Latest / The Nation Podcasts / Europe’s Subservience to the United States w/ Ben Wray | Tech Won’t Save Us

Transcript

Europe’s Subservience to the United States w/ Ben Wray | Tech Won’t Save Us · The Nation Podcasts

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no neoliberal globalization anymore, where profits will and states don't matter.
0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't matter what sector is, every company can be used as a geopolitical tool.
0:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think next day I've proved that I've also proved where the power really lies, you know?
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not, not in Europe.
0:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us in partnership with the Nation magazine, I'm your host Paris Marks and this week my guest is Ben Ray.
0:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Ben is a researcher specializing in the platform economy, he writes, the gig economy project newsletter and his written a number of reports including a recent one called Uberization.
0:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, in this interview, we talk about a few different things.
0:52
[SPEAKER_01]: We start by digging into the case of Nexperia, which maybe you haven't heard very much about, maybe you haven't been paying attention to, but it's this chip company in the Netherlands, that was recently in the middle of this geopolitical firestorm.
1:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And for Ben, it shows a lot about how Europe is really limited in its ability to project its sovereignty, whether that's digital sovereignty or just political sovereignty,
1:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's quite clear that the Dutch government was pushed to try to take over this chip company because of things happening in the United States because of the United States broader project of trying to restrict China's chip development and access to chip technology before of course Donald Trump made an agreement with Xi Jinping and this was all reversed.
1:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a good indication of how these European governments, even as they're talking a lot about sovereignty, are displaying that they're actually very dependent on the United States.
1:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It's decisions and have limited room to make decisions in their own interests.
1:50
[SPEAKER_01]: When it comes to these bigger geopolitical subject matters.
1:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And then of course, you know, this is not just an issue when it comes to something like Nexperia, but is a much broader one when we think about tech policy more generally.
2:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was the case when I talked to a lean blankers last week.
2:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But in this interview, we also dig into what that means for platform markers, right?
2:10
[SPEAKER_01]: For the regulations that are defining the so-called platform economy, you know, the workers who tend to work in it, and who have been, as Ben's reports suggests,
2:23
[SPEAKER_01]: of the workforce.
2:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we use that to pivot into talking a bit more about the report that been put together, to look at these pressures to further reduce the working rights and protections that so many workers have, whether it's across Europe as, you know, we're talking about specifically in this interview, but also many other countries that have been experiencing this dynamic, right?
2:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this pressure from companies to
2:45
[SPEAKER_01]: make sure that workers can't push back, they can't demand better pay and, you know, all those sorts of things.
2:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So for me, I think that this is a really fascinating conversation because it gets to a lot of the subjects that we have been talking about through this past year, subjects that I have been interested in for quite a long time, especially when we're thinking about the gig economy.
3:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think this is a really nice follow-up to the conversation that I had with Alene last week, and I think you're really going to enjoy it.
3:09
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3:29
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3:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation.
3:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Ben, welcome back to TechOneSave us.
3:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, fire, nice to be here.
3:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always great to have you on the show.
3:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's been a little while since you were on blast.
3:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Usually we're talking about the gig economy, but we're going to start by winding it out.
4:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And then later on in our conversation, we'll get to some developments on how the gig economy is playing out in Europe right now.
4:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And what developments we're seeing there.
4:08
[SPEAKER_01]: But I wanted to start by asking you about this company next period.
4:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And you wrote an article about this recently.
4:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like
4:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a story that didn't really get nearly as much play in North America as it did over in Europe.
4:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The concerns by what was happening here, how it was developing, what was leading to it.
4:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe the place to start is just by getting you to explain what this company actually is and what it does to give that degree of context to listeners who might not have heard about it before.
4:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so next time it's a semiconductor company, next chips and those chips are used.
4:41
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of them are used in all mobiles, which as we'll get on to it's an important part of this story.
4:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It's quite interesting company because it was like a subdivision of Philips, which is an old Dutch tech firm.
4:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was created as a subdivision of Philips in the 1920s.
4:58
[SPEAKER_00]: and then became an independent firm in 2010 and was floated on the Nasdaq, and at which point in 2018 it was bought by Wengtek, which is a pacific of Dr. Furman China, and it's part of its state-owned.
5:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So next pair is kind of development, it's kind of path is, it's our typical globalization, you know, and the latest thing that's happened with this company is like, you know, indicative of like a new phase of like
5:28
[SPEAKER_00]: these companies become battlefields between states.
5:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So basically what happened was on the 30th of September, the Dutch government surprised everyone when he announced that they had taken over the company, the nationalized and the next pair.
5:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So next pair is a subsidiary of wing tech, so the nationalized subsidiary part of the company.
5:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Because next pair, as you said,
5:52
[SPEAKER_00]: in the Netherlands, when it takes obviously a Chinese company's headquarters in China.
5:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So they take all an experience about six weeks after that and they completely reverse the decision and they say the Dutch government say, well not, we're suspended this, we're not taking over the company, it's all going back to the way it was.
6:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And what happened in between was basically our huge geopolitical fight over the company, where I China responded to an experience nationalisation by banning the company from the wing tech part of it, from the kind of principle part of the company, which was necessary for
6:35
[SPEAKER_00]: and preventing wingtick from selling any of its chips about, which they had not going to affect on you, you know, manufacturing firms who can access those chips the old days from shutting down operations, they didn't put pressure on the Dutch government and eventually the issues resolved.
6:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, it wasn't resolved by anything which the EU and the Dutch government did that was resolved by Donald Trump when he came to our
7:00
[SPEAKER_00]: a chain agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping, which took Nick Spear off the entity list, off the US government's entity list.
7:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And really, that's the key to this story, which I'm sure we're going to get on to.
7:13
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why the Dutch government had done this mad thing, you know, this small country taking over a big subsidiary of a Chinese subsidiary,
7:22
[SPEAKER_00]: was because they were under an immense pressure from the United States to do so.
7:26
[SPEAKER_01]: That gives us a great overview of what went on there and their number of pieces that I that I want to pick up on and dig into further.
7:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But maybe just to make it clear for people, it's pretty unusual, especially in 2025, for government, whether it's Dutch government or any European government to step in and like try to nationalize a company, right?
7:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It's practically unheard of, especially when you're dealing with a company that's, you know, as I said, it says, basically it's part of the Chinese state, almost, you know, as a part, it wouldn't take part in Chinese state-owned.
7:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's clearly that the Dutch of the city are going to take on China here.
8:00
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no other way you can interpret this than they were, they were challenging China directly.
8:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Dutch government could not have done that with the European Union's informal market.
8:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a major geopolitical ploy which turned to
8:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I should have been surprised to hear about a company like next period being in the Netherlands.
8:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But the Netherlands is already this country that has an important foothold in the semiconductor industry.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, ASML is a Dutch company and is one of those companies that is like
8:29
[SPEAKER_01]: basically essential for the global chip manufacturing supply chain, because I believe it's like, you know, lithography kind of systems that it makes and it's the only company in the world that produces them.
8:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And so then, you know, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, but to hear that, there was this other firm that was operating there that is certainly not as important.
8:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like a key.
8:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like the only company that does this sort of thing, but there are still a lot of other companies that are reliant on what comes from next period as you were saying, right?
8:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the semiconductor like supply chain is as globalized but it's also like extremely concentrating.
9:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's only like sort of certain nodes in it and I think maybe five six different countries are really important, Taiwan with TSMC which produce something like 85% of the world's most advanced chips, Samsung and South Korea, obviously America, China,
9:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And then after that, there's not many other places except the Netherlands is one of the key ones.
9:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's really only key one in Europe.
9:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So only part of the European economy which has an important part of the semiconductor supply chain.
9:36
[SPEAKER_00]: As you said, ASML is the absolute key company because they're the only company that produces ultra via the Fogga family machines.
9:43
[SPEAKER_00]: which, after I understand it, are like tiny ways of light, which cut out the tiny chips for semiconductors.
9:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And next pair, you're very, I didn't know the next pair, but it does seem to be one of those other key notes, which is why it came in the, it gave a target for the U.S. right?
10:01
[SPEAKER_00]: because the U.S. for years now has been trying to use semiconductor supplies as a way to undermine China and cut China off from most advanced chips.
10:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So next pair was kind of next on the list.
10:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why this has happened at this moment.
10:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it'd be good to get you to expand on that as well.
10:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what actually happened with the United States in going after an
10:27
[SPEAKER_01]: get this whole story rolling.
10:29
[SPEAKER_01]: What was the United States actually actually doing here?
10:32
[SPEAKER_00]: What the economy minister who's been responsible for this in the Netherlands, called Vincent Carmen's, what he's said in an interview is that the U.S. had contacted the Dutch government about the concerns about next year and 2025, right?
10:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So this goes back to the Biden year in the U.S.
10:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And basically, what they do was something called the Foreign Direct product too, and if the US government decides that not just any US product, but any product which contains US technology, every decide that that should not be exported to any company or any country, which is on the entity
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Those companies can't do that, or they're also going to be called from U.S. technology, right?
11:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like a form of secondary sanctions.
11:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And basically, you can't have a semiconductor company which, unless you're in China, you can't have a semiconductor company which doesn't have U.S. technology, right?
11:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It basically,
11:33
[SPEAKER_00]: forces all these companies in different countries to bow to US demands and not export to specific companies and specific countries.
11:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So the Dutch government denied that had anything to do with the US or their takeover of next year.
11:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's completely contrary to the facts, right?
11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Because on the same day that next year went on the entity
12:00
[SPEAKER_00]: the Dutch government and evidence is plans to take over next period.
12:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there was a quote case that quickly happened because wing tech obviously challenged the legality of this and if you look at the court documents which I say in this jacket binoculars on this, the US official is quoted
12:21
[SPEAKER_00]: meeting Dutch officials and saying, while you're not moving faster to get the Chinese out of an expert, you need to be, you know, doing this if you don't do this, then an experience and danger being cut off from the U.S., the secondary sanctions will kick in, and that meeting that the court documents referred to was in June.
12:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can see that the pressure has been on
12:47
[SPEAKER_00]: and to take it over.
12:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really raises questions about how solving the European Union is and countries like the Netherlands are, because it's not really in the Netherlands interest as a country with a big semiconductor industry.
13:02
[SPEAKER_00]: to start a trade war with China, right?
13:05
[SPEAKER_00]: A small country, an everyone, is something much changed for them to do that.
13:08
[SPEAKER_00]: The pressure from the US is so unrelenting and the vests have been cut off from the US or so a bag that usually default and you can see it.
13:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But this time, you know, they came up against a powerful enemy, you know, as well into,
13:22
[SPEAKER_00]: to kind of counterattack.
13:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So it seems quite unique how the United States does that as well, right?
13:29
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's not just sanctioning another country, right?
13:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Like putting sanctions on, say China or, you know, a certain industry in a different, in a certain country.
13:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we've seen this with Iran as well, but actually saying then if any other country around the world, or if companies in any other country around the world do,
13:47
[SPEAKER_01]: business with the sector that we have cut off or the set of companies that we've cut off or this country that we have put sanctions on, then you will also get hit with this whole kind of range of consequences as well.
13:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, it doesn't really feel that you see that same kind of system from other countries.
14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: the US is the only country that can do that and get away with it.
14:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the first case of this was really Iran because the Obama agreed to the post called the GCPO, the nuclear deal with Iran and then Trump tore up that deal but lots of other countries in the world were signed up to that deal.
14:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So they were legally obliged
14:24
[SPEAKER_00]: to continue trading with Iran.
14:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I was part of the deal, at least countries where if Iran sticks by the deal, these countries will stick by as well.
14:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And the US basically said, if you try to do it, you guys are going to get sanctioned as well.
14:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And the EU and the other countries that were signed up to Den Resets.
14:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So that said, the President, which is now being expanded to lots of different industries and to the relationship with China,
14:50
[SPEAKER_00]: we're by the US and basically dictate the economic and trade policy of other countries and companies and other countries.
14:58
[SPEAKER_00]: These countries, they can resist, they can say, no, we won't do it, but the consequences are, you know, you're caught off from US tech and this is above in the Europe faces, it's not economically sovereign, right?
15:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't have strong technological based Europe.
15:14
[SPEAKER_00]: It's relying on U.S. Tech, it's relying on China as well, and therefore, that lots of economic sovereignty eventually, you know, check those food politics, where you lose political power, you lose the basis to make your own decisions, you lose even the power to nationalize companies, you know, the U.S. government is trying to do that and failed, you know, that's the sad reality of where you are pursuing it.
15:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to talk a little bit more about that later right at the kind of the broader implications of everything that we're seeing here.
15:42
[SPEAKER_01]: But for me, as I was reading this story, you know, I've saw news articles about next period.
15:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw the challenges that this presented for the European auto companies, which I want to ask you about as well.
15:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But as I was reading, especially, you know, your piece, one of the kind of comparisons that really stood out to me, obviously being from Canada, is when the U.S. put pressure on the Canadian government,
16:05
[SPEAKER_01]: to arrest Meng Wenjo, the Huawei executive, who was kind of transiting through Vancouver, and as she was transiting from the US through Vancouver, back to China, she was arrested, and then set off this kind of long court case and things like that.
16:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But it completely torpedoed the Canadian relationship with China for years.
16:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's something that's only starting to
16:31
[SPEAKER_01]: again this was like we have document showing it was clearly at the behest of the united states it resulted into Canadians being held in China as a result of it and it was like this was the consequence that we had to accept to do the united states bidding and it feels like in the case of the Netherlands this was a very similar
16:49
[SPEAKER_01]: example where it was like the United States wants you to do this you have to do it and accept the consequences that come with it because you'd rather face the consequences of deteriorating a relationship with China than losing this key relationship with the United States and you're being forced to choose one or the other.
17:04
[SPEAKER_00]: How he was the big test case right where you can take a tech giant, you know, how he was the leading company when it comes to 5G broadband equipment.
17:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can basically decapitate a global tech giant.
17:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's still working on that in the U.S. and Europe to
17:29
[SPEAKER_00]: the U.S. has been visioned Spanish government to give up contracts at how we has in terms of English internal servers for the Spanish public service, how we runs.
17:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's still ongoing, you know, there've been a larger successful in pushing how we out of Europe, still got some contracts, but for example, the UK, how it was going to run all of the 5G rollout, but just constant pressure at Hammond away from the US was successful and they cancelled those contracts.
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19:22
[SPEAKER_01]: you were talking earlier about the consequences for for the Netherlands basically of taking this action.
19:28
[SPEAKER_01]: How did we see wing tech and then the Chinese government respond to this attempt to take control of next period?
19:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I think within three days, they had issued a statement saying that number one, they submitted an experience cut off from wing tech.
19:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So, basically an experience makes the chips in two factories, one in Hamburg and Germany and other in Manchester and UK.
19:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And then sends them over to China for assembly.
19:56
[SPEAKER_00]: packaging and distribution.
19:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So once you have cut them off from that assembly packaging, distribution is not easy way to fix that, right?
20:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think 70% of the experience output was decapitated by being cut off from one tip.
20:13
[SPEAKER_00]: You think the Dutch government would have thought about this before taking over the company was going to do when
20:19
[SPEAKER_00]: the Chinese act, anyway, didn't seem to have done so.
20:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the Chinese also said, the products that wouldn't take does have the finished products, the finished ships that we do have, you can't sell them to any country, you can only sell them with it within China.
20:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of companies, Japanese, but especially European car manufacturers,
20:42
[SPEAKER_00]: suddenly had a big problem whereby you know as you know these chips are fundamental to modern cars because the whole electronics are based on that and the whole digital aspect of the cars relying on chips and therefore production was was almost shutting down in a lot of countries and that leads to big pressure you know because probably the most powerful
21:10
[SPEAKER_00]: They're powerful in Germany and Germany's the most powerful country in Europe.
21:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So that power transcends from Germany up to the EU level.
21:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And German all manufacturers are massive trouble.
21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: They're being outcompted by Chinese, electric vehicle companies, the fallen miles behind Volkswagen for the first time in its Volkswagen's, the biggest German car manufacturer for the first time in its history, shutting down a factory in Germany,
21:40
[SPEAKER_00]: by Ven Metal, which is the Japanese biggest arms manufacturers, you see the way the German economies go in, you know, they don't, you know, live away from the cars, the tanks, which is pretty grim.
21:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, this was another problem basically for other these old manufacturers and top of all other competitive problems that they have.
21:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So they wanted the Dutch government to reverse it and the Chinese basically met the German government and they said publicly after
22:08
[SPEAKER_00]: We saw the German government to get the Dutch to rescind this major, like there was no compromise here.
22:14
[SPEAKER_00]: We wouldn't, we wouldn't next pay it back, was basically what they said in so many words.
22:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Dutch then flew out to Beijing to have like emergency meetings with the Chinese,
22:24
[SPEAKER_00]: and there wasn't any resolution until the surprise Trump trade deal.
22:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, that trade deal with China, it only came after the Chinese had fed cut the U.S. off cut a comb of materials that it needs, right?
22:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So you see, this is all about power of politics, you know, and all about resource control.
22:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the only language that Trump speaks.
22:48
[SPEAKER_00]: That's something the Europeans don't seem to have learned that Trump only
22:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It is only interested, and if you have power, you can suck up to as much as you want, it doesn't really care, and that's why that's why Europe got widely screwed over when it came to the trade deal a few months ago, signed with the US, tried to suck up to jump, and all I got for it was a terrible trade deal.
23:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I'm expanding into other areas, but the thing I think the thing that's important
23:15
[SPEAKER_00]: global political economy today and it may be a cause of.
23:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is weaponized.
23:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything can be used as a leave a geopolitical leave.
23:24
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no neoliberal globalization anymore where profits will and states don't matter.
23:32
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a matter of what sector is, every company can be used as a geopolitical tool.
23:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think next day I've proved that I've also proved where the power really lies.
23:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is not, not in Europe.
23:43
[SPEAKER_01]: After the reversal happened in November where the Dutch government was like, oh yeah, okay, we're not going to nationalize next period now.
23:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, as you say, because of this trade deal between Trump and China, that took these measures away, did the economy minister in the Netherlands and the Dutch government that they ever admit the role that kind of U.S. pressure played in this, or did they still trying to pretend that this was solely their own initiative?
24:10
[SPEAKER_00]: If denied it, right?
24:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they have to deny it.
24:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's an interesting view which the Sequoemist Academy is done in the Guardian.
24:20
[SPEAKER_00]: where he denies the US is all in it.
24:24
[SPEAKER_00]: The next breath, the next sentence, he literally says, well, when Tec came off the US into the list and therefore we could come to the agreement with China.
24:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So he denies it by then he admits it and the next sentence, you know, so it's completely obvious that that's the reason why the Dutch government has managed to patch things up with China.
24:43
[SPEAKER_00]: is because when the tech has come off the entity list.
24:48
[SPEAKER_00]: As we've said, all this is still doubling on in the courts now.
24:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's still like a legal battle over who the CEO is because the CEO was outstead, Chinese CEO of Nick Nixby, the legal battle still doubling on, but as a geopolitical conflict it's over, you know, China won
25:08
[SPEAKER_00]: it's basically forward.
25:10
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a reason the interview with Carmen's because his response is completely arrogant.
25:14
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I wouldn't have done anything definitely.
25:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Given what's happened, I would have done the same thing again knowing the facts I know now.
25:23
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys unwilling to ever learn.
25:25
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a typical response from European elites.
25:28
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't seem to ever be able to learn from their own failures.
25:31
[SPEAKER_00]: There's been no learnings from
25:33
[SPEAKER_00]: the disastrous trade deal with the US.
25:35
[SPEAKER_00]: We know learns from next year.
25:38
[SPEAKER_00]: You may have seen in recent days the attempt to use Russian assets, which are held in Belgium and you can give them to Ukraine, that's fallen for now.
25:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So it seems to be one mistake after another and nothing's ever learned from any of these errors.
25:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
25:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's frustrating in a way, right?
25:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Because on the one hand, it's like you see the pressure from the United States and the way that the United States wields its pressure whether it's over Europe or Canada or many other countries around the world is just like put on full display for everyone to see, right?
26:11
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's no denying it now.
26:12
[SPEAKER_01]: The United States still use its influence under Biden and under previous presidents.
26:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just much better masked, right?
26:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But with Trump, it's just completely out in the open.
26:21
[SPEAKER_01]: You can clearly see it.
26:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's
26:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, you hear European lawmakers talk about the need to champion European power, European sovereignty.
26:33
[SPEAKER_01]: These discussions are on digital sovereignty and things like that, but then you see Ursula von der Lein sitting next to Donald Trump and looking completely subservient.
26:42
[SPEAKER_01]: you see the economy minister of the Netherlands completely going along with what the United States wants and needs in the case of this next area.
26:50
[SPEAKER_01]: What does this all say about Dutch and European sovereignty in this frappolitical moment that we're in and the rhetoric versus what we see in practice?
26:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of the elephant in the room that Europe is losing sovereignty to the US.
27:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Like whenever
27:09
[SPEAKER_00]: they will talk endlessly about Russia, the fact that Russia poses to Europe, and they will never say anything about the fair America was America's an ally that they sometimes have difficulties with, but fundamentally they're on our site today.
27:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And the whole narrative around Trump has been, Trump is moving away from Europe, and now we have to strengthen ourselves, and that's why we have to be armed, all that sort of thing.
27:33
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a really moving away from Europe.
27:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing to me that the case of Greenland isn't talked about more, like Trump has openly said that the US wants to take over a European territory, a country that's part of Denmark, which is part of NATO, he wants to seize control and take over that country.
27:56
[SPEAKER_00]: We had reported a couple of months ago that the CIA are active in Denmark and in Greenland and Argentina for U.S. control of Greenland.
28:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is like an active operation, it's the same ways that active in Venezuela and China, you know, give it of the Maduro as even as what a thing.
28:14
[SPEAKER_00]: People don't want to talk about it.
28:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, people just want to talk about the fact that Putin poses, but Putin has never said that he wants to seize a European Union territory.
28:22
[SPEAKER_00]: He was the US, how has said that?
28:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's an unwillingness to face the reality, you know, that we're dealing with the United States that is extremely aggressive, willing to tear up an international law at when, willing to seize the country.
28:43
[SPEAKER_00]: a hostile country, right?
28:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, should be seen as a hostile, a hostile country, but we're still because there's so much fear about splitting from the US.
28:54
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so much to lose in terms of the economic lengths and so on and so forth.
28:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And the sole little ambition to build economically, technologically, politically, sovereign Europe, that, you know, there's just paralysis.
29:08
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's just focused on the Russian bogeyma and that oak as for, and that's basically where you observe at the moment.
29:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it makes me think a lot about earlier this year in Canadian politics, and you know, obviously we have a new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, and as we were like going through the election, and this was still in the period where Donald Trump was openly talking about making Canada the 51st state of
29:30
[SPEAKER_01]: the United States, right?
29:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And Mark Carney was asked like, what is the biggest threat?
29:34
[SPEAKER_01]: What countries the biggest threat to Canada?
29:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was like, oh, it's definitely China.
29:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, what are you talking about the country that we're completely dependent on?
29:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's talking about taking us over.
29:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't know, it's like they live in a completely different world.
29:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But as you're saying, it's because the dependence on the U.S. is so great.
29:50
[SPEAKER_01]: even though it's threatening, whether it's Europe or Canada or wherever else in these ways, it's like you still don't want to piss it off enough to like just completely break the relationships so it's irreparable, right?
30:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's so wild.
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31:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you see any opportunity for Europe to escape the trap that it seems in with the United States with regard to its sovereignty?
31:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, what would that look like if it's possible or does it just seem like with the leadership that's there?
31:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to even imagine.
31:20
[SPEAKER_00]: is hard to imagine because the way I mean politics in Europe is very polarised in a sense, you know, because it's polarised between sort of a level thing and the far way.
31:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But both those both those political wins are dedicated to Atlantisism.
31:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're both dedicated to a European Union, which, you know, there's not much sovereignty for the countries of the European Union.
31:46
[SPEAKER_00]: European Union is seized quite a lot of power over over recent years.
31:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And the hard day, they may have, like, nationalized rhetoric for a way, but you never see them talking about actual democratic control.
31:59
[SPEAKER_00]: all over these decisions, which people like the European Commission, but as an Ursula von der Leyen, is taking, it's difficult to see the prospect of change at the moment to be honest.
32:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But I guess the thing, I guess an experience to it does tell you something about the problems with American dependency.
32:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like it's cost-free to just follow
32:27
[SPEAKER_00]: the biggest chain partner of the European Union, bigger than the US.
32:32
[SPEAKER_00]: That relationship is really important, especially for Germany, that really is very difficult for the European Union and for European countries to entirely break with China, and therefore they will have to think about in the future how to have some balance.
32:50
[SPEAKER_00]: between the relationship with the US and the relationship with China.
32:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if they don't have that balance, the economic change is going to be immense.
32:57
[SPEAKER_00]: China is arguably, it's dangerous to cut yourself off from the Chinese economy as from the American economy, right?
33:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe that's where the world plays, that the hard reality of Europe's situation is that it has a twin dependency on US and on China.
33:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And politics, at some point, you're surely going to have to reflect that within the industry a bit more than it does at the moment where politics is heavily skewed towards interest of the United States.
33:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that puts it really well.
33:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It makes me think a lot about like Australian New Zealand as well, right?
33:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Where?
33:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, they have these really close ties with the United States defense relationships, all this kind of stuff.
33:38
[SPEAKER_01]: But economically, they're completely dependent on China and exporting to that market and it creates a very interesting political dynamic that I feel like we're often not as aware of, certainly in Canada, but maybe in Europe as well.
33:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And things are going to need to start shifting to reflect those sorts of things, especially in light of where the United States is right now.
33:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But I guess on that point of like,
34:00
[SPEAKER_01]: how Europe is acting in this moment.
34:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is something I was talking with, a lean blankerist about last week as well, is in the digital sphere, you know, obviously we're talking about an experience and that's chips and this is really important.
34:12
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's also this attempt to regulate these American tech companies in order to get
34:18
[SPEAKER_01]: better control over them or at least that was the plan in the past that seems like that is you know increasingly eroding in front of our eyes and in the past we've talked a lot about the gig economy and platform work because that's something that you have worked on a lot and I wonder what you're seeing in that sphere as well as we're seeing these increasing pressures from the United States and I guess to protect you know US tech companies from regulation abroad
34:46
[SPEAKER_00]: The defence of European Union was achieved so far in its fairly odd years of existence has been this what's called a regulatory superpower, right?
34:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It may not have the military may of the United States, it may not have the economic muscle of China
35:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's able to impose regulations which then have what's called the Brussels effect, right?
35:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We're by because a big company like Google has to bend its system around EU regulations, that then has a vapour effect in the west of the world.
35:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Google decides, look, we'll just have these regulations for the whole world, because we have to have them for the European Union.
35:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And things like general data protection regulation GDPR, lots of laws that the European
35:31
[SPEAKER_00]: to regulate big platforms, big tech firms, have all been with that idea in mind, right?
35:37
[SPEAKER_00]: We may not be an economic power, but at least we're a vaguely to a power, because we've got a big consumer market that always companies want to get into.
35:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So that has been the concept that is now on the major attack.
35:49
[SPEAKER_00]: In the trade deal that was done with the US, it didn't include limits on the vaguely a power of the U.
35:56
[SPEAKER_00]: but we know that the 80 states has put Mehmed Massive Peshire to reduce the misject these regulations.
36:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And the use about that Peshire has got was called a simplification agenda which really means a deregulation agenda going on right now where it's trying to pass through the European Parliament and the European Council a bunch of changes to regulations already has.
36:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So for example,
36:21
[SPEAKER_00]: One of those is GDPR and Europe, you are allowed to access your information, the data which companies hold on you, you make a request, those companies have to give you the data sample.
36:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, now with the changes they want to make, it won't be so simple, you'll have to give a good reason why you want that data and the company can say, well, if we don't believe they have a just divide reason, we don't have to give them that data.
36:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's going to restrict the right to information.
36:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's one example of the simplification agenda.
36:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, interesting thing with the platform economy comes into that platform, what comes into that?
36:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Is the platform what directive came right before this simplification agenda really kicked in?
37:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
37:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's one of the last major regulations about tech in Europe before the the de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de
37:19
[SPEAKER_00]: for platform workers in Europe, whereby it's basically like innocent and until proven guilty, they ain't criminal law.
37:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're presumed to be an employee and tell a company can pause and a court of law that you're not an employee.
37:35
[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to apply to all platform rockers by December 2026.
37:40
[SPEAKER_00]: The question is, this is the interesting thing.
37:44
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where links back into the debate about where you're upscoring.
37:48
[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to be a big problem for American tech firms like Uber and that sort of thing, right?
37:53
[SPEAKER_00]: The Evo de Uber's already said.
37:55
[SPEAKER_00]: If you do this, we're going to pull out of lots of different places.
37:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to cost us too much money.
38:00
[SPEAKER_00]: There's different estimates, but people say that the difference we've been employing, I'll work for Uber and for high numbers, and a quote-unquote independent contractor, is about one far more expensive for every single worker.
38:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's as a begging piece in their costs.
38:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you push through this regulation?
38:20
[SPEAKER_00]: We've already been passed.
38:21
[SPEAKER_00]: by the, it has to be transformed into national law.
38:24
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some leeway for governments to transpose it in ways are, are different in different countries.
38:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Can it be transformed in a way where what could actually get these rates?
38:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Because these big US tech firms like Huber have come in and smashed up Europe's labor model, you know, Uber is imposed itself on countries without following local taxi laws.
38:46
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, it's just behind itself into these economies.
38:51
[SPEAKER_00]: They themselves knew that they were doing this, they said, we're just fucking pirates called on the call.
38:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So they knew what they were doing.
39:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Can we bring these companies to heal?
39:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Can we actually regulate them?
39:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be really interesting to see it.
39:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, right now I'm in Warsaw, and Poland, the Eastern Europe is traditionally not part of Europe, which has strong labor rates in the post-communist years.
39:14
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been highly liberalised and labor markets.
39:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, speaking to we go here about the change position, the platform won't direct if some changes are said to me.
39:23
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not even sure if they're going to change exposure, they might just decide to delay in delay in delay in delay in the change position because they don't want to because the platform lobby doesn't want to.
39:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard about
39:34
[SPEAKER_00]: the platform will be put in for proposals for how the chance deposit in Poland, which would basically make it tofless, which would mean that it would be extremely difficult for workers to access their employment rates.
39:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So for me, it's really interesting to look at the whole question of
39:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Europe's weakness, political weakness, geopolitical weakness, economic weakness, through the lanes of trying to vaculate the platform economy.
40:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess we'll see what happens over the next year, whether it's transports in a way which does, you know, give platform workers the ways the desperate we need.
40:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And just for those outside of Europe, transposition is kind of taking that European law and then bringing it into national law in these different member states, right?
40:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's fascinating, right?
40:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things you were telling me before, you know, we started talking is like we're seeing in so many places right now, a lot of the governments across the European Union are right-wing governments and they obviously don't want to implement these rules in such a way that is going to harm these companies, right?
40:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, Poland is just not saying it's because right now it's got a kind of census, neoliberal government, the hard rate, the left power a couple of years ago, but these countries in eastern New York have got such entrenched liberalised models that they just don't have an ocean that
40:51
[SPEAKER_00]: poorly paid workers would get workers rates, you know, that's not part of the kind of vocabulary.
40:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of an uphill battle in these countries.
40:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I should say those very different, on the other side of Europe, like Spain where I live in, I know that the Spanish government have a very ambitious plan, part of the part for mock directive leads to all-given management rates, okay, so like the rate to access information, rate to a human decision,
41:16
[SPEAKER_00]: on any important decision that the platform makes has to be made by a human being, like for example, suspending a worker's account, has been made by a human being, the right to an explanation.
41:25
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a whole bunch of algorithm management rates.
41:28
[SPEAKER_00]: What this Spanish government want is implemented in the platform with directives.
41:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So those rates don't just apply to platform workers, but apply to all workers.
41:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I saw a study by the OECD, which said that 70% of European companies use at least one form of algorithm management.
41:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So, algorithm management is much bigger than just, you know, fruit delivery workers, taxi drivers, expands to your normal jobs, you know, standard employment jobs, but you will have part of your job is still managed algorithmically.
41:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So, this managed governments think you're heckin' me expand these rates to other workers and try to think of ambitious ways to do it.
42:03
[SPEAKER_00]: In Germany, they're discussing a transposition of the platform objective, which would ban sub-contracting, because one of the models in the platform companies use when they have to employ the workers as they say, okay, we won't employ our workers, but we won't employ them directly.
42:20
[SPEAKER_00]: We will instead pay a tiny unaccountable company to employ them on our behalf and if that tiny unaccountable company happens to operate illegally, abuse the workers, labor rights, not pay them properly, not pay them in a minimum wage.
42:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's not our problem.
42:37
[SPEAKER_00]: because we are not the employer, the sub-conjectivates.
42:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So Germany is looking at banning that sort of these platforms they have to employ the workers directly.
42:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't want to give the impatientness, all negative.
42:52
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some pushes towards ambitious transformations of the platform on the collective.
42:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's quite a polarised picture.
43:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It depends which type of government it is in power.
43:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It depends what the canvlet model is in each country.
43:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I think what you're saying makes a ton of sense, right?
43:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And as I hear you describe that, one of the first things that comes to mind is thinking about a company like Amazon, even.
43:16
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a company that its warehouse workers are employed as employees of the company, but they're still a whole load of algorithmic management that is taking place in a workplace, sorry, like that.
43:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And obviously we've seen a lot of other employers adopt those kinds of practices as well, maybe not to the same degree as Amazon.
43:32
[SPEAKER_01]: but you know, still implementing systems like that.
43:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you talk about sub-contracting, obviously a lot of the Amazon delivery model, if it's through its own fulfillment network, is through sub-contracting delivery companies that then control the workers and, you know, it's easier for them to kind of push down the rights and all that kind of stuff as a result right
43:52
[SPEAKER_01]: If the workers try to, try to unionize as we saw in a few places in the US, then Amazon can just cut the contract and, you know, find a different delivery company to do things, right?
44:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, just to kind of add to what you're saying there and kind of how we see these things, taking place well beyond the platform economy, right?
44:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we've said that part of the reason why the Spanish government is doing this is exactly because Amazon has refused to play ball with the national regulations it's being currently hired.
44:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So Spain in 2021, implementing the law whereby
44:25
[SPEAKER_00]: what cause we're allowed to access information on our movement management.
44:28
[SPEAKER_00]: They were allowed to have an explanation for how the algorithm works, what are the rules that govern the algorithm.
44:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a warehouse, an Amazon warehouse near Barcelona, which is unionized, and they have tried to get this information.
44:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And Amazon just point blank a few, there's no, it doesn't matter where it says in the law, we are not handing over our rules about how we manage workers in the warehouse.
44:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So now the Spanish government's doing like labor inspections, you know, it's trying to stream from the wall to stop the, you know, these loophole.
45:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So Amazon is a big more to be up for this kind of regulated offensive.
45:06
[SPEAKER_01]: That's good to know though and something to watch to to see how it moves forward.
45:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Do these changes that you mentioned to the GDPR and people being able to request their personal information?
45:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Does that affect those type of rights and platforms
45:24
[SPEAKER_00]: As a good question, I'm still looking into what those changes are going to mean for the powerful Mont Directive, because the platform Mont Directive is based on GDPR, but a lot of the text of the Directive stays, this is an addition
45:39
[SPEAKER_00]: to GDPR.
45:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So it should be the case that the platform objective hasn't affected that much by these changes from my understanding, but we'll see how that plays out because the general idea of these changes is to make it hard for workers, consumers, anyone to access, what is their own data, right?
45:57
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what these companies are holding their own data.
46:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just accessing their own data with the ideas to make it more difficult.
46:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think there's probably
46:08
[SPEAKER_01]: That's frustrating, but good to know right as we're looking into how this is developing.
46:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wanted to ask obviously we talk about this process of employees becoming contractors and losing these rights as a process of upperization, right?
46:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the company has really come to exemplify how this is working.
46:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know that you have a recent report where you look at the broader consequences of this.
46:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I wonder for you how you see this growing pressure to Uberize more professions within Europe and how that is actually playing out at the moment.
46:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the study I've published is called like which workers are vulnerable to urbanization, so it's trying to analyze not not predict the future, it's trying to analyze where workers are in a situation that where they could be exposed to Uberstell Business Models or Uberstell Business Models are already, you know, existing these sectors, could they take over them, could they become the dominant model?
47:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a number of different industries we'll look at home care for one in the US public and as well, you already have quite big care platforms that care.com, for example, they're expanding in Europe and outsourcing and privatization of home care.
47:24
[SPEAKER_00]: increased demand for home care as, you know, with a rapidly aging population, as a chart in these kind of business models into sectors.
47:34
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one.
47:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Education is another one as classes move like from in person to online.
47:42
[SPEAKER_00]: They're increasingly being platformised especially like online adult learning, online language learning.
47:48
[SPEAKER_00]: even universities.
47:49
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a platform called Corsair, which has relationships with most of universities in the US and Europe.
47:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's just their mental health care, fair people platforms to co-off during the pandemic.
48:03
[SPEAKER_00]: and they're still really big.
48:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably everyone who's listening to this podcast has seen better health adverbs because they are, I hope they don't sponsor.
48:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure they don't sponsor by a smart podcast.
48:15
[SPEAKER_01]: They do not.
48:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I said explicitly we're not doing better health.
48:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So these are the biggest podcasts sponsor in the U.S.
48:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So you regularly hear the one podcast.
48:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're expanding their fast live music platforms.
48:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I go in agency work like Tempe Worker.
48:36
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of that's been organized with platforms now.
48:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And the one that I really want to mention is data annotation work.
48:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why this is I think really important is the link between
48:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Genitive AI, an expansion of Genitive AI, and Uber-style business models has been hard to see, but I think we're starting to see what that link comes in and it comes in for this data annotation, what we're basically data annotation is the people behind that official intelligence.
49:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So the human workers who are visible to most of us, I'm sure you've talked about it on this podcast, like click workers, people who are testing, training, fixing,
49:12
[SPEAKER_00]: AI systems, the turn like sort of low quality AI products into high quality ones.
49:17
[SPEAKER_00]: You need these human data and data.
49:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And as generative AI becomes more complex and becomes more like sector specific products, you need a sort of higher level of data and a data.
49:30
[SPEAKER_00]: People who can give what's called human feedback data, where you compare two different AI responses, and you can explain why one's better than the other.
49:39
[SPEAKER_00]: So, as that develops, the kind of geography of the data annotation workforce is changing, because previously it was just in the global south, right?
49:49
[SPEAKER_00]: People working in Africa, Venezuela, you know, the first countries where there's some level of English spoken often, you would have these kind of click farms, you know, of people working in
50:00
[SPEAKER_00]: several conditions, there will be companies like Vemal Tasks would cut them off, they would have like a click farm in Venezuela, then they would decide to cut those workers off, say up somewhere else, some of those workers would lose their job overnight.
50:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is bringing the annotation industry up to now.
50:16
[SPEAKER_00]: As it changes, as it needs to have a higher level of the annotation, work more sector-specific.
50:21
[SPEAKER_00]: is becoming more and more in the global north, and we're seeing these companies like Surgei, Scalii, these big data annotation funds.
50:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Uber is the upper zone data annotation wing, called Uber AI Solutions.
50:36
[SPEAKER_00]: First time it's had a non-transport sector part of Uber,
50:39
[SPEAKER_00]: let's go and pretty fast and they're looking for more skilled data tiers.
50:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this is an interesting thing.
50:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Every AI products do start displacing workers in some of these industries.
50:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that you lose the skill altogether.
50:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that the worker becomes a data entity.
50:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's say you have like a paralegal today who's working for a law firm.
51:06
[SPEAKER_00]: where the lawyer can just type in and say, you know, we want the AI to do his research for his find this information for the core case, if it worked.
51:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And these are lots of Fs, right?
51:16
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know where these AI products are gonna be good, they're gonna work and that sort of thing.
51:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a big question mark.
51:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Every able to do that, you will still need parallels to be the data and ideas, to be fixing and refining and improving the AI product.
51:30
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the point where these workers, who previously would have been non-employment contracts,
51:35
[SPEAKER_00]: will be organized for careers, gig economies, there are more looks like Uber's AI solution, so it organizes workers in that way.
51:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's probably, you know, overly long explanation, but I think that that's why we should be thinking about the visualization, not just as a problem for like, food delivery workers, taxi drivers, this is a problem for every worker, and it could come into lots of different industries.
51:59
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not aware of yet, so we,
52:00
[SPEAKER_00]: We should be cheating.
52:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Address in the problem of bad for mockers, the problem for the whole working class.
52:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Even for people who are in what we call middle class professions today could be vulnerable to urbanization in the future.
52:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the idea of the study, to make us think a bit more broadly about what types of workers this could affect in the near future.
52:23
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I think it's a really important point, right?
52:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Like as long as this Uberization process is taking place somewhere, there will be a desire to try to expand it to even more workers.
52:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd be companies want to pay less money for labor.
52:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they want workers to have less power, and they're ability to push back to unionize all these sorts of things.
52:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And by Uberizing the workforce, then you achieve that, right?
52:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's important to make that link to the generative AI process as well, right?
52:52
[SPEAKER_01]: often these things can be easily obscured by these companies, so you don't see what is happening behind the AI product, you know, the humans that are contributing to it.
53:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember early on in the life of Chatchee BT, I guess, there was the story about the workers in Kenya that played a key role in making that tool work in the way that it did.
53:12
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, we're completely like you would never hear open AI talk about them and what they contributed and the fact that there was humans in the loop there, right?
53:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they want you to think it's just a computer that's doing all this and the computer is so intelligent.
53:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess then my question as we kind of round off our conversation is, as you are seeing the risks of further urbanization increase and obviously the desire of companies to roll out whether it's algorithmic management tools like you were talking about in,
53:39
[SPEAKER_01]: many other types of companies, whether it's AI, but, you know, this process of Uberization in more places, what are the opportunities to try to stop that in its tracks?
53:48
[SPEAKER_01]: What needs to be done to try to rain this in?
53:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think I think there's two aspects to it.
53:52
[SPEAKER_00]: First is, if you're trying to prevent urbanization, you're ready to prevent your job being urbanized, the best way to do that is by controlling the wallet of technology in your workplace.
54:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's to stop it before the technologies introduce what we talk about in the report is the importance of workers being on guard.
54:11
[SPEAKER_00]: for new technologies being brought in and you may be being brought in and unissuming ways in ways which seem like they're just going to be efficiency tools for workers, you know, they're going to be aids for workers, they're all going to be they, you know, when advanced the company everyone's going to improve it's going to get better for all the workers.
54:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And then suddenly you find this displacement workers or it's under my in a conditions or suddenly you'll be in paid per task because the algorithm management system can calculate how much time it takes you to complete a task.
54:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you can see how these systems can
54:44
[SPEAKER_00]: can be used in ways which are exploitative.
54:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So you need to guard against that and that's why you need strong unions, you collective agreements, every new technology that's brought into the workplace should be negotiated by workers before it's brought in.
54:59
[SPEAKER_00]: The terms on which is brought in even potentially prohibiting the use and blocking the introduction of some technology.
55:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the first thing.
55:07
[SPEAKER_00]: the prevention part of it.
55:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And then what I talk about in the report is that sort of strategy for de-ubberization.
55:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So jobs are already subject to over a scale business model.
55:17
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you go from that to dignified, secure work?
55:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And the key thing is to favor employment rates.
55:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Until you have workers rates, you know, you be very weak bargain position in with the company,
55:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is operated through the algorithm.
55:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You have no human relationships with management.
55:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So you need to reduce the intensity of algorithm management.
55:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And you need to have a countable human relationships between workers and management.
55:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So employment rates are the easiest way to do that, most effectively to do that.
55:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen cases, for example, in Spain, where workers were previously organized on our independent country other bases, that then become employees and you can see how the unions have been able to establish more of a presence, you can see more relevant to workers when they've got an employment contract because it's got something to defend.
56:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can see how that works.
56:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's not to say that
56:13
[SPEAKER_00]: There's lots of workers in Europe, Canada, United States, that employment contracts and have terrible conditions, right?
56:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not to say everyone's going to get there overnight, when you have employment contracts, obviously not.
56:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a starting point for organization.
56:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an starting point for some accountability, whereas every you are organized on a paper task basis, you don't have any contractual rates.
56:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It's difficult to get started with a holding a company to account.
56:39
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
56:40
[SPEAKER_00]: We kind of try to develop this kind of approach to how to deal with the workplace and we're hopeful that the platform objective can be a big food, not respect.
56:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And we can move away from Uberstale business models, not just for current platform workers, but for, you know, the much larger workforce, which could potentially be subject to these models in the future.
57:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no.
57:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a really important point to need to try to counter this, to need to retake that control.
57:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I know that we took a bit of a journey through this episode from talking about next Syria to the platform economy.
57:14
[SPEAKER_01]: But one thing that always sticks out of my mind as well is, and I think it was in the uber files that you mentioned earlier, in how
57:21
[SPEAKER_01]: These U.S. companies push really hard to make sure that they could get into Europe, they even use their relationships with the U.S. government, with the Obama administration, to try to make sure that American diplomats in Europe were working with European governments to try to make sure that they were not going to regulate the over-model out of existence before it could even take a foothold.
57:41
[SPEAKER_01]: All these things are very much wrapped up together and very much interrelated, right?
57:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly, the same way in which the U.S. government is influenced in next beer.
57:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It's influenced in the platform of beer as well, because it's supporting companies like Uber, which have massive lobbying budgets, which they use in Europe to influence the governments and try and defend their interests, right?
58:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's the same thing.
58:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the dominance of American tape and American economic power chanelese into political power as well, you know.
58:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's a lot of the same challenges looked out from different angles.
58:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, 100%.
58:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's always something that we need to keep in mind, especially given what's going on in the moment and the discussions that we're having.
58:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's always great to get your insights on all this stuff, you know, to learn more about what's happening over in Europe and how that relates to so many of these broader issues that we're always talking about on the show and that so many of the listeners are concerned about.
58:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So thanks so much for taking the time to come back.
58:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate it.
58:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks very much, Sean.
58:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Ben Ray writes the game economy project newsletter and his most recent report is called Uperization.
58:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Tech Won't Save Us has made an partnership with the nation magazine and is hosted by me Paris Marks.
58:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Production is by Kyle Hucen.
58:52
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58:53
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58:56
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59:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week.