As Europe implements its new pay transparency framework, Hyundai is testing humanoid robots on its production lines in South Korea. At first glance, these appear to be unrelated developments. In reality, they tell the same story: the world of work is changing faster than most of us anticipated. For years, the debate has focused on equal pay, wage disparities and the gender pay gap. These issues remain fundamental, and the new EU legislation addresses them by requiring employers to adopt increasingly objective and transparent criteria for determining pay.
Yet, just as we are learning how to explain why two individuals performing the same work may receive different levels of remuneration, a more fundamental question emerges: what will tomorrow’s jobs look like?
The rapid development of artificial intelligence and humanoid robotics has the potential to reshape business organisations profoundly. Repetitive, physically demanding and routine tasks will increasingly be entrusted to machines. This does not necessarily mean fewer jobs. History shows that while technological innovation renders some occupations obsolete, it also creates entirely new ones. The skills in demand will evolve, placing greater value on system design, maintenance, programming and the supervision of intelligent technologies.
Tomorrow’s maintenance technician may no longer replace the motor of an industrial machine but instead update a robot’s software, replace a sensor or microchip, calibrate its control systems, or fine-tune the algorithms that govern its movements. Perhaps one day a preventive maintenance checklist will genuinely read: “Inspect actuators, update firmware… and apply a drop of oil to the humanoid’s joints.”
The humour, however, ends there. The real challenge is not maintaining robots—it is ensuring that technological progress does not leave people behind. This is precisely the message behind the recent protests by Hyundai workers in South Korea. Their concern is not opposition to automation itself, but the demand to share in the economic benefits generated by innovation and to play an active role in the transformation of their workplace.
This is likely to become the next frontier for employment law. Having addressed pay transparency, legislators and employers will increasingly need to confront the challenge of innovation transparency: identifying which roles are likely to be automated, determining the skills employees will need to acquire, deciding how productivity gains should be distributed, and supporting workforce reskilling and career transitions.
In the years ahead, the central question will no longer be simply how much a worker earns. It will increasingly be what work that individual will be doing ten years from now. If employment law succeeds in governing this transformation, robots will not replace people—they will become their new colleagues.
