Sitting broadly within GetSavi’s Advisory channel of activity this year, I recently recorded a joint interview with Jenny Watkins, Director of Professional Services at Intercloud9.
Part of a wider digital roundtable initiative for UK trade unions, our conversation spanned the new risks and opportunities emerging in union technology ecosystems.
AI was, of course, part of that discussion – specifically, how its emergence is shaping the tech ecosystems unions need for the future.
“AI knowledge, skills and experience may well be the very protection our careers need against the threat of a human-less future at work.”
GetSavi’s role was to examine how AI skillsets can be introduced safely and steadily into trade unions, without clashing against their purpose, mission and values.
One line from the session has stayed with me: “Unions exist to protect workers from automation.”
So how do you introduce the skills workers need, without threatening their livelihoods or the union’s integrity? AI is, after all, a mass toolkit for automation.
There’s no one-sentence answer, and none will arrive this year. Unions, like all value-driven organisations, will keep questioning AI’s worth to their workforce as the technology – and the systems of work around it – continue to grow.
for anyone interested in the solutions Jenny and I discussed, we’ll be sharing ways to access the full conversation soon. For now, here’s three takeaways on how this shift can strengthen, not diminish, the union worker’s future role:
- Chase the curve of change, always. AI sets the drumbeat for change, and change can leave organisations behind. As with digital transformation a decade ago, union leaders must engage with AI adoption in a way that’s palatable – before it outstrips the union’s ability to organise, bargain, and operate in the rapidly expanding digital era.
- Play to your strengths during AI adoption. Unions are well placed to lead responsible AI adoption. Alongside the wider debate on AI ethics, unions understand the nuance between better operability through technology, and the unbreakable boundaries of workers’ rights. That judgement will matter more as AI adoption accelerates.
- Use AI skills as a career protector. AI skills and learning opportunities can protect careers rather than threaten them. With the right protections – embedding new skills without neglecting core and behavioural ones – unions can equip workers for a future where AI’s demands at work will only grow.
My experience working with unions across the UK and Ireland makes me a supporter, not an expert. But as technology ecosystems, CRMs, and core working practices evolve in AI’s image over the next three to five years, workers have a choice beyond resistance.
Adoption is a choice, yet there is a plain deal within this choice: AI knowledge, skills and experience may well be the very protection our careers need against the threat of a human-less future at work.
