Abstract
The Roman god Janus had the unique trait of a head with two opposing faces, one turned to the past, the other to the future. Janus played the role of guardian of corridors and crossings in the life of our ancestors. He was also the god of change and transition. His two faces are a good illustration, in my view, of the challenges that digital technology poses for our society and for workers: the transition to a new industrial revolution, profound changes, opportunities and threats.
The opportunities put forward are of an economic nature: increased productivity, reduced number of intermediaries, intelligent systems for the conservation of energy and raw materials, traceability of products and waste, etc. The expected threats include the impact on jobs, with a reduction in need for brawn and brainpower, irrespective of levels of qualifications or the sectors concerned. Dread surrounds the impact of digital technology on employment relations, with an increase in atypical forms of work, including people with the status of freelancer or self-employed. Those who are more naïve see the end of the employee straightjacket, while the more vigilant dread anarchy without social rights.
Digital technology may also have an ambivalent impact on work itself. On the one hand, there is the possibility of greater asymmetrical, vertical and unilateral control of workers. The use and processing of digital data through Big Data and digital tools could make it easier to carry out surveillance of workers, for example via screen shots, checking connections or geolocation. Conversely, the range of possibilities afforded by digital technology allow for more symmetrical, more horizontal, multilateral and democratic forms of cooperation between workers.
Let us not forget crowdworking platforms like Upwork or Amazon Mechanical Turk, where workers from around the world offer their services online to perform various tasks, ranging from skilled work to the simplest task. Here, once again, there are winners and losers: the most highly valued on one side, contrasted with those who have a hard time getting an assignment, sometimes itself subcontracted by other workers on these platforms. All this is played out in a virtual, globalised market. A task earning €3 could be considered decent by a Filipino crowdworker, but poverty payment by his English counterpart.
So, what strategy should trade unions be adopting in the face of digital technology? Here are some possible recommendations.
First, it is a matter of countering the ‘wave’ theory. Digital technology is all too often presented by its smug advocates as THE disruptive revolution that is going to – and indeed must – sweep everything in its path. In their view, there must be no attempt to regulate it, for fear of nipping an extraordinary vector of modernity in the bud.
Some lobbies, including the European Risk Forum, an industry group hostile to the precautionary principle (on GMOs, endocrine disruptors, etc.), have gone on the offensive in favour of an ‘innovation principle’, joined by some digital platform lobbyists. They aim to affirm, through this principle, that innovation is the expression of a fundamental freedom and is positive in itself, irrespective of its impact on health, the environment, and in our case, on work and workers. The ETUC and the European trade union federations such as IndustriAll and UNI Europa are resolved to block this principle, and in particular to avoid it being taken up in the European Commission’s ‘better regulation’ initiatives.
More broadly, we must challenge this supposed conflict between regulation and freedom of innovation. One has merely to look back to the previous century to understand that the social and economic regulations established during previous industrial revolutions did not stop them – quite the contrary.
Our current social models, characterised (still) by social dialogue, labour law, social security and collective bargaining, are the fruit of a compromise reached through the strength of trade union action in particular, so as to establish the necessary protections for workers and to seek to reconcile economic and social progress.
As a European trade union organisation, the ETUC aims to turn the European level into a relevant arena for anticipating regulations and action on digital technology. We want first to influence the European Commission’s strategy, which sees digital technology only in terms of the economic opportunities for the European single market. The social dimension of digital technology and its impact on workers must be put on the European political agenda as a matter of urgency.
The agenda of the European social partners must also take up the digital issue as soon as possible. The European employers’ associations are for the time being reluctant, but we are determined. There is no shortage of negotiating issues. They concern working conditions as much as respect for the privacy of millions of European workers.
In a recent study conducted in Germany by the daily newspaper Bild, for instance, 18 per cent of workers said they had conflicts between family and working life, because digital tools were making them more available. The question of the ‘right to disconnect’ must be discussed in the trade union movement, and could feed into social dialogue at all levels. Other issues could also be broached, such as the definition of rules concerning the protection, use and control of workers’ data.
Agreements on digital technology have already been signed here and there in Europe. This is the case, for instance, in the French telecom company Orange, where at the end of September 2016, the trade unions CFDT, CGT and FO concluded an agreement with management on the ‘digital transformation’. This agreement covers many facets of digital technology and its impact on work. It creates a new right to disconnect and proposes new shared rules on the use of employees’ personal data. It provides for training so that workers can adapt to these new tools, and that 80 per cent of executives and managers are trained in collaborative work. A ‘digital committee’ composed of representatives of management and the trade unions will be in charge of monitoring implementation of the agreement and the future impact of digital technology on the company’s activities.
Other initiatives worth highlighting include that of IG Metall and GesamtMetall (employers), which launched a multi-year project in the metallurgy sector in Germany, in order to develop their social dialogue structures and training policies.
The digital platforms also present immense challenges for trade unions. Whether they operate in local markets (Uber, Deliveroo, online temp agency) or a global market in the case of crowdworking online, these platforms are disrupting the traditional forms of trade union action and industrial relations. Yet these many challenges also offer opportunities for trade unionism.
The platforms active in the ‘conventional’ sectors (transport, hotel, restaurant and catering industry, maintenance, etc.) ultimately employ workers IRL. 1 Trade unions must therefore convince these workers to join or to create unions, so as to get organised and defend their rights. As negotiators, the trade unions must put pressure on employers and legislators to frame the activity of these platforms through legislation as well as by sectoral collective bargaining, where the activity of all the operators (‘conventional’ companies and platforms) would be subject to the same rules. We could, for example, imagine that all workers in the passenger road transport sector (taxis, hybrid bicycle drivers, etc.) are covered by the same collective agreement irrespective of their formal status (salaried employee, self-employed worker, etc.). This could compel the platforms to meet their social obligations as employers or principals, and to abide by the rules on the minimum wage, working time, occupational accidents or the right to training.
Things are more complex for the crowdworking platforms, because the good old trade union practices (mobilisation of workers, sectoral bargaining, etc.) are less adapted to them. How can crowdworkers be organised online? How can platforms that bring together providers of tasks and workers throughout the work be assessed and regulated?
We are only at the beginning of the trade union discussion and action on crowdworkers. But the idea of creating crowd unions 2 where workers could get organised and mobilised online deserves to be developed in Europe and elsewhere.
In addition to possible EU initiatives, the requisite regulation of these platforms, which is global in scope, affords, in my view, a unique opportunity for the ILO to play a leading role. We could imagine the ILO assuming the role of a global regulating authority for these platforms, specifically through the adoption of an ILO convention on this topic. This convention could govern platforms’ practices regarding the minimum wage, respect of social rights and taxation rules. An internationally recognised ‘e-worker passport’ could also be established to guarantee formal acknowledgement to these workers who are today without a status. It would guarantee crowdworkers the transferability of their e-reputation (grading by customers) from one platform to another and make it possible to combat the phenomena of subcontracting between crowdworkers, which creates inequalities, or the resale of accounts.
The committees in the ILO which oversee the application of standards could be turned into a possible ‘online world labour court’, with the establishment of sanctions for crowdworking platforms which do not comply with the standards defined by the institution.
The ILO is preparing to celebrate its centennial in 2019 and is busy drawing up an initiative on the future of work for that occasion. The proposals put forward here are a modest contribution to that discussion. As trade unionists, we bear a special responsibility to provide solutions for workers faced with the digital transformation.
In anticipating these changes, we must twist the neck of this great Janus, as it were, to force him to look us straight in the eye, with his face turned to the future. We can still influence, rather than suffer, the impact of digital technology on work and on workers.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.