Dr Joe Atkinson on AI and Equality in the Workplace

In this clip, Dr Joe Atkinson sets out why we urgently need a regulatory framework for the governance of AI at work, or risk degrading workers’ voice, rights, and conditions while potentially ingraining discrimination and inequality into decision making. The increasing use of technology to manage people at work, from how they are hired and fired to how their work is allocated, monitored and evaluated poses a serious threat to workers’ ability to exercise their agency in the workplace.

The Institute of Employment Rights published Dr Atkinson’s and Dr Phillippa Collins’ report ‘Algorithmic Management and a New Generation of Rights at Work’, which argues that existing employment law frameworks are inadequate to meet the challenges posed by these applications of ‘artificial intelligence’ in the workplace, whilst setting out the reforms necessary to securing decent working conditions and rights in the age of algorithmic management.

In the full episode, equality and discrimination experts Professor Sandy Fredman and Dr. Atkinson analyse the Labour Party’s proposed changes to equality legislation and their impact on workers through the Employment Rights Bill, the Equality Race and Disability Bill, and other forthcoming legislation.

The discussion also covers new proactive duties on employers to prevent sexual harassment, the implications of extending paternity leave, the impact of mandatory pay gap reporting for ethnicity and disability, and the socioeconomic duty on public bodies.

You can listen to the full episode here.

All episodes of the IER Podcast on the Employment Rights Bill can be found here.