Document Type
Article
Publication Title
The Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal
Publication Date
2019
Volume
41
First Page
197
Abstract
(Excerpt)
New technologies, such as on-demand platforms, algorithmic management, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, virtual presence, people analytics, and gamification are all beginning to have an impact on the world of work. Many contemporary scholars and policymakers view these trends as provoking an existential clash with the traditional employment relationship, the gateway definition for most labor and employment law. While many portray the concern about technology and the on-demand economy as seemingly brand new issues, these contemporary discussions are fundamentally linked to the past as part of a longstanding dialogue on automation and work.
The concerns raised are cyclical, repetitious, and recurring, with the policy issues around automation, technological unemployment, retraining, and the law being raised in the 1930s, the 1960s, the 1980s, and now again in the modern day. While at the time each “burst” of technology ignited intense hope, anxiety, and debate, much of the dialogue languished, and many of the initiatives and policy proposals that were discussed in past decades were never tried. To be sure, some of the debates and fears about jobs being lost in the 1960s seem overblown. Academics, industry leaders, and union members in the 1960s were all concerned about a “jobless future,” much the same as they are today. We know that this did not come to pass, but not because governments or unions took particular action. Instead, jobs continued because technology and growth created various other opportunities. But it did not do so equally, and in fact the last few decades have been a story of rising economic inequality across the world.
Today we continue to have the same type of debate, arguing about whether jobs will be gained or lost through automation, and which groups of workers, and which groups of employers, and which countries, will win or lose. But perhaps, as Valerio De Stefano prompts us to think about in his paper in this volume, Negotiating the Algorithm, the discourse may not be asking the proper questions. Instead of thinking just about absolute numbers of jobs gained or lost, we should also consider whether those jobs comprise “decent work,” or whether they are less stable—more precarious—than their precursors. This paper seeks to sift through the history and select the ideas and policy strategies that might have the most applicability to the current debates and dilemmas facing employment law and policy.
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