TY - JOUR
T1 - From access to understanding
T2 - Collective data governance for workers
AU - Calacci, Dan
AU - Stein, Jake
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023.
PY - 2023/6
Y1 - 2023/6
N2 - Regulating data collection and use in the workplace is now more a matter of regulating working conditions than data protection. This article argues that existing data protection law fails workers for precisely this reason. We examine how workers currently use data protection law, labour law, and technology to access and leverage the data they produce at work and identify key ways in which current regulation falls short. Existing regulations primarily aim to protect worker privacy, an approach that ignores the fact that data use now often defines the fundamental conditions of work, particularly in the gig economy. This is because a key limitation of modern data protection law for workers is its myopic focus on the individual ‘data subject’, whose rights to data stem from a right to privacy or data protection. Instead, data regulation in the workplace requires a framework that acknowledges the core interest workers have in accessing their data: to collectively exert greater agency and control at work. We argue that workplace data regulation should largely be a matter of workplace governance and worker co-determination, an approach rooted in workers’ rights, to negotiate the terms of their employment agreements and specific working environments.
AB - Regulating data collection and use in the workplace is now more a matter of regulating working conditions than data protection. This article argues that existing data protection law fails workers for precisely this reason. We examine how workers currently use data protection law, labour law, and technology to access and leverage the data they produce at work and identify key ways in which current regulation falls short. Existing regulations primarily aim to protect worker privacy, an approach that ignores the fact that data use now often defines the fundamental conditions of work, particularly in the gig economy. This is because a key limitation of modern data protection law for workers is its myopic focus on the individual ‘data subject’, whose rights to data stem from a right to privacy or data protection. Instead, data regulation in the workplace requires a framework that acknowledges the core interest workers have in accessing their data: to collectively exert greater agency and control at work. We argue that workplace data regulation should largely be a matter of workplace governance and worker co-determination, an approach rooted in workers’ rights, to negotiate the terms of their employment agreements and specific working environments.
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U2 - 10.1177/20319525231167981
DO - 10.1177/20319525231167981
M3 - Comment/debate
AN - SCOPUS:85175216805
SN - 2031-9525
VL - 14
SP - 253
EP - 282
JO - European Labour Law Journal
JF - European Labour Law Journal
IS - 2
ER -