Launch Event: Collective Bargaining Practices on AI and Algorithmic Management

In late 2022, Artificial Intelligence (AI) entered the public arena and collective awareness with a bang in the guise of ChatGPT, a chat-based form of AI systems that became available for anybody and everybody to use for the first time. The next year, Hollywood writers in the Writers Guild of America called out a strike that lasted 148 days. They were fighting not just for more pay and job security, but also for limits to be placed on the use of AI in the writing process. And they won.

However, these manifestations of the power and challenges posed by AI in the public limelight tend to conceal the fact that AI and algorithmic management systems have been proliferating across a wide variety of industries for a number of years. While commonly associated with platform or gig economies, the fascination of managers at ‘conventional’ companies for AI and algorithmic-management systems is reaching new highs. For workers and trade unions, however, use of these systems at the workplace raises many issues, ranging from data protection and privacy to repercussions for working conditions, such as monitoring of the workforce, bias in decision-making processes or a potential violation of human rights.

Over the last few years, UNI Europa and the FES Competence Centre on the Future of Work have been successfully cooperating to raise awareness of workers and trade unions regarding the use of AI systems at the workplace. In the wake of the report on employee awareness about algorithmic management at work, however, it would appear that there is a need to provide concrete examples of how AI at work is dealt with through collective agreements.

To understand the challenges that are emerging in connection with the increased use of AI at work, we have initiated a new research project and conducted two studies to 1) identify frequently used AI systems in European services sectors and 2) analyse the current situation characterising collective bargaining regarding the use of AI-related tools by employers vis-à-vis workers. Clauses in various Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) have been singled out and are to be made accessible by means of a visually intuitive dashboard.

The aim of the project is to raise awareness amongst workers and trade unions regarding the use of AI systems at the workplace and to support this objective by offering specific examples of how AI at work is addressed through collective agreements.

On behalf of UNI Europa and the FES Competence Centre on the Future of Work, we have the pleasure of inviting you to attend the project launch event taking place on 15 March (10am-12pm) online.

The authors of the two studies, Steve Rolf (University of Sussex) and Marta Kahancovà (CELSI) will be presenting key findings, while colleagues from the WageIndicator Foundation will be providing a brief introduction to the new dashboard. We are delighted to have three experts, Uma Rani (ILO), José Varela (UGT) and the tbc (European Commission), who will comment on the results produced by the studies from their different perspectives.

Register here.