The Irish Times picked up on Kevin Callinan's comments to conference yesterday, about the need for the trade union movement to move towards representing workers in the technology and pharmaceutical sectors as well as the gig economy as the groups have been effectively ignored.

Elsewhere, Fórsa gave its response to the latest on SNA allocations for 2021/22 term and the union's school secretaries campaign has been shortlisted for a PRCA award.

Fórsa has also responded positively to today's publication of the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council’s (NCPC) bulletin on the competitiveness implications of increased remote working. Meanwhile, Congress has made its submission to a public consultation on the introduction of a right to request remote working.

In that submission, Congress policy officer Dr Laura Bambrick focuses on the need for trust between employers and employees, and outlined concerns about the AI-driven technology used to monitor employee activity while working from home. These systems can "count the number of mouse clicks, keystrokes, emails in an hour, record time spent on social media sites, and take photographic ‘timecards’ every 10 minutes via a webcam." Such surveillance software could well become a feature of remote working, and some have been classified in draft AI regulations by the EU as 'high risk'.

Your Zen this morning is a film recommendation for those who've been scrolling through their Netflix options and wondering if 40 Year Old Version, Radha Blank's funny and thoughtful film about a struggling Harlem playwright, is worth a go. Happy to recommend, it's a real treat.

Niall