The Public Policy Research Center will participate in the ADAPT Annual Conference, titled “Labour and Society: New Rights and Institutional Reforms for an Inclusive Future”, taking place from 21 to 23 November 2025 in Bergamo, Italy.
The conference is organized by the ADAPT International School of Higher Education in Labour and Industrial Relations, and aims to bring together researchers and regulators to exchange knowledge and policy proposals on the future of labour law in the context of digital transformation.
The Center will present research that analyses how algorithmic surveillance and rating systems influence the behaviour of workers on digital platforms, particularly in the food delivery sector. The focus is on a distinct form of unpaid labour—activities performed under algorithmic pressure that are neither recognized nor valued as work.
In this paper, the Center raises the issue of regulating unpaid labour generated by algorithmic management systems, which remains outside the scope of current legal frameworks. Although the EU Platform Work Directive introduces obligations for algorithmic transparency, it does so only from a technical perspective, without addressing the role of algorithms in organizing and controlling work. In this context, the Center proposes a regulatory framework that would limit the power of algorithms, grounded in three key principles derived from labour law: proportionality, ensuring that algorithmic demands are aligned with the role and status of workers; transparency, requiring platforms to clearly communicate how decisions are made; and due process, guaranteeing workers the right to information, response, and protection from automated consequences.
The abstract of the paper is available here.
