A conference organised by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), discussed over a period of three days which impact digitalisation will have on the future world of work. Issues at the centre of the almost 30 different panel discussions included questions such as what the future quality of work, the working conditions, the social dialogue of health and safety at the workplace should look like. These debates took place against the background that the trade unions and the Chamber of Labour, one of the co-organisers of the event, want to help shape a "social digitalisation of work and the workplace" to ensure that it is not just a small (new) elite that benefits from the digital change, but society as a whole.

Active participation to meet the challenges of the digitalisation of the world of work is required

At the three-day conference, the discussions in respect of future challenges of a changing world of work were based on a wide range of perspectives. However, at the end of the day, it had become clear to everybody that trade unions cannot ignore certain trends but that they have to seek active participation. Otherwise it might happen, a prospect, the Chamber of Labour has time and again warned against, that the new developments could be used as an excuse to legitimise the undermining of existing standards. However, exactly the opposite should be the case: only if the digital change improves the living and working environment of large sections of the population, it has been successful. That is why the Chamber of Labour has a issued a publication on the subject, which, apart from addressing the most burning questions, shall also serve as a basis for discussion. One of the most important demands from the point of view of the Chamber of Labour is that the work that in future will be done under changed conditions, which guarantee people a fair income, and that the new “digital employers” will make just contributions to public social and healthcare systems to ensure that the welfare state, taking new requirements and possibilities into account, will be expanded and not dismantled.

Online platforms – good “digital employers” of the future?

The panel, which was co-organised by the Chamber of Labour, discussed the working conditions in the new world of online platforms, which are used to offer and provide all sorts of services. Sylvia Kuba of the Chamber of Labour Vienna said that only recruitment/placement would not change the way employees would do their work; what was new, however, was the way jobs were offered and provided. That is why it has to be an important political goal to prevent existing working and social standards being undermined under the pretext of new digital ways of working – independent of how these new forms of working will be called or categorised. According to Kuba, it seems to be a significant similarity that in the final analysis this would concern precarious jobs, which were offered or placed by profit-oriented companies with the aid of digital technology. It is therefore not wrong to say that numerous hard-won rights, such as the collective minimum wage, extra pay for night or Sunday and holiday work, overtime pay, social security, unemployment benefit, holiday pay and so on would cease to apply for many employees and workers on these platforms. Historical battles would start again in the digital age, commented Kuba. And it was exactly this historical battle, which employment representatives had to take up, apart from speedily finding answers to the most burning questions.

Further information:

AK Publication: How do we shape digital change fairly?

Digital labour exchange platforms: Attempt of a structural evaluation (Sylvia Kuba & Michael Heiling)

Conference website “Shaping the new world of work. The impacts of digitalisation and robotisation.”