Bringing Algorithms to the Bargaining Table: Strategies but Setbacks in Sociotechnical Negotiations for Unions in the Korean Platform Economy

Kwon, Hyunji

As AI and data-driven digital technologies continue to reshape the nature of work in the platform economy, unions encounter heightened challenges of negotiating the use of technologies that often lack transparency.

What strategies could unions adopt, particularly in societal contexts with limited support for addressing workplace technologies? How might they engage in effective negotiations about algorithms in their workplaces? This study explores these questions in a particular context where unions generally lack the institutional support for bargaining and critical public discourse to facilitate their intervention in firms' technological decisions. We focus particularly on the case of South Korea, which is unique in the sense that technology is rarely negotiated, while the emergence of unions in the platform economy is significant.

The country's rapid development has historically fostered a narrative that equates technological advancement with successful growth of the nation and its firms. As a result, labor unions are left with limited avenues to critically address the impact of technology on working conditions. In recent years,two emerging labor unions -the National Chauffeur Union and the Riders' Union- have identified the lack of transparency in platform algorithms used for call distributions as a significant concern. Nevertheless, persistent opposition from dominant platforms has led these unions to shift their focus towards more conventional issues, such as securing entitlement to national minimum wages for platform workers. As concerns about algorithms have receded in priority, the unions have sought to elevate the agenda by linking it to broader public concerns, such as road safety.

This paper examines the agenda-setting processes of two unions to shed light on how platforms' resistance to negotiating over technology constrains unions' ability to integrate technology-related issues into collective bargaining and to navigate alternative strategies, particularly in the context of limited institutional and discursive support at the societal level.