like, the lack of shared spaces we have, like- Yeah

public shared spaces. I grew up going to Walmart as, um, a place to hang out because there was no kind of public space for people- Yeah ... during the [00:43:00] winter. Malls,

Alix: man.

Veena: Malls. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a... It is very American on some level, you're right.

Alix: Yeah. I wanna hear some hopeful things. Oh,

Veena: sure.

Alix: Yeah.

Um, what's happening?

Veena: Yeah, so I mean, there is a amazing thing I think that is happening, is that, um, people are really, really pissed off all over the world. They're pissed off in India, they're pissed off in Brazil, they're pissed off in Turkey, they're pissed off in Hungary, they're pissed off here. Like, there's a re- re-engagement with what democracy means.

And not just like liberal democracy, but like actually what does it mean to live in a political community when only certain people have all the power to set all the rules that we live by. And, um, in some ways, you know, it's quite terrifying that the Trump administration has brought, has, has made this real for us.

Um, but I do see kind of a global sense of like, "Oh, no, what's [00:44:00] happening in America, we cannot have that happen here." So there's a real engagement with my work in other parts of the world. Um, and in Europe, there have been really hopeful moves with regard to gig work in particular. The Platform Work Directive, we'll see how it actually gets played out on the ground, but it passed, you know, a year and a half ago.

Um, it's... The member states are supposed to be implementing it right now, and it gives actually gig workers more protections with regard to data rights than any other workers have. So like the law says that companies cannot use biometric surveillance, that they cannot use machine learning systems to manipulate emotional emotions or behavior.

So different from where we ended up in California- Yeah ... with regard to my Proposition 22 story. For me, this is super hopeful. Um, I also just, you know, uh, law is so often useless without, um, people to push to make sure that it is enforced. Mm-hmm. [00:45:00] And kind of like a powerful, um Not, not necessarily just proletariat, but a powerful, um, underclass of people who are really willing to, to push for their rights and the world that they want.

And we see that a lo- we see so much of that right now elsewhere, um, not as much in the US. I think in the US there's been a fatigue with war. Um, I think there's a fatigue with... I mean, I feel this too. You know, 2003, I was in the streets protesting the Iraq war, and here we are again. Uh, feeling like you're not heard, you're not...

You're, you know, nothing that you do is really, um, really results in anything. But, like, now this new wave that we just talked about of, of, um, protests to really protect our community members, to protect those people around us, and I just think that if we could transform some of that energy to feeling that the kinds of, as you articulated, slow violence of the economy, um, if there's [00:46:00] a way to intervene in the slow violence of the economy to, like, save our futures and ourselves, I think there's a lot of hope in that.

And actually, I see my students are more mobilized and radical than ever, and I do not feel like this is, unlike, I think, you know, the boomers above me, like, this is not for them to solve. Like, this is a problem that we created, and we have to be necessarily part of- Mm-hmm ... part of the solution to solve it.

But I feel s- like there's such a willingness to, to mobilize and to work in solidarity and to resist the systems that we, that we live in. And I feel like there... You know, if I, I have to feel like that is very hopeful. I'm

Alix: actually quite hopeful about it too, and I actually feel like the degree and speed of exploitation of certain workers in the economy by these tech companies is actually such...

In the same way that I think data centers shows us- Mm-hmm ... this very, it's a very pure form of villainy-

Veena: Yeah ...

Alix: um, that I think makes for a really good target. Absolutely. And I think a lot of the more information ecosystem questions are so much [00:47:00] more abstract- Absolutely ... and hard to get our head around.

Absolutely. And it feels like an incredible opportunity if we can show up for them. Yeah. 'Cause I feel like that's the-

Veena: That's right ...

Alix: that's the trick.

Veena: I mean, this algorithmic wage discrimination stuff is precisely that. Like, the idea that your wages can be determined by machine learning systems that are drawing on models that know everything ostensibly about you, you know, from a particular moment in time, um, I think that's terrifying-

Alix: Yeah

Veena: to so many people. Um, and I, and I'm... You know, we see state level legislation being brought up, brought right now to ban it, which is exciting. There's something in Maryland, something in Colorado potentially. Um, it was in- actually introduced and passed in California. Newsom vetoed it. Um, there's a lot of- Of course he did.

Yeah, of course. Um, but even that's hopeful because- Yeah ... you know, the California Labor Federation has done a great job of saying like, "Oh, you want to be the anti-Trump?" You wanna be our next president? Yeah. Like, show us what you can do.

Alix: No, making people show themselves is really important part [00:48:00] of this kind of tactical work- Absolutely

for sure. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Um, okay. Well, I think let's call it here. This was incredible.

Veena: Oh, it was so great- It was so nice ... to have this time with you. Thank you so much for- ... inviting me and letting me sit here and chat with you. It was great.

Alix: Yeah. I learned loads. Um, so thank you so much.

Veena: Thank you, Alix.

Yeah.

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