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The UNI Leadership Summit on the Future World of Work, seeks to shed light on the challenges presented by the Future World of Work.

The event is being held on Monday 9th October at UNI headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland and will help inform discussions of the UNI World Executive Board which meeting Tuesday 10th -Wednesday 10th to discuss the programme for the upcoming UNI World Congress in Liverpool June 2018.

The Future World of Work will feature strongly at the World Congress and will also be the theme of a series of events being organised by the city of Liverpool to coincide with the Congress. UNi was ahead of the curve when in conjunction with CNBC it held a televised debate on the Future World of Work at its Cape Town World Congress back in 2014. Consequently UNI as become a pioneer and thought-leader on this subject during the last few years.

The Leadership Summit features a number of experts in the field of digital work. led by Dr Karachalios, the managing director of the IEEE Standards Association.

For details of all speakers see below:

Moderator

Anna BYHOVSKAYA, is policy advisor to the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) covering innovation and technology policies, the digital economy, skills policies, the OECD Ministerial Council and Forum, as well as the G20 jointly with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). She worked as the policy coordinator of the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE) as part of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC), at the OECD and as a broadcast journalist in Paris and Berlin.

Speakers

Valerio DE STEFANO, is a BOFZAP Professor of Labour Law at KU Leuven, in Belgium. He obtained his Master of Sciences' Degree in Law (2004-2006) and his Doctorate (2007- 2011) at the Università Commerciale "Luigi Bocconi" in Milan. After his Doctorate, he received a postdoctoral fellowship for four years (2011-2014). Since 2011, he also taught labour law as "Professore a contratto" at the Bocconi Law School. During his postdoctoral mandate, he was a post-doctoral member at Clare Hall College at the University of Cambridge and a visiting academic at the University College of London.  He also practiced law as a member of the Milan Bar, in Italy. From 2014 to July 2017, he worked at the International Labour Office (ILO) in Geneva, where he authored and edited several publications in the areas of non-standard employment, work in the "platform" (gig) economy and fundamental labour rights, labour dispute resolutions and labour and human rights in global supply chains.

Lowell PETERSON, has been Executive Director of the Writers Guild of America, East since 2008.Peterson’s vision is a Guild that can be the center of writers’ creative and professional lives, even as the distribution, financial, and artistic models continue to change. His digital media initiatives have included seminars and other events to explore the financial, technological, and artistic dynamics of new media; a digital media training program; and organizing creators in that sector. He worked to expand the skills of newswriters and ensure their continued relevance as broadcast news shifts to additional platforms. He has worked to increase opportunities for film and television writers. Under his leadership, the Guild’s organizing and communications capacity have been greatly expanded.

Peterson was partner in the law firm Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein where he represented a number of unions, including the Communications Workers of America, the Laborers, and the United Auto Workers. Representing laid-off workers in the Enron and WorldCom bankruptcies, he won tens of millions of dollars in severance pay, and in many other cases he defended unions from attacks on organizing and other activities. He also successfully litigated against employers for evading contract obligations.

Konstantinos KARACHALIOS, is a globally recognized leader in standards development and intellectual property, Dr. Ing. Konstantinos Karachalios is managing director of the IEEE Standards Association and a member of the IEEE Management Council.As managing director, he has been enhancing IEEE efforts in global standards development in strategic emerging technology fields, through technical excellence of staff, expansion of global presence and activities and emphasis on inclusiveness and good governance, including reform of the IEEE standards-related patent policy.

As member of the IEEE Management Council, he championed expansion of IEEE influence in key techno-political areas, including consideration of social and ethical implications of technology, according to the IEEE mission to advance technology for humanity. Results have been rapid in coming and profound; IEEE is becoming the place to go for debating and building consensus on issues such as a trustworthy and inclusive Internet and ethics in design of autonomous systems.

Before IEEE, Konstantinos played a crucial role in successful French-German cooperation in coordinated research and scenario simulation for large-scale nuclear reactor accidents. And with the European Patent Office, his experience included establishing EPO’s patent academy, the department for delivering technical assistance for developing countries and the public policy department, serving as an envoy to multiple U.N. organizations.

Konstantinos earned a Ph.D. in energy engineering (nuclear reactor safety) and masters in mechanical engineering from the University of Stuttgart.

Christina COLCLOUGH is Director of Platform and Agency Workers, Digitalisation and Trade for UNI Global Union. Often described as a tech-nerd with a social conscience, Colclough supports UNIs advocacy and global impact in relation to the future world of work.With a long history in the union movement and a background in research, Christina engages with global institutions, workers, experts and companies to raise awareness of the need to innovate policies and practices to make sure that the work of tomorrow is empowering, inclusive and transparent.

Keywords: Data, data protection, AI, digital economy, social rights, skills and the platform economy.

Follow Christina on Twitter: @cjcolclough

And stay tuned with our Future of Work Website:  www.thefutureworldofwork.org 

Renata AVILA is a human rights lawyer specialized in Intellectual Property and Technology. Involved in Internet and Human Rights research since 2006, she works with the Web Inventor Sir Tim Berners - Lee in an effort to uphold human rights in the digital age as his Senior Digital Rights Advisor for the Web Foundation. She serves as a Board Member of Creative Commons. She is also a trustee of Courage Foundation, a Dutch foundation assisting whistleblowers at risk, advisor for the Whistleblower Network in Germany, and a member of Diem25´s Coordinating Collective, a movement to save democracy in Europe. She serves as Steering Committee member for the OECD Committee on the Digital Economy Policy, among other roles. 

She is currently writing a book on “Digital Colonialism”, exploring digital trade, technology sovereignty, emerging forms of inequality and more generally, exploring threats to democracy in the digital age. 

Roxana WIDMER-ILIESCU, worked with the Romanian Parliament in youth related issues and international relations, before joining in 1998 the International Telecommunication Union ITU’s Development Sector (ITU-D). The ITU is the UN specialized agency for information and communication technology. It’s Digital Inclusion mandate covers "persons with specific needs" which include: women, children, youth, persons with disabilities (PwD) and Indigenous People. As Senior Programme Officer for Digital Inclusion she provides relevant policy advice to ITU Member States, develops and manages initiatives, activities and projects that enable these groups with specific needs to leverage their social and economic empowerment through knowledge, access to and use of ICTs.

Ms. Widmer is directly involved in the development of ITU global campaign International Girls in ICT Day that raise awareness about ICT job opportunities and encourage girls and young women to prepare for and take up careers in ICTs as well as in the joint ILO and ITU Digital Skills for Decent Jobs Campaign, which as part of the Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth aims to foster decent and inclusive employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. As Focal Point for the ITU-D Study Group on Question 7/1 “Access to telecommunication/ICT services by persons with disabilities and with specific needs”she is also advising ITU Member States and Sector Members in implementing ICT accessibly services and solutions for PwD in their respective countries, thus insuring their inclusion in line with the Article 9 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of PWD (CRPD). The final goal of her work is to achieve an inclusive digital society, globally.
Ms. Widmer has a background education in law and Master’s degrees in International Law and in Strategic Management of Telecommunications.

Helen BLAKELY is a research associate at the Wales Institute of Social Economic Research Data and Methods (WISERD), Cardiff University, and has taught the sociology of globalisation, social change and trade unionism. Her research interests include social welfare policy, community development, gender, work and the labour movement. Her PhD examined the significance of women's unpaid work in the context of their interactions with a radically reforming welfare state in the United Kingdom and she has published on this topic. One of her current research projects, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, examines why people join trade unions, with a particular focus on the importance of history and place. Helen is currently working with UNI Global Union alongside Dr Steve Davies on a study focusing on trade unions' responses to the changing world of work.