The European Federation of food, agriculture and tourism trade unions, EFFAT, is a single umbrella organisation serving trade unions throughout the food processing chain in Europe, “from field to fork”. Our 120 national member organisations bring together over 2.6 million union affiliates and represent workers in all branches of agriculture, in food processing and its allied industries, and in the hotel, restaurant, catering and tourism sector.
Digitalisation is a top priority of the EFFAT agenda since already many years. It includes two main components: robotisation in all its forms (material and virtual) on the one hand, and a new business model, the platform economy, on the other. This project will focus on the impact of robotisation and automation in the European food and drink industry.
Robotisation encompasses all the computerisation and automation phenomena that enable robots to carry out non-routine manual and cognitive tasks. Robots may be either real (smart factories, driverless cars, 3D printers, etc.) or virtual (software, algorithms, production process management and control systems, artificial intelligence, etc.).
Today robots replace humans in complex and specific tasks as they are stronger and more accurate. Tomorrow they will likely replace human brain through predictive analysis and diagnostics.
This project aims at assessing the possible impact of automatization and robotisation in the European food and drink industry in the medium and long term focusing in particular on:
- the digitalisation of tasks, jobs and workplaces;
- the human-machines interactions;
- work organisation (including working time and the concept of smart factories)
- output and productivity;
- working conditions and employment contracts;
- improvements and challenges for workplace health and safety;
- the required skills and qualifications;
- reconciliation of private and working life (right to disconnect);
- privacy, GPS tracking and data protection;
- labour relations, workers participation and collective bargaining.
A full description of the objectives, conditions, required expertise and skills, as well as the time schedule of the project can be found in the enclosed tender specifications:
We kindly ask all candidates who have the required skills and who might be interested in in the project to deliver their bid by 28 April 2019 at the latest by registered mail and by e-mail to:
Enrico SOMAGLIA
EFFAT
Avenue Louise, 130 – boîte 3
1050 Bruxelles
Belgium
E-mail: e.somaglia@effat.org
