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Title: Wage Theft and Technology in the Home Care Context
Home care workers (HCWs) are professionals who provide care to older adults and people with disabilities at home. However, HCWs are vulnerable and especially susceptible to wage theft, or not being paid their legally-entitled wages in full by their employers. Prior work has examined other low-wage work settings to show how technology is designed and deployed has the potential to both cause and address wage theft. We extend this work by examining the relationship between technology and wage theft in the home care context. We collaborated closely with a local grassroots organization to conduct interviews with workers and labor, legal, and payroll experts. We uncovered how the complex, volatile, and diverse nature of home care complicates the errors in time-tracking systems. Through design provocations and focus groups with workers and experts, we also investigated the potential of technology as a part of broader efforts to curb wage theft through educating and empowering isolated HCWs. While we found that approachable design could reduce errors in existing systems, make employer processes more transparent, and help workers exchange knowledge to build collective power, we also discuss concerns around burden, privacy, and accountability when designing technologies for HCWs and other low-wage workers.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2026577
PAR ID:
10559701
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
ACM
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Volume:
8
Issue:
CSCW1
ISSN:
2573-0142
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 30
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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