The CEC produced a special report on AI in the workplace, which they called Organising in a changing economy.
This is quite a long paper consisting of 23 pages. I made a personal wiki page, Notes on the GMB & AI. I passed the special report through two LLMs to summarise and deduplicate it, this final summary is available on the wiki page. Its headings are: Workers’ Rights and Collective Bargaining, AI Regulation and Worker Protection, Transition Support, Skills and Training, Apprenticeships and Industrial Strategy, and Employment Security. I am of the view that the summary could be further distilled.
One of the best ideas might be the demand to create a “Just Transition Fund” for workers displaced by automation or autonomous vehicles, funded through industry levies.
On reflection, the paper is not revolutionary, nor in reality particularly organisationally focused; AI adoption is clearly, a least to me, an issue where political power and strong state regulation is needed. It’s likely that the classic trade union approach of “what’s in it for me” is not enough, although personally I am a sceptic and am deeply unclear that there is a +ive ROI in using LLMs and that the biggest threat is the sunk finance cost in the rapidly ageing infrastructure,
Matt Williams of the CEC gave a powerful advocacy of how it can work, although given where he works, his employer, one of the contractors building the nuclear power stations, will be a late adopter of AI because AI gets things wrong which is unacceptable in nuclear power management, it can’t yet perform construction work and it may not be cheaper to run the project management software with AI support.
The debate was under special report rules, is available on the video and I spoke for London Region.
My words,
President, Congress, Dave Levy, London Region speaking in support of the Special Report.
Work is changing around us and changing fast.
New rights on paper will only matter if we turn them into real workplace power through strong organisation and updated agreements that reflect the modern economy.
We need to use the new freedoms in the Employment Rights Act to win better recognition and better agreements, otherwise workers will be left to navigate an underfunded tribunal system, while employers bank the benefits.
AI is already in our members’ workplaces and on our desktops – not as a distant threat, but as a daily reality.
The report is honest: AI is not necessarily the enemy – it is the boss’s intentions that matter as has always been true.
Used with workers, AI can cut drudgery and improve services; imposed on workers, it risks discrimination, surveillance, deskilling and displacement.
We demand consultation when tasks are automated, guarantees of redeployment and paid retraining, and stronger legal protections on data, bias and automated decision‑making building on the rights established by the EU’s GDPR and its UK implementations.
Our existing agreements were written for an analogue world, not one of algorithms, data centres, continuous surveillance and automated vehicles.
We need new agreements that say that no dismissal or disciplinary decision should be based solely on an algorithm; and AI should not be introduced without genuine consultation, risk assessments that cover health and safety and equality and data protection before anything goes live. We need to engage with the GDPR data privacy impact assessments.
As a union we need to link AI to the wider fight on skills and industrial strategy.
The report reminds us that rights are meaningless without jobs – and that without serious investment in skills, technological change will deepen regional inequality and de‑unionisation.
The report is very clear: we should treat AI as another organising issue.
I do have a concern that maybe it’s not the next big thing, and we should be arguing politically for greater regulation, and a cautious planning approach for the data centres.
But Let us leave Blackpool determined to organise harder, bargain smarter, and go back to every employer we deal with and say – our agreements must change, because the world of work has changed, and workers deserve protection, power and a say in every decision that shapes their working lives.
The debate was recorded on video and several of the speeches are really quite good. I have said previously that the “special report” format will often reduce debate in the union especially on a topic like this where negotiating ideas and demands are only just being tested .
At lunch time, the London Region held a fringe on the topic of AI. The speakers were Dr Antonio Weiss, an independent expert and author, Jenni Tennison of Connected by Data, Dawn Davidson of Whistleblowers Uk, Aparna Surenda, an employment solicitor from AWO.
There was massive interest, by which I mean that all the speeches/questions from the floor were well informed and seemed to come from workplace engagement not a hobbyist’s interest. Given the restrictive nature of the debate format in the Congress Hall, it was good to hear from shop stewards and reps that were engaging. The promise by Steve Garelick of London Region to continue to engage with the shop floor on this issue is hopeful but perhaps it needs a national committee.
The panel introduced me to the term bossware, I hadn’t heard it before but the GMB and many of its members particularly in Amazon and Uber will be used to it. It’s an enhanced form of surveillance and needs to be resisted as it is dehumanising for the workers and dangerous for their customers. While automated/autonomous vehicles were not raised at Congress or in the fringe, there will be pressure from the US software/vehicle authors to permit them to be used.
We briefly spoke of how to organise in the hyperscaler service providers and noted such tools as the corporate compliance requirements established by the GDPR, such as whistleblowing to the DPO, using the GDPR & engaging with Data Privacy Impact Assessments. I may have mentioned European law and the digital market, the GDPR and the AI act. The GDPR adequacy agreement is one means by which we can acquire enforceable rights from European law, extending the Trade & Co-operation agreement and the “Reset” would be others. Full membership of the EU single market or political union is a third.
If these laws aren’t sufficient, we can and should use Health and Safety laws, although H&S enforcement hasn’t helped us in the Amazon warehouses.
One of the platform speakers raised the issue of copyright, framing it as stealing to fuel the training processes. It’s not, such propositions misunderstand the ‘training process and fail to understand that we probably need different intellectual property laws, for science publishing and art.
The notes I took when composing my intervention, are that,
- It is a massive threat to privacy.
- There is no evidence for an ROI through job loss.
- It’s a bubble based on circular debt, which maybe the biggest risk.
- The response to these threats must be political.
