According to a recent report by the Data & Society technology research institute, web-based doorbell surveillance cameras like Amazon’s Ring are everywhere and are changing the nature of delivery work by allowing customers to take on the role of boss to monitor, control and discipline employees.
The growing popularity of Ring and other networked doorbell cameras normalises home and neighbourhood surveillance in the name of safety and security,” writes Aiha Nguyen, director of the Labour Futures Project at Data & Society, and research analyst Eve Zelickson. But for delivery drivers, it means that their work is increasingly monitored by doorbell cameras and scrutinized by customers. The result is a collision between American notions of private property and the business imperative to do the job.”
Through interviews with surveillance camera users and delivery drivers, the researchers were able to provide insight into several key developments in this interaction that have brought this issue to a head. Obviously, the first is the widespread adoption of doorbell surveillance cameras like Ring. Just as important as the adoption of these cameras, however, is the rise of delivery work and its shift to casual labour.
The popularity of connected doorbell surveillance cameras was not an inevitable consequence, but a development fostered by companies like Amazon through various well-documented methods. The company has been stoking suburban paranoia for years, then offering ring surveillance cameras as a lifesaver. It does this by partnering with police departments to offer Ring cameras for free or at a steep discount. ring surveillance cameras are offered at a discount during Prime Day. The company has even launched a TV show with Ring surveillance footage. Each of these methods is also part of a quick fix for the company’s monopoly, which has shifted commerce from brick-and-mortar shops to e-commerce and delivery people.
As the report notes, Ring cameras allow customers to spy on delivery people and discipline their labour by sharing humiliating footage online. This coincides with the ‘zero-working’ of Amazon’s delivery staff in two ways: workforce dynamics and customer behaviour.
Consider Amazon’s Prime program, whose promise of near-instant delivery poses a direct logistical problem for Amazon. In response, the company created a fleet of on-demand delivery drivers: Amazon Flex. Like other labour platforms (Uber, DoorDash, etc.), Flex drivers are classified as independent contractors and denied overtime, paid sick leave, unemployment insurance and standard labour rights or protections. In exchange, they are given the “freedom” to have variable wages, to pay for their own vehicle repairs, to find their own health insurance and to take risks with their own bodies.
“Odd jobs, including Flex drivers, are sold on the promise of flexibility, independence and freedom,” Nguyen and Zelickson write, “and Amazon tells Flex drivers that they have full control over their own schedules and can work on their own terms and in their own space. Through interviews with Flex drivers, it’s clear that these perks on the market have hidden costs: drivers often have to compete for shifts, spend hours trying to get compensated for lost wages, pay for wear and tear on their vehicles and have no control over where they work.”
Competition between employees also manifests itself in other ways, namely in acquiescing and complying with customers’ requests when delivering goods to their homes. Even without cameras, customers placed tough demands on Flex drivers, who were forced to meet unrealistic and dangerous routes and unsafe and demanding productivity quotas. However, the introduction of surveillance cameras at delivery destinations adds another level of monitoring to “piece working”.
Amazon already monitors its Flex drivers by monitoring closed Facebook groups, but because of the “safety” issues caused by their labour conditions, Amazon is trying to add surveillance cameras to delivery vehicles. The move won’t change anything, but it will introduce tighter, more algorithmic control over employees who are recruited with a promise of flexibility and independence – a promise familiar to anyone who has spent time following or working in the odd-job economy. Amazon’s introduction of surveillance cameras at the door is similar.
Nguyen and Zelickson identify this trend among customers as “boss behaviour” or “a series of actions that are often undertaken in the name of security or package safety that also serve to directly manage delivery employees” as part of a way to monitor, direct and as part of the way delivery staff are monitored, directed and punished.
The customer is not only informed of the tracking or monitoring but also believes that it encourages good behaviour and ensures that employees behave in a certain way on their property. When it comes to instructions, customers are more courageous to correct and instruct delivery staff because these activities occur on their property and are visible to them in real-time from anywhere through the doorbell cameras, even if such requests are interpreted as orders are unreasonable requests or conflict with the driver’s other responsibilities. Customers have also publicly stated that the use of surveillance cameras has encouraged them to punish drivers more, whether by reporting them to Amazon, alerting law enforcement or sharing footage online to shame them. All of these forms of customer behaviour are for the most part no different from various forms of workplace management.
As Nguyen and Zelickson point out, it is a very clever way for Amazon to turn what was once a labour cost into a revenue stream by selling doorbell cameras and subscription services to residents who then perform the labour of protecting their own doorsteps.
The report’s conclusion is clear: Amazon has entrusted its customers and made them partners in a scheme that encourages antagonistic social relations, undermines labour rights and provides cover for a move towards increasingly ambitious monopolistic exploitation.
