ILPC 2026

‘Smart’ has become a contemporary buzzword often used to describe the capacity to make the most of technological advancements such as those brought about by digitalisation. From smart cities to smart production to smart working, research has also started considering the topic of ‘smart industrial relations’: analysing, in other words, the development of industrial relations practices able to anticipate, manage and accompany effectively the ongoing digital transformations in the productive structures of advanced capitalist economies. But can we really speak of ‘smart industrial relations’ in the making, or does digitalisation represent instead a threat for established industrial relations actors and practices, that remains yet to be adequately managed and understood? In this paper, we focus specifically on the role of trade unions as key industrial relations actor, and analyse their developing responses to the challenges of digitalisation in two Southern European countries: Italy and Spain. We adopt a multi-level approach and focus on analysing union’s strategic responses to digitalisation at the three key levels of industrial relations: macro (political-strategic) level; meso (sectoral/industry level); and micro (workplace level). At the meso-industry level, our analysis will focus more closely on the service sector, which has received considerably less attention so far than manufacturing.

Our preliminary findings, mapping out union responses to digitalisation in Italy and Spain, are divided in three sections, according to the level of industrial relations. At the macro level, we find that bar a few exceptions, the involvement of trade unions in national policy initiatives related to digitalisation, such as ‘Digital Agendas’ and ‘Industry 4.0’ strategies, has so far remained fairly limited. This is despite noteworthy attempts on part of unions to influence the public debate on digitalisation and ‘the future of work’ through policy proposals and initiatives. On issues relating to the regulatory models for new digital players (e.g. platforms), the interventions of mainstream trade unions in the public policy debate have also been limited so far, as the formulation of coherent regulatory proposals is still ongoing for the majority of confederations. At the sectoral level there are instead more signs of pro-active adaptation, especially in the Italian case, where unions have been taking up issues and demands relating to digitalisation (e.g. individual right to training) as central parts of their collective bargaining platforms. However, the extent to which these collective bargaining strategies are sufficient in countering the polarisation trends associated with digitalisation is debatable. Finally, at the workplace level we observe emerging and deepening disparities between sectors with regards to unions’ capacity to intervene to govern the ongoing workplace transformations arising from digitalisation; and considerable difficulties in building up power resources and representative capacities in the emerging ‘platform economy’ segment of the economy.

Overall, we find that Italian and Spanish unions’ strategies and demands so far have been primarily focused on arguing for an extension of traditional forms of protection to deal with the disruptive effects of digitalisation. However, this has been coupled over the last two years with some mild innovation in unions’ agenda – possibly driven by a desire on part of unions to re-build their strategic power resources and ‘innovate’ their image after having been weakened and delegitimised during the crisis period. These findings question technological and economic deterministic explanations - underlying much of Cassandra’s predictions of inexorable job losses and union decline supposedly due to digitalisation – and point to the fact that, if ‘smart’ industrial relations are to be made, unions seem to have an active role to play in them.