Digitalization – the fourth industrial revolution – does not mean anything new for trade unions but is only another angle on one of our core missions – to help employees’ transition into new jobs. This was the main conclusion of a trade-union seminar about digitalization I attended a couple of weeks ago. I agree with the point that transition into new jobs is crucial, but oh my there are so many more aspects of this subject!

But ok, let’s start with the point of transition into new jobs. In the European Social Dialogue we argue that training and Life Long Learning must take new steps when digitalization is changing the financial sectors so rapidly. A work that potentially could in a preventive way train employees for new tasks and ensure employability before anyone is losing her/his job. That is important and something to promote.

UNI Europa rightly says that precarious jobs as a consequence of digitalization are a serious problem. SMS-hiring and zero-hour contracts can be examples of such. I agree again, and a point of strategy to handle it, I have heard, could be to include new “digital employees”, “digital companies” and “digital sectors” in collective bargaining and social dialogue. I believe this is the trick to prevent precarious jobs and create fair competition for employees, companies and sectors – and we need trade-union strength to ensure such a development.

Transitions into new jobs, Life Long Learning and inclusion through collective bargaining – should we summarize this as “employability” and “trade-union strength”? But let’s leave this “core trade-union work” for a moment, and look at what other aspects of digitalization we can see that trade unions need to focus on.

Creating sustainable sectors – that employees can be proud of working in – is an underestimated one according to me. Deutsche Bank announced recently that they will cut 9000 jobs and close 200 branches due to their focus on developing its digital business. But what we see in customer satisfaction reports is that there is a significant positive relation between satisfied customers and service between four eyes. Personal advice will add further service value to customers beyond that which comes from digital services alone. That is a potential competitive advantage that Deutsche Bank – which is a trendsetter in the European financial sectors – and others need to hear about again and again and again. As unions we should work to make sure digitalization will not be another excuse to cut costs and erode the expertise and trust that the traditional financial sectors build its competitive advantage on. Deutsche Bank needs to pay attention to what Bill Gates said: “Banking is essential, but banks are not.”

And what is essential about banking is also essential for trade unions. For people it is crucial to have access to financial services, to be able to purchase products through payment services and save money in safe accounts. But financial services are also about improving your personal economy. It does matter what kind of interest rate you get, what insurance you buy or what assets you save and invest in. If it gets wrong it can hurt your personal economy and life seriously. Personal services are said to improve quality and outcome of such services. There are worrying analyzes saying that digitalization of finance will lead to less advice for regular citizens, and instead become a service for those who afford it. So the richer and/or more knowledgeable people about finance will benefit more, leading to increased inequality. An important angle of course, since equality has been such an important aim for the trade-union movement throughout history.

So the angles we have so far are “employability”, “trade-union strength”, and “inclusive and competitive finance”. I would like to add one more thing to what trade-unions, according to me, should pay attention when working with digitalization.

My last point is about corporate culture and management styles. Digitalization will make sales targets and performance measurement systems even more sophisticated. And we see already today how these systems lead to management by control, rather than management by coaching the employees to develop their professional skills. The systems do also affect the integrity of employees – should your e-mail be monitored, should your phone calls always be recorded? Performance measurement systems could of course be good if they focus on the right things and if the essential management-employee relation is not harmed or lost. This tone is set by the top, and trade-unions have a role in working to influence it to the better.

Digitalization is a key question for trade unions. It is about core trade-union work but also about being a voice of what future world of work and financial sectors we want – because it will matter for employees. To summarize, here are my key aspects for trade unions to address in relation to digitalization:

Martin Hassel, Policy Officer
@hasselNFU