Digitalisation of the economy and its impact on labour markets —

<strong>Digitalisation</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>economy</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>its</strong> <strong>impact</strong> on labour markets
2. In <strong>of</strong>fices <strong>and</strong> factories, <strong>the</strong> digitalisation <strong>of</strong> production systems will
fundamentally change <strong>the</strong> nature <strong>of</strong> work by:
— interaction with intelligent machines: how to avoid <strong>the</strong> worker
becoming a tool <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> machine? What principles can be devised to
prevent <strong>the</strong> interaction between humans <strong>and</strong> machines from
deskilling workers <strong>and</strong> subjecting <strong>the</strong>m to an unbearable pace <strong>of</strong>
work?
— digital management: how to ensure that <strong>the</strong> worker does not become
subject to permanent monitoring? What ‘humane’ systems can be
devised to evaluate his/her work? How to prevent <strong>the</strong> worker from
being reduced to a data set fed into algorithms?
3. <strong>Digitalisation</strong> creates a parallel <strong>and</strong> ultra-flexible labour market that has
come to be referred to as crowdworking:
— how is this new form <strong>of</strong> work to be regulated? By <strong>the</strong> creation <strong>of</strong> a
new status, or a new form <strong>of</strong> employment contract? How to ensure
<strong>the</strong> financing <strong>of</strong> social security budgets <strong>and</strong> social welfare provision
in <strong>the</strong> context <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se new forms <strong>of</strong> employment (wage, working
time, taxation)? What forms <strong>of</strong> protection can be <strong>of</strong>fered to workers
<strong>and</strong> how are working conditions to be controlled (health <strong>and</strong> safety,
paid leave, even child labour, etc.)?
— how are collective forms <strong>of</strong> action for crowdworkers to be created?
How is <strong>the</strong>ir collective bargaining power in <strong>the</strong> face <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> digital
platform ‘employers’ to be streng<strong>the</strong>ned?
— how is job-destructive competition between a regulated labour
market <strong>and</strong> a non-regulated parallel labour market to be avoided?
4. In society as a whole what steps can be taken to ensure that digitalisation
<strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>economy</strong> does not result in polarisation <strong>and</strong> growing inequality
between highly skilled <strong>and</strong> low-skilled workers, between men <strong>and</strong>
women, young <strong>and</strong> old, home country <strong>and</strong> immigrant workers?
2. Examples <strong>of</strong> trade union initiatives
The following pages list, in relation to several EU member states, initiatives
taken by government <strong>and</strong>/or <strong>the</strong> business world in relation to digitalisation <strong>of</strong>
<strong>the</strong> <strong>economy</strong>. The information supplied in boxes is based primarily on work
done by <strong>the</strong> ETUC 37 . The information is supplemented by data collected by
Mariya Nikolova, <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> European Trade Union Institute, from <strong>the</strong> TURI
network <strong>of</strong> research institutes 38 . This information gives some idea <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
37. Overview <strong>of</strong> national initiatives supporting <strong>the</strong> digitisation <strong>of</strong> manufacturing, ETUC note for
<strong>the</strong> workshop <strong>of</strong> 2 December 2015.
38. http://www.turi-network.eu
WP 2016.02
53