For years, most debates about digitalization and the impact of new technologies on employment have focused on the practical prediction of the end of work. In the millions of jobs that will be destroyed by robots. A world with self-driving taxis or trucks, without waiters or customer service staff. Rather, with a smiling metallic humanoid on the other side of a counter. Without neglecting the effects on worker substitution, some warn against another much more massive and discreet process: the reduction of fundamental labor rights through the use of algorithms. Something that doesn’t need to be projected into the future, because it’s already happening.
One of these voices is that of Paris Marx, Canadian journalist and writer, who was this week in Madrid at the International Labor Congress organized by the ministry led by Yolanda Díaz. “While we were talking about robots, because the industry was distracting us with these questions, tech companies were focusing on algorithms,” Marx noted.
By developing control over employees through them and reducing staff rights, by deploying the appeal gig economy (platform economy), with which “they reclassified workers who should be salaried as self-employed” and “convincing many governments that this was what made sense because it was a new technology which required a complete change,” argued the Canadian author. .
Along the way, through the isolation of these workers, the distance from their colleagues and tools such as union representation, some of the “rights that workers had won through decades of struggle” were quietly overtaken . not a century,” warned Paris Marx.
Rights such as the employment contract itself in the event of riders and other platform workers who are forced to work as freelancers. As well as all its associated rights: vacations, social protection in the event of illness or accident, up to compensation for dismissal.
Sometimes workers are not even aware of their layoffs. The algorithm, without further ado, stops sending them tasks. What is between the riders In Spain, it was said that we were “disconnected” and that complaints from unions and groups such as RidersXDerechos were identified by the courts as dismissals.
A “paralyzing” dystopian world
This “ghost” business management, thanks to algorithms, involves invisible control of the workforce and no ability of workers to respond, also denounced left-wing MEP Leïla Chaibi, from Francia Insumisa, during the conference held in Madrid. Like the VTC workers who ask for it (application) sends them discounted trips, much cheaper than other colleagues. Even if they are not aware of it, they are faced with great helplessness. “When you are in a company, you can talk to the boss, but not here. Because it’s the algorithm that decides,” he explained.
Chaibi gave other examples, such as managing, monitoring and sanctioning employees in ordinary businesses – beyond the platform economy – based on the collection of data such as performance, speed or slowness tasks and breaks taken. workers. Even this algorithmic control sometimes governs access to employment itself, with hiring processes taking into account data that candidates are often unaware of.
Paris Marx advocated “tackle the problems of the present”, which arise due to the implementation of new technologies by companies, and “not focus only on the fads presented to us by big technology companies” . As with robots a few years ago, “I fear that the same thing will happen today with artificial intelligence,” said the Canadian.
At the opening of the International Congress, the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, affirmed that the debate on digitalization “is one of the debates of the moment”, but recognized that “it is generally wrong oriented”. »
“A dystopian world, fear, massive layoffs… The IMF recently warned us of millions of jobs that were going to be destroyed. It’s a look that paralyzes, it comes from a determinism with which they want to tell us that we can do nothing. I tell them we can do a lot. “That public policies matter, that they change people’s lives,” he defended.
Regulation as a safeguard
Yolanda Díaz recalled the regulations of the Rider Law in Spain, to avoid false self-employment among riderswhich, however, remains challenged by one of the main companies in the sector, Glovo. The government has taken a new step and the head of the multinational is today accused of crimes against workers’ rights. Your department is committed to extending regulation to other platform workers, some with a strong platform presence. appssuch as housekeeping, housekeepers or home help.
The Spanish Rider law also made progress in one of the debates that attracts the most attention in Europe: the transparency of algorithms. The rule added a provision allowing unions to access the management of work carried out by these algorithms, although this provision is generally not respected.
The European Commissioner for Employment and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, also present at the conference held in Madrid, stressed that the European Union is a key actor in safeguarding workers’ rights. “We have to regulate,” he defended.
Like the EU directive on digital platform workers approved this year and which has faced enormous pressure and difficulties to move forward, Schmit – who will soon leave office – admitted that he was not “very optimistic » regarding the future directive on algorithms in the workplace. “We are at a time when the whole debate, in the United States and Europe, revolves around deregulation,” he lamented.
Leïla Chaibi agreed on the need to approve this European directive on algorithmic management, for which the MEP has set several objectives. On the one hand, “there are people” in key industrial relations decisions, such as dismissals or sanctions. Also “the ban on the use of certain personal data” in the workplace, in which he recalled that freedom of consent is vitiated by the subordination of workers to the employer.
And in any case, underlined Chaïbi, to “not fall into the trap” of technological companies and to impose “common law”. That workers are considered as such, avoid evading labor law and guarantee its respect. “We have not fallen into the trap of platforms, there is no new status for riders. The directive specifies that you are either an employer or self-employed. Common law must be applied,” he stressed.
