The high level objective of WE-TRANSFORM is to promote collectively prioritized themes on the future of jobs and working conditions across all existing and evolving transport modes by taking into account the digitisation and automation processes that are occurring and are expected to occur within the transport sector.
To achieve this objective, WE-TRANSFORM considers three specific objectives:
- To set up and foster a collaborative platform for the discussion of the effects of automation on transport labour with relevant stakeholders. This will be done mainly by the establishment of a cross-national living hub –meant as an inter-continental European-based platform including Japan, Canada, USA and South Korea – that will comprise of the key stakeholders of all transport modes, researchers, decision makers, trade unions and workers’ associations.
- To co-create user-friendly and shareable knowledge related to automation impacts on transport labour. The aim is to assess the impacts on workers within all transport modes and related sectors (indirect/induced effects), with attention to specific categories such as women and people with disabilities and to gain a sound understanding and insight into the factors which can drive automation-driven transitions. Such knowledge includes not only actions and initiatives related to transport automation and best practices of previous automation-driven transitions, but also those barriers, needs, skills and challenges which are required to have an appropriate ground to contrast the negative aspects of automation.
- To enable and support durable and effective dialogue on innovation and the reality of workforce requirements and conditions. Identified stakeholders will use CI to co-design a comprehensive, evidence-based, action-oriented, appropriate agenda to minimise the potential negative effects of automation on labour force. The identified solutions will not be simply based on forecasts or simulated scenarios. Extreme events and discontinuities are more and more the reality and these are, by their nature, uncertain and unpredictable, so that the prediction on past knowledge seems by far less useful than a continuous adaptation and adjustment to the unpredictable events.
Eventually, WE-TRANSFORM aims at establishing a durable, openly shared knowledge on the effects of automation on transport labour and to ensure durable and effective innovations. This will be done by formalizing methodologies and tools in collaboration with research laboratories, industrial actors and social partners at EU level and overseas (Japan, Canada, USA and Korea).