Access to Austrian employment law is dependent on whether an individual can be regarded as an ‘employee’. Essentially, the idiosyncratic protection provided by employment law is awarded based on a binary option: the subordinate ‘employee’ in contrast to the self-employed person. Intermediary categories – such as the ‘quasi-subordinate’ status – are mere exceptions, although with increasing importance.

Austrian law does not provide a given notion of the ‘employee’. The Austrian Civil Code came into force in 1812, when special protection for employees was not considered necessary.

Denmark is a Scandinavian country of 5.8 million inhabitants. It is a constitutional monarchy, and state powers are divided between the parliament (legislative), the government (executive), and the courts (judiciary). The rule of law is a fundamental principle in the Danish legal system. Denmark is one of the richest countries in the world, and presumably also among the happiest. In the area of digitalisation, Denmark is among the most digitalised countries in the EU as well as globally.

Defining the employment relationship in the United States is not an endeavor for timid souls. The hallmark of American work law, especially its classification of employees and employers, is confusion. And that confusion has only intensified as emerging technologies have changed both the way that many people work and their relationship to the companies that profit from that work. The result of this trend has been an amplification of a long-existing problem: the exclusion of workers from workplace protections because they fall outside statutory definitions of the employment relationship.

Since the Dutch debate about the digitisation of labour is often reduced to a debate about how to qualify a contract between a worker and the platform they work through, or work for, the definition of the term ‘employment contract’ deserves a lengthy discussion. This approach means that the other effects of technological changes, such as changes in the organisation of work owing to changing structures of authority, receive far less attention. In Section II, I examine the definition of an employment contract and the obligations associated with employment contracts, partly to distinguish them from contracts for services. I also discuss the incentives for avoiding employment contracts or the associated obligations. As a result, Section II also includes discussions of flexible employment relationships, domestic work, and, of course, contracts for services, each – to the extent possible – in light of technological developments.

Technological innovation has disrupted standard forms of employment and fragmented the world of work, creating new digital sites of work and new modes of work organised around digital platforms. The arrangements for platform work, which vary in form and substance, defy classification in terms of the traditional configuration of employment and bypass the boundaries of South African labour law. Even the net of protection designed to provide labour rights for atypical (non-standard) forms of work is inadequate and excludes vulnerable workers in the digital economy from its scope. As such, work in the digital economy is largely ‘characterised by an absence of effective labour regulation’.

In 1969, David A. Morse received the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Labour Organization (ILO). In his Nobel Lecture, the then Director-General (DG) explained how the organization contributes to ‘an infrastructure of peace’ by providing Member States with ‘a meeting ground’ for cooperation and dialogue. This meeting ground is characterized by tripartism and universalism, two qualities that make the ILO stand out. Tripartism, in which governments and workers’ and employers’ representatives discuss and decide on all ILO action, ‘was both the most daring and the most valuable innovation of the Peace Conference’. By setting up the ILO in tripartite fashion, the social dialogue between trade unions, employers’ organizations, and governments was presented as a viable approach to resolving social conflict. As Morse suggested, if tripartism ‘could be accepted and applied in Geneva, why not at home?’.

The fourth industrial revolution, the economy 4.0, the digital economy … all these terms refer to the profound processes of transformation that are changing the lives of people all over the world. Despite there being no consensus on the founding principles of the digital economy, some basic common points are frequently mentioned in all research studies: the key role played by platforms, robotization, and digital intelligence; the importance of network effects and the use of big data; the emerging model of Industry 4.0; and the increasing profitability of technological investments. Digitalization is changing the economy, our societies, our daily lives, and it is having an especially significant impact on employment, working, and social conditions. In fact, it is one of the major concerns and study targets in the framework of the initiative and activities promoted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) regarding ‘The Future of Work’.

In 2019, the report of the Global Commission on the Future of Work of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Work for a Brighter Future, called for ‘technology in support of decent work’. Affirming that ‘labour is not a commodity; nor is it a robot’, the report insisted on the necessity of making sure that technology is ‘human-centred’ and that a ‘human-in-command’ approach to technology prevails. Whether labour law, as it stands, is sufficiently equipped to reach this goal is a difficult question.

The Republic of Korea (Korea) is known to be a country that is dynamic in many ways. At a glance, this may be true in relation to its labour law. In a relatively short span, it has made and revised a number of labour law statutes and case-law in response to political, economic, and social changes. It is, however, not certain that its labour law, aged almost seventy, remains a still adequate regulatory tool to address the changes in, and challenges to, the world of work caused by recent technological developments. This chapter sees the life of Korea’s modern labour law coming to an end, but does not necessarily see the dawn of a new labour law era. Hoping to contribute to finding this new path, this chapter will lead the reader through where we are now and where we are heading at this crossroads.

The Covid-19 crisis has shaken Israel’s labor market. Many Israeli workers lost their jobs temporarily or permanently. Workers in several sectors, such as teachers and hi-tech workers, have moved to working at home using technology tools such as Zoom. Others, such as healthcare workers, workers at grocery stores, and other types of essential worker, continued to go to work facing health risks. Workers with children, who have been studying at home through virtual learning, needed to find a new balance between work and taking care of family members.

As is the case in many other legal systems, Italian labour law (widely intended) has been traditionally structured around the employment and self-employment divide, taking the standard employment relationship, that is, the open-ended, full-time contract of employment, as a reference.

The summa divisio between employees and the self-employed provided the distinction between those covered by – and benefitting from – labour law regulation and those falling outside its scope of application. This distinction was enshrined in the Civil Code (henceforth: c.c.) of 1942 through the definition of prestatore di lavoro subordinato (employee, Art. 2094 c.c.) and contratto d’opera (contract for services, Art. 2222 c.c.).

The European labour market is undergoing a process of radical change. While the standard contract of employment remains the predominant form of work organisation (often based on full-time work for one employer), its social importance has been declining. In addition to part-time, fixed-term, and agency work (the original ‘atypical’ contracts), new casual forms of employment have become more prevalent; these include zero-hours contracts, employee sharing, information communication technology (ICT)-based mobile work, voucher-based work, interim management, portfolio, crowd, and gig work. The data are revealing: half of all the new jobs created in the last ten years have been non-standard, with more than 25 per cent of the workforce of the twenty-seven European Union countries (EU-27) being engaged in casual and atypical forms of work at any given time.

Polish labour law is mainly statutory law, while collective labour agreements play only a secondary role. The basic concepts are regulated by the Labour Code (LC). Under Article 2 LC, an employee is a person employed on the basis of an employment contract, an appointment, an election, a nomination, or a cooperative employment contract, while, according to Article 3 LC, an employer is an organizational unit, even if it has no legal personality, or an individual, provided it employs employees. Moreover, Article 22 § 1 LC provides that by establishing an employment relationship, an employee undertakes to perform specific work for the benefit and under the guidance of an employer, and an employer undertakes to employ an employee in return for remuneration. This definition is quite short and does not indicate all the features of an employment relationship. Those are – as determined by the jurisprudence and the legal literature – voluntary character, personal work performance on a continuous basis, subordination, and work performance for the benefit of an employer who carries the risk related to the employment. The legal nature of a contract cannot be determined on the basis of a single factor, only on a comprehensive assessment of the factual situation. There are three types of employment contract: a contract for a trial period, a fixed-term contract, and a contract for an indefinite period of time.

Work has long been recognised as a core element of the human experience. It helps to shape our personal identity while also ensuring that societies can function, regenerate, and grow. At present, we are in an era where technology is having a profound impact on how work is carried out. Often referred to as the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, technology has accelerated the automation of many types of work around the globe. For example, two of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers, Mercedes-Benz and Audi, are planning to axe close to 20,000 employees in order to transition to cleaner technologies and more modern vehicle production processes.

The collection offered in this book is a kaleidoscopic exercise in contrast. Contrast between the promises and pitfalls of technological innovation that often reach a degree of hype in the public discourse, on the one hand, and the speed and breadth of law reform, on the other. Between the varying legal traditions of regions and countries in dealing, through labour and employment law, with what has been a historical constant of modernity: adjusting and responding to technological change. Between regimes more favourable to embracing technological innovation through evolving labour organisation and/or regulation, and regimes more favourable to restricting technology by old or new labour organisation and regulation. Between countries where the pace of legal progress is set primarily through courts and cases in a typically incremental, organic, and occasionally transformational fashion, and countries where the statute book sets the tone in a typically categorical fashion.

This chapter explores the legal and policy issues that Japan is now facing in this era of technological innovation. Like many other industrial countries, Japan is experiencing various facets of technological innovation such as robotisation and utilisation of artificial intelligence (AI). These changes have already had, and will continue to have, considerable influence on the world of work, thereby raising new issues in the realm of labour law and policy. Of course, Japan has its own features with respect to the labour market, employment practices, and legal norms. Such features may have influence on the situation regarding the relationship between technological innovation and labour law and policy. Therefore, issues regarding technological innovation in Japan are worth exploring from a viewpoint of comparative labour law and policy.

Labour markets and their supporting regulatory structures will always be subject to disruptive forces. The economic consequences of the recent pandemic, if nothing else, have highlighted the challenges that are likely to be faced over future decades as societies come to grips with a number of disruptive megatrends that will impact on the future character of work, labour, and employment law. While this particular chapter focusses on the disruptive impact of technological change, it is clear that this factor cannot be viewed in isolation. Political debate in Aotearoa/New Zealand is becoming increasingly concerned with the future of work, as is broadly illustrated by the introductory chapter to this collection. In late 2019 New Zealand’s Tripartite Forum on the Future of Work stated that ‘the future of work is being shaped by four global megatrends: technological progress, demographic change, globalisation and climate change’.

The nature of work, the substance of jobs, the types of party involved, their legal and operational relationships, the formation of those working relationships: there is very little in the world of work that is not subject to some form of technology-driven transformation. This, perhaps, is nothing new. After all, modern labour and employment law emerged as a response to a technologically induced industrial revolution that triggered wholesale societal transformation. As some observers predict the most radical change in the labour market since the first industrial revolution, this begs the question: if the future of work is set to change, what will the future of labour law be? If technology is disrupting employment, how is it causing a disruption in labour and employment law?