New actors or new tools – algorithms in employment and labour relations

Abstract

It can be said that, for more than a decade, algorithms seriously affected the work processes around the world. Despite this, in most countries, there are only pioneering attempts to analyze their impact on the quality of the enjoyment of workers’ rights and to prevent or sanction the possible abuses of algorithmic decision-making. The research follows some basic recorded bad practices, both during the hiring process and in the work process itself. The goal is to point out the fact that algorithms in themselves represent a significant technological achievement that makes labour relations more efficient and easier, but that precise normative limits of their usage have to be set. Algorithms are therefore neither good nor bad themselves, as good or bad are more of parameters by which their functioning has been defined. Guided by this idea, authors try to point out basic principles of prior and subsequent control of algorithmic decision-making, in order to preserve or improve the quality of the achieved rights of workers without, at the same time, diminishing the importance of automation of data processing in the work process. Available current literature on this topic, as well as normative sources and the most significant judicial practice, were used in the research.