Labora

Labora is a research and engagement project working with creative practitioners to identify and overcome the limitations of job hyperflexibility in tech and creative industries. The goal is to collectively identify the most pressing problems generated by market overexposure and develop appropriate, bottom-up and community driven solutions.

The project is currently in its theoretical stage. Preliminary findings emerging from a 24-months ethnographic exploration of Vancouver’s burgeoning startup and tech industry indicate that professional communities (semi-formal grassroots organizations connecting workers with similar competences and professional interests) can be effective in fostering collaboration and mutual support amongst tech and creative practitioners, thus helping them to navigate the uncertainties of hyperflexible labour.

These findings indicate the opportunity, and the necessity, to mobilize and involve professional communities in the development of solutions to systemic problems created by a reckless flexibilization of labour in the digital and creative industries.

In line with the bottom-up and inclusive spirit of the project, we want to call all tech and creative practitioners to join the project. Whether you are an employee or employer at a creative or tech company, or you are a freelancer, a startupper, a remote worker, a solopreneur, a contract worker, a digital nomad, a social activist or you are just interested in the project, you are more than welcome to participate.

The Problem

The adoption of Information and Communication Technologies in the workplace and the affirmation of new managerial paradigms (e.g. agile management, lean entrepreneurship), are fostering the diffusion of new, flexible, forms of employment. This tendency towards flexibilization seems to be particularly accentuated in the economic sectors where these new managerial paradigms and technologies originated: digital media and software industries.

Within these contexts, the lean, flexible organization of labor promises to remediate the drawbacks of XX Century industrial capitalism, including alienation and extreme division of labor. However, it also poses new challenges such as lack of social security for tech workers, individualization of risk, social isolation, and the normalization of precarious forms of employment.

In this regard, this research investigates if and how occupational communities, i.e. informal meetings of tech workers, can create moments of reflexivity and inspire collective actions aimed at overcoming the limits of hyperflexible organization of labour.

For every solution there are many problems

We would love to present you with a clear roadmap with milestones and deliverables. Unfortunately, dealing with social phenomena such as labour is always messier than we can anticipate. For this reason, we do not have a solution to the problems described above, yet. This because:

1. the identification of the problems of flexible labour should be done by the same people working in the tech and creative industries. We cannot, and we do not want, to impose a specific definition of what a “problem worth to be solved” is.
2. It is unlikely that the identified problems will be solved once and for all by a single and universal “fix”. The same problem might require different solutions in different contexts. It might lead to social movements in some areas, and to the development of a technological instruments in another.
   Therefore, it is imperative to involve the communities affected by labour casualization in the identification of problems and the development of solutions. So, while we still do not know where the project will lead us, we know from where to start. We know we need to start from community mobilization and we need to start building small cells of committed practitioners willing to change, for the better, the way we work.

Get involved!

You can contribute to the project in several ways.

• The easiest way to join is by subscribing to our mailing list. We use it to circulate news about labour and technology and to update everyone about the state of the project.
• We are also looking for community leaders who can help us map, understand and connect with tech communities around the world. Do you run a local meetup about tech or creativity? Are you a member of an organization promoting tech workers’ rights? Do you want to do something to change the way we work? Send us an email using this form.
• While we do not have highly sophisticated technologies, we are currently mapping tech ecosystems using Meetup API. The software is currently living on a server at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, Canada. We would like to release the code to the public and allow everyone to use and improve it. If you are a developer and you’d like to help, please get in touch using this form.
• Lastly, if you are an organization, NGO or company and you want to know more about partnership opportunities, get in touch with us using this form.

  Find out more

• Project website: https://labora.co
• Join the newsletter: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/labora