The research group collaborates closely and on a long-term basis with academics from abroad. As Mercator Fellows, they also work in Münster at times. However, they remain closely connected to the project even beyond their stays on site.
The following academics support our project as Mercator Fellows:
Leonardo Battista is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Labour Law at the Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, where he is affiliated with the Department of Sociology and Business Law. He currently serves as Managing Editor of the Italian Labour Law e-Journal. He has been a Visiting Researcher at Lund University, the University of Córdoba, and the University of Münster.
He is the author of the monographs "Il lavoro autonomo nel diritto dell'Unione europea" (Cacucci Editore, 2024) and "Il lavoro sommerso e il ruolo dell'Autorità europea del lavoro" (Cacucci Editore, Bari, 2022), both published in Italian.
Since March 2024, he has been included following a competitive selection based on qualifications under the Call for Experts, in the European Labour Authority's (ELA) Pool of Experts, within the Capacity Building section.
He was awarded the Marco Biagi Prize for the best doctoral thesis in Labour Law and Industrial Relations, jointly conferred by the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Policies and ADAPT (Association for International and Comparative Studies on Labour Law and Industrial Relations).
His research interests focus on the evolution of EU labour law in response to the transformation of the world of work, with particular attention to the impact of algorithmic management and the European Union's growing regulatory intervention in this field. He also examines the role of trade unions as key actors in safeguarding workers' fundamental rights through the exercise of information and consultation rights, collective bargaining, and the promotion of judicial and administrative enforcement.
Within the project, this research will be developed through an analysis of the role of trade unions in identifying and challenging algorithmic discrimination, facilitating workers' access to justice, and ensuring that the deployment of AI systems in the workplace complies with labour law, anti-discrimination law, and fundamental rights standards.
Over the past years, the EU legislator has adopted three instruments that markedly expand its engagement with wage-setting: the Adequate Minimum Wage Directive, the Pay Transparency Directive, and the Platform Work Directive. These instruments promote collective bargaining coverage and individual and collective information rights. EU non-discrimination law is built around the individual worker and a comparator, while collective bargaining and the information rights of workers’ representatives act on behalf of the workforce as a group. These are two structurally different modes of protection that current wage regulation keeps largely separate. On a substantive account of equality, collective participation can be seen as one of equality’s own constitutive dimensions, raising the question of what genuine participation actually requires once pay is set by an algorithm rather than negotiated or classified in a traditional sense. Taking algorithmic wage-setting as a case study, that is a pay system whose individualised, continuously shifting outcomes are too unstable to be captured by either a job-category grid or a classical comparator-based discrimination claim, the project seeks to identify how the individualised and collective dimensions of wage justice can be meaningfully connected, rather than treated as separate or competing tasks.
Johannes Warter is a University Assistant (Post-Doc) at the University of Salzburg, where he is affiliated with the Department of Labour and Business Law.
He is the author of the monographs "Crowdwork" (ÖGB Verlag, 2017) and "Gesundheits-Apps in der österreichischen Sozialversicherung" (Manz Verlag, 2024).
He was awarded first place in the Labour Law Science Award of the Austrian Chamber of Labour and received a Johann Böhm Scholarship from the Austrian Trade Union Federation. He was also awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award by the University of Salzburg and the Merit Award of the Ars Docendi State Prize for Teaching by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research.
His research focuses on the intersection of digitalisation, labour law, and social law, in particular the legal classification of algorithmic management and automated decision-making in employment relationships.
He brings this research focus to the project, examining in particular the extent to which the GDPR, the Platform Work Directive, and the AI Act effectively protect individuals affected by automated decisions.
His list of publications can be found here.