Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The ILO considers sovereignty over time as one of the pillars of decent work. Working time has achieved renewed relevance in the face of technological change and its disruptive effects on labour relations. The outdated formulas of reconciliation rights linked to the reduction of working time have proved to be ineffective for the full exercise of reconciliation rights. The ageing of the population along with the COVID-19 health crisis have yielded care work, whose traditional female gender link has hindered women’s full labour integration. The working conditions of sustainable work of the future require subordinating working time to people’s needs.

The Spanish employment system formally reserves, especially since 1997, the use of temporary contracts to cover temporary jobs. However, our high temporary employment rates show an excessive use of this type of contract in comparison with other European Union countries. This paper, focusing on structural temporary work, aims to highlight how the various regulatory reforms that have taken place since the approval of the Spanish Workers' Statute have not guaranteed the effectiveness of the principle of causality and how, only very recently, does it seem that a task of reconstructing this principle based on the requirement of genuine temporality is beginning.

The objective of the article is to analyze the role of social dialogue in the governance of the labour dimension of digitalization, within the geographical scope of the European Union. First, a general assessment is made of the main developments in social dialogue in this field. Subsequently, the dynamic of industrial relations in companies restructuring linked to digitization is addressed, based on the findings of a comparative study of cases. The main conclusion of both sections is that the role of social dialogue is still emerging, although interesting advances are being made in recent years. The article ends by raising some proposals for the strengthening of social dialogue as a necessary condition to guarantee a just digital transition, which allows governing in a more proactive and balanced way the technological changes and their effects.

In this paper, I offer a reading of the European context in the third decade of the twenty-first century. I discuss, first, how far ‘varieties of capitalism’ persist, and the implications of changes in industrial relations regimes for trade unions. Second, I consider some of the ambiguities of EU regulation. Is ‘Social Europe’ (still) a bulwark against market liberalisation? Third, I draw on Polanyi to examine the rise of precarious work situations, including the emergence of the ‘platform economy’. Fourth, I comment on the impact of Covid-19 and the climate crisis, before some brief final remarks about trade union responses.

The deconstruction of the traditional enterprise through decentralization, outsourcing and subcontracting, together with the irruption of digitization is giving rise to new forms of blurred organization of the enterprises. These changes bring about new forms of organization of collective representation from two different initiatives. The first, promoted "from-the-bottom", by the workers themselves, such as proto-unions, quasi-unions, mutual societies, work cooperatives. The second initiative consists of forms of "top-down organizations", from unions and employers, promoting new autonomous related organizations. Likewise, the use of new communication technologies contributes to improve the flow of communications between representatives and represented. The methodology of this study is quantitative and qualitative. A survey of more than 1500 people, 27 interviews and 5 focus groups have been carried out

Although the effects of AI on work are still uncertain, effects on privacy, data protection, equality and occupational health have already been described in algorithmic business management (from hiring to firing). Solving the AI/discrimination ban binomial will require the adaptation of anti-discrimination legislation, introducing regulations that impose algorithmic transparency, explainability and accountability. The analysis of the various documents and regulations, both in the European Union and in our country, relating to the protection of the rights of workers in the context of algorithmic business management, will be the subject of this work. And its main shortcoming, the exclusively individual approach, the absence of instruments for trade union protection of labour rights, will be verified.  For this reason, the competences of trade union representatives in the control of AI will be analysed and proposals for regulatory reform will be formulated.

The digital revolution is a complex challenge for the German trade unions. On the one hand, this is due to general problems of the German trade union movement like declining organising power; on the other hand, digitalisation is a multi-layered process that is developing in different forms, ranging from the 'Industry 4.0' to the platform economy. In addressing these challenges, German trade unions were able to draw on new strategic approaches based on principles such as organising, participation and the activation of works councils. Basically, trade unions are trying to influence digitalisation and its effects on the basis of new initiatives and, in doing so, to reposition themselves as interest representatives of workers. While the activation of works councils is at the forefront of trade union initiatives on 'Industry 4.0', the initiatives in the platform economy are more diverse, but also more restricted. And while the proliferation of works councils forms a limit for the activation strategies, the platform strategies are limited by their high costs and effort compared to the relatively lower return. 

The platform economy ('gig' economy) in its two variants as localized services (Uber, Deliveroo, Glovo) and as work in the cloud (Crowdwork, Amazon Turk, Upwork) is a new growing business model that presents important challenges for trade unions. The paper analyses the characteristics of the platform economy from a union organizing perspective using the union power resources approach. In a second step, experiences with collective action and union organizing in this sector are examined based on empirical studies, documents and activist websites and the author's conversations with platform workers. The difficulties and potentialities of union action in the platform economy are identified. The conclusions classify the distinct forms of collective organization and reflect on the impacts of this business model beyond the sector itself for the future of digital capitalism.

This paper addresses the role that serialized audiovisual fiction produced by public television in Mexico has in the promotion of democratic values considering as a framework the crisis of representative democracy and the current socio-technological transformations in the media system. The objective is to diagnose its state in order to determine the opportunities it has for democracy, conceiving it as a cultural policy. A qualitative methodology with a documentary-analytical approach is followed to review the production of serialized audiovisual fiction of public television in Mexico through the elaboration of a database. It is shown that Canal Once has produced 96% of the teleseries since 1999, which makes it a precursor in the matter. Structural reasons for this have not been found, but probably institutional ones by translating the mandate as public television to inform, educate and entertain with the operationalization of the concept of quality entertainment. It is concluded that there is a civic-educational potential from edutainment in the national production of audiovisual fiction as a tool for intervention in public television in Mexico given its scarce use by the different public television systems, its persistence and historical predominance in media entertainment as well as the enjoyment it implies.

Faithful modeling of the femur accounting for bone distribution and material orthotropic behavior is presented. In this study, a biofidel femur Finite Element Model (FEM) has been developed from Computerized Tomography (CT) scans using a specific combination of software’s to correctly represent bone physiology and structural behavior. Proper identification of trabecular bone arrangement and distribution in the proximal diaphysis enabled modeling and definition of material properties. The faithful femur model proposed allows us to correctly account for non-isotropic properties to the proximal end explaining the critical structural role played by trabecular bone that should be taken into account in the design of a new innovative prosthetic system.