Beyond misclassification: algorithmic management as challenge to the Standard Employment Relationship

The by and large unregulated presence of algorithmic governance techniques in couriers’ labor process short-circuits what would otherwise be a standard employment relationship, thus undermining the regulatory efforts of the Spanish Government. To a large extent, this stems from the surveillance possibilities offered by algorithmic management, leveraged by human managers in ways that compromise the normative underpinnings of the employment relationship through systematic breach of workers’ privacy, inducement of hazardous behaviors, diminishment of workers’ autonomy and constraints to right to information.