Regulating Algorithmic Management of Work at EU Level: The Adequacy of the Platform Work Directive and the AI Act

Algorithmic management is rising with an increasing spread both in the gig and regular economies and is becoming a central point of academic analysis and EU regulatory interventions. The European Commission has adopted, in 2024, two novel pieces of legislation which impact on algorithmic management of work, the Platform Work Directive (hereinafter ‘PWD’) (Directive (EU) 2024/2831 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2024 on improving working conditions in platform work, [2024] OJ L, 11.11.2024, pp. 1–26) and the Artificial Intelligence Act (hereinafter ‘AI Act’) (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 laying down harmonised rules on Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act), [2024] OJ L., 12.7.2024, pp. 1–144). In the context of these legal initiatives, a crucial question arises: are such regulatory tools adequate to tackle the harms stemming from algorithmic management practices for workers’ fundamental rights (e.g. right to dignity, right to privacy, right to equal treatment, freedom of association)? To answer this question, the chapter examines the content and limits of each of the two regulatory texts, in the light of their different conceptual approach, juxtaposing a traditional in law rights-based method to a less conventional risk-based method. It concludes that the risk regulation driven rationale weakens the protection of the workers’ rights and, thus, creates a need for a complementary rights-based and civil recourse legislation to tackle the use of AI in an employment context.