Internet Law Commons^™

Introduction To The Future Of Remote Work, Nicola Countouris, Valerio De Stefano, Agnieszka Piasna, Silvia Rainone

Articles & Book Chapters

Debates on the future of work have taken a more fundamental turn in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Early in 2020, when large sections of the workforce were prevented from coming to their usual places of work, remote work became the only way for many to continue to perform their professions. What had been a piecemeal, at times truly sluggish, evolution towards a multilocation approach to work suddenly turned into an abrupt, radical and universal shift. It quickly became clear that the consequences of this shift were far more significant and far-reaching than simply changing the workplace’s address. They …

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind? Remote Work And Contractual Distancing, Nicola Countouris, Valerio De Stefano

Articles & Book Chapters

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, remote work has acquired quasi-Marmite status. It has become difficult, if not impossible, to approach the issue in a measured and dispassionate way, which is one of the reasons books such as the present one are being published. Remote work is often seen as anathema by some who associate it with laziness, low productivity and the degradation of the social fabric of firms and of their creative and collaborative potential. The notorious views of CEOs such as Tesla and Twitter’s Elon Musk or JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon come to mind, indicative – in the view of …

Between Risk Mitigation And Labour Rights Enforcement: Assessing The Transatlantic Race To Govern Ai-Driven Decision-Making Through A Comparative Lens, Valerio De Stefano, Antonio Aloisi

Articles & Book Chapters

In this article, we provide an overview of efforts to regulate the various phases of the artificial intelligence (AI) life cycle. In doing so, we examine whether—and, if so, to what extent—highly fragmented legal frameworks are able to provide safeguards capable of preventing the dangers that stem from AI- and algorithm-driven organisational practices. We critically analyse related developments at the European Union (EU) level, namely the General Data Protection Regulation, the draft AI Regulation, and the proposal for a Directive on improving working conditions in platform work. We also consider bills and regulations proposed or adopted in the United States …

Regulating Ai At Work: Labour Relations, Automation, And Algorithmic Management, Valerio De Stefano, Virginia Doellgast

Articles & Book Chapters

Recent innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) have been at the core of massive technological changes that are transforming work. AI is now widely used to automate business processes and replace labour-intensive tasks while changing the skill demands for those that remain. AI-based tools are also deployed to invasively monitor worker conduct and to automate HR management processes.

Through the dual lens of comparative labour law and employment relations research, the articles in this special issue of Transfer investigate the role of collective bargaining and government policy in shaping strategies to deploy new digital and AI-based technologies at work. Together, they …

The Future Concept Of Work, Nicola Countouris, Valerio De Stefano

Articles & Book Chapters

This chapter offers a reappraisal of the idea of ‘personal work’ and a critical assessment of the concept of subordination, which shapes the traditional contract of employment and subordinate work. The authors suggest that the notion of personal work may be more useful in attempts to develop a newly conceptualised concept of human labour, one capable of incorporating certain dimensions of (unpaid) gendered labour, ‘heteromated’ labour (‘heteromation’ is the extraction of economic value from low-cost or free labour in computer-mediated networks), and other forms of socially (and ecologically) valuable labour that hitherto have been excluded from the realm of formal, …