Marta Otto

Algorithmic discrimination in employment. An overview

Debates about the future of work in light of developments in artificial intelligence are held predominantly in the context of job losses and technological unemployment. Far less attention is paid to the challenges posed by the increasingly widespread phenomenon of algorithmisation of management functions in the modern world of work. Meanwhile, the shift to algorithmic management represents a significant qualitative change that, in addition to promising broadly understood modernisation and optimisation of decision-making processes, carries specific repercussions in the context of human rights protection, including in particular the prohibition of discrimination in employment. The article attempts to assess the adequacy of the EU antidiscrimination instrumentarium to the specifics of algorithmic discrimination mechanisms, and aims to encourage an in-depth scientific discussion on the need to develop effective regulatory responses at the national level.

ASJC: 3308, JEL: K31

Migration of people is a multidimensional phenomenon that combines various aspects. Complexity of migration processes, its variability in time, diversity of economic, demographic, political or cultural determinants pose considerable challenges on the European labour market on many levels, starting from theoretical ones—related to the adoption of a uniform definition of migrant workers, and ending with the practical ones—relating to the establishment of the sustainable migration policy measures that would aim at safeguarding their fully-fledged participation in it guaranteed by various regulatory norms and standards. The article aims at presenting a rudimentary analysis of the specificity of labour migration in Poland against the background of European countries, in order to elucidate the deficiencies of the present regulatory approaches in addressing the phenomenon of sui generis peripherilization of migrant workforce in Poland. Its content has been enriched with comparative overview of the results of the case studies conducted in one of the key sectors for European labour market exposed to this phenomenon—namely pork meat value chain. Notably, problems related to wage levels and working conditions of migrant workers observed in this sector are as much industry-specific, as exemplary of wider global trends in industries that offer low pay, low status, little career advancement and stressful work environment.

* This article has been prepared during implementation of the project “Fairness, Freedom and Industrial Relations across Europe: UP AND DOWN THE MEAT VALUE CHAIN (MEAT.UP.FFIRE)”— VP/2017/004/0035 partially financed from financial resources for science in 2018–2020 granted for the implementation of an international co-financed project by Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

ASJC: 3308

JEL: K31