For years, most debates about digitalization and the impact of new technologies on employment focused on practically predicting the end of work. In the millions of jobs that are going to be destroyed by robots. A world with autonomous taxis or trucks, without waiters or customer service personnel. If anything, with a smiling metallic humanoid on the other side of a counter. Without disregarding the effects on the substitution of workers, there are those who warn of another much more massive and discreet process: the reduction of basic labor rights thanks to the use of algorithms. Something that does not have to be projected into the future, because it is already happening.
One of these voices is that of Paris MarxCanadian journalist and writer, who was in Madrid this week at the International Labor Congress organized by the Ministry directed by Yolanda Díaz. “While we were talking about robots, because the industry was distracting us with these issues, the technology companies were focusing on algorithms,” Marx noted.
In developing control of employees through them and reducing the rights of staff, in deploying the call gig economy (platform economy), with which “they reclassified workers who should be salaried as self-employed” and “in convincing many governments that this was what made sense because it was a new technology that required a complete change,” the author argued. Canadian.
Along the way, thanks to the isolation of these workers, the distance from their colleagues and from tools such as union representation, some of “the rights that the workers had acquired thanks to the decades-long struggle” were quietly going overboard. , if not a century,” warned Paris Marx.
Rights such as the employment contract itself in the case of riders and other platform workers who are forced to operate as freelancers. As well as all its associated rights: from vacations, social protection for illness or accidents, to compensation for dismissal.
Sometimes, workers are not even aware of their layoffs. The algorithm, without further ado, stops sending them jobs. It is what between the riders In Spain it was called being “disconnected” and that the complaints from unions and groups such as RidersXDerechos were being identified by the courts as dismissals.
A dystopian world “that paralyzes”
This ‘ghost’ business management, thanks to algorithms, entails invisible control of the workforce and no ability for workers to respond, the left-wing MEP also denounced at the conference held in Madrid. Leila Chaibifrom France Insoumise. Like the VTC workers to whom the application (app) sends them trips at bargain prices, much cheaper than other colleagues. Even if they are not aware of it, they face great helplessness. “When you are in a company, you can talk to the boss, but not here. Because it is the algorithm that decides,” he explained.
Chaibi gave other examples, such as the management, control and sanctioning of employees in ordinary companies – beyond the platform economy – based on the collection of data such as performance, how quickly or slowly tasks are performed and the breaks that are taken. performed by workers. Even this algorithmic control sometimes governs access to employment itself, with hiring processes that take into account data that candidates are often unaware of.
Paris Marx advocated “addressing the problems of the present,” which arise due to the implementation of new technologies by companies, and “not focusing only on the fashions that big technology companies present to us.” Like robots a few years ago, “I am worried that the same thing is happening with Artificial Intelligence now,” said the Canadian.
At the opening of the International Congress, the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, maintained that the debate on digitalization “is one of the debates of the time,” but agreed that “it is usually focused in the wrong way.”
“From a dystopian world, from fear, from massive layoffs… The IMF recently warned us of millions of jobs that were going to be destroyed. It is a look that paralyzes, it is done from a determinism with which they want to tell us that we cannot do anything. I tell them that 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 regulation of the Rider Law in Spain, to avoid false self-employment among riderswhich however still faces the challenge of one of the main companies in the sector, Glovo. The Government took another step, and the head of the multinational is in court accused of a crime against workers’ rights. Your Ministry has committed to expanding the regulation to other platform workers, some with a large presence of these platforms. appssuch as cleaning, housekeepers or home help.
The Spanish Rider Law also advanced in one of the debates that attracts the most attention in Europe: the transparency of algorithms. The rule added a provision to give unions access to the labor management carried out by these algorithms, although it is generally not complied with.
The European Commissioner for Employment and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, also present at the conference held in Madrid, highlighted that the European Union is a key actor in safeguarding workers’ rights. “We have to regulate,” he defended.
Following the example of the European Directive on digital platform workers approved this year, which suffered enormous pressures and difficulties to move forward, Schmit – who will leave office shortly – acknowledged that he was not “very optimistic” regarding the future directive on algorithms in the workplace. “We are at a time when the entire debate, in the US 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 stated several objectives. On the one hand, “there are people” in key decisions in labor relations, such as dismissals or sanctions. Also “the prohibition of 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, Chaibi stressed, “not falling into the trap” of technology companies and imposing “common law.” That workers are considered as such, avoid escape from Labor Law, and guarantee its compliance. “We did not fall into the plot of the platforms, there is no new Statute for the riders. The directive says that you are either an employer or self-employed. Common law must be applied,” he stressed.
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