2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.31178/AUBD.2022.04

Abstract: This study offers a critical analysis of the future of labor law as shaped both by the structural transformations resulting from the effects of the COVID-19 crisis and by the acceleration of earlier developments in its field, ranging from the increasing complexity of legal relationships between workers, employers, and the state to the very nature of work itself. The Fourth Industrial Revolution also creates factors that have both a direct and indirect impact on labor law; the consequences of these developments lead to the inevitable adaptation of labor law, not its disappearance, just as the processes underlying that revolution may transform the components and substance of work without eliminating it. The study concludes with a selective overview of the consequences that the developments of 2020 have foreshadowed in the form of trends likely to continue in 2021 and beyond, as well as some post-pandemic responses in the field of social law.

Keywords: automation, employment relationship, labor law, inequality, digitization, working time, paternity leave.