Compliance and enforcement of workers’ rights in the age of AI

Algorithmic management and Artificial Intelligence systems are reshaping the organisation of work, raising complex regulatory issues for the effective protection of workers’ rights. At the core of these challenges lies the structural opacity of such systems, which undermines both ex ante compliance and ex post enforcement. Using the EU regulatory framework as a case study, this chapter investigates whether, and to what extent, existing legal instruments can address this opacity by leveraging the traceability of algorithmic processes to strengthen both compliance and enforcement. It argues that mechanisms originally developed outside the traditional domain of labour law – such as impact as-sessments and transparency obligations – can be functionally repurposed to reinforce the protection of labour rights. Analysing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA), and the Platform Work Directive (PWD), the chapter shows how these tools can fos-ter anticipatory compliance and provide evidentiary support for enforcement, especially when made operational by workers’ representatives. While the PWD offers the most advanced example to date, its sectoral scope also reveals the limits of frameworks that hinge on technological typologies rather than on the underlying managerial practices. The chapter concludes by suggesting that a more inte-grated regulatory strategy may be essential to overcome the current limitations and to ensure effective compliance and enforcement across the evolving landscape of algorithmic management.