CONCEPT
Worker Co-Determination in the AI Transition
The institutional practice — common in Northern Europe, rare elsewhere — of giving workers voice and authority in decisions about workplace technology deployment.
Co-determination is the institutional framework, developed in Germany and Scandinavian countries across the twentieth century, that grants workers formal authority in corporate governance — through board representation, works councils, and statutory consultation rights before major organizational changes. Applied to AI deployment, co-determination means that workers whose jobs are being restructured by AI tools have legal standing to participate in decisions about adoption, implementation, and the distribution of productivity gains. When a Swedish company deploys AI that restructures workflows, affected workers must be consulted; their representatives have authority to negotiate the terms; and the company cannot proceed unilaterally. The framework embodies a principle Jasanoff's work supports: that the people whose professional lives are transformed by a technology deserve institutional voice in that transformation — not as beneficiaries of managerial benevolence but as participants in governance with legal rights and structural power.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Co-determination emerged from post-war European labor politics and reflects a civic epistemology different from the American