Industry 4.0, Legal Protection of the Employee and Intercultural Impact of Labour Migration

Alex Kainz

doi:10.46282/blr.2021.5.1.219

Authors

Alex Kainz University of Economics, Prague https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3486-0052

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46282/blr.2021.5.1.219

Keywords:

Industry 4.0, Employment protection legislation, Productivity, Labour law and migration, Intercultural behaviour

Abstract

Industry - Industry 4.0 [I4.0] is the main topic of discussions and proposals for innovative changes. In the last five years, inside industry sectors took place the intellectual clashes among digitisation, robotisation and automation. These concepts have been combined with performance, efficiency gains, steady economic growth, employment, labour migration, and increasing labour productivity in all managerial or economic forums. In particular, the European Union [EU] is one of the foremost leaders in improving workforce quality, given the increasing share of robotics and automation. The competitive pressure, beset on individual EU member states by countries with low-cost labour, is increased by assessing economic growth, increasing labour productivity, and setting social-law standards in the EU.

On the other hand, increasing the automation of production plants leads to increased employment pressure and contributes to managed labour migration. This migration is mainly about the pressure on competencies, quality, number of employees and the negative development of the demographic curve in the EU. All this reflects the demand for more robust legal protection for workers in the field of social assistance and legal regulations generally linked to a rapid change in labour market conditions. The resulting mix will have a significant impact on the economy’s performance and competitiveness.

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