After the visit to Amazon warehouses, the EU turns to algorithms evaluating employees
The European Commission wants to present the Quality Jobs Act on 3 December, with a chapter on algorithmic management. The new rules could also apply to offices where software measures working time and evaluates productivity.
An algorithm that sets targets based on the team's average results has a simple property: the faster people work, the higher it raises the bar. MEPs heard about this mechanism in Amazon warehouses and want new EU rules to regulate it. For companies outside logistics, this is a signal to check what their own tools know about employees.
What MEPs heard in Sosnowiec
From 26 to 28 October, a seven-member delegation from the European Parliament's Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) visited Amazon logistics centres in Germany and Poland. On 27 October, the MEPs were at the KTW1 facility in Sosnowiec, where they spoke with workers and trade union representatives about work pace and performance measurement systems.
Committee chair Li Andersson called this form of surveillance a “digital panopticon”. In an interview with EUobserver, she summed it up in one sentence:
When you work faster, you have to work even faster.
According to Andersson, employees do not know what data is collected about them, what it is used for, or how performance targets are created. Her account also suggests that a short break or equipment failure can end with intervention from a supervisor. Agata Wypiór from Solidarność, vice-chair of Amazon's European Works Council, spoke about constant assessment pressure that harms employees' mental condition. These are accounts from participants in the visit, not findings of proceedings that would confirm a breach of the law. Amazon responds that automation reduces physical effort and improves safety, and that the company focuses on transparency and cooperation with employee representatives.
Quality Jobs Act: the date is known, the scope is not yet
The initiative did not arise after the visit to Amazon; the visit only gave it a high-profile example. The European Commission published the Quality Jobs roadmap on 4 December 2025, and on 20 July 2026 opened the second stage of consultations with the social partners (document C(2026) 5109). One of the five areas is algorithmic management and AI at work: greater transparency of automated decisions and protection against excessive monitoring.
On 19 October, at a meeting of labour ministers in Luxembourg, European Commission Executive Vice-President Roxana Mînzatu expressed hope that the proposal would be adopted on 3 December. It is to be a single act with chapters on algorithmic management, subcontracting and health risks. Mînzatu announced that the new rules would not duplicate what is already in the AI Act and the GDPR.
This is where the uncertainty begins. Some countries, including France and Cyprus, believe the current law is sufficient. Some observers expect the chapter on algorithms to end up as guidelines rather than binding obligations.
The warehouse is the most visible case, but not the only one
Andersson is calling for three things: a list of data that employers must not collect, employees' access to information about themselves, and consultation with the workforce on technology deployments. Such rules could apply to any company that automatically assigns tasks and measures efficiency: manufacturing, retail, customer service centres and offices.
The market for productivity measurement tools is broad. At one end are programs that record working time together with screenshots and location, such as Hubstaff, often used with distributed teams and contractors. Further along are analytics tools like ActivTrak, which according to industry comparisons do not record keystrokes or the screen, only activity patterns. Microsoft Viva Insights does not install an agent on the computer at all, but uses data from Outlook, Teams and Microsoft 365.
Andrzej Buła, an MEP from the EMPL committee, gave an example from the warehouse: an employee should know how the time to scan a product is measured. In our view, the office equivalent could be the handling time of a support ticket, the number of tasks closed in a project system, or an activity indicator in a messenger app.
The company should inform the employee that they will be evaluated by an algorithm.
Three layers of rules that already exist
Employers are not waiting for the Quality Jobs Act empty-handed, because some rules already apply or will start applying very soon.
AI Act classifies AI systems used in employment as high-risk systems, including those used to monitor and assess employees' performance and behaviour, as well as to assign tasks based on behaviour. Obligations for these systems were supposed to apply from 2 August 2026. According to an analysis by the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Digital Omnibus regulation postponed them to 2 December 2027; we have not confirmed this information in a second independent source. The same analysis indicates that the obligation to inform people affected by a decision of such a system runs independently of that deadline. Emotion recognition in the workplace has been prohibited since 2 February 2025.
Platform Work Directive (2024/2831) must be implemented by 2 December 2026, the day before the planned presentation of the Quality Jobs Act. It requires transparency and human oversight of algorithms, and a decision to suspend an account or terminate cooperation must always be made by a human. The Polish draft law (UC160) was published on 6 August. Business organisations warn that in its current wording it may also cover some freelancers, IT specialists and digital services platforms.
GDPR and the Labour Code already apply today. Article 22 of the GDPR protects against a decision made solely by automated means if it significantly affects a person, and grants the right to human intervention, to express one's own point of view and to challenge the decision. The Labour Code regulates monitoring in Articles 22² and 22³. A legal analysis published in Forsal.pl indicates that continuous detection of inactivity and repeated alerts about low performance may in some situations be regarded as workplace bullying.
Opportunities and risks for the employer
The biggest risk lies in tools bought for one purpose and used for another. A program for billing hours to a client starts affecting bonuses, and an activity report becomes the basis for a dismissal conversation. That is when a company may enter the scope of Article 22 of the GDPR, and in the future also the AI Act, often without realising it.
The opportunity is on the side of companies that get this topic in order already now. In our view, a transparent assessment system is easier to defend in a dispute with an employee, and someone who understands the indicators is less likely to see them as surveillance. Before December, it is worth checking:
We do not yet know the exact obligations under the Quality Jobs Act, and they may turn out to be milder than the MEPs on the EMPL committee would like. However, the answers to these four questions will be useful regardless of the outcome of the December debate, because they are required by rules that already apply. When making decisions about specific implementations, it is worth consulting a lawyer specialising in labour law and data protection.