The ETF Digitalisation & Automation Toolkit gives our transport unions concrete tools to address the challenges caused by automation and digitalisation for European transport workers.

The toolkit covers all transport sectors and provides trade unions with key tools to tackle digitalisation & automation:

o A model collective agreement – based on existing agreements;
o A framework for effective lobbying and campaigning;
o Organisational methods to achieve a worker-led digital transition

1. Collective bargaining
Negotiations with employers’ associations and companies are the most effective way to address and mitigate the effects of automation on work and working conditions, to tackle job losses, to make sure the workforce has the right skills for the future. In this field, experience shows that in order to be meaningful, negotiations have to be started timely.

2. Lobbying and campaigning
It is our vision that trade unions should play an active role in shaping the future of work in transport. Automation and digitalisation bring forward the need for adapting policies and legislation. The changes that new technologies will impose on work need to be framed by the right policies.

Issues such as employment levels and labour market policies, education and employability of current employees, taxation policies and infrastructure financing, automation impact on local economies, the establishment of transition funds, would deserve a much wider debate and concrete actions.

3. Workers’ representation through organisation
Automation and digitalisation processes change the face of transport work. This requires unions to adapt their organisational models and their representation strategies and structure, in order to stay relevant for the workers and properly represent their interests.

The ETF A&D toolkit can be downloaded here.

With financial support from the European Union