Digital & Multi-Local Work

The Observatory on Digital and Multilocal Work proposes various types of services to meet the continuing education and training needs of enterprises and workers related to the performance of work in fully or partially digitilised environments (e.g.: disconnection techniques and modalities, agile work agreements, exercise of employer powers, algorithmic and data-driven management, collective bargaining and exercise of trade union rights), adopting innovative teaching methodologies and an interdisciplinary approach.
The Observatory promotes opportunities for debate among researchers, economic actors and civil society stakeholders and carries out dissemination initiatives on such issues as remote working, disconnection and digital platform working.

The Observatory’s research activity takes the form of:

• participation in research calls promoted at local, national and European level for the funding of projects aimed at investigating, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the different profiles of the digital transition and its impact on work;
• publication of contributions in scientific journals and books, which, in most cases, are presented by members of the working group at national and international conferences and seminars;
• organisation of conferences and thematic seminars.

The research areas on which the Observatory is active include:

• comparative analysis of the impact of digitisation on industrial relations systems and social dialogue (iRel project, https://irel.fmb.unimore.it; monitoring implementation of the European framework agreement on digitisation)
• digital platform work (monitoring of the legislative process of the ‘Proposal for a directive on the improvement of working conditions in digital platform work’);
• remote work and the right to disconnection (in-depth study of the different profiles, mainly legal and organisational, through the study of the law, collective bargaining and contributions from the European social partners);
• collective representation and the democratization of digital workplaces (in-depth analysis of issues relating to the exercise of trade union rights, information and consultation and collective negotiation of working conditions in highly digitalised contexts, such as factory 4.0, remote working and platform work), in collaboration with the Observatory on Participatory Management in the private and public sector (OSMAPART). A research project on “Work, representation and democracy in digital capitalism: study of three work models via platform” has been active since July 2023, financed under the University Research Fund of UNIMORE-“Department of Economics Marco Biagi ” (research group: Iacopo Senatori, Paolo Borghi, Ilaria Purificazione, Federica Palmirotta);
• The protection of health and safety in digital work (analysis of the prevention legislation in force in relation to the onset of new risks to the health of workers present in work on a digital platform and in other business models and work methods characterized by de -spatialisation of workplaces and time porosity), in collaboration with the Environment, Health and Safety in the Workplace Observatory;
• digital work and inclusive workplaces (study of digital innovation as a possible lever for inclusion, for example through better work-life balance models), in collaboration with the Gender Equity Observatory (ObeeG);
• the impact of digitalisation on the labor market and the construction of employment transition paths in the name of social sustainability.