About this episode

The episode discusses algorithmic wage discrimination and its impact on pay for contract workers in America.

Pay is personal for plenty of Americans, but a new distribution model that consumes vast quantities of worker data is turning pay into something else: personalized. For an increasing number of workers in America, the money they can expect to be paid on any given day, week, or month is unknown to them. They could work the same number of hours as they did the shift before. They could help the same number of customers. They could do everything, as nearly similar as possible, and still be paid less than another worker in the exact same position, or even themselves just last week. The mechanism behind this pay disparity is called algorithmic wage discrimination and while the term may be new, it’s inner workings could sound quite familiar. Algorithmic wage discrimination describes the zig-zag pay that is meted out to contract workers by big companies like Uber and Amazon. Whereas many workers in the world rely on salaries, or commissions, or self-determined contract rates, workers at Uber are different. In the same way that Uber decides what you pay for a ride to the airport, Uber also decides what a driver makes. And the calculus behind that decision is opaque. Location, traffic, the…

People in this episode

Guest: Veena Dubal

Topics covered

• algorithmic wage discrimination
• pay disparity
• contract workers
• worker data
• gig economy

Keywords

• pay gap
• algorithmic wage discrimination
• Uber
• Amazon
• contract workers
• worker data
• gig economy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Uber, Amazon

Places: America

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