Algorithmic management and the gig economy in Ghana: A growing concern for worker rights
By Joseph Opoku Mensah
Over the past few years, the city of Accra has also experienced a headlong growth of digital labour, with services like Bolt, Uber, and Yango. Such sites have been heavily marketed as places where employment and entrepreneurship are to be found, especially among the youth with little prospect of decent jobs. But under the blanket of technological advances and the ability to work flexibly is a growing problem, which the world cannot hide anymore: the growing dependency on the use of algorithmic systems to control and track and assess labour. This process has been coined as algorithmic management, which involves the application of data-based systems in the process of assigning tasks, evaluating performance, and enforcing regulations, usually with the least human control. Although these systems are globalised as an efficient and neutral way to do it, they give way to a new mode of labour control that is, in most cases, unregulated and opaque.
Algorithmic control assumes a darker than usual aspect in the case of Accra, with its patchy infrastructure, informal labour structure, and lax policing. Quite often, platform workers are punished due to reasons that they cannot change themselves, including poor internet connection, traffic jams, or even prejudice on the part of customers, with virtually no explanations and appeal options. Deactivations, withholding payments, and unexpected alterations to the policies of the platforms are routine, and workers are left at their mercy. The use of the term independent partners that characterises all gig workers hides the unbalanced power between platforms on the one hand and those who do the work on the other. The algorithm imposes extremely strict conditions on these employees, which they find difficult to comprehend. It is a relationship that does not only impair labour rights but further entrenches economic precarity.
The lack of regulation concerning these platforms is particularly troubling. In contrast to most states where the rights of the platform workers are being discussed or are already introduced, the labour legislation in Ghana has not addressed the aspect of the algorithmically controlled work satisfactorily. Consequently, thousands of people are now working in a type of job that is mostly unknown to the lawmakers and exposed to the dangers of the work largely uncodified by the laws that are supposed to guarantee fair and decent work. The country needs immediate national debate and change in policy. The government agencies, in cooperation with higher educational establishments, labour unions, and civil society entities, have to start discussing the detailed models of how to manage digital working platforms.
These involve making the algorithm processes transparent, protecting the workers against unfair deactivation, and bringing minimum protections, which includes maintaining fair remuneration, providing redress through worker-to-worker grievances, and availing social security. Ghana is at a point of no return. In an increasingly digitalised world, where the concept of work continues to change, we must avoid repeating the imbalances and inequalities that have characterised past labour models. Instead, we need to come up with locally informed policies that echo what happens in our urban settings and our institutions as well as the crucial workers. The future of work is not coming; it is now. It should be the national priority to make it just, inclusive, and humane.
