The EU’s new focus on algorithmic management could safeguard workers’ rights in a tech-driven workplace.
On 17 September 2024, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen published the Mission Letter for Roxana Mînzatu, Executive Vice-President-designate for People, Skills and Preparedness. Building on the European Pillar of Social Rights, the letter directs the Commissioner-designate ‘to focus on the impact of digitalisation in the world of work’, including notably ‘an initiative on algorithmic management’.
This focus on algorithmic management — the increasing automation of traditional employer functions, from hiring to firing workers — is to be welcomed: it builds on the Union’s success in setting out the world’s first comprehensive framework for governing platform-based work, and the explicit recognition in the AI Act that automated decision-making in the workplace poses significant risks to decent working conditions and fundamental rights.
Important gaps remain: algorithmic management has long outgrown its origins in platform work, and has come to workplaces across the socio-economic spectrum, from factories and warehouses to professional service firms and universities. The AI Act fails to confer meaningful rights on individuals, and leaves little space for context-specific regulatory approaches, notably collective avenues for social dialogue.
Only a dedicated, legally binding, instrument can fill these gaps. Building on the Platform Work Directive, the Union should enact a Directive on Algorithmic Management, including prohibitions of particularly harmful practices; transparency obligations; rights to challenge, monitor, and rectify automated decision-making at work; and information and consultation rights for worker representatives.
This will secure a future in which workers’ fundamental rights are protected and socially beneficial innovation ensured. With confirmation hearings due to begin imminently, the European Parliament has a unique opportunity to clarify the expectations surrounding Vice-President-designate Mînzatu’s mandate: nothing less than a Directive will be able to provide Europe’s workers and employers with the clarity needed to ensure wide-spread adoption of genuinely productivity-enhancing technology.
Signatories:
Jeremias Adams-Prassl, Oxford University
Halefom Abraha, Utrecht School of Law
Antonio Aloisi, IE University
Diego Álvarez Alonso, Universidad de Oviedo
Alberto Barrio Fernandez, Copenhagen University
Joanna Bronowicka, European University Viadrina
Philippa Collins, Bristol University
Nicola Countouris, University College London
Valerio De Stefano, Osgoode Hall Law School
Isabelle Ferreras, University of Louvain
Giovanni Gaudio, Università degli studi di Torino
Elena Gramano, Bocconi University
Martin Gruber- Risak, University of Vienna
Piotr Grzebyk, University of Warsaw
Tamás Gyulavári, Pázmány Péter Catholic University Budapest
Ann-Christine Hartzén, Lund University
Frank Hendrickx, KU Leuven
Christina Hiessl, KU Leuven
Jorn Kloostra, Radboud Universiteit
Eva Kocher, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)
Miriam Kullmann, Utrecht School of Law
Marta Lasek-Markey, Trinity College Dublin
David Mangan, Maynooth University
Claire Marzo, Université Paris Est – Créteil
Marta Otto, University of Warsaw
Vincenzo Pietrogiovanni, University of Southern Denmark
Nastazja Potocka-Sionek, University of Luxembourg
Valeria Pulignano, KU Leuven
Luca Ratti, University of Luxembourg
Iván Antonio Rodríguez Cardo, Universidad de Oviedo
Six Silberman, Oxford University
Bernadett Solymosi-Szekeres, University of Miskolc
Simon Taes, KU Leuven
Annamaria Westregård, Lund University
Raphaële Xenidis, Sciences Po Law School