Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven systems are becoming increasingly central to modern workplaces across virtually every sector of the economy. This has profound implications for trade unions, workers, and labor relations.

The rise of AI, alongside broader digitalization and the platformization of work, is transforming how workplaces function. It reshapes how work is organized and how individual workers perform their jobs.

These transformations are not simply the result of AI systems themselves, but of how management introduces and (mis)uses them.

In a capitalist context, AI is typically deployed in the pursuit of profit maximization – and often, this comes hand-in-hand with a new, algorithmic layer of authoritarian management: your all-new AI boss.

This affects workers, labor relations, and working conditions. As widely predicted, it touches virtually all jobs, all workers, across nearly every industry.

From a European perspective, the arrival of AI means that cooperative, consultative, and collective bargaining frameworks between employers and workers must be used to shape how AI-driven changes are implemented in business organizations.

The intersection between corporate AI and labor law is not frictionless – it can lead to conflict and resistance. As libcom.org once noted, this might end up in the wonderful world of bossnapping. These tensions underscore the need for robust legal frameworks.

European labor law provides a set of legal protections that apply to employment relations affected by AI. These conflicts often arise between management and workers – us –as AI systems change workplace dynamics.

More precisely, we’re witnessing the collision between an AI-dominated work environment and long-standing labor rights. At both the supranational (EU) and national levels, the use of AI by management raises critical legal questions.

EU labor law heavily draws on ILO Recommendation 198 on the Employment Relationship (2006), which emphasizes two key features of employment:

1. Managerial Control:

Unsurprisingly, management retains the self-assumed right to direct and control work. This includes integrating workers into the business structure, establishing working hours, and specifying the workplace. Often dressed up as organizational culture, it demands submission under mantras like my way or the highway.

Management literature frequently legitimizes this power asymmetry by framing it as “shared values”—typically the values of management. AI amplifies this control, further centralizing managerial authority and reducing worker autonomy.

2. Remuneration:

Work is compensated via periodic wages – often a worker’s sole or primary source of income. This includes entitlements like rest days, holidays, and payments in kind. This operates under the illusion of a fair market exchange – work under authoritarian-managerial control in return for avoiding destitution in a hollowed-out welfare system.

These EU labor law principles were affirmed in the CJEU’s landmark Lawrie Blum case (1986). Together, they define EU labor relations around three core components:

1. work to be performed,
2. subordination to management,
3. remuneration.

In reality, EU labor law enshrines a power imbalance – manager over worker – even while it tries to mitigate it. It secures managerial rights and workplace despotism. Still, EU labor law recognizes the following rights for management:

1. The right to issue directives and instructions.
2. The right to monitor and surveil workers’ performance.
3. The right to discipline workers.
4. The right to impose sanctions.

These are legal acknowledgments of deeply embedded power asymmetries. One goal of European labor law is to moderate this imbalance – a goal that becomes even more urgent in the context of declining union density across Europe.

Labor law aims to strike a balance between employer and worker interests at both the individual and collective levels. But it also grapples with a contradiction: while it acknowledges this power imbalance, it still rests on the neoliberal fiction of a fair, equal exchange between employer and employee.

This links the EU’s idea on social dialogue to democracy and the threat of AI. To reconcile these tensions, EU labor law promotes social dialogue between trade unions, employers, and governments. It also claims to support workplace democracy.

Yet, industrial democracy continues to be undermined by unelected, despotic management structures. The only democratic institutions in most workplaces are trade unions.

EU labor law enshrines rights to organize, bargain collectively, and strike. It also promotes economic cooperation in the context of technological change, including the deployment of AI.

All of these apply to platform work, algorithmic management, and labor law regulation. The EU’s Directive on Improving Working Conditions inPlatform Work is the first labor law globally to regulate automated monitoring and decision-making systems. It emerged from a Europe-wide consultation addressing four main challenges:

1. Employment status of platform workers;
2. Algorithmic management and its effects on workers;
3. The cross-border nature of platform work;
4. Regulatory gaps in current labor law with respect to AI systems.

For the EU, the rise of AI must not undermine core social partnership values. Algorithmic monitoring must comply with GDPR standards, including Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs).

Yet, legal gaps remain. EU labor law needs to safeguard human autonomy in human-machine interactions. Workers and trade unions must be kept in the loop whenever management deploys AI-based decision-making.

Especially in joint problem-solving systems (human-AI collaborations), management must ensure that AI respects workers’ autonomy and agency. This relates to transparency, informed consent, and labor rights.

Workers must be informed of the purpose of AI systems, and be granted access to algorithmic logic and coding. Six critical areas must be addressed:

1. The architecture of the AI model;
2. The managerial purpose of AI;
3. The organizational context of AI deployment;
4. How AI is embedded in organizational workflows;
5. The extent to which workers are exposed to AI;
6. The personal data collected from workers.

Management must provide technical documentation on high-risk AI systems to trade unions and workers, detailing how the system works and its potential impacts.

Consultation rights must extend to all AI systems that process personal worker data. EU labor law must ensure:

• Workers understand the implications of AI-driven decisions;
• Workers can challenge decisions that breach labor law or human rights.

Yet, there are serious risks in Algo-management and adjacent Surveillance systems. AI systems often operate invisibly. This makes identifying risks difficult. These risks include:

• Surveillance of behavior, physiology, emotions, sexual orientation, and political attitudes.
• Bias, favoritism, discrimination, and dehumanization.
• Violation of privacy, autonomy, and safety.

Left unchecked, AI can worsen labor market inequalities and managerial abuse. To mitigate this, workers must be given informed consent rights, and intrusive AI surveillance must be banned.

Trade unions and management must work together to build AI literacy among workers. One possible strategy is to appoint dedicated AI representatives within unions to assess algorithmic risks and protect worker rights.

All in all, AI is rapidly becoming one of the most disruptive forces in labor relations. It holds the potential to intensify existing power asymmetries and weaken democratic principles at work.

But with a strong, enforceable body of European labor law, and through vigilant union advocacy, AI’s negative impacts can be curbed.

Only then can workers and unions anticipate and address the challenges posed by AI – and those yet to emerge in the digital workplace of the future.

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