The European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) organised its 6th edition of the Future of Work conference, a conference series focusing on the changing world of work, particularly in terms of digitalisation. This year’s conference explored how digitalisation reshapes labour processes, work organisation, and labour market dynamics, and possible regulatory responses to these challenges. Many of the discussions were centred around the emergence and spread of algorithmic management and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in the workplace, which might undermine the resilience of existing protective frameworks.

The two-day event showcased recent research ranging from the pervasiveness of generative AI in the creative sector, health and safety risks of digitalisation in the workplace, algorithmic biases, and sectoral concerns, e.g., in transport or retail. The golden thread connecting all sessions was the level of disruption AI technologies have cause in the world of work and the necessity of regulating AI in order to ensure that workers remain protected.

The conference included a policy debate, in which CECOP Secretary General Diana Dovgan spoke alongside the Head of the Future of Work, Youth Employment Unit at the European Commission Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL), and representatives of the International Trade Union Confederation and BusinessEurope.

In her intervention, she elaborated on cooperatives’ relationship with AI and algorithmic management in the workplace. Platform cooperatives, the cooperative response to the challenges posed by platform work, prioritise workers’ rights, ethical commitments, sustainable consumption practices, and support to their community, while providing workers with the right employment status and adequate social protection. While dominant platforms use AI to gain unfair competitive advantage through practices, such as the misclassification of workers, tax avoidance, and the use of opaque or discriminatory algorithms, platform cooperatives emerge as enterprises that prove that ethical, human-centric alternatives to algorithmic management exist. In cooperatives, digital technologies are used by the workers as coordination tools that help to optimise work organisation and improve working conditions, while the data generated by these technologies is owned collectively by the workers themselves.

"It is essential that digital technologies are supporting and working for the workers, not the other way around. This is why algorithmic management is rejected by cooperatives, who, instead, adopt digital tools through processes based on shared decision-making, in line with the cooperative principles and values." – CECOP Secretary General Diana Dovgan

Ms Dovgan underlined that trade unions and the cooperative movement are connected by a shared struggle for democracy at work. Worker cooperatives, where democracy at work means that the workers own the means of production, giving workers a real say in work organisation and the strategic direction of the enterprise, bring a complementary approach to worker representation. In the context of digitalisation and the use of AI in the workplace, democratic governance in cooperatives means that the workers who will be directly affected by new technologies are involved in decisions about which technologies are adopted and how they are implemented, avoiding top-down approaches to digitalisation.

The two movements share the same objectives: ensuring that digitalisation works in favour of workers and that technological change delivers social progress. By working together, we can give workers a strong and collective voice in that field.