I attended a Keystone Research Center (KRC) Conference last weekend. KRC is a progressive think tank founded thirty years ago by labor. In one workshop, representatives from public sector unions talked about their struggles to protect their members from the intrusions, speedups and job displacement that the current implementation of AI is causing.
These union leaders are in trench warfare against technology controlled and implemented by our corporate and financial sectors. Because that’s who “owns” the technology, it is being used to impose the greatest workplace restructuring in the history of enterprise. Seen from this perspective, workers cannot be expected to defend themselves or try to bend AI to more worker-friendly purposes, at the workplace level alone. We need to look at AI as a global and transformative technology that requires a multi-layered response.
While AI has consequences far beyond the workplace, it is already causing major job eliminations and job change. The AI job and workplace impact isn’t that different from what we faced in the Steel Industry as globalization forced changes in the Mills. The Steelworkers response to those changes may provide some ideas to deal with AI.
The decline of the American Steel Industry is often told in terms of unfair trade. But underlying that decline were years of industry failure to invest and modernize. The Mills that survived the sell-out trade policies successfully upgraded their technology and restructured workforces that had been designed for the initial steelmaking era. My Mill, at Steelton, PA, went through that wrenching change process. Our Union responded with negotiating tools in our collective bargaining agreements. Tools that gave guidance to and put limits on corporate management’s ability to unilaterally do as they saw fit. We still lost a lot, but these actions helped hold on to a significant part of steelmaking in America.
The first steps were to implement “Communications” committees in the Mill Departments. These were similar to public sector “meet and greet” committees, that had no overt power. Union Stewards and Committee people gathered our members’ issues, created a formal agenda and then posted meeting results. The Union’s organizing approach to these discussions was not welcomed by management (often we had 25 or more items to discuss in our department alone). But we fixed a host of problems that were beyond the collective bargaining agreements language.
Then came contractually mandated Labor/Management Committees that were established from the corporate level down through to the Mills and Departments. This was important because the company’s financial information was shared with union leaders, corporate officials had to open themselves up to questioning and the Union gained the ability to understand what was happening and develop a strategy.
Ultimately the union negotiated a set of provisions that provided input into management’s actions, put a worker representative on the Boards of the major steel companies, and provided other corporate governance protections. As former USW President Lynn Williams said, “management is too important to leave to management alone”.
At the sessions last weekend, these public unions were at the Labor/Management Committee stage. They are now preparing AI proposals for their next round of bargaining. The L/M stage is a critical building block because with these kinds of technological changes, the workers at ground floor level have information on what’s happening and the expertise to suggest alternatives. Any effort to reshape AI to be positive change in our workplaces, must have that rank-and-file component if it is to be effective.
AI is a change that is impacting every workplace in the nation. That means the nation needs the structure and implementation of mechanisms like what we developed in Steel. But on STEROIDS. Broad agreements on AI need to cover sectors (public employment, manufacturing, professions, education, service, medical/scientific/technical fields, etc.) and be tied to a national set of AI implementation rules.
The current public debate centers around legislation that controls AI’s tendency to “go rogue” and the siting of data centers. Those concerns are critical to address. What we need to add to those facets of AI is legislation that gives workers’ rights in how AI is implemented in our workplaces. That includes the entire process from worker input at the worksite to corporate responsibility requirements.
It’s hard to imagine this kind of national or even global worker involvement policy in a world where corporate dominance and runaway wealth have decimated workers’ rights and power. Yet AI just may be the unifying threat that reestablishes worker solidarity, rebuilds the union movement, creates a political counterforce to AI misuse and ultimately puts a collar on unfettered greed.
Time to think out of the box. It’s time to replace our current union organizing “greyhound track” with a guaranteed union at every workplace. Then mandate those worker organizations to inject worker interests into AI implementation. While we’re at it, let’s stop making union dues a hurdle for workers by providing an instant tax deduction for union members. Imagine a requirement for companies to deal with AI worker displacement before implementation. Think about workers having the right to influence what kinds of capabilities companies purchase in their AI development contracts. How about assuring that AI “restructuring” includes application to management job duties. On a broader scale, give workers the power to use AI to review and recommend improvements and savings to healthcare insurance, pensions and other employee benefit programs. AI could assess the value of management strategies overall. Require that AI “post-change” reviews are conducted and if negative, reversed. Evaluate AI impact on customer satisfaction. Finally, give workers the right to redirect AI to worker-positive uses and enterprise building capacity. Let’s explore the myriads of ideas can lead to better AI usage, from the CEO’s suite to the janitor’s mop closet. Let’s recognize that AI is a game changing technology that requires a matching response.
These suggestions are meant to be a sparkplug for discussion into what might be done. Worker/Union input will generate many more. One thing is for sure. If we don’t confront the potential of AI to turn us into human machine servants, the future of work and living wages are bleak indeed.
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You might also be interested in a collection of 38 Steel Mill Stories that I wrote some time ago in an effort to preserve some of the history of my home Mill in Steelton PA. They can be found at https://ikegittlen.wordpress.com/category/ikes-mill-stories/.