Prof Michael Doherty, along with other members of the DIGILARE team presented at the XXII International Conference in Commemoration of Professor Marco Biagi in Modena, Italy. The conference was held at the Fondazione Marco Biagi on March 19-20 2025 and this year’s conference theme was Employment in the Era of AI and Digital Platforms: Understanding and Regulating Transitions. Prof Elisabeth Brameshuber, Co-director of the DIGILARE project, introduced the project and the panel session: DIGILARE – Digitalisation of Industrial Labour Relations. Age-old values in a new digital world, setting out the main research goals and progress to date. Prof Kübra Dogan Yenisey, Prof Gábor Kártyás, and Prof Luca Ratti also spoke at the session.
Prof Doherty’s paper considered the role of worker representatives when it comes to I&C on the introduction, and use, of algorithmic decision-making systems at the workplace. The paper considered the response to date in various Member States, as well as recent caselaw of the CJEU in the SCHUFA and Dun Broadstreet Austria decisions, where the Court focussed on the employer’s obligations in relation to providing meaningful and transparent information to workers, and the potential claim of trade secrets as a reason for not supplying information to worker representatives.
The 2-year EU Commission funded project, DIGILARE (Digitalization of Industrial Labour Relations – Age-old values in a new digital world (DIGILARE 101126503)), has the goal of providing a comparative analysis of how national industrial relations systems at company/undertaking level respond to the challenges linked to the digital workplace and to digitalisation of employment relationships, with a view to eventually reinforcing industrial relations structures in Europe. The consortium is led by the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela – USC, the Universität Wien – UVienna, and ASTREES, and the team is composed of 23 researchers, from 15 countries (14 Member States and Turkey). The project final conference will be held in Santiago de Compostela on 11-12 September 2025.
