Documents digitalisation 1 865 results

"An essential investigation that pulls back the curtain on automation, like AI, to show human workers' hidden labor.
Artificial Intelligence fuels both enthusiasm and panic. Technologists are inclined to give their creations leeway, pretend they're animated beings, and consider them efficient. As users, we may complain when these technologies don't obey, or worry about their influence on our choices and our livelihoods. And yet, we also yearn for their convenience, see ourselves reflected in them, and treat them as something entirely new. But when we overestimate the automation of these tools, award-winning author Antonio A. Casilli argues, we fail to recognize how our fellow humans are essential to their efficiency. The danger is not that robots will take our jobs, but that humans will have to do theirs.

In this bracing and powerful book, Casilli uses up-to-the-minute research to show how today's technologies, including AI, continue to exploit human labor--even ours. He connects the diverse activities of today's tech laborers: platform workers, like Uber drivers and Airbnb hosts; "micro workers," including those performing atomized tasks like data entry on Amazon Mechanical Turk; and the rest of us, as we evaluate text or images to show we're not robots, react to Facebook posts, or approve or improve the output of generative AI. As Casilli shows us, algorithms, search engines, and voice assistants wouldn't function without unpaid or underpaid human contributions. Further, he warns that if we fail to recognize this human work, we risk a dark future for all human labor.

Waiting for Robots urges us to move beyond the simplistic notion that machines are intelligent and autonomous. As the proverbial Godot, robots are the bearers of a messianic promise that is always postponed. Instead of bringing prosperity for all, they discipline the workforce, so we don't dream of a world without drudgery and exploitation. Casilli's eye-opening book makes clear that most "automation" requires human labor--and likely always will--shedding new light on today's consequences and tomorrow's threats of failing to recognize and compensate the "click workers" of today."

"The literature on labour market segmentation traditionally looks at servitisation as the main structural driver behind the rise of employment precariousness, overlooking another crucial engine of the knowledge-economy transition: the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) revolution. This paper proposes a task-based approach to complement the skill-biased framework usually applied to labour market segmentation, investigating the correlation between occupational exposure to the risk of automation and low-quality employment. The empirical analysis, based on 14 countries sampled from ESS (2002–2018), shows a strong correlation between technological replaceability and low income across all of Western Europe, especially after the Great Recession, while its association with atypical employment is mainly driven by fixed-term contracts in Central and Southern Europe and by part-time arrangements in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries. Overall, a “recalibrated” dualisation emerges in Western European labour markets, characterised by the diffusion of low labour earnings and atypical contracts among mid-skill routine workers, besides the low-skill service precariat."

"La numérisation et l'automatisation transforment des millions d'emplois dans le monde entier, créant de puissantes opportunités pour améliorer la sécurité et la santé au travail. L'automatisation et les systèmes de surveillance intelligents peuvent réduire les expositions dangereuses, prévenir les blessures et améliorer les conditions de travail en général. Toutefois, ces avancées entraînent également de nouveaux risques potentiels qui nécessitent des réponses politiques proactives et adaptatives. Afin d'exploiter pleinement les avantages de la numérisation pour la SST tout en atténuant les risques,il est essentiel d'adopter une approche participative, proactive et fondée sur des faits. Cela suppose uneimplication active des gouvernements, des employeurs et des travailleurs, mais aussi des professionnelsde la SST et des autres parties prenantes, de façon à garantir que la transformation numérique necompromet pas mais, au contraire, renforce la sécurité et la santé au travail."

ILO Open Access publications

"A riveting account of labor's bottom-up resurgence, providing a roadmap for workers, unions, and social movements to win widely.

After decades of union decline and rising inequality, an inspiring wave of workplace organizing—from Starbucks stores to Amazon warehouses to southern auto factories—has thrust unionization into the national spotlight. By analyzing this surge and telling the stories of the courageous workers driving it forward, We Are the Union makes a case for how to overcome business as usual in both corporate America and organized labor.

Eric Blanc shows that recent struggles have developed a new organizing model, worker-to-worker unionism, which builds scalable power by giving rank-and-filers an unprecedented degree of leadership. Through digital tools and ambitious campaigns, young worker leaders are turning the labor movement back into a movement—and they're winning. Rigorously researched and compellingly written, We Are the Union illustrates how this new grassroots approach can exponentially grow the power of working people to overcome economic exploitation, racial injustice, and authoritarianism at work and beyond."

"The COVID-19 pandemic has completely disrupted the European labour markets. Demand has collapsed in certain sectors, teleworking has become the norm in others, and the use of digital technologies in services and businesses has experienced a significant acceleration. While the use of short-time work schemes contributed – especially in the initial months of the crisis – to preserving employment and avoiding massive layoffs, unemployment and the inactivity rates are increasing and this course is expected to continue. Such a constellation poses significant challenges to European labour markets. Multiple questions arise around job creation and destruction, up- and re-skilling of the labour force, spatial or sectoral relocation of dismissed workers and the quality of the newly created jobs..."

"A thousand years of history and contemporary evidence make one thing clear. Progress is not automatic but depends on the choices we make about technology. New ways of organizing production and communication can either serve the narrow interests of an elite or become the foundation for widespread prosperity.
Much of the wealth generated by agricultural advances during the European Middle Ages was captured by the Church and used to build grand cathedrals while the peasants starved. The first hundred years of industrialization in England delivered stagnant incomes for workers, while making a few people very rich. And throughout the world today, digital technologies and artificial intelligence increase inequality and undermine democracy through excessive automation, massive data collection, and intrusive surveillance.
It doesn't have to be this way. Power and Progress demonstrates that the path of technology was once - and can again be - brought under control. The tremendous computing advances of the last half century can become empowering and democratizing tools, but not if all major decisions remain in the hands of a few hubristic tech leaders striving to build a society that elevates their own power and prestige.
With their breakthrough economic theory and manifesto for a better society, Acemoglu and Johnson provide the understanding and the vision to reshape how we innovate and who really gains from technological advances so we can create real prosperity for all."

"Growing levels of income and wage inequality and the precaritization of many sections of the labour force have made labour unions as salient as ever. Although membership levels have decreased, they remain among the world's largest representative organizations and continue to play a significant role as vehicles for democracy, sustainable development and social justice.
This handbook assembles an array of experts to critically engage with the debates and discussions about the role and purpose of unions and the many means by which they seek to attain them. The book provides insights into how unions can meet the challenges of structural changes in the labour market, including technological progress, the green agenda and the digital platform economy, and how they can better represent the needs of their members, in particular migrant, domestic and informal workers.
The book is a valuable resource for industrial relations, labour economics, sociology of work, employment and labour law, history of trade unionism, working patterns and practices, workplace culture and workers' rights."

"Focusing on the past two decades, the handbook explores how technological advancements, automation and a shifting capitalist landscape have fundamentally reshaped work practices and labour relations. Beyond simply outlining the challenges and opportunities of automation, the handbook integrates these emerging realities with established discussions of work. Importantly, it moves beyond dominant technology-centric narratives, probing into broader questions about the nature of capitalism in a time of crisis and the contestation for alternative economic models. With contributions from established and emerging authors, based in institutions around the world, the handbook offers a systematic overview of the developments that have sparked radical shifts in how we live and work, and their multifaceted impacts upon social relations and identities, practices and sectors, politics and environments.
The handbook is unique in its exploration of the potential for economic transformations to reshape the centrality of work in our social and political imaginaries. A useful resource for students and researchers, the handbook serves as an essential guide to this new intellectual landscape."