ILPC 2026

Digitalisation is discussed as one of the main trends of work and economy in advanced industrialised societies, forming a new digital capitalism based on platform and share economies or new forms of automation. Moreover, in some of the advanced economies like Germany, digitalisation has become a Pandora’s box in the public debate in the way that it seems to be an indispensable condition for the modernisation and long-term competitiveness of the manufacturing sector. However, the effects of these changes on labour, labour policy or labour regulation are hotly debated. There are different and competing scenarios discussed, ranging from rising unemployment and precariousness of work and employment or the standardisation and automation of labour to more optimistic views pointing to economic growth, increasing skill demands, flat hierarchies, decentralized organisations and more autonomous work.

However, there is little evidence yet about the real changes of work that have taken place in the course of digitalization in the manufacturing sector. There are several important questions to be posed here from a labour process perspective: How advanced is the technological change produced by digitalization today? How does it affect work and work organisation? What are the effects on labour regulation in terms of working times, wages or other issues? And, finally, what could be the responses of workers and labour interest representatives like works councils and unions?

In my presentation I will try to tackle these questions, referring to findings from the German manufacturing sector. My presentation is based on the results of a two-year research project financed by the German Hans-Böckler-Foundation. In this project we evaluated a union project from the German Metalworkers’ union IG Metall focusing on consulting works councils, analyzing digitalization and its effects and identifying problems of labour policy caused by digitalization. As more than 30 companies have been included in this project and we could analyse about the half of the cases in depth, it is possible to make statements on the state of the art of digitalisation in the German manufacturing sector, on the political issues and conflicts arising from digitalisation and on the effects of the campaign on the practice and patterns of interest representations of works councils.