As policymakers debate how artificial intelligence could impact jobs and workers in the future, a profound transformation of the California workplace is already underway. Employers are increasingly using digital technologies to monitor workers, measure their performance, assign tasks and schedules, set the pace of work, and inform decisions about pay, discipline, and termination. These technologies—collectively known as “bossware”—combine electronic monitoring with algorithmic management. Taken together, the concern is that these tools tilt the balance of power further toward employers, who can use bossware to tighten control, intensify work, and extract more value from workers, even at the expense of safety and workplace dignity.
Bossware can include algorithmic performance evaluation systems, location and activity tracking, productivity software, digital scheduling tools, biometric timekeeping, wearable devices and sensors, always-on cameras, and even AI-generated predictive analytics that measure emotion or sentiment. Although employers often present these tools as ways to improve efficiency, fairness, or safety, their use remains largely unregulated and can lead to an array of harms to workers.
This report draws on a large body of existing social science and legal research, as well as 25 in-depth interviews with California workers in industries including hospitality, health care, warehousing, sanitation, transportation, security and janitorial services, delivery, and software engineering. The evidence presented makes clear that the risks of unchecked bossware are not merely speculative, but already reshaping working conditions, undercutting established labor protections, and shifting power toward employers—often without workers’ knowledge or consent.
Key Findings:
- Bossware adoption is widespread and accelerating. A number of employer surveys put current rates of worker monitoring at 60% to 80%, with a recent large-scale report finding that of those employers that use digital tracking tools, a significant share are using biometric data collection like fingerprints and facial recognition (67%) and AI-driven productivity analytics (61%).
- Bossware is often implemented without sufficient disclosure to workers. Worker-reported adoption rates tend to be lower than employer-reported sources, indicating a clear knowledge gap around workplace technology implementation: 41% of workers received no communication from their employer about workplace data collection or AI use, according to recent research.
- Bossware can intensify work and exacerbate health and safety risks. Employers can use electronic monitoring and algorithmic management tools to push workers to unsafe speeds, leading to physical harm and mental anguish.
- Bossware can deepen existing workplace inequities. Algorithmic management systems reduce complex work processes to rankings, notifications, and productivity scores, providing employers with a veneer of objectivity even as they continue to treat workers unfairly.
- Bossware can give employers unchecked control and erode worker power. These same systems can facilitate wage theft through unaccountable and opaque timekeeping processes, can mask employer retaliation after workers speak up or attempt to organize, and can automate the process of discipline or termination.
The authors recommend that policymakers build a robust regulatory regime that incorporates the following four principles:
- Employers, not algorithms, should make decisions about workers. Bossware should not automatically hire, fire, discipline, or make other consequential decisions about workers.
- Workers must know when and how bossware is being used. Employers should provide detailed notice before introducing or changing a bossware system.
- Harmful uses of management technologies by employers must be prohibited. Employers should not monitor workers while they are off duty or in private spaces; use algorithms to infer sensitive personal characteristics; use unreliable emotion, facial, or behavioral recognition systems; set individualized wages using surveillance data; or use bossware to evade labor, civil rights, wage-and-hour, or health and safety laws.
- Protections must cover all workers and include meaningful enforcement. Standards should apply to all workers: employees, independent contractors, job applicants, temporary workers, and workers employed through subcontractors, in both the public and private sectors.
