Through her experience as an educator and Amazon delivery driver, Adrienne Williams has witnessed first-hand the technological harm inflicted on both students and workers. These experiences catalyzed her to begin her work as a labor organizer, where she worked to shut down Amazon warehouses, protect pregnant workers’ rights, and provide testimony for policymakers, and also hold Amazon accountable. Williams is also a fellow at the Distributed AI Research (DAIR) Institute.

Project Description

Adrienne Williams uses Amazon and its delivery drivers as a case study to expose how wage theft is exacerbated and difficult to expose due to surveillance technologies. This theft largely goes unnoticed due to the mandatory, unpaid “homework” assigned to drivers with alleged driving mistakes and the outsourcing of fulfillment responsibilities to third-party delivery service providers. Through interviews and focus groups with Amazon delivery drivers, Williams will create a wage-theft calculator to show exactly how much they are owed. She will disseminate this research to policymakers, regulators, labor advocates, and organizers through public advocacy about tech and labor.