Chris MarsdenNov 1, 2022
Michael Veale

[New šŸ“] Focus so far on the EUā€™s proposed Platform Work Directive has mostly been on employees misclassified as self-employed, yet the draft contains powerful, broadly well-drafted protections on #algorithmicmanagement ā€” new digital labour rights for individuals & collectives!

These will be be fought hard against by big platforms.

In our new pre-print, @RDBinns, Six Silberman + I analyse and propose specific tweaks to safeguard digital #workersrights.

šŸ“„: https://doi.org/jjr2 [šŸ§µ/n]

Oct 31, 2022 at 2:01pmWeb
Show threadMichael VealeOct 31, 2022
Platform workers face challenges regardless of their employment status, including šŸ§¾ unaccountable nonpayment; āŒ account suspension or closure without explanation/recourse; šŸ–„ļø ineffective/unfair automated decisions; šŸ’¬ uncommunicative customers/admins. We focus on 4 main themes tackling these: Transparency; Human Oversight; Information & Consultation; Communication and Monitoring. [2/n]
Show threadMichael VealeOct 31, 2022
On šŸ§Š transparency, some provisions add little the GDPR, although unlike the GDPR the proposal requires the ā€˜main parametersā€™ and the ā€˜importanceā€™ of important automated and semi automated decision systems. The EU has used the ā€˜main parametersā€™ framing a lot; in the paper we critique it, consider its interaction with the AI Act, and ask the legislator to think harder encouraging limits to model complexity that prevent accountability. [3/n]
Show threadMichael VealeOct 31, 2022
On šŸ‘€ human oversight and review ā€” against what standard are automated decisions reviewed? If high, thatā€™s really sneaky harmonisation of EU labour law; will never pass. Instead, our modest proposal focusses on injustices specific to algorithmic decisions. Individuals need rights to have decisions *restated* by a human, w/ separate, interpretable reasoning, supported by evidence, *substituting* original algorithmic logic, allowing decisions to be challenged. More on up & downsides in paper [4/n]
Show threadMichael VealeOct 31, 2022
On šŸŽ™ļø Information & Consultation, proposal provides for platform workers to have representatives. In reality, many platforms won't ā€” the proposal needs to do more for when no representative exists to ensure platforms donā€™t bias procedures as we have seen them do before. There needs to be greater focus on consultation across languages and borders. And because we donā€™t really know how to consult platform workers at scale yet, information and consultation procedures need to be adaptive. [5/n]
Show threadMichael VealeOct 31, 2022
šŸ“ž Communication and Monitoring, new obligation on platforms to make a comms channel to allow workers to organise. This is hard, both to build a comms people want to use, and to do it without collecting personal data as proposal says! We evaluate the challenges faced by civic techs, the tensions in maintaining exception-free confidentiality (eg harassment), & pose a more workable way forward that helps workers choose comms tools they want to use, while flagging these to colleagues at scale. [6/n]
Show threadMichael VealeOct 31, 2022

We also consider the tensions in monitoring: many provisions require impact to be assessed, or context about whether the worker is or is not working to be known, but with little data this becomes hard. It also may interact with fireworks in the world of general online tracking. This part needs some quite significant tweaking to get right.

Thanks, we hope it's useful & makes its way to legislators to contribute to Council, Parliament, trialogue, and regulators too! https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/7jyhe [7/n]

Show threadLilly IOct 31, 2022
@mikarv thank you for posting this. Has this been made available as a same workshops for workers for implicated to give feedback? My immediate thought is it would be easy for a company to cherry pick isolated workers rather than workers who are organizing and building relationships with other workers in some way. Is there a provision to have that work or representative be from an organized worker group whenever possible? I don't know how you define that legally but in practice it seems important
Show threadMichael VealeOct 31, 2022
@gleemie by this, I assume you mean the actual propoal around the bigger picture of rights, rather than our legal/technical loophole which is more tweaking than proposing. The Commission describes their feedback and consultation process here (see screenshots) and link p10 https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=24992&langId=en
Show threadMichael VealeOct 31, 2022
@gleemie in relation to representatives in the text, in the proposal the draft says
"'representativesā€™ means the workersā€™ organisations or representatives provided
for by national law or practices, or both"
you'll notice that doesn't say much. that's because the Commission has little ability and the EU little political will to harmonise those things, so they stay an issue for national law. Six wrote most of the 'representatives' section so is the one to ask.
Show threadChris MarsdenNov 1, 2022
@mikarv @gleemie How much has ECOSOC contributed to the amendments? It's very much the poor cousin of EU co-legislators so could use your expertise?
Show threadLilly IOct 31, 2022
@mikarv thank you! this is very helpful. I am new to understanding the EU process and have just been seeing flickers of statements by academics collecting signatories, and I wasn't clear on the tweak vs proposal distinction you make. I appreciate you taking the time to lay it out for me.
Show threadMichael VealeOct 31, 2022
@gleemie i agree it would be outrageous if we made a proposal without talking to workers both organised and not! the thing we are critiquing is racing to be a law so we need to move fast to improve it, itā€™s already a strong proposal but it could be stronger still. would love to talk to you about this and of course we cite your work lots in this piece!