Q&A: Give workers a say in AI rollout, says union head

LONDON - Shorter hours, higher wages and new skills are vital to ensure that workers don't lose out in the age of AI, says the head of a union representing 20 million people in the services sector.

As takeup of artificial intelligence spreads from data analytics to disease detection, Christy Hoffman, general secretary of the UNI Global Union, said workers must be involved from the outset in shaping the uses of this revolutionary tech. 

"If we are not sharing in the gains, we are really supercharging the concentration of wealth and power," Hoffman said on the sidelines of the Trust Conference, the Thomson Reuters Foundation's flagship gathering of leaders and experts.

With members ranging from cashiers to cleaners, UNI Global Union is the union federation for the services industries, representing more than 20 million workers in 150 countries. 

Hoffman spoke to Context about the need for collective bargaining to shore up their rights and said the world was "far from where we need to be" in terms of legislation on AI.

Here's her take on what AI might mean for workers:

What are the greatest risks posed by AI to labour rights?

Workers, especially white-collar workers, fear that they are going to lose their jobs without any safety net or any say. 

We are starting to see it happen. The (number) of new graduates going into some white collar jobs has declined in the UK and U.S. We know anecdotally that a lot of the workers left behind are saying, 'I'm being squeezed to do more with less; instead of hiring new coders, I am being told that I have to supervise the AI coders'. 

We hear that AI is going to supercharge productivity, GDP (gross domestic product) is going to go way up and everybody is going to get richer but to workers that means, 'you need fewer of us'. 

There's also widespread use of algorithmic management. You are looking at people not able to meet their targets, drivers being surveilled and forced to drive unsafely to meet their goals. 

And then there is this AI hidden workforce in the supply chain; workers who are labelling and content moderating, mostly in the Global South, and they are being paid very little. 

What can workers do to counteract these risks?

We would always prefer to engage in collective bargaining on all tech-related issues. 

We want notice, we want to be engaged in decision-making about how (tech) is going to be used, we want to be engaged in who's getting the training and what are the implications for safety and job security. 

In terms of collective bargaining, the works councils in Germany (elected employees who collaborate with management on behalf of the workforce) have a very explicit mandate to bargain around technology. 

The Germans have found that when technology is implemented with the support and involvement of the workers, it is more successful. It's not smart from a business point of view to leave workers out. 

There has to be some sort of obligation that companies deploying and developing AI should pay taxes commensurate with the impact their products will have. So there has to be a shifting of the tax burden.

The other principle is that every step should be considered before displacing workers, for example retraining for other actual jobs. Workers don't have confidence in the retraining obsession. Retraining has to be done meaningfully. 

A shorter work week has to be on the table. 

Why are we not talking about that? Nobody is talking about making it easier for workers to have unions. If (the tech companies) really want to avoid some kind of catastrophic pushback against AI they should be speaking out in favour of making it easier for workers to come together and bargain. In this transformational period, to keep that roadblock up is really irresponsible on the part of the tech companies.

With Big Tech consolidating power, and authoritarian governments on the rise, are worker rights ever more in danger? 

When I look at two countries that are in the thick of it now - Argentina and the U.S. - in Argentina, the unions have been winning against (President Javier) Milei in many ways. 

If Milei did not have those really strong unions standing in the way, he would have eliminated so many benefits and changed that economy so profoundly. 

In the U.S., the unions are much smaller as an economic power as they only represent 10% of the workers but they also have a lot of power and influence (but) for sure the fact that we have an authoritarian and right-wing government means it will be very difficult to create new unions.    

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

(Reporting by Clar Ni Chonghaile; editing by Lyndsay Griffiths.)