Untangled researcher, Zuzanna Kowalik of IBS presented preliminary research results showing that employees in Poland’s business services sector welcome automation, rather than fearing its effects, because it relieves the burden of tedious, repetitive tasks. The qualitative case study, carried out as part of UNTANGLED, was presented at the Social Boundaries of Work conference in Lublin, Poland on 19-20 May.

UNTANGLED held our General Assembly on 16 May, 2022 – our first in-person consortium meeting. More than a year ago we started UNTANGLED remotely due to Covid19, and it was good to finally see each other at HIVA Leuven. We discussed our progress on researching the impact of technological innovations, globalisation & demographics on various aspects of the labour market. We also planned our next steps: papers, workshops, and conferences.

UNTANGLED will host its third Open Virtual Expert Café on 21 June at 4 PM CET. This format creates a platform to connect people working on labour issues who are looking at digitalisation, globalisation, skills, migration and related trends.

An article by UNTANGLED researcher Eduard Storm of the RWI–Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, “Task specialization and the Native-Foreign Wage Gap”, has been publishedin LABOUR: Review of Labour Economics and Industrial Relations, Volume 36, Issue 2.