Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Now, the European Commission will today unveil a plan to future-proof what it's calling quality jobs as Europe continues to face challenges over competitiveness, building up its defences and the global AI race.
But how does the roadmap balance protecting workers with the EU's drive to cut red tape, a key component of the draggy and letter recommendations for keeping the EU competitive internationally? in the future. Joining me now to discuss is Roxana Manzatta, who's Executive Vice President of the European Commission for Responsibility for Social Rights, Skills and Jobs. Good morning.
Great to have you with us in studio. What's this plan about?
It's about balancing competitiveness and social rights. You are spot on. Because as Draghi said, there is no competitiveness without quality employment, without quality jobs. And many of the shortages that we see in many sectors are about the working conditions. But it's not just about the current types of employment that we see. It's also about the future of work.
And you've mentioned AI, algorithmic management, which is
not going to change many types of jobs and skill sets but it does change labor relations workers relations with their bosses when we have ai as an assistant is one discussion when you're looking at ai as a boss because we have algorithms that sometimes manage activities or assess activities then it's a different story so what the commission is doing is on the one side
investing, pushing on innovation in AI, pushing on deployment and diffusion of AI in Europe. And this is extremely important. But in order to have this diffusion and uptake of AI throughout our industries, in all company contexts, small or large, We need to create trustworthy environments for workers and for employers alike. So the quality jobs route will look and will ask this question.
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Chapter 2: What is the European Commission's plan for future-proofing quality jobs?
Do we have enough protections for workers when the algorithm is in charge or do we need to create a framework that enables this kind of protection? this kind of work environment. And I need to mention this today, we also launched this first phase consultation for a potential quality jobs act.
So it's not just the strategy that we launched today on employment, but it's also asking social partners what we need to do in the sense of legislative initiative.
But when you're talking about new rules, businesses are going to be wary about the what exactly that's going to mean for their competitiveness if you're adding to a regulatory burden. How do you respond to the call from unions, for example, to put rules in place, but also balance that with competitiveness?
Look, no, no. The idea is not to create more burden for companies. We need to keep them agile. We will look at gaps. So gaps mean where we have no types of frameworks and of regulatory setups.
Chapter 3: How does the roadmap balance worker protections with business competitiveness?
And whether these gaps need to be filled or not, it will be the result of these consultations with the social partners. But this is clear, and I work very closely with the executive vice president for technology in the commission, with Hena Virkunen, We are working together, not in silos.
So obviously everything will be carefully balanced so that any type of outputs of this Quality Jobs Act is not creating burden or any type of negative influence on companies. But we cannot forget about people, about workers, because it's them in the end that need also to deliver competitiveness and they need also to benefit from the prosperity that we want to share in Europe.
How worried are you about the kind of broader signals of that sends to companies that might want to invest or hire in the European Union as well? Because the narrative is often that the EU is just adding rules and red tape. So it's a difficult message to send without it being interpreted as it's going to be more difficult and perhaps drive jobs away from Europe.
But look, we are already doing a lot on simplification and that's not looking, we're not talking about labor rights, but we're talking about many overlaps or regulatory burdens that needed to be made easier and simpler for companies. But on the other side,
Is Europe ready or willing to go in a direction where it says that workers and people that deliver for competitiveness need to be put on the third place or to be left outside of the discussion? I mean, this is the big question. Do you want human oversight then when it comes to this sort of... Human-centric is Europe. Europe has set the standards with the AI Act, with...
safety and security in the workplaces and with this approach of being human-centric. But we need to find ways to do it so that it makes sense, it's pragmatic, it doesn't create for companies, as I said, pressures, but at the same time you cannot treat people as a machine. they are, in the end, the final end of our quest for competitiveness.
So that's why we need to balance workers' rights and workers' health and safety, their privacy, everything that is related to that, and the productivity that we need by using AI and by using technology. So we need to find the right balance and to strike the right balance so that we keep our European social model, but also make European industries more agile.
And when we say simplification, I do not think we say deregulation. Because if we say that Europe is not competitive because people have too many rights, then I would say this is very dangerous. I do not agree with that. Simplification means looking at reports, looking at bureaucracy, looking at how they make sense, how we can digitalize or whether they're overlapping.
And then taking action is not about saying, You know, you have to forego some rights. You have to really be loosening up.
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Chapter 4: What role does AI play in changing labor relations and job types?
We had the example of Klarna, for example, firing hundreds of workers to replace them with AI and then having to rehire them.
We're working with the budgets that we have at European level. First of all, on the proposal for the next budget, I have secured with my colleagues a proposal that we have direct investment in people of minimum 14%. That would mean support for reskilling, upskilling, includingly.
I want to mention another tool that we're piloting right now, this European Skills Guarantee for Workers, which is also about reskilling and upskilling workers when they need to change their skill abilities to work with AI or to transition to a different kind of job because of AI or robotization or automation impact. So we are creating these tools so that we support people in these transitions.
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