PhD Defence: Jose Gallegos Quezada

Abstract

Public debate about artificial intelligence at work turns on how many jobs will disappear. The more consequential questions are who decides how a technology is used and who gains from it. This dissertation answers them from inside two workplaces where those decisions were visible and contested.

At the Port of Rotterdam, terminal automation moved container handling from the quay into remote control rooms, and a decade-long automated infrastructure project met sustained resistance. In the United States, telecommunications firms shifted service work onto customers through apps and self-service systems. The evidence comes from interviews with dockworkers, union officials, managers and technicians in both settings, together with company and union archives and observation on site.

Three findings stand out. Workers shape what an automated system can actually do, and use that influence to defend skill and a say in decisions. Employers change the stated purpose of a technology when they meet resistance, so a project launched to cut costs is later defended on other grounds and survives. And the work left after automation grows heavier: machines take the simple tasks, while people absorb fault-finding, monitoring and customers who arrive angry. Fewer workers do more difficult work.

“Technology is not destiny. Every automated system carries decisions that somebody made, and those decisions can be made differently.”

The findings have already left the university. They underpin a bargaining toolkit that unions in the transport sector now use internationally.