Two union organizers walk into a bar. One works construction. One works nights in an ICU. Ask them what they think about unions and AI, and you’ll get two completely different answers, and both will be right. There is more than one union AI playbook.
That’s the story to be paying attention to around labor unions and AI right now. It’s not “workers versus the machines.”, or “unions united against a common threat.” The real story is messier. Some unions, especially trade unions, are very supportive of AI projects, while other unions take a more cautionary approach.
Unions and AI: where they stand
Such is the case with North America’s Building Trades Unions, three million members, who’ve partnered with the biggest AI companies in the country and are fighting anyone who wants to slow data center construction down. Those data centers pulled in billions this year. For the trades, that’s a gold mine, not a threat.
Unions tied to other industry sectors have taken a different approach. In healthcare, the National Nurses United have issued their guiding principles around AI in a document called the Nurses and Patients’ Bill of Rights. Creative talent in film and media worry about AI cloning their likeness or their voice. Unions like the Teamsters are very concerned about the impact of AI on jobs in transportation and logistics.
Same labor movement, opposite ends of the spectrum on how to react. Anne Lofaso, a labor law professor at the University of Cincinnati and former NLRB attorney, told Bloomberg Law this tension inside the AFL-CIO “truly is existential,” pointing directly at the jobs question.
The Writers Guild wrote AI into the contract
The Writers Guild of America wrote protection language into a contract. Their 2023 deal included protections for employees’ work by defining AI, requiring disclosure when AI became the basis of someone’s work, and creating a standing meeting every six months to discuss how things were going. When the contract came up for renewal in 2026, almost nothing changed.
UC Berkeley’s Labor Center maintains a database where they have curated numerous technology provisions from U.S.-based union contracts, providing useful insights and examples of how workplace technologies are being addressed through collective bargaining. As an employer, you might consider adding some of these principles into your AI playbook preemptively.
Nursing shows how fast AI disputes escalate
A 2024 survey of 2,300-plus nurses found 60% didn’t trust their employer to put patient safety first once AI got involved, and it’s become more contentious ever since.
Here’s a timeline showing how AI has spread through healthcare:
- October 2024: nurses at 17 hospitals win contract language giving them a say in AI rollouts.
- Early 2025: marches across multiple cities.
- August 2025: a rally tied to a single contract covering 60,000 workers.
- July 2026: nurses picketing outside a hospital industry leadership summit, timed to land while the CEO onstage was talking about moving AI “from pilots to everyday practice.”
AI is now an organizing issue
Examples of how unions are responding to AI concerns are growing by the day. They are using AI as an organizing issue to raise fear among workers. One campaign built a whole story around a retail worker concerned about an AI scheduler overloading her workday.
A research group staffed by former AI-lab employees created a public guide that takes management’s own AI talking points and rewrites each one as a myth with a rebuttal.
The Aspen Institute runs a private roundtable of executives, from construction to hospitality to media to tech, who’ve spent years figuring out how to work with organized labor instead of around it.
This week, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler told Marketplace on National Public Radio that the federation is tying workplace AI and automation concerns directly to organizing and political mobilization. She expects AI to become a labor issue in the 2026 midterms and an even bigger one heading into 2028.
Where this leaves employers on AI
In the end, how this applies in your organization comes down to trust and the ultimate impact of AI on jobs. Unions will try to use AI to drive a wedge between the employer and employees based on fear of the impact on jobs. The employers ahead of this curve aren’t staying quiet and hoping nobody notices. They’re communicating transparently and directly with employees, before a union ever comes into the picture.
