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tripleC 20 (1): 82-100, 2022
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Date of Acceptance: 25 March 2022
Date of Publication: 27 March 2022 CC-BY-NC-ND: Creative Commons License, 2022.
Labour Struggles in Digital Capitalism: Challenges and
Opportunities for Worker Organisation, Mobilisation, and
Activism in Germany
Holger Pötzsch* and Kerem Schamberger**
*UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway, holger.potzsch@uit.no,
https://en.uit.no/ansatte/person?p_document_id=43820, https://orcid.org/0000-
0002-5533-5014
**Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität, München, Germany, kerem.scham-
berger@ifkw.lmu.de, https://www.ifkw.uni-muenchen.de/organisation/perso-
nen/mitarbeiter/schamberger_kerem/index.html
Abstract: In this article, we investigate labour struggles under the condition of digital capital-
ism. The main research question we address is: How do German unions evaluate and respond
to the rapidly accelerating digitalisation of economy and work? Based on a series of interviews
with union representatives in Germany, we trace recent developments within an increasingly
digitised economy, outlining challenges and opportunities for unions. Our findings show that
the large-scale deployment of digital technologies fragments the workforce, reduces social
standards, worsens working conditions, and exacerbates power imbalances to the detriment
of the employed. These disadvantages are only insufficiently met with new opportunities to
raise public awareness and connect with and mobilise workers by means of digital communi-
cation technologies. Our study suggests a growing significance of technological expertise for
unions, a need to meet global capital with enhanced international and regional cooperation
among labour organisations, and the importance of uniting established unions and grassroots
workers’ movements in shared struggles to improve the situation of workers under technology-
enhanced conditions of globalised exploitation and control.
Keywords: digital capitalism, platform capitalism, labour struggle, unions, platform work, gig
work, algorithmic management, surveillance, control, grassroots unions, Germany
Acknowledgement: We would like to thank the editor of tripleC, Christian Fuchs, and the
reviewers Jamie Woodcock and Tai Neilson for their constructive engagement with an earlier
version of the present text.
1. Introduction
In January 2021, Amazon rolled out Mentor in its US logistics centres – a new app al-
legedly designed to increase the safety of workers who drive vans for last-mile delivery
of ordered products (Palmer 2021). The app had to be installed on private phones used
for work and was calibrated to automatically register a series of factors assumed to give
indications about driving style and habits such as speeding, intensity of braking, safety
belt and mobile phone use, and more. However, Mentor was not only designed to in-
crease efficiency and nudge drivers into safer conduct, but also to audit them. The gath-
ered data was employed to rank drivers on a scale from “fantastic+” to “poor”, and the
results had an impact on issues such as payment, scheduling, and even further employ-
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ment. The way the data was acquired, the logics behind the analysis, and the implica-
tions of the produced results remained opaque to drivers, who were unable to issue
complaints against disciplinary actions perceived as unfair or based on mistakes. In this,
Mentor exhibits traits that are typical for the ways digital technologies are used to exploit,
direct, evaluate, and discipline workers under the current condition of digital capitalism.
As such, they merit continued critical attention from the side of academics, activists and,
most importantly, labour organisations.
The case referred to above highlights key issues at stake in this article. In the follow-
ing, we present data from a series of interviews we conducted with union representatives
in Germany to investigate how unions reflect upon such conditions. This article ad-
dresses the main research question: How do German unions evaluate and respond to
the rapidly accelerating digitalisation of economy and work? This overall research focus
is broken down into three sub-questions that guided data collection and analysis:
1) What do German unions perceive as key challenges and opportunities of enhanced
digitalisation?
2) By which means do unions address the identified challenges, and how do they at-
tempt to seize perceived opportunities?
3) What concrete changes in terms of tactic, strategy, and structure are seen as neces-
sary or desirable?
Before we present our findings and draw conclusions, we will offer an overview of earlier
studies on labour struggles in a digital era. We move from research addressing general
trends toward labour-related themes and finally home in on specific conditions in Ger-
many that are most relevant to our inquiry. In this way, we contextualise our own data
and further corroborate our main conclusions.
2. Gig Economy, Platform Labour, and Algorithmic Control of Work: Tendencies,
Dynamics, and Implications of Digital Capitalism for Workers and Unions
2.1. General Trends and Dynamics
Today, digital technologies affect all areas of life and work and have become helpful or
outright necessary tools for almost all conceivable purposes. As a rapidly growing num-
ber of scholars have shown, however, the apparently convenient, smooth, and friction-
free ‘solutions’ to everyday challenges and needs have a ‘dark side’ and come at an
increasingly significant cost to societies, the environment, and the freedom, autonomy,
and well-being of citizens (Harcourt 2015; Pasquale 2015; O’Neil 2016; Qiu 2016; Eu-
banks 2018; Couldry and Mejias 2019; Zuboff 2019; Fuchs 2021; Crawford 2021; Trittin-
Ulbrich et al. 2021).
Several studies have already directed focus at the implications of rapidly emerging
digital technologies for work, labour relations and the economy (Scholz 2013; 2017;
Fuchs 2014; Srnicek 2016; Staab 2019; Woodcock and Graham 2020; Gandini 2021).
Philipp Staab (2019), for instance, has shown that investments in the digital and platform
economy are often driven by considerations for quick increases in stock market value
rather than long-term prospects for sustainable profits. This, he argues, creates pres-
sures to enhance efficiency at all costs, not only impacting new digital and platform busi-
nesses but also the established companies forced to compete with them. According to
Staab, the burdens of such adaptations are to a large extent shouldered by workers. In
his study on the changing nature of work in the digital economy, Trebor Scholz (2017)
makes a similar argument that outlines how both individual workers and labour organi-
sations can productively respond to such conditions by, for instance, acquiring the nec-
essary expertise and means to develop alternative technical solutions such as platform
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cooperativist applications (155ff.; see also Scholz and Schneider 2017; Ferrari and Gra-
ham 2021). Srnicek (2016) and Woodcock and Graham (2020) have laid out additional
elements and consequences of this turn towards what they refer to as work under plat-
form capitalism and the gig economy respectively (see also van Doorn 2017; Mrvos
2021; Henning 2021).
The technologies behind digital capitalism have a considerable impact on how work
is organised in many sectors. Increasingly, algorithmic systems are developed and de-
ployed that micro-coordinate workflows, schedule working hours, and surveil, audit, con-
trol, and profit from employees in an unprecedented fashion (Adler-Bell and Miller 2018;
Mateescu and Nguyen 2019; Sánchez-Monedero and Dencik 2019; Kellogg et al. 2020;
Ajunwa 2020). These practices have complex implications for workers, unions, and
other labour organisations manoeuvring in this relatively new terrain.
For instance, the way Amazon surveils, directs, and micro-manages its workforce
without possibility for feedback or appeal, in order to radically increase efficiency and
reduce costs (Palmer 2021), has negative impacts on the working conditions of employ-
ees in retail businesses forced to compete with Amazon (Apicella 2021; Beverungen
2021). Simultaneously, digital platforms make hiring and firing easier than ever. Most
workers in this sector are not formally employed but treated as ‘partners’ who can be
up- or downgraded and deleted from databases or websites whenever it suits the plat-
form owner (Scholz 2017; Kellogg et al. 2020). Global digital networks also make it pos-
sible to play out national or regional workers against each other and undermine their
activities by redistributing tasks across national and regional borders (Scholz 2017; Ad-
ler-Bell 2018). As Felix (2020) observes, a ‘platformisation and uberisation of work’
makes a hyper-circulation possible that adjusts wages and regulations to minimal stand-
ards in a global race to the bottom, thus leading to increased precarisation and a frag-
mentation of the workforce. Digital platforms also create new sources of profit by ena-
bling a monetisation of worker data assembled by surveilling interactions on company
platforms (Sánchez-Monedero and Dencik 2019; Kellogg et al. 2020; Ajunwa 2020).
The aspects mentioned above have been of concern to workers, unions, and other
labour organisations for some time and have led to attempts at adjusting structures and
practices in line with the new conditions and challenges (Brophy 2009; Scholz and
Schneider 2017; Neilson 2018; Tassinari and Maccarrone 2020; Englert et al. 2020;
Henning 2021; Mrvos 2021). As, for instance, Scholz (2017, 168) writes, current devel-
opments demand “inventive unions” capable of actively appropriating technologies of
power and developing their own solutions to efficiently coordinate and bundle responses
by workers ranging from unpaid interns via TaskRabbit users and Uber drivers to highly
qualified tech workers. Here, technological expertise emerges as crucial to the ability of
unions to efficiently engage in labour struggles across sectors, regions, and national
borders. Neilson (2018) brings together Marxist autonomist approaches with infor-
mation-society thinking when he fleshes out current tensions between different forms of
organising labour under such conditions of globalised digital capitalism. We will now see
how this situation plays out in a German context.
2.2. Digital Capitalism, Unions, and Workers in Germany
In the present article, we narrow our focus to the ways in which digital capitalism recali-
brates labour relations and worker organisation in Germany. More accurately, we inves-
tigate how German union representatives perceive challenges and opportunities posed
by the emergence of platforms, the gig economy, and algorithmic forms of management
and control. Before turning to this data, however, we take a closer look at earlier studies
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that have directed attention to how trade unions and grassroots workers’ initiatives in
Germany approach these problems and dynamics.
In his study about Germany’s contemporary digital economy, Simon Schaupp (2021)
distinguishes between two main dynamics of change and adaptation: 1) cybernetic pro-
letarianisation and 2) technopolitics from either above or below. According to Schaupp,
the first is characterised by recurrent dynamics of de-qualification, automation, and the
replacement of human workers. Algorithmic micro-management first concentrates and
de-skills tasks and then fully automates them. In this process, workers are de-qualified,
precarised and then substituted, before being reintegrated into other sectors under even
more precarious conditions. Schaupp states that union and worker responses to these
processes take the form of technopolitics – an interaction of unions, companies, and the
state at the level of institutional procedures that is characteristic of a German social
partnership (from above) and spontaneous grassroots worker initiatives (from below).
Schaupp demonstrates how the constant tensions between cybernetic proletariani-
sation and technopolitics play out across three key arenas of German society: 1) a reg-
ulatory arena where state, business, and established unions negotiate binding juridical
and other frameworks, 2) an arena of implementation where concrete technical solutions
are developed and deployed at company level, and 3) an arena of appropriation where
the actual functioning and use of new technologies is negotiated, and realised or re-
sisted, in practice. Workers and labour organisations, writes Schaupp, engage in each
of these arenas when attempting to co-determine the overall direction and conse-
quences of rapidly progressing processes of digitalisation. In the arena of appropriation
in particular, an antagonistic technopolitics from below, driven by grassroots movements
and syndicalist unions, aims at developing a counterweight to the institutional techno-
politics typical of the German model of social partnership between established unions,
major business organisations, and key state institutions (see also Englert et al. 2020).
In a recent study for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Butollo and Gaus (2021) have
expanded upon the issue of labour organisation, mobilisation and struggle under the
conditions of digital capitalism. In their practice-oriented approach, they take a series of
recent high-profile labour struggles in Germany and other European countries as depar-
ture points and explicate how both established and grassroots unions can productively
employ available digital technologies in support of their struggles. According to Butollo
and Gaus, digital tools can be used productively to support, mobilise, and connect with
a fragmented workforce without shared physical company locations (the platform
model), to strengthen collective identity and solidarity among workers, to increase par-
ticipation and control of union leadership from below, and to foment new alliances, as
well as to spread information and influence public opinion.
Many of the concrete instruments available for Schaupp’s (2021) technopolitics from
below identified by Butollo and Gauss (2021) recur in recent studies about worker mo-
bilisation and struggles at Amazon locations in Italy and Germany and among riders in
the food-delivery sector in Berlin (Apicella 2021; de Greef 2020; Wälz 2021). Findings
point to an increased necessity to coordinate activities across sectors and national
boundaries, and to bring together grassroots movements and established unions in
shared struggles for common goals. In particular, de Greef’s (2020, 31) adaptation of
the concept of “strategic unionism” to the conditions of a precarious, de-localised, and
fragmented workforce typical for the digital economy and Apicella’s (2021, 83) demand
to established unions to adjust their practices to the lifeworlds and experiences of both
organised and unorganised workers are important contributions. Henning (2021) has
directed attention to attempts at organising highly skilled tech and gig workers in Ger-
many.
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In this article, we explicitly draw upon and confirm some of the findings of these authors.
At the same time, we offer new insights about the understandings and practices of Ger-
man unions engaged in labour struggles under the condition of digital capitalism. In par-
ticular, our data speaks to the following aspects, which did not receive sufficient attention
in earlier studies:
1) COVID-19-related recalibrations of the relationship between digital technologies,
employers, unions, and workers;
2) implications of rapid digitalisation for state-driven school education and research;
3) updates on currently ongoing discussions about union tactics and strategies in
encounters with platform companies, gig work and algorithmic management;
4) new advances to enhance cooperation across sectors and nations as well as be-
tween grassroots organisations and established unions.
3. Method
Our contribution is based on a series of 13 semi-structured qualitative interviews with
union representatives that were carried out at various locations in Germany and via
Zoom between April and December 2021. Of our 13 informants, 12 were members of
unions or other labour organisations and had roles and responsibilities that were rele-
vant to our inquiry. Interview partners were sampled through a snowball method where
personal contacts led to an initial round of conversations during which additional relevant
candidates for interviews were identified and later contacted.
1
Our selection of interview partners reflected our research interests concerning the
perspective of unions on implications of processes of digitalisation in different sectors of
the German economy. To gain an understanding of challenges and opportunities in an
increasingly platform-based food-delivery sector, we interviewed two representatives of
the Food, Beverages, Catering Industry Union (Gewerkschaft Nahrung-Genuss-
Gaststätten; NGG) who are responsible for this segment of the union’s operations. Sub-
sequently, we balanced their institutional perspective with insights from one coordinator
of the grassroots riders’ organisation Gorillas Workers Collective (GWC) and one rider
organised in the NGG. Here, our focus was on possible cooperation between estab-
lished unions and ad-hoc workers’ movements in a sector with, so far, low degrees of
organisation. We then moved on to address challenges experienced by unions operat-
ing in the retail and logistics sector, where Amazon in particular has introduced new
digital surveillance and management technologies and actively plays workers off against
one another across national boundaries. We interviewed three functionaries of the
United Services Trade Union (Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft; Ver.di) to learn
more about how labour struggles against globally operating tech-savvy corporations can
be conducted. One interview with a representative of the Industrial Union of Metal Work-
ers (Industriegewerkschaft Metall; IG Metall) balanced our account: this interviewee is
responsible for highly qualified and well-paid gig workers operating at the innovation
centre of a large German car manufacturer and voices the perspective of a segment of
the workforce that seems to profit from the increased flexibility of digitised workflows and
a de-regulated global labour market. Next, we turned our attention to issues of teaching,
learning, and knowledge production in a digital era. In interviews with four representa-
1
Unfortunately, our selection of informants suffers from a severe gender imbalance with only
two female interview partners. This imbalance was maintained despite our efforts to get into
contact with additional sources. Several female interview partners either did not respond,
pointed to male replacements, or declined to be interviewed.
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tives of the Education and Science Workers’ Union (Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wis-
senschaft; GEW) we gathered data on how work and conditions for mobilisation of em-
ployees in this sector have changed. Finally, we added one interview with a tech activist
associated with the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) to gain an overview of possible coop-
eration between unions and civil society organisations. In all interviews the changes due
to the COVID-19 pandemic played a role. However, we deliberately bent our conversa-
tions away from these emergency conditions to ensure that our data also retained va-
lidity for conclusions pointing to general trends characteristic of labour struggles in a
digital era, such as those identified by Scholz (2017), Schaupp (2021), de Greef (2020),
Apicella (2021), and Henning (2021).
The interviews lasted between 45 minutes and two hours. Most were held in German
and a few in English. The interviews were recorded and later transcribed and anony-
mised. After transcription was complete, the recordings were deleted. For citation in this
article, we used pseudonyms (‘Informant 1–13’). We translated the specific parts of the
interviews we wanted to refer to but refrained from transferring entire transcripts into
English. All interview partners received our contact details and were informed about their
rights and our obligations in line with established research ethical frameworks. In all
phases of the research process, we ensured that no names or other identifying details
of our informants were made public. We also took precautions not to publish anything
that might hamper future union work and attempts to organise or that would make avail-
able any of the tactics used by platform workers to trick or game the systems managing
their workdays.
4. German Trade Unions in Digital Capitalism: Problems, Pitfalls, and Potentials
In the following sections, we present findings from the analysis of our interviews with
union representatives about the changing conditions for labour and labour struggle in
Germany. When working with our data, three salient themes emerged: 1) changes in
working conditions and a redistribution of power between capital owners and workers,
2) new challenges and opportunities for labour organisations and worker mobilisation,
and 3) new dynamics between traditional and activist approaches to unionism and be-
tween regional/national as well as international/global dimensions of labour struggles.
Based on our findings, we offer a series of concluding recommendations for union work
in digital times.
4.1. Changing Working Conditions and Power Relations Under Digital Capitalism
Through our analysis of the collected interview data we were able to identify four themes
referenced as important elements of changing working conditions and power relations
under digital capitalism: 1) a blurring of boundaries between work and private life, 2)
increased outsourcing of costs from companies to workers, 3) enhanced workplace sur-
veillance that also encroaches on private spheres, and 4) an obscurity of the logics and
functionalities of the algorithmic systems (e.g. apps) that organise work life. We will more
closely examine each point with reference to our data below.
A majority of the workers and union representatives we interviewed were concerned
about what they describe as severe shifts in work-life balance connected to the platform
and gig economy and “possible spillovers of new business models […] from digital to
traditionally organised companies” (informant 4). One dimension of this problem is the
increased use of private tools for work-related purposes (e.g. riders using their own mo-
bile phones and bikes, Uber drivers their own cars and insurance policies). Another is
that apps as well as digital platforms make it possible for platform workers to interact
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with customers and employers on a 24/7 basis. This enforces a state of almost perma-
nent availability and therefore alertness and stress. According to most of our informants
this has negative consequences for employees’ mental health, sleeping patterns, and
general sense of security.
Informant 5, from Ver.di, tells us about conditions at Amazon and connects this to
issues of general worker welfare and workplace safety:
When I finally get home […] I continue typing and packing. You bring the work
with you. And as a burden. As something you are not finished with yet. And with
this same anxiety you go to work again the next morning. Therefore, the question
of algorithms versus safety and occupational health is not abstract at all.
Directing attention to the use of apps and other digital devices as communication tools
for teachers, students, and parents, informant 6, from GEW, connects the debate to
COVID-19-related changes:
[During the pandemic] colleagues were sitting in front of their computers all day
until late in the evening and could hardly take breaks. The expectation of acces-
sibility on the part of students and parents has also increased massively.
The problems described by informants 5, 6, and others were exacerbated by the COVID-
19-related lockdowns. However, our informants agreed that the pandemic did not initiate
this process and that the developments are likely to continue after the current crisis is
officially over.
According to informant 8, from GEW, and others, currently most unions are poorly
prepared and inadequately staffed to deal with strong pressures to introduce new digital
devices. He told us that “in our organisation [GEW], we are quite slow, almost sedate.
We need a lot of time to adapt to new processes and to integrate them into union work”.
This is not an unfamiliar situation for representatives of other unions.
Well-established unions in sectors with strongly institutionalised workers’ participa-
tion, however, have created better conditions for a critical follow-up of new digital tech-
nologies. As informant 3 tells us, IG Metall at BMW has its own workers’ council delegate
responsible for questions of digitalisation. Considering what other informants told us,
this example of ‘institutional’ and ‘company-based’ cooperative technopolitics (Schaupp
2021) must be seen as one effect of the very high degree of unionisation and a specific
corporate culture at BMW. As Schaupp has pointed out, institutionalised cooperation
often holds unions co-responsible for the introduction of allegedly necessary digital tools
for the sake of retaining their influence. The innovations then deteriorate working condi-
tions and thus undermine the legitimacy of unions among workers on the ground ex-
posed to these ‘solutions’.
Digital technologies also enable new and more efficient forms of management. In-
formants 4 and 5, working in the retail sector and having roles at the union Ver.di, de-
scribed increased stress levels and anxiety due to technologies that prescribe worker
tasks and movement patterns at Amazon warehouses in an increasingly detailed man-
ner. Informant 5 states that
when I stand at a shelf at Amazon and take a breath for two minutes, I already
receive three warnings. Because the algorithmic timing device determines that
one needs X minutes and X seconds for this route. And if a worker remains stand-
ing there for more than 30 seconds, an alarm goes off.
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Such new devices of management are often combined with gamification tools that pit
individual workers against one another. The same informant tells us that
when you break down how algorithms and AI are used [at Amazon], one can say:
how can you get employees to enter into an even more crass competition with
one another. Earlier, in the retail sector, whole chain stores were compared to
one another. This is not any longer relevant. Today [the comparison] is broken
down to single divisions and inside divisions to individual workers.
As Apicella (2021) notes, the Amazon workers she interviewed in Germany and Italy
presented similar conditions as important reasons to go on strike.
Similar problems connected to digital technologies arise in purely platform-based
businesses such as Uber or various food-delivery services. Our informants lament the
anonymity and unpredictability of job assignment and customer feedback practices, as
well as the rewarding and disciplining measures by means of apps and other algorithmic
systems, the operational logics of which usually remain opaque. Informant 11, repre-
senting the GWC and working in the food delivery sector, states that
there is the option to track who delivers how much per hour. […] One [the dis-
patcher
2
] sees who worked more, who worked less, and who was sitting around
for how much time. But [the system] also ignores some instances: when you do
not ride one day but work inside. Or when you had an accident, or the order needs
to be delivered to the fifth floor […]. All these are factors, because of which you
at some times are slower and other times faster. And these are not considered.
As the informant explains further, it often remains opaque to users if the dispatcher is a
human being or a bot.
Surveillance constitutes a crucial condition for the practices of micro-management,
commodification and control presented above, and digital solutions tend to enhance the
ability of employers to surveil workers, as such exacerbating an already significant
power imbalance to the detriment of the employed. In the interviews we conducted, in-
terview partners drew attention to two types of surveillance – workplace/workflow-re-
lated surveillance and surveillance of workers’ attempts to mobilise and organise.
Informant 5, from Ver.di, tells us about the difficulties surveillance-driven micro-man-
agement of workflows creates for mobilisation and activism.
When you isolate people like it is done at Amazon where you work with 800 peo-
ple in a huge hall but for 8 hours you hardly have any contact with others and that
only when you go to the toilet. This, of course, makes union work more difficult.
Informants 6 and 7, from GEW, extended the problem of surveillance to the state-driven
educational sector (for a US-based study with a similar focus, see Overtz 2021). Inform-
ant 6 explains how certain school principals had created fake student profiles to access
restricted spaces on learning management systems and attended digital lessons without
permission by teachers. “In principle”, he tells us, “this is no different from setting up a
camera in every classroom […] there was a complete lack of awareness among certain
school leaders that this might be problematic”.
2
A dispatcher is a company employee who – in the case of the food-delivery sector – distributes
orders to riders and oversees delivery.
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Yet another form of surveillance criticised by union representatives is the capacity of
employers to surveil workers’ spare time and private activities. Informants 10 (NGG) and
11 (GWC) expressed the suspicion that the company apps riders use also track their
movements and gather other types of data about their performances even after shifts
are over. Informant 11 explains that “[the app] can even track us when we do not use it.
Even when it is turned off, it continues to use your GPS”. In addition, by creating fake
profiles on social media, employers can map connections among employees and gain
access to their networks. This can help managers to undermine attempts to mobilise,
organise, and unionise at a very early stage. This is particularly problematic in sectors
such as platform-based food-delivery services. There, labour organisations so far only
exist in rudimentary form and are hence comparably weak and often unable to launch
an efficient defence, as explained by informants 1 (NGG) and 13 (Ver.di).
However, social media surveillance is also a potential tool to undermine worker mo-
bilisation and strikes in sectors where established unions have a comparably strong
standing. As informant 4 (Ver.di) explains, representatives often end up being at the
mercy of certain courts.
But there are courts in Bavaria where you might lose such things [issues of sur-
veillance to undermine union work]. Then the constitution does not matter much.
In particular, Facebook accounts are scanned. There are people [working for em-
ployers] who look at such things.
Finally, informant 8, from GEW, draws attention to the detailed data Microsoft 365 ac-
quires about employees regarding app use, network activities, and working times.
Microsoft Office 365 offers features for control and as soon as such things are
available there will be people who use them. If this is not disabled technologically
these options for control will be used. And often one will prevent people even
from tracing who did the controlling.
This confirms revelations by Schüler (2021) and Hern (2020), among others, about the
potentials for surveillance and auditing built into the Microsoft 365 office suite.
All the instances of surveillance presented above demonstrate that unions need ex-
pertise regarding the open and hidden affordances of the digital technologies workers
use, both in the labour process and in private settings. As informants 1 and 2, both NGG,
conclude in a group interview, unions should systematically build juridical and technical
expertise in order to gain the capacity to adequately explain and respond to new tech-
nologically afforded practices of management and control and to adapt both work con-
tracts and organisational capabilities accordingly. For instance, the informants argue
that unions should be able to help employees understand the usually deliberately con-
voluted terms of service agreements they are subject to when using commercial apps
for work. At the same time, labour organisations should improve their technological skills
and re-appropriate employer-biased technical solutions to make them subservient to
their own interests and needs (informant 4, Ver.di).
The cases referred to above offer first-hand empirical insights into some of the chal-
lenges faced by German unions engaged as partners in what Schaupp (2021) has
termed institutional and company-based cooperative technopolitics and proves the point
that efficient union work also needs to consider grassroots initiatives in a more antago-
nistic model of unionisation.
Such ideas point to the fact that the current bent of systems of algorithmic manage-
ment towards supporting the interests of employers are not naturally given but politically
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willed and socially constructed. As Scholz (2017) and Butollo and Gaus (2021) explain,
when designed for a common good rather than the profit interests of the few, digital tools
can open new possibilities for resistance and empower both workers and unions. Fur-
thermore, corporate systems can be cheated or gamed by workers supported by tech-
savvy unions or civil society organisations aiming at appropriating or subverting such
technologies of power. For example, informants 10 (NGG) and 11 (GWC), both working
in the food-delivery sector, reported on specific practices of micro-resistance – such as
faking technical problems to gain some free time or holding back completion messages
to avoid unattractive orders.
Our findings show that unions attempting to organise fragmented and precarious
sectors of the German economy characterised by temporary hiring and high turnover
rates among employees might acquire a new role as conveyors of not only organisa-
tional and juridical, but also technical knowledge and skills. For such an emergent form
of “algoactivism” (Kellogg et al. 2020, 391), forging alliances with tech-savvy civil society
organisations becomes increasingly important (see also Ferrari and Graham 2021). In-
formant 12, a tech expert associated with the CCC, and informant 13 (Ver.di) both tell
us that such cooperation until now has been very rare.
However, our findings indicate that establishing such connections would be a com-
paratively easy concrete step German unions can take to improve their standing in en-
counters with platform companies and other tech-savvy commercial actors engaged in
globally distributed value-creation chains.
Our interview data summarised in the present section show that while unions in Ger-
many seem to be acutely aware of the problems outlined above, their ability to respond
to these conditions and efficiently engage in both cooperative and antagonistic forms of
technopolitics (Schaupp 2021) appears limited. This finding led us to inquire in more
detail how established unions might ally with civil society organisations, grassroots work-
ers movements, and unions in other countries to gain an increased power base and
efficiently engage in new forms of struggle against globally organised adversaries.
4.2. Challenges and Opportunities for Worker Mobilisation and Unionisation
As we have shown in the section above, the digital era has profound impacts on workers
and often recalibrates both working conditions and the relations between employers and
employees, to the detriment of workers. In the following section, we investigate what
union representatives in Germany see as new challenges and opportunities for activism
and worker mobilisation connected to the widespread use of digital technologies. We
initially present concrete examples from everyday working life before taking a step back
to highlight overarching issues such as tensions between 1) different unions attempting
to organise the same sector, 2) grassroots mobilisation and traditional unions, and 3)
local/regional union work and globally operating multinational corporations. In all cases,
we draw on data taken from conversations with our informants.
As, for instance, Butollo and Gaus (2021) have shown, digital communication tech-
nologies open new possibilities for organising and mobilising a fragmented and discon-
nected workforce typical of platform-based sectors such as food delivery or new taxi
services. A majority of our informants report using tools such as WhatsApp, Discord,
Telegram, or Instagram regularly to 1) connect with a workforce that lacks regular phys-
ical meeting places such as offices, cantinas or elsewhere (a condition that has been
exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic), 2) draw public attention to contentious issues
such as poor working conditions, 3) mobilise workers for ad hoc strikes or the formation
of grassroots organisations, 4) support traditional forms of struggle (informant 4, Ver.di,
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mentions digital strike meetings and online voting procedures), and 5) reach out to pre-
viously inaccessible groups such as single mothers employed in the retail sector (exam-
ple from informant 4, Ver.di).
It is important to note that most informants from all unions we interviewed emphasise
that in sectors where labour organisations are already well established, digital tools can
only complement more direct forms of interaction between workers and union represent-
atives. Informant 5 (Ver.di) recounts:
You need access to people to organise them. For me, the personal conversation
cannot be replaced by technology […The technical device] can be a means of
support but it cannot replace [the personal conversation].
Repeatedly, the foreclosure of informal arenas for exchange among workers was high-
lighted as one severe challenge the COVID-19 pandemic poses to the activities of es-
tablished unions. This factor has less relevance for platform workers used to interacting
with employers and co-workers via digital platforms. Here, issues of surveillance of em-
ployees and data monetisation emerge as important challenges that need to be ad-
dressed by both established and grassroots unions.
In a platform economy characterised by structural problems such as a fragmented
and dislocated workforce, digital tools often emerge as the only option to mobilise, reach
out, and gain potential members. As informants 2 (NGG), 4 (Ver.di), and 13 (Ver.di)
explain, in such cases, unions must ensure that they develop “protected areas” (inform-
ant 2) on commercial social media to prevent potential spying by the management. In
the food-delivery sector, the raising of public awareness on contentious issues via, for
instance, commercial social media proved a highly efficient tool for struggles with em-
ployers as it threatened the reputation and therefore the stock market value of targeted
businesses. Informant 1 (NGG) puts it like this:
[we employ] Instagram because it has a low threshold for use […as] a normal tool
for communication. We can then also inform the public. Because Lieferando re-
acts to public pressure, precisely where we do not have organisational powers
yet.
Informants 1, 2, and 10 (all NGG) explained to us in detail how attempts by activists to
set up union structures in a platform company were undermined by employers who
forced them to use the company’s own app to organise their activities and interact with
fellow workers. After a workers’ council had been formally established, the employer
created dedicated space space for union activities inside the company app. However,
the rights to edit this space were withheld, making it impossible for the elected repre-
sentatives to post on or update the site. This created the impression of a lack of engage-
ment and thus undermined the authority and legitimacy of the workers’ council in the
eyes of fellow workers.
Companies can also gain a legal advantage and challenge unionisation by means of
laws and regulations that have not been adapted to current digital environments
(Schaupp 2021). To give a detailed example, the main charge of a juridical challenge
reported by informant 2 (NGG) was the failure on the part of union representatives to
inform all workers on equal terms by setting up physical posters at company locations.
However, as the same informant explains, in platform businesses, such physical com-
pany structures are often difficult to locate and access. Furthermore, the management
did not allow union representatives to use the company’s email list to contact their fellow
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workers. An additional challenge in this respect is posed by the fact that platform com-
panies often attract a precarious workforce who use a variety of different languages and
come from areas with varying cultures for organisation, creating “language barriers as
in the old Babylon” (informant 4, Ver.di).
Informants 1 and 2 (both NGG) agreed that it is crucial for unions in need of setting
up digital structures for the purpose of interacting with platform workers to systematically
build in-house expertise on the technologies used, and to employ their organisational
power and influence on lobbying for an update of outdated company and union laws on
the “regulatory arena” of the contemporary German economy (Schaupp 2021, 67). This
would help to reduce the power imbalances created in digital environments that are
usually dominated by corporate actors.
In Germany, as elsewhere, platform capitalism is structured around the basic busi-
ness idea that connecting supply and demand in novel ways via an app reduces costs
and improves the quality and speed of services. However, increased efficiency is often
‘paid’ for by workers who lose job security and often suffer under low wages. The apps
used by platform companies are the nodal point of the interaction between platforms
owners, customers, and an increasingly precarised workforce. Therefore, it is also an
Achilles’ heel of employers, becoming amendable to attacks during labour struggles (in-
formants 4 and 5, both Ver.di). Disabling, overburdening or otherwise confusing the app
or its algorithms can deal significant blows to employers at relatively low costs, becom-
ing a potentially powerful weapon in strikes and other conflicts. Moreover, systematic
development of in-house expertise combined with increased cooperation with civil soci-
ety organisation can secure advantages for unions and may help to realise some of the
potentials for a ”digital workerism” outlined by Englert et al. (2020, 134) that aims at
finding ways of understanding technologies from within the context of the workplace and
using them to the advantage of employees.
Having addressed some challenges and opportunities connected to technology use
for worker mobilisation, strikes, and unionisation, we will now turn to how German union
representatives view such issues as cooperation and competition between different un-
ions, between sectors of the economy, and between workforces in different countries
that are all enhanced by globalised digital capitalism.
4.3. Unions Between Grassroots and Establishment and Between the Local and the
Global
To most of our informants, tensions between established unions and often syndicalist-
oriented movements constitute a recurring challenge in attempts to organise a precari-
ous workforce employed in the platform and gig economy. This illustrates tensions be-
tween two of Schaupp’s (2021) cooperative-institutional and antagonistic technopolitics
and throws light upon some of the difficulties of organising digital labour in information
societies identified by Neilson (2018).
As informants 1 and 2 (both NGG) explain, established unions often follow a long-
term strategy aimed at setting up legally supported structures such as elected workers’
councils in carefully selected businesses to gain institutional momentum. According to
informant 1 (NGG), one challenge is to retain a core of activists and protect these against
firing or the discontinuation of their temporary contracts long enough to enable them to
establish lasting institutional structures. Their grassroots counterparts, such as the GWC
or the Free Workers’ Union (Freie Arbeiter*innen Union; FAU), on the other hand, tend
to spontaneously start concrete campaigns around specific issues of contention. Exam-
ples that were mentioned by informants 10 and 11 include uneven working hours, un-
clear rules for payment, and the lack of provision of vehicles, phones, or working clothes.
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In this process, grassroots movements usually only develop ad hoc and short-term
structures that are created during concrete struggles but prove difficult to sustain in the
long run. As the examples offered by informant 11 show, grassroots movements are
often inadequately prepared to legally challenge employer actions or to protect workers
from various repressions. This view is shared by informants 5 (Ver.di), 6 (GEW), and 13
(Ver.di).
Informant 1 (NGG) tells us that syndicalist grassroots organisations have developed
efficient forms of struggle but often misjudge their power base and fail to adequately
protect activist workers against legal or other measures taken by employers to curtail
their activities. She explains that
[in terms of strategy] unions are rather conservative and agitation from a radical
left position doesn’t work after some time. You can’t demand a collective labour
agreement with an organisational rate of 3%. You can try this, but then you’re
simply laid off.
Potential repressive responses from management mentioned by our informants range
from firing activists, to blocking them from company apps and disadvantaging them in
job distribution, to heavy fines of up to 10,000 Euros. This was confirmed by informant
11 (GWC), who co-organised a syndicalist campaign among riders in Berlin, and corre-
sponds to findings by de Greef (2020) from the same sector. Both also point to the im-
portance of legal and other support by more established grassroots movements such as
the FAU. Schaupp (2021) also points to the need to use union leverage within the reg-
ulatory sphere in order to update the laws regulating strikes and other forms of labour
struggle to adapt these to the new conditions of digital capitalism.
Informants 1 (NGG), 5 (Ver.di), and 13 (Ver.di) highlight additional fault lines in the
sector. Traditional unions, informant 5 explains, are not inherently political organisations,
since they must represent the interests of workers “who are affiliated with parties ranging
from Die Linke to the AfD”. This factor, combined with the formation of a privileged seg-
ment of the workforce at large multinational companies such as BMW (informant 3,
IGM), creates tensions between grassroots and established unions as to how and with
what aims labour struggles should be conducted. This illustrates some of the challenges
encountered when engaging in Schaupp’s (2021) cooperative-institutional technopoli-
tics in order to influence the regulatory sphere while at the same time sustaining a viable
cooperation with more antagonistically oriented grassroots organisations such as the
GWC or FAU, who are more bent on creating fissures and engaging in direct struggles
(Ferrari and Graham 2021).
In analyses of our interview data, it became apparent that mutual misperceptions
regarding the intentions, capacities, strategies, and tactics of each group’s respective
counterpart were not unusual. Activists voiced the suspicion that traditional unions are
merely interested in retaining a status quo and assumed they had a mere service func-
tion to courtesy grassroots initiatives’ political needs (e.g. informant 11, GWC). In con-
trast, traditional unions often hold the false impression that grassroots alternatives pose
a threat to their own position or to established structures and procedures in organised
work life, as explained by informants 1, 2 (both NGG), and 13 (Ver.di). Seeing these
misconceptions and this mutual distrust through the prism of Schaupp’s (2021) various
arenas and spheres of technopolitics can help both established and grassroots unions
to better understand their own leverage for action and to more clearly see potentials for
cooperation rather than the need for competition.
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Furthermore, our findings show that there seems to be growing competition between
established unions attempting to organise the same sector of the economy. All of our
informants from NGG and Ver.di, for instance, recount difficulties of clearly determining
if Ver.di (service) or NGG (food) should represent riders in the food-delivery sector. This
competition limits unions’ abilities to effectively campaign on behalf of groups of workers
facing similar problems and challenges. Our informants’ statements point to the possible
solution of establishing a cross-sectoral digital labour union that fully concentrates on
organising all platform and gig workers currently distributed between different unions.
This would also make it easier to establish union membership as a factor of continuity
connecting a single worker’s various short-term precarious employments.
Both activists and traditional union representatives agree that there are large un-
tapped potentials for cooperation. According to our informants, these include possible
combinations of traditional and innovative forms of struggle (informants 1, 2, 6, 11, and
13), improved adaptation of established organisations to the new demands of the digital
economy (informants 2 and 13), increased democratisation of established unions (in-
formants 6 and 13), and extension of established unions’ legal protection and institu-
tional support to grassroots organisations (informants 1 and 6). Informant 6 (GEW) ex-
plains the potentials that lay dormant in differences between established and grassroots
unions as follows:
I would find it essential that employees chase DGB unions [Confederation of Ger-
man Trade Unions] so that the union apparatus later does not prescribe every-
thing for them. This should be prevented by means of a strong grassroots struc-
ture. This is one perspective: that a core of worker collective activists retains a
grassroots structure to control activities in the workers’ councils and around col-
lective bargaining from below.
One possibility of facilitating a realisation of such goals in practice might be found in the
idea of “decentralised vanguardism” introduced by Rasit and Kolokotronis (2020, 2) with
reference to attempts by revolutionary organisations to manoeuvre tensions between
democratic mobilisation and participation on the one hand and needs for efficient deci-
sion-making structures enabling quick reactions of organisations operating under hostile
conditions on the other (see also the rank-and-file versus full-time functionaries debate
in Darlington and Upchurch 2011). In this line of thought, the ad hoc collectives of plat-
form workers spawning spontaneous acts of democratic resistance could acquire the
function of what Rasit and Kolokotronis call a “middle stratum”, which can reduce the
tendencies of large organisations to centralise, hierarchise, bureaucratise, and monop-
olise, while at the same time offering sustainable democratic structures on the ground
that facilitate inclusive engagement and sustained commitments from the side of pre-
cariously employed workers. Thus, this middle stratum could become the centre of “an
emancipatory struggle […] waged without falling victim to new forms of domination”
(Rasit and Kolokotronis 2020, 13).
The very high turnover rate among employees in the platform economy, with con-
tracts usually lasting not more than a couple of months, if they exist at all, has been
identified as a major challenge to long-term union engagements in the sector from both
grassroots and traditional unions (informants 1, 2, 6, 10, 11, and 13). As mentioned
earlier, a possible solution to this challenge could be a new digital labour union as a
cross-sector element of continuity connecting various consecutive short-term employ-
ments (informants 1 and 2). This, of course, would imply the need for a close coopera-
tion between relevant established unions (e.g. between NGG and Ver.di organising
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food-delivery workers) when forming a joint digital alternative, and between this digital
union and its syndicalist counterparts (informant 13, Ver.di). This solution could also
help address perhaps the most severe power imbalance between unions and their digital
capitalist counterparts – the national or even regional limits of union operations as op-
posed to the global reach of major platform companies and their owners.
Most of our informants agree that the current limitation of union activities and respon-
sibilities to certain regions and countries is a decisive disadvantage when faced with
employers and capital owners organising globally distributed value-creation chains. As
informants 4 and 5 (both Ver.di) explain, when striking against Amazon, Ver.di needed
to adjust established forms of struggle and devise new instruments to create a viable
counterweight to a capitalist actor with global reach. Informant 4 tells us that
we quickly understood that the longer a strike [at Amazon] lasts, the more it loses
its effect. In contrast to strikes at normal logistics companies […] at Amazon […]
they have the data from every distribution centre, meaning they know which
goods are where all the time […] and then they use an algorithm to simply reroute
all orders to different locations.
As a result, Ver.di devised new forms of struggle and adapted strategies and tactics to
the new conditions. To avoid hampering future union activities, we do not explain these
advances in detail here but limit ourselves to the conclusion of informant 4: “Sometimes
not to strike caused more confusion and economic costs than going on strike”.
In new forms of labour struggle with globally operating companies, an international
cooperation and coordination between unions is essential (for reports on ad hoc solidar-
ity actions across national borders, see e.g. Apicella 2021, 93). Informant 5 offered sev-
eral examples of how Ver.di began to coordinate their actions with organised workers in
other countries and listed a series of challenges ranging from different degrees of or-
ganisation, different cultures of worker mobilisation, language barriers, and attempts by
multinational companies to play workers in different countries, regions, and companies
against one another. According to informant 5, the building of permanent organisations
in other countries is crucial so that “unions are already there when Amazon enters the
scene”. Furthermore, he identified careful planning of strikes as an essential component
that must include meticulous timing and sustained coordination across national and re-
gional borders so that “at a particular time slot, workers [in different countries] can get
going together”. Finally, informant 5 continues, the dissemination of knowledge concern-
ing value-creation chains, working conditions, and power relations under global digital
capitalism is an important precondition for the success of labour organisations at a
global scale. Such struggles, he concludes, require well-organised, well-funded and
strong unions that can engage in sustained campaigns against global actors that can
“last for years, if not decades”. As we would like to suggest at this point, these powerful
organisations’ tendency to hierarchise and bureaucratise needs to be balanced by a
strong “middle stratum” (Rasit and Kolokotronis 2020) that can serve as a democratic
counterweight and ensure sustained grassroots participation in all dimensions of glob-
alised labour struggles. Digital workerism (Englert et al. 2020) can serve as an important
activist-focused and tech-savvy element in such developments.
5. Conclusion
In this article, we have investigated implications of digital capitalism for unions and work-
ers in Germany. Conducting interviews with 12 union representatives from four different
sectors and 1 tech expert, we identified a series of issues labour organisations should
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be attentive to when organising struggles under the economic and political conditions of
digital capitalism.
Responding to our research questions, we found that German unions have a signifi-
cant awareness of the challenges and opportunities posed by digital capitalism, but that
at the same time they perceive their ability to adjust organisational structures, strategies,
and tactics as limited and riddled with contingencies. Our findings confirmed that unions
are aware that the increasingly widespread use of digital technologies enhances the
powers of employers to determine workflows, surveil, audit and control workers in an
unprecedently detailed fashion, pass on costs to employees, reduce their benefits, and
undermine strikes and attempts to unionise. This leads to increased precarisation and
enhanced competition, threatening the security, health and well-being of workers. All
informants confirmed that such tendencies have been exacerbated by the COVID-19
pandemic and that unions need to actively engage in these developments along all di-
mensions of current technopolitics.
On the positive side, our findings suggest that unions use available digital tools to
improve their practices regarding mobilisation, organisation, and active struggles. New
opportunities being exploited range from connecting to a previously passive workforce
and to workers distributed across different sectors or regions, the possibility to quickly
mobilise public attention and support, more efficient organisation of ad hoc actions, im-
proved international coordination, and new strike weapons that, for instance, target com-
pany apps or algorithmic processes as Achilles’ heels of employers and capital owners.
To benefit from these potentials, increased in-house technological expertise and in-
creased cooperation with civil-society organisations are important aspects of updated
union strategies and tactics.
We registered awareness among our informants that globalised digital capitalism re-
quires new ways of conducting union work and determined concrete steps towards
meeting the identified challenges. In highly globalised sectors with weak or no unionisa-
tion, cooperation between established unions and grassroots movements is important.
Increased coordination and mutual support can facilitate mobilisation, improve the legal
protection of unorganised workers, and enhance the capacity to act against platform
businesses that, so far, have received little attention from established unions in Ger-
many.
Our data also shows that, if taken seriously, bottom-up movements can help retain
democratic structures at all levels of union work and leave control with those organised,
thus increasing the legitimacy of labour organisations. Activating this “middle stratum”
(Rasit and Kolokotronis 2021) in a constructive manner could help to avoid classical
contradictions between ‘rank-and-file workers’ on the one hand and ‘full-time union bu-
reaucracy’ on the other, as identified by Hyman (1989) and actualised by Darlington and
Upchurch (2011), among others.
Our findings also suggest that increased coordination and mutual support between
workers’ organisations in different countries, regions, and sectors is crucial in order to
balance the power of globally operating companies. International, interregional, and
cross-sectoral coordination between unions can, for instance, help to outmanoeuvre the
current capacity of managers to undermine strikes or other actions by relocating activi-
ties or re-routing traffic to areas with weaker or no unionisation. An institutionalised glob-
alisation of union activities will reduce the ability of capital owners to pit workers against
one another in global or regional competitions that currently imply a race to the bottom
in terms of wages, workers’ rights, social benefits, and more. A potential new union for
digital labour that crosses the sectorial boundaries of the German union system and
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links various short-term engagements in, for example, platform companies could be one
potential initiative emerging from the conversations with our informants.
Lastly, we found that increased cooperation with tech-savvy civil society organisa-
tions can improve the prospect of labour struggles under current conditions of digital
capitalism. Such liaisons can, for instance, help unions devise efficient new tools for
struggle or support the lobbying for changes in laws and regulations to plug loopholes
created by digitisation in the regulatory arena of institutionalised technopolitics (Schaupp
2021).
In sum, unions and other labour organisations take the current and future changes
enabled by digital technologies very seriously, dedicating significant resources to devel-
oping strategic expertise in this field. Such expertise, we believe, will be crucial for their
ability to retain the capacity to successfully engage in long-term struggles under condi-
tions currently systemically biased towards the interests of management and capital
owners.
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About the Authors
Holger Pötzsch
Holger Pötzsch, Ph.D, is professor in Media and Documentation Studies at UiT, The Arctic Uni-
versity of Norway. His main research interests are critical approaches to digital technologies,
the relation between media, conflict and war, border technologies and border culture, as well as
computer game studies.
Kerem Schamberger
Kerem Schamberger, Ph.D, is research associate at the Department of Media and Communi-
cation at Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität in Munich/Germany. His main research interests are
media system research beyond nation states, Kurdish media, and critical approaches to digital
capitalism.
