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Welcome to Workers and Machines – authoritative, accessible and actionable updates and insights on tech and AI for the British labour movement, allies and anyone interested.

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As we design technological systems, we are in fact designing sets of social relationships, and as we question those social relationships and attempt to design systems differently, we are then beginning to challenge in a political way, power structures in society"

Mike Cooley (1934 – 2020), engineer and shop steward at Lucas Aerospace, and pioneer of the union-led 'Lucas Plan' for socially useful tech innovation

The movement on the move

UK creative workers demand justice on GenAI: A major survey of 10,000 workers in the creative industries was published last month. It came back with some explosive findings: 99% of creators say their work has been scraped without consent; one in three creative jobs already lost to GenAI; and a third of illustrators report lost commissions or cancelled projects due to GenAI.

Report authors, including Equity and several performing arts trade associations, are calling for a new regulatory framework based around creator consent, licensing schemes over web scraping, and clear ethical standards, accountability, and renumeration.

ICYMI and an update – CWU take on TikTok: In June 2025 TikTok made a fanfare about a massive new investment in London. Just two months later, they announced 400+ redundancies of the London-based team that moderates content on the platform, citing AI and offshoring. The redundancy order came a week before workers were set to vote on forming a union with the United Tech and Allied Workers branch of CWU. This sparked a campaign, with the TUC weighing in alongside online safety campaigners, and prompted action from the chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee. A second round of redundancies, which the union claims targeted union organisers, soon followed.

The union is fighting back, slapping TikTok with not one, but two legal actions for union-busting, working with tech-justice non-profit Foxglove.

CWU’s telecoms workers are also getting organised: Last year, BT’s CEO said that plans to cut more than 40,000 jobs by the end of the decade “did not reflect the full potential of AI”. CWU members in the telecoms sector disagree – and they're getting organised. Working with Connected by Data, an action learning project has seen the union build internal expertise, deliver training for reps, map workplaces and build collective bargaining strategies in workplaces across telecoms and financial services.

What we're up to

AI up North: TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak spoke up for a pro-worker AI strategy at an event in Northumberland last week. The event, "the past we inherit, the future we build", was hosted by Ian Lavery MP – former miner, trade union leader, and (not least) MP for Blyth and Ashington – and focused on the risks and opportunities AI could bring to the North East. One of Europe’s largest data centres is currently slated to be built in Blyth as part of the government’s AI Growth Zones initiative. In his speech, Paul said, "we know from experience that rapid technological change only delivers social progress when workers and unions are empowered”. You can read the whole speech here.

TUC appointed to DSIT’s Responsible AI Adoption Panel: The government has ambitious plans to roll out AI across the civil service and wider public sector. But concerns abound – from impacts on jobs, AI-enabled harms to the public and the further encroachment of Big Tech into the public sector. DSIT is establishing a Responsible AI Adoption Panel with external experts to provide expertise, strategic oversight, and scrutiny around AI in the public sector. We’re happy to report that the TUC’s tech policy lead, Adam, has made the cut. He will be engaging closely with unions to make sure views are represented.

Advising the government’s Future of Work Unit: How generative AI is impacting the labour market is the subject of intense debate, hot takes, and inconclusive evidence. Supported by the TUC, the general secretary of Prospect Union Mike Clancy will be joining an advisory group to the Future of Work Unit within the DSIT. More details here.

Bookmark this

Next time an employer cuts corners on introducing AI into a workplace, show them this: Tech giant Microsoft advocates for worker voice in its Future of Work 2025 Report. It says “centring worker voice in AI design boosts productivity, satisfaction, and skill growth—driving both business success and worker flourishing.” It’s been known for some time that "workers give wisdom to the machines", so it’s good to see Microsoft are catching up and hopefully putting this into practice.

Have a listen: What happens in the USA is often a harbinger of what comes to UK shores. Have a listen to Episode 18 of Democracy Deciphered, with the former director of the AFL-CIO's Tech Institute on how workers and unions have influenced technology in the past and can shape a truly worker-centred approach to innovation today.

In brief: Up/re/de-skilling in the AI era

Think about the last time you tried to find your way somewhere without Google Maps. Most of us have outsourced navigation so completely that we can barely retrace our own steps. Cognitive offloading – to use the lingo – may be convenient, but some skill atrophies.

At work, this can be about a lot more than convenience. We sell our time and skills, so if AI diminishes those skills, our bargaining power risks shrinking too –whether we’re teachers, coders or call centre workers.

Recent research from Anthropic (the self-styled good guys of Big AI and makers of Claude) sheds light on the hot topic of AI skills. They found that coders who used AI assistance showed "a statistically significant decrease in mastery," scoring 17% lower on retaining information and developing skills compared to those that didn’t use AI. Notably, the time they saved was not statistically significant.

Anthropic noted that "how someone used AI influenced how much information they retained." Although though perhaps not surprisingly for an AI company, this does raise the question: what exactly is an AI skill?

In February, the UK government offered an answer to this by relaunching the AI Skills Hub, which aims to provide free AI training to 10 million workers. It is a "directory" (produced by consultancy firm PwC with a price tag of £4.1 million) of AI courses – mostly provided by big tech firms.

Things have not been smooth. Some courses are out of date while others simply don't exist (seemingly hallucinated by an AI). Many aren’t free and funnel users to paid-for products (by one count, 58%). One course required residency in provincial Canada, while another offered training in US copyright law. As one software engineer pointed out, the site itself also fails to meet accessibility standards.

We agree that skills are absolutely essential to ensuring workers benefit from AI. And Government efforts are welcome on this. But to get this right, we’d offer the following suggestions:

• Specialist education professionals and independent quality controllers must lead on policy and course development, and any corporate involvement should be secondary.
• Workers don’t just need to be trained to use new proprietary AI products, they need portable skills and verifiable qualifications.
• Workers must also be upskilled to understand their rights, 
• exercise
• and negotiate around AI, supported by unions.
• Managers and employers need training too. There's a lot of snake oil being sold. This training needs to include a critical emphasis on the effective and fair management of organisational change – the essential component of AI adoption.
• Training and skills should be universally incorporated into collective bargaining, to drive up employer investment in skills and improve workforce planning, including how AI will change job design.

Events etc

TUC ‘Bargaining on AI Forum’: We need to get AI on the bargaining table. This will be a full day session at TUC HQ for reps, officers and allies to share experiences and dig into negotiating and bargaining on AI.

11 March | in person | Congress House, London

Connected by Data ‘Power and Participation in Public Tech’: For anyone interested in how to achieve better outcomes in the delivery of digital, data and AI work in the public sector through the involvement of the public, communities and workers.

6 March | in person | Mechanics Centre, Manchester

AI’s dirty secret – the environmental cost of digitalisation: UNISON and legal campaigners Foxglove host this webinar to discuss the environmental impact of AI in public services – and what we can do about it.

26 March |12:30pm–1:30pm | online