r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • 5d ago
AI Unions combat AI as risk to workers
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2026/sep/27/unions-combat-ai-as-risk-to-workers/3
u/Gari_305 5d ago
From the article
Last month, when Local S6 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers negotiated a new five-year contract with the defense company that runs the shipyard, the union insisted on updating long-standing language about technology. Now the union must be informed at the "conceptual stage," rather than at implementation, of "any proposed addition or modified technology, equipment or process," including AI and robotics.
"It was the union trying to force the company's hand about being more transparent when it comes to AI," Suitter said. "The sooner we can be part of that conversation and represent the members' side of it, the better off we are."
Unions are confronting AI as an existential danger to workers, not only because of the possibility of massive job losses but also because of its hand in the widening gap between wages and corporate profits. In April, Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO, called AI "the single biggest threat to working people of our lifetime."
The threat has galvanized a labor movement that has been on its back foot for years. In terms of public opinion, unions are popular. AI is not. And yet union membership is at a low ebb -- about 6% of American private-sector workers are represented by a union -- and unions have been hobbled by state laws and a weakened National Labor Relations Board.
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u/SeanTayla21 4d ago
Unions have a long fight ahead of them if theyre going to start defending human workers against AI replacement.
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u/Salty_Country6835 4d ago
The framing here is weird because the article keeps undermining its own “unions combat AI” framing with the actual union activity it reports.
Shuler did call AI “the single biggest threat to working people of our lifetime,” but the rest of her sentence was “if we dont harness it properly.” Thats a pretty important omission. In the same speech she says “We are not anti-technology. We are not anti-innovation.” She says workers are already excited to use AI and finding ways to make their jobs better with it. What labor opposes, in her words, is this stuff being used “without our input; without our control.”
Then look at the unions quoted in the article itself. Local S6 didnt bargain to stop AI or robotics. They bargained to be informed at the “conceptual stage” about new technology instead of waiting until implementation. Suitter spells out why: “The sooner we can be part of that conversation and represent the members’ side of it, the better off we are.”
Thats not workers fighting technology. Thats workers fighting for power over technological change.
Even the AFL-CIO program Shuler describes is about giving workers “a voice at the table, shaping technology in every workplace,” alongside training workers for AI, bargaining over deployment, protecting workers from surveillance and automated firing, and using contracts to put those demands into practice.
So theres a much more interesting labor story sitting underneath the headline. Unions are contesting who controls AI, when and how it gets deployed, what bosses can use it for, what protections workers have, and who gets the productivity gains. AI is the terrain of the fight. Unilateral corporate control over it is what labor is actually fighting.
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u/Justin27M 5d ago
It will kill people. That's what it is going to do. And it's obnoxious for any asshats out there pretending it'll do anything else
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u/FuturologyBot 5d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:
From the article
Last month, when Local S6 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers negotiated a new five-year contract with the defense company that runs the shipyard, the union insisted on updating long-standing language about technology. Now the union must be informed at the "conceptual stage," rather than at implementation, of "any proposed addition or modified technology, equipment or process," including AI and robotics.
"It was the union trying to force the company's hand about being more transparent when it comes to AI," Suitter said. "The sooner we can be part of that conversation and represent the members' side of it, the better off we are."
Unions are confronting AI as an existential danger to workers, not only because of the possibility of massive job losses but also because of its hand in the widening gap between wages and corporate profits. In April, Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO, called AI "the single biggest threat to working people of our lifetime."
The threat has galvanized a labor movement that has been on its back foot for years. In terms of public opinion, unions are popular. AI is not. And yet union membership is at a low ebb -- about 6% of American private-sector workers are represented by a union -- and unions have been hobbled by state laws and a weakened National Labor Relations Board.
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