Study raises criticism that technology makes it easier to send work to temporary workers (Cornell University)

Technology is making it easer for employers to assign work to temporary agency workers instead of traditional employees and makes it easier to treat workers as commodities, according to a report by Cornell University. “Routine tasks are easy to automate which means the demand for workers doing those tasks is going to fall, meaning wages are going to fall, too, until those jobs disappear entirely,” said Associate Professor Adam Seth Litwin, who authored the report along with Sherry Tanious. “But, instead of focusing on that aspect, through this study we’re able to show that technology also makes it easier for employers to reassign work that was once done by traditional employees to workers at temp agencies.”