Following an overview of the situation of digitalisation in the food and drink industry, EFFAT affiliates in the food sector gathered in Bologna to discuss consequences for jobs, mainly in terms of impacts on required workers’ skills, training programmes and wages.
Ensuring cooperation between man, machines and systems that works towards the mutual benefit of both workers and company represents a corner stone on the route to successful implementation of digital technologies and automated production systems in the food industry. The following themes were in particular addressed during the workshop: digitalisation and transformation of worker’s skills, education and training programmes, role of social dialogue in digitalisation processes, sharing of benefits deriving from digitalisation processes and digitalisation and senior workers.
One of the conclusions that was unanimously agreed was that benefits deriving from digitalisation processes should be shared among employers and employees to guarantee both the possibility to attract new talents/retain the existing ones, and to promote an inclusive environment, so that workers perceive it as a win-win situation. Clearly, a successful implementation of digital technologies in the food industry must necessarily include an open social dialogue.
The final conclusions and recommendations of this project will be presented to a conference in Brussels on 15 October
