Surveillance, Spacing, Screaming and Scabbing: How Digital Technology Facilitates Union Busting

Paper Title

Surveillance, Spacing, Screaming and Scabbing: How Digital Technology Facilitates Union Busting

Publication Info

• Topic area: The role of digital technology in employer counter-organizing against unionization efforts.
• Keywords: union busting, workplace technology, surveillance, labor organizing, counter-organizing, digital communication, labor process, scabbing, screaming, spacing.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Despite high public support for unions, union membership in the U.S. remains low due to employer counter-organizing tactics, increasingly facilitated by digital technologies. Existing research has not systematically analyzed how technology is weaponized against unionization.
• Significance: Understanding these tactics is crucial for designing effective strategies and tools to support labor organizing and counteract employer suppression in digitally-mediated workplaces.
• Motivation and related work: Prior studies in HCI and labor research have examined workplace technologies, gig work, and algorithmic management but have not comprehensively addressed how digital tools are used to suppress unionization. This paper builds on these foundations to identify recurring technological tactics across multiple case studies.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A framework identifying four recurring tactics of tech-facilitated union busting: Surveillance, Spacing, Screaming, and Scabbing.
• Novelty:
  1. Systematic identification of four distinct yet interrelated tactics used by employers to counter-organize.
  2. Case study analysis across three distinct workplaces (Amazon, Starbucks, Boston University) to generalize findings.
  3. Integration of labor process theory with HCI perspectives to analyze the explicit embedding of union-busting tactics in workplace technologies.
  4. Implications for designing pro-worker technologies and strategies to resist digital counter-organizing.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Case study selection based on the significant role of digital technology in counter-organizing.
  • Analysis of 142 documents, including legal filings, news articles, and firsthand accounts.
  • Coding and categorization of tactics using an iterative process informed by labor organizing experience and prior scholarship.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Identified four tactics:
    1. Surveillance: Monitoring workers’ behavior and communications, predicting unionization risks, and targeting pro-union employees for retaliation.
    2. Spacing: Using technology to isolate workers physically and digitally, limiting opportunities for collective communication.
    3. Screaming: Amplifying anti-union propaganda through digital channels like emails, apps, and notifications.
    4. Scabbing: Leveraging digital tools to replace unionized labor, reroute work, or hire replacement workers.
  • These tactics are mutually reinforcing, forming a systemic apparatus of digital counter-organizing.
• Advantage over baselines: This study extends beyond single-case analyses by identifying recurring patterns across diverse contexts and industries, providing a generalized framework for understanding tech-facilitated union busting.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Case studies of Amazon, Starbucks, and Boston University.
  • Analysis of digital tools like surveillance systems, scheduling software, and communication platforms.
  • Metrics include the frequency of tactic occurrences and their interplay in suppressing unionization.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Focused on U.S. labor contexts; further research is needed to validate findings internationally.
  • Relied on publicly available documentation, potentially missing undocumented incidents.
  • Future work should explore worker-led resistance strategies and design interventions to counteract these tactics.

Summary

This paper identifies four key tactics—Surveillance, Spacing, Screaming, and Scabbing—that employers use to suppress unionization through digital technologies. Drawing on case studies from Amazon, Starbucks, and Boston University, the authors demonstrate how these tactics operate individually and synergistically to undermine collective organizing. The findings highlight the need for pro-worker design interventions, stronger workplace privacy protections, and strategies to counteract the systemic embedding of union-busting practices in workplace technologies. This work provides a foundation for future research and design aimed at supporting labor organizing in digitally-mediated environments.