Surveillance @ Work: Forms, Dimensions, and Resistance (Panel Discussion)

We are pleased to announce the next installment of the QUFA Political Action and Communications Committee (PACC) panel series entitled: Surveillance @ Work: Forms, Dimensions, and Resistance. The event will be held on March 25 at 2:00pm. This is a hybrid event, but we invite QUFA members especially to attend in person at the University Club on campus. Food and refreshments will be served. Please RSVP by March 23rd to Elizabeth Polnicky at ep43@queensu.ca if you will be attending in person or to receive the Zoom link.

In a moment marked by the authoritarian appropriation of technology, expanding austerity, and intensifying political repression, surveillance practices and extractive logics are converging in unprecedented ways. This panel examines how Big Data, AI, and digital monitoring systems are undermining privacy and academic freedom as well as transforming labour relations — extracting value from workers while deepening precarity within and across sectors.

From algorithmic oversight in universities to performance scoring, the integration of AI in teaching and administrative tasks, and data-driven management on global platforms, digital systems increasingly structure how work is measured, evaluated, and controlled. These processes not only intensify labour and, in some cases, replace human work, but also erode privacy, academic freedom, and professional autonomy. At the same time, the extractive practices of global tech corporations deepen vulnerabilities for workers across geographical and institutional contexts.

In this panel, we will examine how these dynamics operate and function. We will further explore possible forms of resistance. The discussion will consider legal dimensions, the integration of digital labour rights and anti-surveillance demands into collective agreements, and strategies for organizing within and beyond academic institutions. We will also explore forms of transnational worker solidarity against data extraction and algorithmic control, and for equity-informed governance of workplace technologies within and across sectors.

The panel is structured around the following questions:

• How does digital monitoring and algorithmic management in universities connect to broader platform-based and global labour regimes?
• In what ways do extractive data practices bind together precarity, surveillance, and the erosion of privacy and academic freedom?
• What legal, collective, and technological strategies can workers mobilize to resist surveillance, protect privacy, and defend academic autonomy and labour integrity within as well as beyond academia?

Discussants:

• Rebeca Chen, PSAC 901, Co-Lead Steward.
• Hannah Johnston (TBC), Assistant Professor, School of Human Resources Management, York University, Toronto.
• Carolyn Lamb, Continuing Adjunct Professor, School of Computing, Queen’s University.
• Adam Molnar, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo.
• Vera Khovanskaya, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto.