When the washing machine entered households in the mid-twentieth century, it was expected to liberate people from domestic drudgery. It did not. Instead, as Ruth Schwartz Cowan famously documented, cleanliness standards rose, washing frequency increased, and the total time spent on laundry barely changed[1]. The technology did not reduce the burden of housework; it redefined what ‘clean’ meant and thereby reshaped the very activity it was supposed to ease. This is the washing machine effect: The introduction of a technology that, rather than solving a problem, silently transforms the concept that frames the problem in the first place.
Could the same be happening to our concept of labour by introducing assistive technologies in the workplace?
Assistive technologies and the workplace
Across Europe, employers in logistics, construction, healthcare, and manufacturing are introducing a growing range of assistive technologies to support physical workers. Passive exoskeletons reduce biomechanical loads on the body, collaborative robots (cobots) take over repetitive or ergonomically demanding subtasks, and autonomous robots take over physically intensive tasks. Each of these technologies is introduced with a familiar promise: to reduce physical strain, to keep workers healthy, and to sustain labour participation, particularly for those with musculoskeletal disorders.
The promise is real and individual studies report encouraging results. Yet it also carries an unexamined assumption: that the concept of ‘labour’ and the associated questions of what counts as work, what constitutes a reasonable workload, who is a capable worker, remains stable while the technological conditions around it change. If the washing machine effect teaches us anything, it is that this assumption deserves attention.
What do we mean by ‘labour’?
Labour is commonly defined as human effort, physical or cognitive, delivered over time, in exchange for compensation, directed at the production of goods or services. Each element of this definition is load-bearing. It presupposes a human effort, frames that effort as something exchanged within economic relations, and ties it to productive purpose. But the introduction of assistive technologies, and the partial removal of human effort that follows, puts pressure on the concept of labour and each of its components.
This makes labour a concept that is vulnerable to what Guido Löhr calls conceptual disruption: a situation in which technological change puts pressure on a concept’s capacity to serve its functional role[2]. When an exoskeleton enables a worker with chronic back pain to perform tasks previously classified as ‘too heavy’, has the concept of reasonable labour changed? When a cobot takes over the physically demanding component of an assembly task, does the remaining human contribution still qualify as labour in the same sense?
These are not hypothetical questions. They are emerging in workplaces today.
When the promise cuts both ways
While assistive technologies promise to strengthen labour participation, they also carry risks, particularly when deployed with less noble intentions. An exoskeleton may help a worker feel less fatigued at the end of a shift, but it can also create pressure to be more productive or to take on heavier tasks. Cobots that share the workload can raise productivity norms, effectively intensifying the pace for everyone. And when robots take over part of the work, what remains for the human worker may be precisely the repetitive, monotonous tasks, the kind that are most physically and mentally taxing.
In well-regulated environments, guardrails exist to control and prevent the negative effects of assistive technologies. In the Netherlands, the Working Conditions Act (Arbowet) places a duty of care on employers. Collective agreements define what constitutes a reasonable workload. Occupational health professionals mediate between what a job demands and what a worker can safely deliver. In this environment, an exoskeleton does not automatically redefine what ‘labour’ means because there are institutional actors who negotiate and constrain what the technology is allowed to change.
But strip those guardrails away, and the picture shifts. In temporary employment, subcontracting chains, or workplaces where collective agreements are absent, there are fewer constraints. When productivity gains from cobots or exoskeletons quietly translate into longer shifts, heavier targets, or fewer breaks, nobody formally decides that the meaning of ‘reasonable work’ has changed. It simply drifts, not through deliberate revision, but through accumulated practice. This is exactly how the washing machine effect operates: not through a single decision, but through a gradual, silent shift in what is considered normal.
The way assistive technologies are deployed, then, determines the conceptual disruption. It is not the exoskeleton itself that redefines labour, it is the decision to use it for intensification rather than protection. This means that maintaining a clear, functional concept of labour is not merely a philosophical exercise, but is key to preserving what the concept should do: protect the people who do the work.
Maintaining the concept of labour
If the concept of labour is under pressure, what should we do? Sally Haslanger’s normative question offers a starting point: What do we want our concepts to do for us? [3]
Applied to labour, I suggest the answer is clear. We want a concept that protects workers’ health, ensures fair compensation, supports social participation, including those with chronic conditions or musculoskeletal disorders. The concept should serve production, but never at the expense of the people who make that production possible.
To ensure our concept of labour continues to do this work, we need to engage in what philosophers call conceptual engineering: the practice of critically assessing our concepts and, where necessary, revising them[4]. A well-revised concept can serve as an additional guardrail, one that operates at the level of meaning rather than regulation, offering protection precisely where legal frameworks fall short or have yet to catch up.
This is not about building a new definition from scratch. It is about conceptual adaptation: proactively checking whether our concept of labour still serves its functions as the material conditions of work change around it[4]. Caring for a concept that works, before it quietly erodes.
The washing machine effect did not announce itself. If we are not attentive, the same could happen to labour in the age of exoskeletons, cobots, and other assistive technologies. The question is not whether our technologies are changing the way we work; they are. The question is whether we will maintain our concepts before they change in a way we’ve never intended.
References
- Schwartz Cowan, R. (1983). More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. Basic Books.
- Löhr, G. (2023). Conceptual disruption and 21st century technologies: A framework. Technology in Society, 74, 102327. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2023.102327
- Haslanger, S. (2000). Gender and race: (What) are they? (What) do we want them to be? Noûs, 34(1), 31–55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2671972.
- Hopster, J. & Löhr, G. (2023). Conceptual Engineering and Philosophy of Technology: Amelioration or Adaptation?. Philos. Technol. 36, 70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-023-00670-3
Author bio
Jolan Schreuder is a PhD candidate at the University Medical Center Groningen and Saxion University of Applied Sciences. His research focuses on the implementation of occupational exoskeletons, examining both the facilitators and barriers to workplace adoption, as well as the ethical considerations surrounding their introduction and use. His work primarily employs participatory action research methodologies.