Beyond honouring Professor Blackett’s visit, the workshop aims to highlight the distinctive contribution of labour law to broader reflections on the relationship between work and society. Addressing issues such as social dialogue, ecological transition, digitalisation, subcontracting, informal work and migration, the discussions resonate strongly with the concerns identified in the recent CNRS report “Le travail et la société française”. In this sense, the workshop situates labour law not merely as a technical field, but as a critical lens through which contemporary social transformations of work can be analysed, debated and collectively understood.
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
Every panel will consist of two presentations of 20 minutes, followed by a discussion by the chair (10 minutes) and by a reaction by prof. Blackett (10 minutes). Then the floor will be open for discussion with the audience (20 minutes)
09:00 - 09:15 | Welcome & Opening Remarks
Mélanie Schmitt and Marco Rocca
09:15 - 10:45 | Panel 1: Social Dialogue, New Forms of Workers’ Representation, Democracy
Chair/Discussant: Mélanie Schmitt
Cinzia Carta: Work, Ethics, and the Law: Collective Action as a Tool for Sustainable Globalisation?
Matthieu Vicente: Collective bargaining beyond employment? The French experiment of sectoral social dialogue for digital platform workers
10:45 - 11:00 | Coffee Break
11:00 - 12:30 | Panel 2: Work in Transition(s), Climate Change, AI and Digitalisation
Chair/Discussant: Linxin He
Elise Dermine: What role for labour law in the ecological transition?
Claire Marzo: Regulating artificial intelligence and algorithmic management: the CEPASSOC and IAG4UPEC projects.
12:30 - 14:00 | Lunch Break
14:00 - 15:30 | Panel 3: Employer’s Fragmentation, Subcontracting, Value Chains
Mijke Houwerzijl: Towards a preventive approach against abusive subcontracting
Silvia Rainone: Erosion and displacement of employer accountability in the digital economy
Chair/Discussant: Nastazja Potocka-Sionek
15:30 - 15:45 | Coffee Break
15:45 - 17:15 | Panel 4: Informal Work, Domestic Work and Migration
Chair/Discussant: Marco Rocca
Mauro Pucheta: Informal Work and Human Rights in the Americas: Strengthening Inter-American Jurisprudence Through ILO Labour Standards
Catharina Lopes Scodro: Migrant domestic work in France and Ireland: encounters between au pairs’ working lives and laws at work
17:15 - 17:30 | Closing Remark
SPEAKERS
Adelle Blackett is Professor of Law and the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Transnational Labour Law at the Faculty of Law, McGill University. She is currently Senior Advisor to the Director-General of the International Labour Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. She is the author of the 2019 book Everyday Transgressions: Domestic Workers’ Transnational Challenge to International Labor Law and she has been the lead ILO expert in the treaty-making process on decent work for domestic workers.
Cinzia Carta is researcher in labour law and industrial relations at the University of Genoa, where she teaches Italian and EU labour law. She holds the title of PhD and of Doctor Europaeus and she is habilitated as an Associate Professor since 2025, when she published a book on labour and corporate accountability in the global value chains. She conducted her studies at the University of Bologna, Trier, Freiburg, Luxembourg, Paris Nanterre and at the ENS (Paris), addressing labour law and industrial relations in the EU, the meaning of work and its role in the transition towards sustainable globalisation.
Elise Dermine is professor of labour law at the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Principal Investigator of the ERC RethinkingWork. Her research is structured around three main topics: (1) the relationship between labour law and ecological transition, (2) the links between law and inequality in the workplace, and (3) access to law and justice for vulnerable people. Since September 2023, she is also president of the Belgian association for labour and social security law (ABETRASS/Begasoz).
Mijke Houwerzijl is a full professor of Labour Law at Tilburg University (since 2011). She also held a chair by special appointment in Comparative and European Labour Law at the University of Groningen from 2010 - 2020. Her research focuses on Dutch and European labour law and social security law, with an emphasis on topics concerning flexible and vulnerable workers, the combination of family and work and cross-border labour mobility in(to) the EU, including issues of monitoring & enforcement. She has been involved in several research projects on subcontracting and recently finished a commissioned report for the EFBWW: https://www.efbww.eu/news/study-towards-a-preventive-approach-against-abusive-subcontracti/4961-a
Catharina Lopes Scdoro is Doctoral researcher at the University of Strasbourg and a member of the ERC-funded project European Birds of Passage. She holds a Master’s degree from the University of São Paulo (Brazil). Her PhD thesis focuses on the regulation of au pairing in the European Union, specifically in France and Ireland, by investigating the impact of gender and citizenship status on the normative structure.
Claire Marzo is Associate Professor (MCF HDR) at University Paris East (UPEC, MIL). Specialising in European and comparative social and labour law, she has coordinated a project on digital platforms workers (https://cepassoc.hypotheses.org) and now focuses on Artificial intelligence and work at university (https://iag4upec.hypotheses.org).
Mauro Pucheta is a comparative and international labour lawyer from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina), with an LL.M in Labour Law from Paris 1-Sorbonne and a PhD in Law from the University of Nottingham (UK). He is currently a Lecturer in Law at the University of Kent. His research focuses on international labour law and the intersection between human rights and workers’ rights in the Global South.
Silvia Rainone is a Senior Researcher in EU labour law at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels. Her research focuses on collective labour rights, social dialogue, and the regulation of digitalisation, algorithmic management and platform work within EU law. Silvia is also a lecturer at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and is affiliated with the Institute for Labour Law at KU Leuven. She holds a PhD in European labour law jointly issued by Tilburg University and KU Leuven.
Matthieu Vicente is a lecturer in labour law at the University of Montpellier-Paul Valéry. In 2022, he defended a doctoral thesis on the collective rights of platform workers at the University of Strasbourg. His research focuses on precarious forms of employment and atypical employment relationships, with a comparative perspective and a focus on international and European law.
