Digitalisation of the economy and its impact on labour markets —

Christophe Degryse
transition from a society in which energy was <strong>the</strong> engine <strong>of</strong> progress,
innovation <strong>and</strong> productivity to one where data <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> information
technologies that underpin it will be <strong>the</strong> engine <strong>of</strong> progress 2 .
In <strong>the</strong> world <strong>of</strong> labour, <strong>the</strong>refore, it would be inappropriate to expect that it is
a question simply <strong>of</strong> ‘training’ for <strong>the</strong> ‘new digital <strong>economy</strong>’ or <strong>of</strong> investment
in skills <strong>and</strong> qualifications (European Commission 2015: 32). Ra<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong> need
will be to enter a new world <strong>of</strong> work in which everything will be different. ‘What
Europe needs is first <strong>and</strong> foremost a shared European vision <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> direction
in which digitalisation should evolve’ (Kowalski 2015). In <strong>the</strong> services sector,
what will change is <strong>the</strong> relationship between <strong>the</strong> worker or ra<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong> provider
<strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> employer or ra<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong> algorithm that supplies <strong>the</strong> work, calculates <strong>the</strong>
pay <strong>and</strong> prepares <strong>the</strong> pay slip; <strong>the</strong> employment contract, wage bargaining,
dismissal procedures or deactivation <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> account will change also; as will
social security, occupational health <strong>and</strong> safety st<strong>and</strong>ards, etc. In <strong>the</strong> industrial
sector too, modes <strong>of</strong> production are changing, interaction between <strong>the</strong> worker
<strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> (intelligent) machine is being altered, monitoring <strong>and</strong> control <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
worker are being stepped up, managerial practices bring an increase in
pressure, not to say oppression.
1.2 Big Data
In order to properly underst<strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> magnitude <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> dynamics <strong>and</strong> rationales
at work, it is necessary to refer to <strong>the</strong> workings <strong>of</strong> this <strong>economy</strong>, for <strong>the</strong>y are
what will indicate <strong>the</strong> possible degrees <strong>of</strong> freedom/enslavement, <strong>of</strong>
sharing/deregulation, or <strong>of</strong> collaboration/ precarisation to be found in this
digital <strong>economy</strong>, as well as <strong>the</strong> foreseeable consequences for labour markets,
labour law, collective agreements, trade unions, <strong>the</strong> balance <strong>of</strong> power between
employers <strong>and</strong> employees – in short, <strong>the</strong> potential consequences for <strong>the</strong>
European social model.
Big Data can be defined, schematically, as being <strong>the</strong> combination <strong>and</strong> sum total
<strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> data (personal, commercial, geographical, behavioural) available on
digital networks – internet, mobile phone, satnavs, etc. – <strong>and</strong> exploitable as
raw material, particularly in <strong>the</strong> framework <strong>of</strong> mobile applications. The digital
<strong>economy</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>its</strong> start-ups seeking to monetise this raw material rely on a
h<strong>and</strong>ful <strong>of</strong> giant-sized platforms – including Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon,
IBM, etc. – which ‘produce, accumulate <strong>and</strong> manage a huge volume <strong>of</strong> data on
<strong>the</strong>ir clients <strong>and</strong> use algorithms to convert this data into exploitable
information. The growth <strong>of</strong> such data is exponential: 90% <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> data now
circulating on <strong>the</strong> internet was created less than two years ago (…). The Big
Data sector has growth <strong>of</strong> 40% a year, seven times higher than that <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
information data market’ (European Commission 2015).
2. Though <strong>the</strong>re is one dampener here: according to a GESI (Global e-sustainability Initiative)
finding, <strong>the</strong> internet causes as much pollution as does air traffic, in particular with regard to
<strong>the</strong> cooling <strong>of</strong> servers <strong>and</strong> super-computers (GESI 2012). This does cast a different light on
<strong>the</strong> claim that we have moved beyond <strong>the</strong> industrial period when energy served as <strong>the</strong>
engine <strong>of</strong> growth.
10 WP 2016.02