ILPC 2026

When new technologies are introduced by a manufacturing firm it is often with the aim of achieving greater efficiency and improved productivity. For a workforce expected to work with and alongside new technology this will normally mean new ways of working, as the technology modifies the production process and the work performed becomes, for example, more routine or complex, upskilled or deskilled, and so on (e.g. Braverman, 1974; Blauner, 1964); or the work might disappear altogether as technology replaces the worker and job losses ensue. Indeed, any assessment of the available evidence suggests that there are implications for work and workers emanating from technological change (see Edwards and Ramirez, 2016 for an overview).  Our contribution to debates on technological innovation and new technologies in the workplace is to examine the implications for work and workers of a new piece of kit i.e. unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more familiarly known as drones.

In this paper, we draw on evidence from a project that is investigating the use of drones in the steel industry. Funded by the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) the project examines how drones can be used for monitoring gas leaks in pipes and identifying the need for repairs in roofs and chimneys. The specific aim of the project in employing drone technologies is explore how they might enhance occupational health and safety (e.g. reducing the need for work at height) and improve productivity (i.e. by identifying repairs more quickly and replacing workers, thereby reducing labour costs). The potential outcome of the project is, then, a safer more efficient workplace, but one that seemingly aims to intensify work and threatens, moreover, to remove it for some entirely; to which we might add questions of increased levels of workplace surveillance from drone camera technologies. However, during the research, it became clear that the potential use for drones within the industry is much broader than that specified by the project – with a range of applications and opportunities enthusiastically discussed by our worker participants from steel plants in Germany and Italy (e.g. for upskilling, enhanced monitoring and detection, resource efficiency, etc.).

Hence, we might ask a question similar to that raised by Edwards and Ramirez (2016: 99) in their analysis of how workers might respond to new technologies: ‘…[on what basis might] workers and trade unions consider whether to embrace or resist new technology’? Thus, we give consideration to the tension between risk and benefit, and how workers perceive the introduction of a particular piece of new technology that offers both opportunities and threats. Set within wider discussions of the digital workplace (see, for example, Pfeiffer (2017) on Industrie 4.0), we view the relationship between workers and the introduction of drone technology through the lens of Orlikowski’s (1992) analysis of the dimensions of technologies: intended/unintended effects; direct/indirect effects, and; the degree to which technology is reconstituted in use, to comment more broadly on technological (digital) innovation and the labour process.

We begin by discussing the steel industry context within which the drone technology is to be introduced, before locating our analysis within debates concerned with understandings of the implications for workers of the introduction of new technologies in the workplace. We then provide an account of research design and afterwards present our data and discussion.

Blauner, R. (1964) Alienation and Freedom: The Factory Worker and His Industry. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Braverman, H. (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital. The Degradation of Work in Twentieth Century, New York: Monthly Review Press

Edwards, P. and Ramirez, P. (2016) When workers should embrace or resist new technology? New Technology, Work and Employment 31(2) 99-113

Orlikowski, W.J. (1992), ‘The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in Organizations’, Organization Science 3, 398–427.

Pfeiffer, S. (2017) 'Industrie 4.0 in the Making' in K.Briken, S.Chillas, M.Krzywdzinski and A.Marks (eds.) The New Digital Workplace: How New Technologies Revolutionise Work Basingstoke: PalgraveMacMillan pp.21-41