Thank you very much, Ms. Chabot.
Presently, we seem to want unions and employers to find the magic bullet or the magic wand. Instead, I think it’s going to take the federal and provincial governments to put regulations in place, according to their respective areas of jurisdiction.
The first step to understanding the effects of algorithmic management is being aware of what’s going on. Employees must be informed and consulted. This will ensure transparency and explainability. The only effects of algorithmic management that we are currently seeing are negative ones. We see work decreasing rather than increasing.
What we see is a decision-making tool, a computer application, making decisions and diagnosing anomalies instead of the individual. Our impression is that, in unionized workplaces that apply an algorithmic management program, workers find themselves dehumanized. Dehumanization is a strong word. In fact, the individual is clearly told that their judgment is no longer needed, because a computer tool does the thinking for them. That demotivates people, since they become automatons, i.e., they perform a task without thinking.
Currently, people are unaware that they are being replaced. What’s more, they’re being asked to feed data into the tools that are going to replace them. We need to get back to basics. We need to impose, probably through the Labour Code, a conversation about the kinds of technology companies want to use, and we need to determine its impact.