Adapted from the New York City Policy Forum, a new research and publishing network dedicated to governance in New York City.
As Mayor Zohran Mamdani works to make New York a city we can afford, he has an opportunity to promote higher pay and lower consumer prices by halting the rapid growth of individualized “surveillance” wage- and price-setting.
Burgeoning access to personal data is enabling corporations to exploit new technologies to low-ball pay for desperate workers and jack up prices on consumers who lack options. App-based companies such as Uber are leading the charge, and experts warn the practice is spreading, including to retailing and services where corporations are beginning to use personalized data to target prices toward individual consumers.
Senator Ruben Gallego recently introduced federal legislation to ban surveillance pricing. But efforts by states to ban these abuses have been blocked or watered down after a lobbying blitz by Big Tech. This year, New York State took a modest first step by requiring retailers to inform consumers when surveillance pricing is in effect. But disclosure alone is not enough. The new mayor and city council should build on this state law by banning these practices altogether.
A booming ecosystem of tech tools enables businesses to easily acquire and use extensive personal and behavioral data to shape the workplace. Businesses can now use vast surveillance data and automated decision-making tools — algorithmic hidden bosses — to decide in real time who gets work, how workers are evaluated and disciplined, and how much they will earn.
These AI-type tools are causing harm to workers, necessitating bold solutions. A good place to start rolling back Big Tech’s latest assault on workers would be the implementation of policies that ban dynamic, unpredictable, and individualized pay practices known as surveillance wage-setting.
Businesses can feed “amassed datasets on workers’ lives into…
Auteur: Sally Dworak-Fisher
