Trade unions say Europe needs to enact a separate AI labor law because the EU’s new AI law contains little on workers’ rights.
Last Wednesday (June 14), the European Parliament adopted an opinion on the Artificial Intelligence Law, a game-changing regulation for AI-based products and services.
MEPs put more emphasis on workers’ rights than the original Commission proposal.
But in the race to legislate potentially disruptive technology, EU institutions still largely ignore workers affected by incoming AI systems, trade unionists say.
AI is changing the lives of workers in many ways.
This is already being used by apps like Uber and Deliveroo to track drivers, help robots work side-by-side with people on factory lines, and help doctors and nurses manage patient medical data. used for
The EU parliament has added the possibility of banning dangerous AI emotion recognition systems that could distort employer-employee relationships, but progress on employment issues is so far.
“There are a lot of unclear question marks in the AI law, so we need a specific directive on labor relations because it is not a provision of the AI law.” [original] purpose,” said Aida Ponce, senior research fellow at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels.
“Special provisions are needed to set clear and concrete limits on the use of AI systems in industrial relations, up to the monitoring stage,” she said.
ETUI’s sister organization, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) in Brussels, also said a separate directive on AI workers would be needed.
He specifically criticized the regulation of only high-risk AI applications as a “huge loophole”.
According to Article 6 of the EU Parliament’s position, workplace regulation can only be restricted if it poses a “significant” risk.
But on the other hand “[AI] Providers typically say their applications may pose risks to workers. [they] They will be classified as unimportant,” ETUC warned.
“This additional burden on workers is unacceptable and could abuse workers’ safety and rights,” the group said.
The EU Commission’s original AI law proposal requires providers to assess the potential risks of their technology before putting it on the market.
Depending on the level of risk, EU regulators will impose restrictions, including banning the most dangerous products, such as AI social scoring, which classifies people according to their personal characteristics and social interactions.
For IndustriALL, a global trade union representing 50 million workers, AI systems should be classified as high risk whenever they use workers’ personal data.
IndustriALL also says AI decisions must be legally “traceable” and “reversible”.
Facts about AI
But amid trade union vigilance, market developments are in any event speeding ahead of the EU legislative process.
AI systems are already replacing workers in EU institutions.
More than 40% of administrative and legal services could soon be automated, according to US-based investment bank Goldman Sachs.
The use of AI in the workplace has increased by nearly 30% between 2018 and 2023, according to research by the Boston Consulting Group, a US management consulting firm.
Nearly one-third of respondents said they were worried about being replaced.
The European Commission’s main response to workers’ risks so far has been ‘upskilling’, with buzzwords like ‘upskilling’, ‘reskilling’ and ‘digital skills’ favored in EU press materials. It is rare.
But for ETUI’s Ponce, that misses the point about the potential damage bad AI can do to people’s working lives.
“The focus on the skills policy needed to counter the use of AI is misleading,” she says.
“We need to completely reframe our approach,” Ponce said.
