Since the early 21st century, several European countries have gone through extensive liberalisation of their labour markets by undertaking structural reforms. This injection of liberal market elements has featured a misplaced conviction in the merits of labour market flexibility. The liberalisation trend was reproduced in other institutional spheres by an increased importance placed on shareholder value and led to extensive corporate and household financialisation, which in turn intensified the rise of contingent work across advanced industrialised countries. The dual processes of liberalisation and financialisation culminated in the eruption of a mortgage-led financial crisis in the US, which was transmuted – through the spurious role of credit rating agencies – into a sovereign debt crisis in Europe.
Despite this important turning point, few lessons have been learned. The post-crisis period, characterised by the strange non-death of neoliberalism, was not followed by rebalancing or stabilisation. Instead, a new long wave in the evolution of capitalism unveiled an acceleration of digitalisation and disruption of the labour and product market spheres enabled by innovations made by Big Tech and startups. While on the surface, digitalisation seems to be reflecting recent technological advances and disruptive innovations, the driver of this change has been the shareholder value imperative in disguise. In the technological ‘arms race’, Europe is frequently depicted as a laggard, having to rely on American or even Chinese technology companies.
But Europe never lacked innovative capabilities per se. Any failure was likely due to a heavy reliance on US technology that crowded out European technology, or a futile effort to emulate the US model. Nokia has been a case in point. US credit rating agencies downgraded Nokia for its perceived lack of innovative capabilities, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy that eventually sealed its exit from the smartphone market. The technological innovation of Apple’s iPhone enabled app-based business models, hijacked by greedy startups to create shareholder value by constructing new platform labour markets in traditional economic sectors, e.g. accommodation (Airbnb) and transportation (Uber).
Yet the quality of jobs in Europe is not only threatened by the aggressive expansion of the platform economy. In parallel, Big Tech companies have exported their anti-union model to Europe, disrespecting workers’ rights with a slow erosion of the central pillars of the European social model. Amazon’s warehouse conditions, intrusive algorithmic management and anti-union strategies have been notorious. As the UNI Europa Regional Secretary, Oliver Roethig, stated: “In Germany, Amazon still refuses to collectively bargain with the ver.di trade union despite repeated demands. European competitiveness shouldn’t mean that union-busting and tax avoiding multinationals like Amazon have a competitive advantage over decent European employers that sign collective agreements and pay their taxes.” The same pattern of abuse of power and contempt of workers’ rights is observed elsewhere in Europe. Google workers in Sweden and their union Unionen took the company to court over its failure to involve the union in restructuring plans. In Ireland, workers for Meta’s contractor Covalen – which provides outsourced AI content-moderation services for Meta – went on strike over redundancies, severance pay and union busting.
These labour disputes run in parallel to the European Commission’s investigation of Meta, Apple and Google for potential abuses of their dominant position and anti-competitive practices. This contrasts sharply with the US model of ‘Wild-Wild-West’ capitalism. As the case of Google shows, American antitrust authorities allowed Google to abuse its power in the search engine market to colonise and monopolise even more digital markets. Despite US authorities paying lip service to free markets and competition, the political climate favours keeping Big Tech out of reach of any regulatory intervention, and monopolisation has been deemed acceptable.
The wave of digitalisation in capitalism did not only affect the product markets and the platform economy. In addition, it has enabled the adoption of intrusive algorithmic management and artificial intelligence across many different economic sectors. There has been some pushback. In countries like Spain, the platform economy has been regulated to avert a race to the bottom in working conditions. Trade unions in Luxembourg banks managed to respond to the digitalisation of service work by relying on their traditional power resources of social dialogue. In Germany, the works councils in ICT companies managed to shape the use of AI technologies in areas such as performance monitoring and workforce analytics, but faced more challenges in restructuring decisions.
This suggests that national-level responses are insufficient to avert the threat to European capitalism of Big Tech. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced in her 2025 State of the Union address that the Commission would propose a Quality Jobs Act in 2026 to update European rules protecting workers while supporting productivity and competitiveness in the context of algorithmic management and AI at work. The plan for a Quality Jobs Act is a welcome development; however, European policy makers and social partners need to ensure that this does not turn out to be another missed opportunity, since competitiveness will not come from emulating the US model.
The ETUC (European Trade Union Confederation) called the Commission to bring forward binding legislation and to include a dedicated EU Directive on AI and algorithmic systems in the workplace. This should enhance the power resources of unions and help them avert the threat to European capitalism. In the European social model, regulation in labour markets has always gone hand in hand with regulation in product markets and in industrial policy. Any EU-level initiatives should not only be focused on job quality as an isolated matter. Antitrust regulation and a national champions policy to limit its technological dependence on the US or China is paramount. In the broader environment of geopolitical volatility, an activist industrial and competition policy should be part and parcel of efforts to upgrade job quality in Europe.
Andreas Kornelakis is a Reader (Associate Professor) at King’s Business School, King’s College London. His research interests are in the areas of digitalisation, employment relations, HRM and comparative management. His work has appeared in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Human Resource Management, Work, Employment and Society and other outlets.
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