Microsoft · Google · Meta · YouTube · The Guardian Technology
How AI may drive union-resistant tech workers to the bargaining table
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Now, that fortress is cracking from the inside.
Key facts
- ZeniMax, the Microsoft-owned game company, unionized in 2023 and finalized a contract for its quality assurance testers in 2025 that included protections relating to AI usage, outsourcing and overtime
- When I first started in tech, you could leave a job and have another one by the week with better pay,” said John Chadfield, a former tech worker who co-founded United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW)
- A few years later, in 2021, Google employees formed the Alphabet Workers Union
- The push toward tech unionization has been building for years and includes workers at the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and Microsoft-owned gaming company ZeniMax, as well as the Alphabet Workers
Summary
For decades, the technology industry was a fortress that labor unions couldn’t breach. Workers from Google DeepMind and Meta in the UK are also objecting to how their companies’ AI products are being used, such as for military purposes or to monitor employee productivity. On the frontlines of AI’s rollout in the workplace, tech workers have often been the first to feel its effects, including job loss, employee surveillance, increasing workloads, and uses that conflict with employees’ values. A Meta employee who was part of a recent union drive in the UK said, “It’s about us having a voice in all of the operations of the company, from products to employee experience.” The employee spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from their employer.