The Algorithmic Expropriation of Labor: Toward a Modernization of the Employment Contract

Introduction: A Contract Designed for Another Century The employment contract we use today was designed between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Its logic was clear and, in its context, efficient: the worker surrendered time and effort in exchange for remuneration, and the firm obtained in return observable, repetitive, and readily measurable tasks. Williamson (1985) would later describe this type of contract as an efficient governance arrangement for transactions characterized by low cognitive specificity and a low degree of idiosyncratic assets. The problem is that this architecture, still in force, has remained anchored to the kind of work that prevailed in that historical moment: manual labor, performed in person and measured in units of time. The contemporary economy, however, no longer rests primarily on tasks, but on knowledge. It is this mismatch—between the nature of the work performed today and the nature of the contract that governs it—that gives rise to the problem addressed in this article.