2026 May Day Special Issue
Editorial
Dear Reader,
With MayDay around the corner, we bring you a special issue covering a broad span of critical issues at the forefront platform labour struggles. Also, in the editorial this month, we cover the tech fallout from the persisting chaos of the US’s war in Iran. In addition, we track the shifting political dynamics on digital trade at the WTO, the ominous developments surrounding Anthropic’s new ‘mythos’ AI model, novel policy frameworks in the EU, and China’s remarkable new stance extending labour protections for the gig economy.
THE NEW DIVERGENCE
Riding the Odds: Platforms, Precarity, and Worker Power in Africa
by Ruth Castel-Branco | 11 min read
As advocacy efforts towards the upcoming International Labour Conference have begun in full swing, important issues and internal tensions are being worked out within platform labor movements as well. Ruth Castel-Branco provides a glimpse into this process as it’s playing out in Africa, tracing important victories and innovative interventions, as well as the debates that remain unresolved in the strategic thinking of worker groups in the region.
THE POLICY TABLE
Workers vs Platforms: The Battle That Will Define the Future of Labor
by Tea Jarc | 6 min read
The Confederal Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUI), Tea Jarc, sends a dispatch on the state of the struggle in the EU. Reflecting on the gains and shortcomings of the Platform Work Directive, she draws important lessons for the battles ahead: to put the legislative frameworks that have been secured into action properly, and to expand the horizons of these workers’ rights at a global level.
THE BIG EXCESS
From Recognition to Responsibility: Worker-Led Perspectives on Labor Standards for the Platform Economy
by Shobhit S. and Anousha P. | 6 min read
In light of the International Labour Conference this year, the Global Platform Workers Solidarity Project (GPWSP) has spent the last two months conducting discussions and strategy sessions with platform workers across the globe, looking to gather their perspectives on what would be the most meaningful gains from such a standard-setting exercise. In this piece, Shobhit S and Anousha P. draw on these conversations to highlight the gaps in existing frames of the debate and the need to expand and reconstitute the categories of labor law so they can do justice to the platform age.
INSIDE INTELLIGENCE
Invisible Hands, Visible Futures: The Rise of Africa’s Data Worker Movement in the Age of AI
by Joan Kinyua | 6 min read
While there is growing recognition of the crucial role of data work in the value chains of Artificial Intelligence, there has been little reform within the deeply exploitative industry as regards workers’ rights. Joan Kinyua, the founding president of Kenya’s pioneering Data Labelers Association, shares her experiences of organizing resistance at this key frontier of platform worker struggles.
THE BIG EXCESS
When Care Work Becomes Data Work: ASHA Workers and the Digitization of India’s Public Health System
by Sadaf Masoodi | 6 min read
One of the enduring problems with regulatory debates around platform work today is the lack of sustained engagement with how algorithmic management has completely transformed jobs outside the gig economy. Drawing on her ethnographic fieldwork, Sadaf Masoodi shows how this occurs among community health workers in India, documenting the strain of these new channels of surveillance and control.
DIGITAL DISSENT
The Digital Precariat and Deteriorating Health: Analyses Based on Latin American Dependent Capitalism
by Marlon Campos | 6 min read
Any attempt to regulate platform work must engage deeply with the underlying political economy that shapes the conditions within which this work is performed. Drawing on dependency theory and recent empirical research, Marlon Campos does this for the Latin American region, painting an incisive portrait of a vicious cycle between the structural precarity of platform labour in the periphery and the adverse, destabilizing effects it has on the health and wellbeing of workers.
EXPERIMENTS IN THEORY
“Poetry is not a Luxury”: Cultural Work as Essential Labor
by Sadhana Sanjay | 6 min read
With Generative AI, questions about artistic originality and the proper ownership of creative work have become unavoidable. While recent court cases have successfully enforced copyright infringement claims against these AI companies, Sadhana Sanjay argues that this is a misguided path for politics in the long run. Unpacking the underlying political economy, she argues that ‘copyright’ as a framework tends to protect corporations and gatekeepers, rarely the individual creative workers themselves. Instead, the fight should be about creative industries as essential public goods.
The Sins & Synergies Lounge
Start off with part one and two of this Bot Populi deep dive, where Shobhit S. breaks down how the north-south dynamics shape the political economy of platform labour, and how this analysis should inform regulation on labout rights.
Check out with this sharp essay on the battle for human attention, which argues that attention has become a key site of geopolitical and economic power, a finite cognitive resource now industrially extracted and increasingly weaponized in the age of AI.
Also read AI Now Institute’s report on the platformization of care work that shows how data-driven management is reshaping nursing labor, raising urgent questions about precarity, quality of care, and the future of public health systems.
Don’t miss the Balanced Economy Project’s new report on how speculative investment, political influence, and concentrated corporate power have fueled an AI infrastructure race to the bottom whose costs fall on the public.
For a more technical deep-dive, explore Stefaan Verhulst’s research examining the political economy of AI systems, building on his concept of data collaboratives as seven governance archetypes and the specific coordination problems they address.
On philosophizing in resistance to technofascism, check out Alice Crary’s lecture on the ideological covers for the harms of artificial intelligence.
Read this forceful challenge to early internet nostalgia by Noemi Garay Murcia, which asks, “When we say the internet was ‘better’ before, we must ask: for whom was it better?”
As a final act of creative resistance, get your data too dirty to train with this playful art project.
Post-Script
DataSyn is a free monthly newsletter from the Center for Global Digital Justice, featuring content hosted by Bot Populi.
DataSyn is supported through the Fair, Green and Global Alliance.
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Hi - all the links in the May Day Special issue seem to be broken. Please could you double-check this and fix if so? The articles look great. Best, Paul.