Professor Ioannis Lianos, Professor of Global Competition Law and Public Policy at UCL Laws, delivered the keynote speech at the bi-annual International Federation of Musicians' conference on freelance work held in Copenhagen on June 27th-28th.
His presentation focused on the topic of 'collective bargaining and competition law'. Professor Lianos examined the new economic models that emerge out of the development of digital capitalism and how these affect the nature of work and the labour share in the economy. He emphasised the need to develop a fresh thinking about the interaction of competition law with labour law and human rights law and to develop further collective bargaining as a way to tame the power of digital platforms that are now controlling essential bottlenecks in the digital economy. He explained the progress so far achieved and the regained importance of collective bargaining as this is manifested by some recent case law of the Court of Justice of the EU, some recent amendments to the Competition Act in Ireland, a recent decision of the European Committee on Social Rights and the recently adopted EU Copyright Directive.
The transformation of the nature of work and labour's share in the digital economy and the role of law forms part of an ongoing research work undertaken at UCL Laws, and led by Professor Nicholas Countouris (Professor of Labour Law and European Law) and Professor Ioannis Lianos, in collaboration with a large interdisciplinary team from various jurisdictions and in cooperation with a number of external partners, from trade unions, the ILO and civil society.
More on the International Federation of Musicians and the bi-annual conference can be found on their website.