Waste workers—like cleaners and recycling sorters—are mostly absent in U.S. news media narratives about automated technologies in sanitation and disposal fields.

1/10 #Discard2020 in collaboration with @perhaxis for @DiscardStudies.

For example: look at this set of images that were published in a NYT article this April, a time when many Americans were panicking about the emerging Covid-19 pandemic. Where are the workers? 2/10 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/business/coronavirus-workplace-automation.html

Robotic floor cleaners and AI-powered recycling sorters require all kinds of human labor to make them work. When machines are introduced, they need to be trained, calibrated and corrected as things go wrong. Over time, they need to be maintained and repaired. 3/10

Yet, during the last 5 years, U.S. news articles have focused on the promise of AI and automation to solve challenges in workplaces (productivity) and at the level of industry (profitability). When workers do appear, they are sometimes framed as a problem themselves. 4/10

Airports & recycling facilities were already depicted as struggling before Covid-19, needing to manage labor costs and employee retention. Now, articles emphasize the risk of transmission between co-workers, repositioning labor-saving automation as a prudent health measure. 5/10

AI and robots generate data about every move they make. With surface cleaning, for example, this data offers company management a trace to prove compliance with intensified disinfection procedures (every crevice has been sanitized) and thus avoid potential liability. 6/10

Articles characterize automated tech as superhuman—not just an improvement to facilities but an improvement on workers themselves. Machines are unaffected by the dirty, dangerous and dull aspects of waste labor work. And, in the era of Covid-19 “robots can’t get the virus.” 7/10

The promises of automation are exclusively voiced by tech execs, facility owners & municipal govt. Between 2015-20, there have been ~50 articles published in the U.S. about automation in recycling sorting. None quote waste workers who are directly impacted by implementation. 8/10

Lost within these media accounts on mitigating dual financial and health disasters is the voice of workers. For example: it took Pittsburgh waste workers striking to call attention to the lack of necessary PPE and hazard pay. 9/10