Digital Exclusion, Social Exclusion, the Workplace Digital Divide, Algorithmic Decision-Making, and the Digital Transformation of the Enterprise from a Legal-Social Perspective
摘要
The continuously evolving digitization of how we facilitate and disseminate information, educate ourselves, study, and how we do business presents a critical disruption of fundamental rights insofar as it manifestly increases the dependence of their application on digital technology and on a digital infrastructure of a networked world. Access to the benefits of the Internet and the digital ecosystem enhances digital inclusion, which in turn improves social and economic inclusion. The right to access the Internet establishes a social right aiming at restraining social injustice and discrimination between the “haves” and the “haves not.” Nevertheless, the level of access to the Internet and participation in the information society is not only volatile but very often also unequal and discriminatory. Inequality and discrimination applied in Internet access lead to the creation of a digital divide. The digital organization of work based on the platform economy system, and the consequent bipolar division of labor into unskilled and high-tech labor are only some elements highlighting the new digital reality in the workplace environment. Given the immense footprint of the digital transformation on the organization of an enterprise, and the required skills it needs in order to thrive in the digital economy’s ecosystem, it is imperative for national, supranational, and international authorities, as well as for employers and trade unions to promote policies that expand work opportunities, eliminate workforce’s inequalities and the risk of being excluded from the benefits of the digital economy. Such a comprehensive policy framework could be based on three pillars: lifelong learning, collective representation, and algorithmic decision-making control.