Strike while AI is hot: Rebuilding worker power for the age of AI

Artificial intelligence is the latest technology to raise the spectre of human labour becoming obsolete. AI technologies can now perform complex cognitive tasks that were once considered exclusively human. If businesses adopt these technologies at scale to replace human work, this could generate a significant productivity windfall – one that is likely to be unevenly distributed throughout society. 

AI-driven automation is not a new economic phenomenon: throughout history, technological change has redefined the role of human labour in production. Some technologies have complimented the skills and creativity of workers, while others have undermined human labour and even replaced it altogether. The design of new technologies, and the way they are deployed by firms, determines whether technological progress results in shared prosperity or concentrates wealth in the hands of a minority.

Rebuilding worker power must be an urgent priority for a decade of progressive national renewal. AI’s distributional consequences will depend in part on the strength of workers’ power, as has been the case with processes of technological change throughout history. AI technologies could be deployed to augment, degrade or displace human labour, and these impacts are not predetermined. Workers’ ability to influence AI adoption at the firm level will shape AI’s macro-level distributive effects and determine how the technologies impact their working lives.

Workers want the power to both shape and adapt to AI’s impacts. Progressives can meet this challenge by giving workers power to influence AI adoption at the firm level, adapt to its effects on the wider labour market, and access communities of workers with similar experiences. Worker power is unevenly distributed, so any effort to enhance workers’ capacity to shape and adapt to AI must tackle power asymmetries in the labour market.

As AI is deployed into the real economy, progressives should seek to give workers greater power over how these new technologies are adopted. To achieve this rebalancing from capital to labour, workers must be empowered to shape the use of AI in their workplace. Ministers should legislate to require employers to disclose their use of AI to employees, and to consult (or even negotiate) with their workforce over the introduction of AI technologies. New bargaining rights for unions and codified worker participation rights – meaning workers on boards and a new system of Anglo co-determination – would provide substantive channels for workers to determine how AI impacts their working lives. 

Progressives should also develop a new, flexible system of “portable benefits” to support workers through AI-driven disruption in the labour market. Framed as part of a 21st-century model of flexicurity, this approach will give workers access to income support, training, and core protections across jobs, while enabling more fluid movement between roles, sectors, and forms of work. Such a system would be particularly important for workers whose circumstances limit their ability to exercise influence through workplace-specific channels of power. 

Portable benefits should be designed to strengthen worker agency and in turn support a more dynamic and adaptable labour market. It would be designed around three pillars. 

1. A worker support levy: an auto-enrolled system that generates a shared fund for worker power, training and representation for all workers.
2. A digital “portable benefits wallet”: giving each worker tailored options on how to spend their funds based on their employment and needs – from collective bargaining access to training credits and legal assistance.
3. Accredited worker-power organisations: workers would use their portable benefits on union membership, worker collectives, and legal and training organisations that meet certain standards.

If implemented at a national level, these policies would create a new institutional foundation for worker power at the scale required for the AI era. The age of AI will be defined not only by the technologies it unleashes, but by the political choices made in response to them. By rebuilding worker power now, progressives can ensure that the gains of AI are broadly shared, its risks are collectively managed, and the dignity of work is preserved for the decades ahead.