The Politics of Employees’ Critique and Whistleblowing in a Digitized Norwegian Working Life

In this chapter, we take a closer look at employee’s rights to utter themselves critically, including whistleblowing in the age of digitization. Firstly, we discuss what makes the topic politically relevant. Secondly, we place the topic in the historical development of the Norwegian working life democracy. Thirdly, we ask how democratic practices are shaped and influenced by digitization. In this context, we make use of a case from the public sector. After employees uttered themselves critically via employee representatives, their utterances were turned into a notification which then was examined using an algorithm-based method. Instead of examining the content of the notice, we argue that the method resulted in a profiling of employees. Even though both the law and collective agreements regulate the implementation of such methods, we show how the provisions are put into play in ways that challenge the balance of power between employers and employees. In this context, we argue that new conditions for power and counter-power arise when governance becomes algorithmic and algorithms rule.