Imposition of regulations, rights, and scope are core tenants of unionized opposition.

“If it’s applied ethically and responsibly in collaboration with trade unions and the workforce, then AI actually has the potential to impact our members’ lives in a positive way,” says Budd. But regulations might fall far behind this objective. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) issued a  to this effect in April, arguing that ministers had failed to introduce the necessary regulations to safeguard workers’ rights amid the rapid rise of workplace AI. 

The TUC, which represents more than five million workers across England and Wales, remains dissatisfied with provisions in the government’s , the UK’s post-Brexit replacement for GDPR, as well as the  and the recent  from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, which critics argue favours Big Tech. Prospect’s deputy general secretary Andrew Pakes is just as excoriating. “The government’s AI strategy is silent on workers,” he says. “It talks about innovation but not industrial change or investment in it.” 

The TUC is calling for legislation mandating that employers tell their staff when — and how — AI is being . They also argue that workers should be entitled to a human review of any decisions made about them by a machine-learning model — especially when it comes to hiring and firing. Staff don’t want to face a scenario “where [they] feel that they can’t challenge decisions made by technology,” says Mary Towers, who leads a project on AI at the TUC. Turner agrees. “I think we only need to look at the  for an example of what can happen when an IT system is seen as too complicated to challenge or too big to fail,” he says.

Turner, Pakes, Dearden, and Towers all told Tech Monitor that robust legislation needs to emphasise physical and mental well-being in the workplace — not just productivity gains. “At the moment the debate feels very fixed on the number of jobs that could be lost or created, with less focus on the quality of that work,” says Turner. In an  by GMB, 32% of 1,620 respondents said that workplace surveillance, including by automated systems, negatively impacted their mental health. Similarly, Towers highlights that so-called ‘algorithmic management’ — which might fail to account for a worker’s individual context — can leave workers feeling powerless, resulting in increased stress and anxiety. 

In the meantime, trade unions are playing catch-up. For one thing, Pakes argues, the legal framework for employment rights is now outdated, having been written in a century where legislators were more focused on physical risks than unseen digital dilemmas in the workplace. Unions are also struggling to keep up with the pace and complexity of AI themselves. “There is an understanding gap at the moment,” says Turner. “If you’re a trade union officer — or, for that matter, a management representative — trying to understand the outputs of an unsupervised machine learning model in employment is something which most of us just don’t have the training in.” 

For its part, GMB is investing resources to improve its representatives’ understanding of how AI systems work, says Turner. Community’s organisers also recently received training on AI from the , a specialist consultancy firm that aims to help progressive organisations navigate the digital transformation — a process that Dearden says helped remove some of the fear representatives had around engaging with this complex topic.

Unions want to be able to have their say whenever new technologies are on the table. Without that kind of diversity of input, argues Pakes, the entire economy loses out: “The UK is missing out on its potential because not everyone has a seat at the table in driving forward this new technology.”

That’s why it’s so important that unions be consulted on when — and how — AI will be used to make decisions in the workplace, says Dearden. It’s the workers on the shop floor and the production line who are best placed to understand the kinds of blockages that AI could, if implemented effectively, help overcome. “Technology change has to be brought into the scope of collective bargaining and recognised as an area in which worker consultation is legally required,” argues Dearden. “We just don’t think employers will take it seriously otherwise.”