Trash Work Futures: A Design Fiction

Abstract

This design fiction presents an ecosystem involving workers who resell fashion Trash for a living in cooperation with automation technologies and regulatory organisms. It is based on an ongoing ethnographic study with fashion resellers in the US who work on digital platforms and online marketplaces with the assistance of automation provided by third parties and outsourced human labor. Using the denomination “Trash work” inspired by the framework of “Waste Work” [13], this article describes a fictional ecosystem of Trash Workers enmeshed together in pluralistic coalitions and institutions. Based on the empirical materials, this design fiction reimagines how the alliances and tensions between fashion resellers and their networked collaborators could play out in futures where organizational design and political demands of various workers are inseparable from HCI. It is set in 2033, at a time where teleoperated robots and partially automated labor in the clothing industry are prevalent. Labor and automation processes are regulated by transnational institutions which include a Coalition of Trash workers (CTW), and the Organization of Trash Exporting and Importing Countries (OTEIC). We provide context with three artifacts: 1) a catalog of products offered by RAGKYNETICS, a company that builds automation solutions for garment work 2) the style guide of the Organization of Trash Exporting and Importing Countries and 3) a podcast about Trash Work conducted by two fictional Trash Workers. We explore questions of labor markets and ethics of automation through the lens of fictional constituencies, governance systems and corporate actors.