Digital technologies and systems are being rapidly implemented by businesses looking for cost efficiencies and productivity gains. Competitive markets increasingly require firms to have better data, process automatability and sophisticated uses of artificial intelligence (AI).

But this rapid digital transformation has also surfaced many new concerns about jobs and workers’ rights. Much attention has focused on predictions of an AI-led ‘hollowing out’ of the labour market, with millions of jobs made obsolete by ‘intelligent’ systems – though these remain largely speculative predictions. But fears of mass unemployment are not the only driver of today’s unease. Globally, workers, unions and governments are actively grappling with how digitalisation is reshaping workplaces, management practices and workers’ experiences. Job tasks and employer expectations are shifting, often without clear avenues for workers to influence the pace or direction of change.

Different models are emerging of what worker involvement in this process might look like. In January 2026, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) announced a landmark deal with global computing giant Microsoft, establishing a new ‘framework agreement’ for workers’ rights in the technology sector. The deal commits Microsoft to a more consultative and inclusive model of managing technological development, with unions getting a seat at the table to actively negotiate outcomes for workers before they take effect.

From voluntary agreements to binding regulation

The ACTU-Microsoft announcement is a major step forward in protecting workers’ digital rights. Yet, while significant, such bespoke and voluntary deals are invariably patchy – they typically apply only to a limited subset of workers (in this case, Microsoft workers). Missing in Australia, until just last month, has been the broader, binding coverage that comes from government action. This reflects a general tendency for regulation to lag behind the adoption of disruptive technologies, as seen with social media apps, digital platform ‘gig’ work and, most recently, AI.

Now, in a major development that is bound to pique the interest of policymakers across Australia, the New South Wales Parliament has passed the Work Health and Safety Amendment (Digital Work Systems) Act 2026. The amendments embed digital systems squarely within existing work health and safety duties for employers in NSW.

The legislation makes it a primary duty of care for a person conducting a business or undertaking to ensure that the use of a ‘digital work system’ does not jeopardise workers’ health and safety. This includes a new obligation for NSW businesses to provide reasonable assistance to union officials who hold workplace health and safety (WHS) entry permits to allow them to access and inspect a digital work system where there is a suspected breach of the Act. The definition of a ‘digital work system’ is broad; it includes algorithms, AI, automation and online platforms – all of which are now widely used in different forms across industries and firms.

In a strict sense, this is a workplace safety reform. But it reflects a deeper shift. It recognises that workplace digitalisation is not just a neutral business tool. It is fundamentally altering how work is governed and experienced by workers, sometimes improving efficiency, but often intensifying pressure and reducing worker autonomy.

Across many sectors, digital systems now determine who works when, how quickly tasks must be completed, and how work performance is measured. In warehousing and logistics, scanners and sensors fuel AI tools that monitor output and enforce performance standards. In call centres, real-time data analytics shape the flow, pace and quality of worker-customer interactions. In platform work, apps assign tasks and can suspend workers with little notice.

When these systems increase work intensity, generate unpredictable schedules, or penalise workers automatically, the risks are not only economic. The hazards for workers can also be physical and psychological. Fatigue, stress and unsafe pacing can all follow from how work is digitally organised.

Treating digital systems as workplace infrastructure

The new NSW laws make clear that such risks fall within the core duty of employers to provide a safe workplace. That is noteworthy and potentially game changing. It signals that digitally allocated and managed work is not exempt from workplace health and safety laws simply because it is mediated by software.

There is also a broader principle at stake, which can be usefully understood through the lens of dignity at work. As NSW Industrial Relations Minister, Sophie Cotsis, said in support of the legislation: ‘The bill ensures the safety and dignity of workers in the digital age.’ Dignity at work rests on basic foundations: economic security, fair treatment by employers and work that enables people to exercise skill and judgement, rather than being reduced to a metric.

Some digital work systems support those goals. For instance, they can make rostering more efficient or reduce arbitrary managerial decision-making. But when they operate opaquely, or when they accelerate work demands to an impossible pace for even committed human workers, then they can serve to undermine both safety and workers’ fundamental dignity.

By allowing WHS entry permit holders to get access to relevant digital systems, where there is a suspected contravention, the NSW legislation creates a new avenue for scrutiny. It does not give workers or unions free rein over a company’s sensitive technology. The powers are tied to safety concerns and subject to regulatory guidelines. But the law does acknowledge that workers and their representatives need visibility into how digital work systems allocate and control work in order to effectively assess risks of new and different kinds arising from transformative contemporary workplace technologies.

This matters because individual workers are rarely in a position to interrogate complex digital systems on their own. If a worker believes a new algorithm is contributing to unsafe workloads, proving it can be difficult without access to the underlying system. Embedding digital systems within WHS obligations thus shifts the burden back onto businesses to ensure these tools are safe.

There is no pre-determined path for how artificial intelligence and data driven systems will reshape work. Organisations make choices about how technology is designed and deployed. Governments make choices about how those systems are regulated.

Lessons for other jurisdictions

The NSW amendments suggest one such choice. They treat digital work systems as part of the infrastructure of work that must meet established safety standards. In doing so, they open space for collective scrutiny where risks are suspected.

Other jurisdictions could follow a similar approach, introducing WHS-style obligations for digital work systems adapted to local contexts. A more ambitious option at the Federal level would go beyond safety obligations, embedding a principle of digital dignity in the Fair Work Act 2009 and enshrining workers’ rights to scrutiny and safeguards over the technologies that organise their work.

As digital systems become embedded in everyday working life, the central question will not be whether they improve productivity, though this has been a central theme in business opposition to the amended laws. What will matter at least as much, for business reputation and social cohesion, is whether they do so without compromising workers’ health, security and sense of fair treatment. Safety is the legal hook in this reform. But beneath it lies a wider concern: that in the rush to automate and optimise, we do not lose sight of the basic dignity that work provides and the expectations of a fair go that Australians have long prized.

Andreas Pekarek is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on platforms and the future of work, the Human Resource Management profession and practice, unions and industrial relations institutions, and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of work. He has published widely on these topics in leading international journals.

Josh Healy is an Associate Professor in the School of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney and the Director of its Master of Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations postgraduate program. His research and teaching expertise are in the fields of employment relations, labour economics, human resource management and the sociology of work, with a focus on developments shaping the future of work.

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