etui.podcast

The Counter-app series explores how app-based workers can counter the power of their algorithmic bosses. Each episode is based on cutting-edge research by the European Trade Union Confederation on platform work and how workers are resisting digitised exploitation. In this first episode, Ben Wray looks at what algorithmic management is, how it affects workers and what data tools and tactics workers can use to 'negotiate the algorithm'.

To close this season, etui.podcast went a little further afield than usual to take a look at the United States labour relations landscape with Kayla Blado, who recently served as Director of Congressional and Public Affairs at the US National Labor Relations Board.  

In our chat she offered some insights from her experience at the federal agency, into the recent, particularly volatile chapter in US politics, and into the country’s industrial relations system more broadly. 

The European Commission recently launched an evaluation of the 2014 directives which shape the rules around public procurement, the process by which public contracts are put out to tender. 

Trade unions have called for a revision that ensures the inclusion of criteria based on quality, rather than only price. In particular, they have argued that these rules can be used as a tool to improve labour conditions and promote collective bargaining, rather than allowing some employers to be undercut by those who show less respect for workers’ rights and trade union engagement.  

‘Invest now or deindustrialise’ was the recent, stark warning put to the EU by industrial trade unions.

Continued heavy losses in manufacturing jobs over the past decades are now culminating in what has been termed a crisis for European industry and the many workers it employs.

But how should this crisis be addressed? Is the European Commission taking the right approach with the recently presented Clean Industrial Deal? And what could a worker-friendly European industrial policy look like today?

Amidst all the current debates in Europe about competitiveness, productivity, migration, and economic transitions – both ‘green’ and ‘digital’ - the ongoing issue of labour shortages has emerged as a major policy concern, intrinsically tied to all of the above.

But what are the major factors driving these shortages? Where do we see them the most? And what kinds of solutions would be the most effective?  

Discussion with ETUI Senior Researcher Wouter Zwysen, author of multiple recent papers on labour shortages, job quality, and workers' bargaining power.

Further reading:

Security is the watchword across European politics today.

But what is the place for social and environmental policy in a security-conscious, or even security-driven, Europe?

And where does the trade union movement fit in?

Discussion with ETUI Senior Researcher Christophe Degryse about his recent Foresight Brief, ‘What if? A socio-environmental agenda in a 'security Europe'?’

Further reading   

The standard 40-hour work week has been around for a while now as our full-time norm. But in recent times, debates about working time reduction appear to have been making somewhat of a comeback – particularly in the form of the 4-day week idea.

Is it time to rethink our working time norms? And what role is the labour movement playing in this debate?

Discussion with Agnieszka Piasna, ETUI Senior Researcher and co-author of the paper ‘Negotiating working time reduction’.

Further reading  

An anniversary can be a good occasion for reflection.

20 years ago, in 2004, eight central and eastern European countries joined the European Union. Followed by the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and Croatia in 2013, these successive enlargements nearly doubled the number of EU Member States. And they came with many hopes for economic and social cohesion, as well as for strengthened industrial relations in the region.

So to what extent have these hopes been met?  

This year, after a long and embattled process, the EU adopted new rules to improve working conditions on digital labour platforms, particularly regarding employment status and the use of algorithmic management.  

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has called the 2024 Platform Work Directive ‘a policy milestone’ and ‘a testament to the resilience of collective efforts’.  

Discussion with Tea Jarc, ETUC Confederal Secretary, and Silvia Rainone, ETUI Senior Researcher, about what exactly is in the Directive, what it took to get it passed, and what it means for the millions of people working through digital platforms today. 

Further reading  

The term ‘burnout’ has become a common one in recent times. But are we clear on what it really means and, even more importantly, exactly what causes it? The World Health Organization recently recognised it as an ‘occupational phenomenon’. So what should organisations be doing to prevent burnout or, at the very least, to address it when it does occur amongst their employees? 

Discussion with Evangelia Demerouti, Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at the Eindhoven University of Technology and co-author (with Niels Adaloudis) of the recent ETUI report ‘Addressing burnout in organisations’. 

Further reading

Recent years have arguably seen a ‘social turn’ in EU policymaking, with initiatives on minimum wages, pay transparency, platform work, corporate due diligence, and health and safety coming to fruition, amongst many others.

But in this moment of political change and uncertainty, can this 'social paradigm shift' be sustained?

Guests Bart Vanhercke, ETUI Research Director, and Sotiria Theodoropoulou, Head of Unit for 'European economic, employment and social policies', discuss the current state of play.

Further reading:

The resurgence of the social dimension of the EU raises a number of questions: in what way and to what extent has the EU social dimension indeed been strengthened since the adoption of the EPSR? To what extent are newly adopted social policies actually likely to contribute to improving people’s lives, and in particular the lives of those who face precarious working or living conditions? What explains the broad political support of the centre-left and centre-right for this social turn? 

How can the European Union steer a course towards long-term social and ecological well-being in the context of incessant emergencies? Two decades of perpetual crisis management have greatly eroded Europe’s capacity to pursue a sustainable future, as considerations of short-term expediency continue to hamper the four necessary transitions – green, digital, geopolitical and socio-economic.

Until recently, the discussion of social welfare systems in Europe was disconnected from ecological concerns and policies. The relevant objectives, instruments and actors were largely different. Environmental and climate science, on the one hand, and the analysis and theoretical foundations of welfare systems, on the other, emerged and developed in disparate silos. While the welfare state was designed to reduce social risks and ensure (relative) stability of income and societies, it was also created as an institution that favours economic growth and the maintenance of income and consumption. Its aim was not to change behaviour but to maintain it, with a focus on redistribution. With environmental inequalities increasingly embedded in social ones, environmental policies are becoming social policies, and vice-versa.

Advanced capitalist societies seem to limp from one existential crisis to the next, becoming ever more fragile and unstable. Yet the dominant theoretical frameworks in political economy view capitalism as fundamentally stable or, at most, subject to incremental change. Baccaro, Blyth and Pontusson emphasise the diversity of capitalist trajectories or, rather, growth models. 

One should be careful using the word ‘historic’. But in the case of the directive on adequate minimum wages in the European Union it might actually be appropriate.

Even in Continental Europe, trade unions are the most powerful voice defending outsiders in welfare state politics, and reducing their institutional power in unemployment insurance and elsewhere will likely make things worse for outsiders and not – as certain political leaders in these countries often imply – make things better.

In this episode, you will be hearing a conversation between Hamid Ekbia and Nicola Countouris on AI, the concept of Heteromation and how artificial intelligence is impacting and will impact our (working) lives. 

This episode with David Natali (Professor of Comparative and EU politics at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies) addresses some of the key questions stemming from the pandemic. The magnitude of the crisis, in terms of both its impact on health and well-being, and its consequences on economic prospects, is enormous. The massive spread of the virus, higher mortality rates, lockdowns and the huge decline in economic activity in 2020 all seemed to bode ill for our future.

What type of European social citizenship does the public across the European Union (EU) prefer on the national- and EU-levels? This episode looks into the development of public opinion towards European social citizenship from 1985 to the present from a birds-eye perspective.

Further readings: 

The pandemic seems to have accelerated the expansion of all kinds of platform work and at the same time, platform work is being increasingly associated with difficult working conditions, health and safety risks, and inadequate levels of income for those that rely on it as a source of living. This podcast episode will shed light on some of the key insights from the second wave of the Internet and Platform work survey conducted in fourteen EU countries in Spring 2021. 

The European Union is currently fighting on two main fronts, Covid-19 and climate change, though with skirmishes elsewhere – including migration and the rule of law. While science seems to be slowly gaining the upper hand in the fight against the pandemic, despite setbacks like the latest Omicron attack, Covid-19 continues to hold global society in its grip. But the second nut is even harder to crack. Climate change is rolling out its forces, in the form of floods, droughts, tornados and hurricanes, and striking indiscriminately.

In this episode, we had the pleasure of interviewing Caroline de la Porte (Copenhagen Business School), Maurizio Ferrera (Università degli Studi di Milano) and Philippe Pochet (ETUI) on the recent developments in EU Social Policy. The discussion stems from their recent contribution to Transfer. In the second half of the episode, we had the pleasure to talk to Hyojin Seo, the winner of Transfer's young scholar award and her article on labour market segmentation. 

In this episode, we had the honour of discussing with pioneer climate activist in science: Klaus Hasselmann, who laid the foundations for linking climate change to human-made CO2 emissions and has been very recently awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics. 

Show notes:

At the end of April 2020, in the EU27 there were more than 42 million applications for support for workers on short-time work or similar schemes. This corresponds to almost 27 percent of all employees. If one includes the United Kingdom and Switzerland, the number of applications for short-time work rises to more than 50 million. 

Dr. Torsten Müller of ETUI and Prof. Dr. Thorsten Schulten, head of the WSI collective agreements archive talk about their recent study on "Ensuring fair Short-Time Work - a European overview" in a conversation with Elisa Bruno of the ETUI.  

In this episode we look at the struggle of platform workers during the COVID19 pandemic with Jan Drahokoupil, senior researcher at the ETUI. From the issue of health and safety at the workplace to the recent strikes in the Amazon factories in the US and in Europe, Jan talks us through what the EU is doing in this field.