UNI Global Union sets out groundbreaking principles in data collection protection and ethical artificial intelligence

On 11 December UNI Global Union released two documents, each containing a set of ten principles that aim to address how work-related data is managed. The union confederation stated, “Data collection by companies and artificial intelligence are the next frontier for the labour movement.” Via the documents entitled, Top 10 Principles for Ethical Artificial Intelligence and Top 10 Principles for Workers’ Data Privacy and Protection, UNI Global Union is calling for workers to have the right to the data on them that is collected by companies, including the right to have data corrected, blocked, or erased. Another critical principle is the ‘right of explanation’, meaning that workers must be able to see the data employers are collecting and how it is being used to inform management decisions to hire, fire, discipline or promote workers. Without this right, workers cannot check whether companies are using data in ethical, non-discriminatory ways.
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Eliminating unbalances. In its first document that addresses data protection, UNI Global Union highlights a basic disequilibrium. On one hand companies are collecting an increasing amount of data, which has become ‘a most valuable resource in the global economy,’ and includes both private individual data as well as worker-related data (CVs, biometric data, productivity data…). On the other hand however, rules governing data protection and protection over the individual’s private life are practi

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