Artificial intelligence and labour rights in Poland. A fresh Spirit of Management

In Poland he is increasingly not a man, but the algorithm determines the rate of work, the amount of earnings or even the release. As a Citizen Accelerator of Innovation, in cooperation with the Institute of civilian Affairs, we decided to check how our country responds to these changes – we asked the State Labour Inspectorate and the Ombudsman. The answers show that national state institutions have missed another technological revolution, and workers are left alone with the decision of “invisible bosses”.

The State Labour Inspection (PIP) was asked by us about worker complaints and checking activities in the context of the usage of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace. Our questions included statistic on complaints related to automated surveillance technologies or worker management.

We received the answer on 14 August 2025.

The Chief Labour Inspectorate reported that it does not keep separate statistic on workers' complaints or violations of labour law related to the usage of artificial intelligence.

The data are collected only in accordance with the provisions in question, without indicating whether the case afraid AI tools. Since 2020, however, inspectors have been controlling companies operating through platforms specified as Uber, Bolt or Glovo – in fresh years, the number of interventions has increased and ended with occurrences and safety decisions. Is monitoring of food supply systems adequate in the era of automation?

Modern individual – employable and flexible

In the book "A fresh Spirit of Capitalism" – Boltanski and Chiapello showed that capitalism does not defend itself against criticism as much as it consumes it and transforms it into fuel.

In the 1960s, the model of Fordian capitalism continued to dominate, where the economy was based on large workplaces, and the management model assumed worker management through rigid rules, a clear hierarchy and division of roles. This model was designed to build a sense of safety through unchangeable employment on a permanent basis and a predictable career path. In return, he required obedience to the accepted organizational pyramid inside the workplace.

The management model of the 1960s turned out to be obsolete in the face of 2 waves of criticism – social related to the fight against inequality and exploitation, and artistic revolting against bureaucracy, postulating greater independence, authenticity and creativity in the workplace.

Over the next decades, capitalism devoured criticism and turned it into a fresh management model. Fordysm ran out, and in his place appeared rhetoric about individualism, mobility, and worker creativity. fresh concepts began to reign in managerial literature: networks, projects, flexibility, innovation. The book “The fresh Spirit of Capitalism” reads:

"The large man is not attached to 1 profession or 1 kind of qualification, but he has the ability to adapt, he is flexible, he can go from 1 situation to another, very different, and to it he is versatile, he can change activities or tools depending on the kind of relation he enters with people or objects. It is thanks to adaptability and versatility employment, which, within the business world, means that it is able to integrate into a fresh project."

Participation in the network thus replaces erstwhile loyalty to the company. First of all, the worker is to be flexible, mobile, easy adapt to fresh situations and the environment.

In exchange for the liberation from the yoke of the management model from the 1960s, it must endure the effects of precarization: civilian contracts, instability and social security, life from plan to plan and in the rhythm of deadlines.

Today the question arises whether we are entering another model of management – capitalism cannot feed on artistic criticism indefinitely, so it starts preying on our fear of monotony and inefficiency. Capitalism has found a link for the promise of freedom from what is "borrowed" with the increased control of workers.

Is the “new spirit of capitalism” the spirit of the algorithm that controls us under the appearance of emancipation?

A fresh spirit of management in Poland

Algorithmic management is simply a modern form of occupation management, covering the full employment process – from recruitment to termination of cooperation. Those employed in offices first encountered an omnipresent, algorithmic supervisor mainly due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but in many industries – specified as call center, logistics, and in peculiar warehouse or courier work – employees have long been operating in specified a model.

There are already jobs where the worker does not enter into a relation with the manager or another colleagues, but constantly communicates with a strategy based on artificial intelligence. Personnel decisions relating to employment are taken automatically on the basis of data, without time for discussion or correction in exceptional situations. The worker becomes dependent on evaluations generated by algorithms that form his position and further work opportunities, and this generates problems related to algorithmic discrimination and abuses associated with the automation of HR management processes.

One of the loudest cases is the activity of the global giant – Amazon – in Poland. As the Panoptykon Foundation wrote in 2023, algorithms track the pace of work and automatically make warnings for not making standards.

The employees complained that they did not know on the basis of which criteria the strategy calculates the standards made by the worker and for what precisely you can get a informing or punishment. Workers' Initiative trade unionists tried to intervene, but the company was blocked by global procedures and refused to engage with worker representation.

As early as 2022, in the Poznań Labour Court, a case concerning the dismissal of Amazon's employees was dealt with, which was mostly based on the assessment of People Analytics systems. As “Business Puls” reported, algorithmic management decisions were contested. The court pointed out that specified practices may violate labour law and call into question the legality of global corporate activities in Poland, which usage algorithmized worker assessment systems.

Similar mechanisms can be seen in the supply industry.

In 2021, the media, including “Business Insider Poland”, reported on strike strikes of Glovo couriers in Gdańsk and Białystok. Without consulting the employees, the accounting rules were changed.

The remuneration algorithm stopped charging for access to the restaurant, which importantly reduced the income of many people. The couriers organized protests, the case ran widely social media. In retaliation, the company applied repression – any of the participants of the strike were blocked in the application and consequently their livelihoods were deprived. The State Labour Inspectorate conducted inspections on the subject of the freight courier industry, but they focused mainly on formal and legal employment aspects alternatively than algorithmic supervision, which remains beyond clear regulation.

The usage of algorithms raises doubts besides in the public sector. An example is ZUS, which has been utilizing systems that kind people and companies for fraud control for respective years, including medical exemptions. As the "Spidersweb+" portal wrote in 2025, it is not known on the basis of which data and criteria these algorithms work, and the selected persons are not so able to competition the control decision. The Authority explains this by improving the work of institutions, but the deficiency of transparency gives emergence to concerns about possible abuses, especially erstwhile the decision of the latent algorithm depends on the financial and professional situation of controlled persons.

New technologies and the future of work

The task “Strengthening the Councils of Workers – fresh Technologies and the Future of Work”, carried out by the Citizen Accelerator of Innovation in cooperation with the Institute of civilian Affairs, aims to educate and network organised workers so that they can respond effectively to the challenges of developing tools based on artificial intelligence.

By sending requests for access to public information to the State Labour Inspectorate and the Ombudsman, we wanted to check whether there were already situations in Poland where artificial intelligence could be a tool of abuse against workers.

Whether state institutions control the process of algorithmisation of the manadium and whether workers have tools to respond to fresh forms of discrimination and abuse.

By letter received on 22 August 2025. The Ombudsman's Office has declared that 1 case has so far been brought into the RPO closely related to civilian rights violations by artificial intelligence – alleged algorithmic discrimination or automatic decision-making towards employees.

In 2019, the RPO then asked the Chief Labour Inspector to analyse a case controlled by the Treasury of the Bank, fearing the usage of technology for worker evaluation. PKO BP president showed that the programme was voluntary and its aim was to advance charity and affirmative attitude. At the same time, the RPO's consequence is vague, as it acknowledges that any controlled units have demonstrated irregularities in the working regulations and monitoring rules, but at the same time it has been established that the strategy did not violate the provisions of the GDPR due to the fact that it did not process biometric data or identify people.

At the same time, the PIP stresses that it does not have information on cases of infringements straight arising from AI strategy decisions and does not carry out analyses or guidance in this respect. However, legislative work is underway at the Ministry of Digital Affairs on the Act on Artificial Intelligence Systems, and at the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy on the implementation of the EU Platform Work Directive. Pending the adoption of fresh regulations, it is hard to identify future PIP tasks in the field of protection of workers from automated technologies supervision and management of staff, and inspectors themselves have not yet taken part in specialist AI training. No information campaigns are planned on this subject, either for employees or for employers.

There is another question – did the Polish strategy not sleep over the management revolution, which already has a crucial impact on the labour market, but is not decently controlled and monitored?

Media relations and trade union talks clearly show that state institutions are not keeping pace with changes in the labour market. The ignorance of institutions in this area is worrying, and this gap begins to be filled by NGOs. However, should it not be that the PIP, which has the tools essential to control and monitor jobs, should set standards and transfer cognition and, in the 3rd sector, see a possible partner for cooperation alternatively than a substitute in the face of a fresh challenge?

Against this background, it is clear that the PIP operates with limited resources. Personnel shortages, under-financing and deficiency of training in fresh technologies mean that the state has no tools to respond effectively to the challenges of algorithmic management and artificial intelligence at work. Financial, HR and PIP expert reinforcement is essential if the institution is to keep up with changes in the labour marketplace and defend the rights employed in the digital management revolution.

A fresh spirit of management in Europe

The introduction of artificial intelligence into jobs, which seems inevitable in certain areas, requires thoughtful regulations that defend workers' rights.

In Spain, the first AI surveillance agency in Europe to monitor the usage of algorithms in different sectors to guarantee the protection of workers. In Germany, however, there is simply a strong co-decision mechanics for workers – all decision to implement AI systems in the company must be consulted with the advice of employees, which gives them a real impact on working conditions and the pace of change. In France, however, there was a loud echo of a punishment imposed on Amazon for overly invasive monitoring of warehouse workers utilizing AI systems – state authorities considered that the technology was in breach of privacy, showing that supervision of automatic performance tracking was necessary. Solutions ensuring the protection of workers and transparency of algorithmical decisions are necessary. In Poland, state institutions specified as PIP seem to be deprived of the essential tools to address the increasing problem.

Artificial intelligence is surely selling itself as a tool by which we do not gotta waste valuable hours of work on reports, tables, analyses so that we can focus on what is truly crucial and creative. At the same time, artificial intelligence is an “invisible” boss who knows how long it took you to compose an email, how fast it takes you to decision the packages in the warehouse, how long it takes you to break, what portions of the study you've improved, how many seconds you've suspended between 1 task and the other. Artificial intelligence will not motivate us or yell at us, but will count. And the figures, unlike human opinions, are not negotiable.

In this logic, artificial intelligence is not a neutral technology, but another incarnation of the executive fantasy of complete worker transparency. In addition, utilizing our own cognition and experience, which we feed algorithm servers.