What Economic Rights Should Workers Have to our Own Data?
By Neha, AIITEU Bangalore
AIITEU recently organised a public talk on workers’ rights to our data and the data we produce. The talk was delivered by IT for Change’s Director, Parminder Jeet Singh who spoke about how the advent of a digital society impacts collective data ownership, workers’ rights, and the role of the public sector.
Mainstream discourse on data rights is often limited to justified concerns around privacy and surveillance. Is our privacy being violated? Is the management collecting data on us without our knowledge? What is the data used for? These are the primary questions raised.
But what of our own right to data?
Parminder began his talk by pointing out to the fact that in the digital data space, there exists no discussion on economic rights of the worker to their data. “Data rights is a wide, raw, and unformed subject,” he stated.
According to him workers’ movements largely lack even a basic understanding of data ownership means. Control over data and digital intelligence is the key ingredient of power in the emerging digital society, increasingly shaping the global economic, social and political order.
So, what does it mean to have rights to data in a digital society?
Parminder believes we must first start by investigating the nature of value and economic organisation in a digital society. In the early 2000s, the top 7 to 8 companies globally were part of the oil industry. Today that position is claimed by data corporations like Google, Facebook etc. Thus, the nature of value has shifted.
“When you really look at Uber as a company, what is their main service or product? What they really own is the intelligence of a sector.”
The value in data is derived from its conversion to intelligence. Uber owns the intelligence of the transportation sector. For example, information on valuable data about traffic patterns in a particular city on a specific day. Similarly, Amazon is the brains of the commerce sector. They may not own the production, manufacturing, or service logistics; but rather the intelligence of recurrent aggregate patterns that makes them possible.
Parminder provided another example of Waymo, a sister company of Google, which functions in the mobility and transportation sector. Waymo is expected to grow 10 times bigger than the top 5 global car companies such as GM or Toyota. The difference is that Waymo has captured data sources which can be converted to intelligence and applied across the sector. The CEO of Waymo declared that Waymo makes drivers, not cars. They create transport intelligence.
Of workers in a cotton factory, Marx says, they do not only produce cotton. They produce capital. They produce value which creates “by means of it, new values”. Workers in the IT sector must understand our place in this value production. Today, capital expropriates this value by extracting granular data.
What is the relationship workers, those who produce this data, share with its value?
Parminder took the example of Uber to elucidate this further. Uber, the platform owner, collects the intelligence of the transport sector. It uses this data to manage, control, exploit all actors in that sector. For Uber, this data is primarily generated through the cars licensed by the company. Cars which are run by workers or ‘Uber drivers’. Uber then uses data produced by drivers to also deskill the worker. Earlier, taxi workers could be presumed to understand the city they are working in. However, Uber’s objective to replace workers with AI is taking place through a slow and progressive deskilling process.
“If Uber is worth $100 billion, 80% of that is being generated by its workers through producing data in the form of driving. Can the workers claim stake to some part of this value?”
Can workers own the data and derivates they produce and contribute to corporations?
Intelligence production derives its value from the data it acquires. Parminder proposed that in this context, it is possible for those who created the data to demand primary ownership of the intelligence value they contribute to. He stated that IT for Change is working on the health, education, and welfare delivery sectors for realising this.
In order to clarify his work, he referred to a recent report on non-personal data in India. The report discussed the process by which individuals and communities can own the data that is about them. It recommended establishing economic ownership over their data. For example, drivers working for Uber can claim larger cuts of the profits and co-governance status in the company based on the real value they generate through data production.
He concluded that there are three forms of possible relationships workers can have with the data they are part of producing.
- One is individual and collective rights over their data and its derivative values.
- Second, workers must push for data commons thereby making digital economies more distributed rather than concentrated. This would ensure that digital spaces are pro-worker.
- Lastly, it is in the interest of workers that data power (AI logistics, etc) is with public authorities rather than private repositories. Ambitious policy-making such as the non-personal data framework in India begin to address these needs and can be considered a useful precedent for the Global South led movement on data governance and data ownership.
Data Ownership: Corporate Control or Collective Ownership?
As India attempts to market itself as a tech giant, it becomes crucial that workers in the sector are protected rather than exploited. There must be a collective struggle to tip the scales in our favour. ‘Digital Intelligence’ corporations cannot be allowed exclusive control over digital infrastructure or capital.
Collective access of worker data (personal or non-personal) must be the goal. Data should be treated as a common public good rather than a means to private profit.
Providing data and digital intelligence as public goods, ensuring the development of appropriate digital public institutions, and managing data infrastructures will play an important role in tipping the scales in favour of the value creators. Widespread access to society’s data — currently in the hands of a few digital corporations — is a precondition for a fair economy, quality public services, public policy-making and democratic governance.
