Artificial intelligence isn’t just a futuristic idea anymore – it’s reshaping industries right now, and the stakes for workers couldn’t be higher. IndustriALL has released a comprehensive policy paper aimed at guiding trade unions through the challenges and opportunities that AI brings. This document serves as a crucial aid for unions to protect workers’ rights, dignity, and jobs amidst rapid technological change.
Kan Matsuzaki, IndustriALL’s assistant general secretary, emphasizes that AI isn’t something on the horizon; it is already revolutionizing industrial sectors through automation, robotics, and data-driven management systems. This policy paper is both a wake-up call and a practical roadmap to navigate AI’s impact, ensuring workers remain front and center rather than sidelined by technology.
Putting Workers at the Heart of Technological Transformation
The paper highlights how AI is changing work fundamentally — from how tasks are organized and monitored to how employee value is assessed. Increasingly, workers find themselves under the control of algorithmic systems that determine their schedules, evaluate their performance, and even influence hiring or promotion decisions. What's alarming is that these AI-driven systems often operate without transparency or any real accountability, leaving workers in the dark about how decisions affecting their livelihoods are made.
At the same time, governments and companies have yet to establish strong regulations that guarantee fairness in AI’s workplace use. Few collective labor agreements explicitly address AI, creating a landscape where businesses boost their profits while many employees face job insecurity, discrimination, and heightened surveillance.
IndustriALL’s Vision: Technological Advancement Paired With Fairness
IndustriALL’s new policy paper lays out a clear strategy to reverse this imbalance, advocating for technological progress that supports decent, equitable work and a Just Transition—a shift towards sustainable and fair employment conditions.
Five Critical Areas for Union Involvement
The document pinpoints five urgent priorities for trade unions to focus on:
- Algorithmic management and data privacy: Push for transparency in AI systems, hold companies accountable, and set boundaries on workplace surveillance to protect workers’ privacy.
- Quality jobs and skills development: Ensure workers have access to lifelong learning opportunities, inclusive retraining programs, and support during transitions resulting from AI adoption.
- Occupational health and safety: Use AI to create safer workplaces, not add psychological stress or new hazards.
- Fair distribution of wealth and productivity gains: Demand equitable profit-sharing, progressive tax systems, and robust social protections that benefit workers.
- Defending workers’ rights and collective bargaining: Safeguard the right to unionize, bolster legal protections, and equip union leaders to negotiate effectively in an increasingly digital work environment.
A Multi-Level Approach: Global, Sectoral, and National Action
The paper calls on unions to engage across different scales for maximum impact:
- Globally: Shape international AI standards through bodies like the International Labour Organization (ILO) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), collaborate with global union federations, and advocate for just AI governance.
- Sectorally: Negotiate how AI is implemented responsibly in specific industries, anticipate future skills requirements, and ensure all workers benefit without anyone being left behind.
- Nationally: Promote inclusive AI policies within countries, foster tripartite social dialogue among governments, employers, and unions, and build solidarity across economic sectors.
AI: A Tool for Empowerment or Exploitation? The Choice Is Ours
The paper wraps up with a powerful message: AI's role in the workplace could either boost worker empowerment or deepen inequality and union suppression, depending on the governing frameworks established. Trade unions hold the key to shaping this future by insisting on transparency, ensuring workers receive their fair share of productivity gains, and integrating AI within a system based on social justice and democratic oversight.
Kan Matsuzaki sums it up: "By rallying international solidarity and strengthening collective bargaining, IndustriALL and its members can turn AI into a force that promotes decent work and sustainable industry—rather than just a new mechanism for exploitation."
But here’s where it gets controversial: Should unions accept AI as an inevitable part of the modern workplace and focus on managing its risks, or should they fight for more radical restrictions on its use to protect jobs? What do you think – is AI a threat or a chance for workers? Share your thoughts and join the debate!
