Artificial Intelligence and Collective Labour Agreements: A Comparative Study within the EU-Türkiye Context

Öz

Digitalisation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution have produced a new management paradigm in the workplace known as “algorithmic management”. This process, in which the functions of traditional human managers are taken over by algorithms, creates a lack of transparency and intense pressure from digital surveillance on workers. This study examines the transformative impact of AI on the collective bargaining framework from a comparative perspective, focusing on the European Union (EU) and Türkiye. The study’s central argument is that AI shifts the scope of collective bargaining away from traditional working conditions and towards the axis of “negotiating the algorithm”. EU legislation, through the AI Act, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Platform Work Directive, establishes this transformation on a prescriptive and procedural public framework. In Türkiye, despite the absence of a standalone technology law, provisions in the Constitution (Art. 51, 53), Law No. 6356, and the Personal Data Protection Law (Art. 11/1-g) offer social partners a robust “micro-regulation” framework capable of limiting algorithmic authority. The study concludes that, due to the technology-neutral nature of the existing legal framework in Turkish law, algorithmic governance can be opened up to collective oversight through specific provisions added to collective agreements, thereby safeguarding industrial democracy in the digital age.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Artificial Intelligence
• Algorithmic Management
• Collective Labour Agreement

Kaynakça

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