An algorithm assigns your shifts, scores your performance, and flags you for dismissal. Around the world, employers increasingly rely on algorithmic management: AI and automated systems that direct, monitor and discipline workers. The European Union has responded with the most ambitious regulatory experiment so far, combining the AI Act, the Platform Work Directive, and the GDPR.
The EU’s new rules on algorithmic management look, on paper, like a significant strengthening of worker protection. Workers managed by AI may gain transparency, explanation, and review rights that workers under traditional management never had. This workshop asks under what conditions that promise can be realized, and what role collective bargaining can play in turning formal rights into effective protection.
This workshop takes a critical look at the EU framework and then turns to analyzing the role of collective bargaining. Using Sweden, with its strong unions and co-determination tradition, as a case study, we ask whether negotiation and information rights can govern workplace better than statutes alone. We will also draw comparisons with emerging US approaches.
Lunch will be served.
Workshop Presenter
Sonia Bastigkeit Ericstam, Doctoral Student, Stockholm University and Visiting Research Fellow, Harvard Law School
Moderator
Benjamin Sachs, Faculty Co-Director, Center for Labor and a Just Economy and Kestnbaum Professor of Labor and Industry, Harvard Law School
