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August 20, 2026Journal of Industrial Relations

Governing artificial intelligence-enabled labour surveillance: A multi-level framework for legal, organisational and collective governance in the digital workplace

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FCFu‐Hsuan Chen

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Overview

Comparative institutional analysis reveals governance failures in AI-enabled workplace surveillance, highlighting the need for participatory design and collective digital contracts.

Key Points

  • To develop a multi-level governance framework linking legal regulation, organisational practices, and collective representation to address the challenges of AI-enabled labour surveillance.
  • Conducted a cross-jurisdictional institutional comparison evaluating the European Union AI Act, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and platform labour regulations alongside US and Asian governance practices.
  • Applied labour process theory and comparative political economy frameworks to analyze predictive scoring, affective inference, and workplace datafication.
  • Identified a structural triad of governance failure: abstract ex-post legal controls, unilateral organisational policies, and collective bargaining constrained by technical opacity and information asymmetry.
  • Reconceptualised AI labour surveillance as a breakdown in institutional translation across regulatory levels rather than a simple regulatory void.
  • Formulated the concept of a 'sustainable digital labour contract' to operationalise legal duties via participatory system design, transparent data access, and collectively negotiated algorithmic grievance mechanisms.

Cite This Study

Fu‐Hsuan Chen (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a86b5ff8a91293e6a1cd975https://doi.org/10.1177/00221856261478209
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