The Stakhanov Machine: Why We Can No Longer Afford to Just Work More

Mattia Cavani

October 29, 2026

This is an adapted translation of “Non possiamo più permetterci di lavorare e basta” , a blog post published on the website of Acta, the Italian Freelancers Union.

As social tensions rise across Europe and major strikes are called in protest against the impact of inflation, what do independent workers have to say? Even though it’s hard for us to strike effectively – withholding our labour does not necessarily disrupt our clients’ operations – we can still take to the streets and join the protests.

But are we able to take to the streets with struggles that are truly our own? Do we have strategies to collectively break free from this horrific situation? Are we condemned to joining demonstrations merely in solidarity with others, or because we share broader political commitments, such as opposition to war?

For employees, strategies to tackle the rising cost of living are relatively straightforward, however ambitious: indexing wage increases in collective bargaining agreements to inflation or introducing/raising a minimum wage. For us, they are far less obvious. Thus, in the absence of credible collective solutions, we end up fending for ourselves.

Today, the most tempting survival strategy goes like this: My fees are falling? Or are they staying the same, while being eroded by inflation? What if I could get more work done in less time using AI? (From here on, we’ll use this term for brevity, but we mean “what marketing departments and far too many journalists insist on calling Artificial Intelligence”).

This strategy isn’t suitable for everyone; the usefulness of these technologies varies greatly across sectors and professions. The positive impact of AI on the productivity of US companies, for example, is concentrated in certain sectors , namely, the tech sector. Across the rest of the economy, companies are increasingly questioning the value of every cent spent on tokens, while the bubble expands toward a point of no return and NVIDIA remains the only company making profits .

As far as the impact on work is concerned, however, the bursting of the bubble – which some analysts say has already happened in China – wouldn’t really change things. We cannot expect these technologies to disappear after the impending financial catastrophe. It is now well established that they are here to stay. At most, they will be replaced by cheaper, more efficient models: AI that is less centralised and energy-hungry than today’s frontier models.

Indeed, at our most recent meetings in Milan, several freelancers – a vulnerable group but, precisely for this reason, highly sensitive to these changes – in digital marketing and IT told us how they’re making the most of the potential of “AI agents” which, to put it simply, do much of the work they used to do themselves. Productivity gains are significant; incomes are holding up and sometimes even rising. At the very least, these freelancers are getting more time for hobbies, housework and loved ones. As they say, So far, so good.

However, if it remains an end in itself, this frantic pursuit of increased productivity can be a trap, for two reasons.

The first is obvious: every time we use these technologies, we’re “training” them to take over an ever-larger portion of our work. To see what this process of replacement might look like as it advances, consider the translation of subtitles – a field we’re familiar with thanks to Tramiti . Working conditions have deteriorated, the work has been progressively stripped of meaning and the quality of the final products has declined , while subscription prices for streaming platforms have gone up. We have discussed the connection between the degradation of work and enshittification for some time.

One reason things have gone so badly – and so quickly – in this field is that subtitles are translated using proprietary software owned by clients. This has allowed them to integrate AI tools directly into their workflows with little regard for quality. For these translators, AI has not been a choice, but an imposition that, fortunately, is sparking a strong backlash among individuals and associations.

The quality of every product will not necessarily collapse, but the trend towards replacement is widespread, as COG U also points out. To see just how far this can go, consider the Indian barbers who wear cameras on their foreheads to earn a few extra dollars .

The second reason to question the effectiveness of pursuing productivity gains for their own sake is that this is the only strategy we have consistently followed up to now, with or without AI.

Back in the 1990s, even translators breathed their own So far, so good when their work became easier and faster thanks to Computer-Assisted Translation tools.

And where has this strategy led us? Here:

With labor rights unworthy of the name for non-salaried workers;
With a social protection system that discriminates based on contractual status and revenue thresholds;
With a fair compensation law that protects only the lobbies;
With a pension system that will leave us old and broke.

[Hey, I know this describes the specific situation in Italy, but I suspect things aren’t all that different elsewhere. What’s it like where you are? ]

And, above all, without the associative, trade union and mutual-aid networks capable of giving these rights real weight, demanding them and advancing them collectively.

We at Acta know this all too well. We have been trying for years, putting in an exorbitant number of voluntary working hours, and we have achieved a few victories . It is not easy, but we keep trying .

These are the tools we lack to offset the power imbalance between us and our clients, and to negotiate, among other things, how, to what extent, and whether AI should be integrated into processes, how it affects our fees and – why not! – whether it should be used for mass surveillance.

We can no longer afford to just work more. Otherwise, just as it happened with digitalisation, businesses will gradually pocket the gains in productivity while we continue to run ourselves ragged and compete against one another, like the truck drivers in southern Italy described by researcher Andrea Bottalico.

Cory Doctorow made a similar point in a recent article : the real limit to the transformative potential of digital innovation is that it is reduced to a meager individual advantage, a geeky gadget, useless to build coalitions and institutions. In other words, yet another escape route to avoid conflict.

The alternative is to stop looking for individual solutions to problems we can only solve collectively. We need to stop believing that we can improve our situation simply by working harder or working better.

A strike or many strikes – moments when we simply don’t work – can be a starting point.

On the 30th of September, during the translation strike , the French collective En chair et en os suggested an out-of-office email containing the following sentence: “Aujourd’hui, je me consacre exclusivement à réfléchir et à agir pour améliorer les conditions de travail et d’existence des traducteur·ices”. The idea of dedicating – or, in a more suggestive, if less accurate, rendering, consecrating – an entire day to reflecting on and taking action to improve our working conditions sounds wonderful.

If we truly believe that a single day of strike action can make a difference, we must use it to confront the root causes of our vulnerability – and finally overcome them, once and for all.

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