The Second Vice-President of the Government and Minister for Labour and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, upon her arrival at the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumers Council (EPSCO), in Brussels

The Second Vice-President of the Government of Spain and Minister for Labour and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, participated in the formal meeting of Ministers of Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs (EPSCO) in Brussels.

Within the framework of the political debate at the EPSCO Council's European Semester, the challenges arising from the incorporation of artificial intelligence into the labour market were analysed, especially regarding how this transformation can be used to strengthen the quality of employment and workers' rights.

According to the Labour Minister, European companies will not be able to become more productive and efficient if they depend technologically on their international competitors.

"The rise of AI presents a great opportunity to improve our public employment services, the effectiveness of the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate, and to free workers from routine and unhealthy jobs, thereby increasing productivity, reducing working hours, and improving well-being," Díaz explained in her address at EPSCO.

However, this civilisational advance requires active intervention from social and labour policy.

Proposals from the Ministry of Labour

Given the challenges posed by, for example, the emergence of the platform model and the experience in its regulation, the Ministry of Labour and Social Economy has proposed implementing six basic measures:

• Guarantee the individual right to training that allows workers to respond to and assume the new skills demanded.
• Ensure that labour rights are not compromised by the lack of limits on algorithms: the right to algorithmic transparency, preservation of privacy, and human control of decisions. Algorithmic audits must be mandatory.
• Union oversight of algorithmic work management through specialised advice and concrete action tools.
• Preserving occupational health by guaranteeing the right to disconnect, protecting workers from corporate interference.
• Creating an automation risk indicator to identify the most vulnerable workers.
• Making progress on the European public data protection agency.

Ensuring social justice

The Labour minister also argued that artificial intelligence companies should be taxed to achieve a just transition.

For Yolanda Díaz, "we need to finance all these measures while guaranteeing fiscal balance: AI companies must pay taxes to create a fund for adapting to the changes that technological development implies for work. EPSCO has the power to ensure that the digital transition is a matter of social justice."

For the Labour Minister, "this is not the time to go backwards, it is the time to move forwards, and to do so hand in hand with European social dialogue," she affirmed.

Non official translation