Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Projects
    • Corporate Taxation in a Globalised Era
    • US Election 2020
    • The Transformation of Work
    • The Coronavirus Crisis and the Welfare State
    • Just Transition
    • Artificial intelligence, work and society
    • What is inequality?
    • Europe 2025
    • The Crisis Of Globalisation
  • Audiovisual
    • Audio Podcast
    • Video Podcasts
    • Social Europe Talk Videos
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Shop
  • Membership
  • Ads
  • Newsletter

The transformation of work

Our project partner

The future of work is an ever-present concern for workers in a globalised economy characterised by footloose finance, fickle supply chains and above all ‘flexible’ labour markets. Fewer and fewer workers enjoy regular labour contracts—with associated social entitlements—and risk is increasingly being displaced on to labour by the rise of short-term and zero-hours employment and notional self-employment at the behest of platform contractors.

These changes have been advanced as having a purely economic logic—replacing the ‘dead hand’ of the state with the ‘invisible hand’ of the market. Yet what has really been at stake is a decades-long shift in the balance of social and political power towards capital, reversing the gains for labour in western Europe and north America deriving from the postwar settlement.

 

gig workers Gig workers: guinea pigs of the new world of work Pierre Bérastégui
labour platforms The infrastructural power of platform capitalism Funda Ustek-Spilda, Fabian Ferrari, Matt Cole, Pablo Aguera Reneses and Mark Graham
industry 4.0,digitalisation,automation The many worlds of work in the 4.0 era Werner Eichhorst
new forms of employment,non-standard work New forms of employment in Europe—how new is new? Irene Mandl
right to disconnect,telework Telework and the ‘right to disconnect’ Oscar Vargas Llave and Tina Weber
public services, EPSU Ensuring trade unions have a say in the transformation of work Richard Pond and Jan Willem Goudriaan
flexibility, flexible labour Gig-life balance? Agnieszka Piasna
digital labour platforms, cross-border social dialogue An international governance system for digital labour platforms Thorben Albrecht, Kostas Papadakis and Maria Mexi
digital labour platforms, cross-border social dialogue The platform economy—time for decent ‘digiwork’ Maria Mexi
European Pillar of Social Rights,social pillar Shaping the future of democracy at work Isabelle Schömann
occupational safety and health,OSH The transformative impact of tech firms’ technologies Ivan Williams Jimenez
socially useful work, Lucas plan The right to socially useful work Kate Holman
digital labour platforms, cross-border social dialogue A human-centred approach to the future of work: time to walk the walk Thorben Albrecht
mobile work Mind the gap Oliver Suchy
Industry 4.0 Industry 4.0: the transformation of work? Hartmut Hirsch-Kreinsen
digital capitalism Enclosing the market Philipp Staab
algorithmic systems Workers’ rights: negotiating and co-governing digital systems at work Christina Colclough
restructuring Anticipating the Covid-19 restructuring tsunami Judith Kirton-Darling and Isabelle Barthès

This steady erosion of worker security has been critically facilitated by the rise of digital technologies. These have allowed capital to reorganise labour on a scale never imagined by Frederick Taylor or Henry Ford—to make it merely another ‘just-in-time’ commodity to use up in the production process.

Yet this is a double-edged sword: ‘informational’ or ‘cognitive’ capitalism relies on the knowledge inside the heads of today’s ‘labour aristocracy’ of analysts, gleaned through public education rather than the tutelage of firm apprenticeships. Demands for greater control at work and even ownership are likely to rise accordingly. As is the right to do work that is socially useful—which is for the public good and at minimum does not generate ‘negative externalities’, such as contributing to climate breakdown or biodiversity collapse.

Were the pattern of recent decades to be sustained, a dystopia would hove into view of workers under ever-more tight monitoring and surveillance, with an intensified labour process, depressed incomes and no freedom from work demands even away from the workplace. Alternatively, however, the huge rise in productivity associated with digitalisation could be captured by empowered labour and used to seek shorter working time, greater flexibility from a worker’s point of view, more freedom to work from home, a better work-life balance, a genuine sharing of domestic labour and proper valuation of workers in socialised care.

Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on LinkedIn
Home ・ Focuses ・ The transformation of work

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Find Social Europe Content

Search Social Europe

Project Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

.EU Web Awards