Employment relationship and big data analytics: rules and limits for workers’ data-driven profiling

The use of big data analytics is leading a transition from human to “codified knowledge” in almost every aspect of society, including the management of the employment relationship. Advanced analysis of data makes it possible to screen the workers by combining disconnected data in a synthesis that provides further information expressing personal or professional features of the individuals involved. The chapter highlights that these processing techniques rely on prediction and correlation and offer inaccurate and non reliable knowledge, harming the right to control over one’s own information and other fundamental rights such as dignity, personal identity and right to work. Identified the major risks for workers’ rights derived from data analytics, the paper propones rules and limits for data-driven decisions in the Italian labour law framework. While the European Data Protection Regulation offers new procedures and measures to reduce the impact of automated data processing on individuals, in the Italian system, article 8 of the Workers’ Statute in conjunction with the general principles concerning Data Protection, may still provide a proper guarantee for workers’ rights. To rule out any possibility to collect and process data revealing sensitive information about the worker, we should prohibit massive and indiscriminate processing, even in the early stages of collection and storage. This goal may be achieved by the introduction of strict and efficient anonymisation procedures to select non personal data and then provide consent to process them with algorithmic techniques.