Gabrielle Rejouis (she/her) is a Senior Fellow at the Workers’ Rights Institute (WRI) at Georgetown Law where she researches the intersection of race, labor, and technology. She is also an adjunct professor for the Communication, Culture & Technology MA Program at Georgetown University where she teaches Competition & Regulation in Tech Policy. The course examines antitrust policy as a tool to regulate Big Tech. Prior to joining WRI, she organized the Tech Justice at Work working group at United for Respect. Gabrielle also managed the federal tech and antitrust policy portfolio at Color Of Change and co-organized the Color of Surveillance: Monitoring Poor and Working People conference for the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law. She earned her JD from Georgetown Law and BA from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Research Project: “A sieve for Black workers”: How racial and gendered exclusions created today’s precarious future of work
“‘A sieve for Black workers’: How racial and gendered exclusions created today’s precarious future of work” argues any categorization of worker eligibility for protections using racist and gendered logic undermines all workers’ rights and protections. To defend this thesis, I will first examine how racism and misogynoir, or the combination of anti-Black racism and sexism, undermines workers’ rights and protections by looking at labor history and the history of labor and employment laws. For example, the federal laws recognizing the right to form a union and establishing a standard minimum wage exclude domestic and food services workers respectively. Caring for children, cleaning, and preparing food were among the chief duties given to enslaved Black women. And today Black women continue to be overrepresented in these industries. Their exclusion from these protections preserves the racial hierarchy established during slavery by contributing to and exacerbating the racial and gender pay gap. Building on this historical foundation, I will elaborate on why the current siloed approach to the future of work—separating race, gender, labor, and technology from each other—weakens attempts to reinforce and expand workers’ rights and protections. In contrast, a Black feminist, pro-worker, technology-informed approach to labor reform will avoid these issues. To conclude, I will then investigate how a Black feminist, pro-worker, technology-informed approach to policies, organizing, and campaigns addressing the future of work can create an equitable and just workplace and society. The Combahee River Collective stated, “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” My project aims to increase our understanding of the need for a holistic and an interdisciplinary approach to the so-called “future of work.”