Taylorooism: when network technology meets corporate power

• Date: 01 November 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12228
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Author: Ewan McGaughey

Taylorooism: when network technology

meets corporate power

Ewan McGaughey

ABSTRACT

Despite the glitzy rhetoric of techno-utopia, the ‘gig economy’presents no new issue

for labour rights. Yet an unusually aggressive mode of business has developed: a kind

of ‘technological management’or ‘Taylorooism’. Its basis is the misrepresentation of

employment status in the search for profit without responsibility and is seen in com-

panies using apps like Uber, CitySprint or Deliveroo. In the early 20th century, ‘Tay-

lorism’professed to have found principles of ‘scientific management’, but this merely

concealed an authoritarian rejection of the right to organise and contempt for the dig-

nity of staff. In the early 21st century, Taylorooism professes that its use of network

technology and apps means efficiency in matching suppliers and customers of ser-

vices, but this merely conceals the evasion of legal duties and contempt for employees

and their rights. This article unpacks the response of the UK and other EU countries

to this business practice. It outlines a government report, coincidentally named the

Taylor Review (July 2017) that proposed the deepest cuts to employment rights for

30 years. It explains why the Review was corrupted by one of its member’s conflicts

of interests and must be regarded as a squandered opportunity. The real issue is the

misrepresentation by tech corporations of the employment status of their staff. In

Aslam v Uber BV, the Employment Tribunal found as fact that Uber is ‘an excellent

illustration …of “armies of lawyers”contriving documents …which simply misrep-

resent the true rights and obligations on both sides’. With new Supreme Court case

law, tech firms may be risking liability for fraud.

1 INTRODUCTION

When technology enables social progress, wealthy interests often think up ways to

hoard the gains. Computing and the internet enable unprecedented efficiency in com-

munication, including for work. Employees seeking work can connect to more peo-

ple, faster than ever, across the globe. Consumer preferences can be ascertained

more quickly than ever through big data. Transaction costs, a barrier to allocative ef-

ficiency, are reduced by algorithms of online networks that match people who supply

to those who demand.

1

And yet the reduction of transaction costs does not alter the

inequality of bargaining power between those who have resources and those who

❒Ewan McGaughey, School of Law, King’s College, London and Centre for Business Research,

University of Cambridge, UK. Correspondence should be addressed to: Ewan McGaughey, School of

Law, King’s College, London, Somerset House East, Strand, WC2R 2LS.

Email: ewan.mcgaughey@kcl.ac.uk

1

JR Commons, ‘Institutional Economics’(1931) 21 American Economic Review 648, and RA Coase, ‘The

Nature of the Firm’(1931) 4(16) Economica 386.

Industrial Relations Journal 49:5-6, 459–472

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd