Google employees in the UK protest military uses of AI, vote for labor union

Bad news! Antisemitism? Leftist anti militarism?

Does Google Deepmind need new employees?

"Google employees protest military uses of AI, vote for union

 

Employees at Google DeepMind’s London office voted to unionize, seeking recognition from the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union specifically to block the lab from providing technology to US and Israeli militaries.

The push accelerated after Alphabet removed its public pledge against weapons development and surveillance from its ethics guidelines in February 2025, a move that prompted one anonymous DeepMind employee to tell WIRED the company is moving toward “further militarization of the AI models we’re building here.”

The unionization effort comes as Google signed a Pentagon deal allowing the US military to use its AI for “any lawful government purpose”—language the employees consider dangerously vague—and follows similar concerns across the industry: DeepMind and OpenAI staff signed a letter supporting Anthropic after the Department of Defense tried to designate it a supply chain risk for refusing autonomous weapons use. If Google refuses to recognize the unions, workers say they’ll escalate to a UK arbitration committee to compel recognition." (Source)

"Employees at Google DeepMind in London have voted to unionize as part of a bid to block the AI lab from providing its technology to the US and Israeli militaries. ...

The push to unionize began in February 2025, when Google’s parent company Alphabet removed a pledge not to use AI for purposes like weapons development and surveillance from its ethics guidelines, according to a DeepMind employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. ..."

Google DeepMind Workers Vote to Unionize Over Military AI Deals "UK staff of Google’s AI research lab hope to block the use of the company’s artificial intelligence models in military settings."

Im internationalen Streik Vergleich gehört die Bundesrepublik allerdings nach wie vor zu den Ländern mit den stabilsten Beziehungen zwischen Arbeitgebern und Arbeitnehmern. Wirklich!

Die Deutschen sind sehr oft und lange im bezahlten Urlaub und haben daher weniger Zeit zum streiken. Vorsicht Satire!

Streik-Geschehen ist weltweit im Wandel - iwd.de "In den vergangenen anderthalb Jahrzehnten ist die Zahl der durch Streiks ausgefallenen Arbeitstage in Deutschland tendenziell gestiegen. Im internationalen Vergleich gehört die Bundesrepublik allerdings nach wie vor zu den Ländern mit den stabilsten Beziehungen zwischen Arbeitgebern und Arbeitnehmern."

The New Argentina Begins: Milei Will Execute the Largest Structural Change Since the 90s

Recommendable!

The Rise, Fall and Reinvention of American Labor Unions since the 19th century

Recommendable! Trader Joe's is particularly featured in this video. Well, Trader Joe's is owned by a German company. In Germany, labor unions have a very strong legal status guaranteed by the German constitution. Maybe the Wall Street Journal was not aware of this fact! Hopefully, the US will never get there!

Trump’s Hilarious Phone Call to the Teamsters’s Union President Sean M. O'Brien And Chuck Schumer’s Response

Recommendable! The union president is not mincing words in this interview!

Amazon workers go on strike at seven Amazon facilities across the United States

I think, this is a very bad move by labor unions! 

In the retail business you can strike at any time during the year, but not before Christmas! This is extortion of the worst kind!

Let the robots take over!

Amazon workers go on strike — union blames company's 'insatiable greed' for potential delivery delays | Blaze Media

46th President’s successfully pressured dockworkers to delay strike until after 1/15/2025

What!!! I already wondered why this dockworker strike at the east and gulf coast ports was over so quickly!

"Aided by intense pressure from senior Biden administration officials, the shipping companies, represented by the U.S. Maritime Alliance, significantly increased the raise they were offering the dockworkers to 62% from their previous offer of a 50% boost in pay. The International Longshoremen’s Association, the dockworkers’ union, was seeking a 77% raise, but it accepted the new offer, which will be phased in over six years.

The agreement labor leaders and management reached will suspend the strike until at least Jan. 15, 2025, allowing more time for additional collective bargaining and negotiations. ..."

Dockworkers pause strike after Biden administration’s appeal to patriotism hits the mark

Workers at Samsung Electronics Walk out for the First Time Ever with Palki Sharma

Recommendable! From workaholics to strikers?

Chart of the day

 Are we going to see more strikes in the U.S. during election year 2024?

Source

UAW Strike Ends with Higher Wages, Better Benefits for Auto Workers. Really!

Maybe with more robots and fewer jobs too!

Could be what is also called a Pyrrhic Victory! A few get to keep their jobs.

UAW Strike Ends with Higher Wages, Better Benefits for Auto Workers

Yellow: Inside American Trucking’s Largest Bankruptcy

Very recommendable! Government bailouts and labor unions can unnecessary and artificially protract any company's bankruptcy at taxpayers expense!

Hospital CEOs’ salaries are increasing even faster than we thought. Really!

So what!!! Who was the responsible editor to allow such demagoguery to be published!!!

Who was the purveyor of this junk journalism: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Global Health NOW

Perhaps there are many nurses and fewer managers or is this labor union propaganda dressed up as journalism?

What about hospital consolidations? Larger hospitals typically lead to larger pay for the CEO.

What about specialty nurses or specialized nurses in high demand?

I did not read the whole article, but it appears to be a hodgepodge of grievances and a collection ideological narratives! It appears to be based on a "new research out of North Carolina". Just one state??? Only nonprofit hospitals??? The headline is a bit of an extrapolation or worse misleading?

The "new research" is also not really research, but report by the "State Health Plan is to improve the health and health care of North Carolina teachers, state employees, retirees, and their dependents." The report opens with "Nonprofit hospital executives enriched themselves while fueling a crisis of health care affordability in North Carolina. A new analysis of hospital data finds that nonprofit hospital CEOs doubled their paychecks in less than five years — a fraction of the time previously thought. Existing research had gravely underestimated the growth of wage inequity across nonprofit hospitals. ..."

Hospital CEOs’ salaries are increasing even faster than we thought - Vox Some hospital CEOs quadrupled their salaries in a few years while nurses’ pay largely stayed stagnant

Nonprofit Hospital Executive Pay Groundbreaking Report Concludes Nonprofit Hospitals Paid Top Executives More Than $1.75 Billion Over the Past Decade, Doubling CEO Compensation Faster than Previously Believed

British actors union: Stop AI stealing the show

There is a famous quote by Victor Hugo: "One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas." Often shortened to: "No army can stop an idea whose time has come."

AI has the power to make a lot of actors jobless! Labor unions better try to accommodate and cooperate instead of oppose the inevitable!

British actors union Equity - Stop AI stealing the show "Join our campaign to strengthen performers' rights in response to the rise of artificial intelligence across the entertainment industry."

"... Actors Act Against AI

Performing artists are taking action to protect their earning power against scene-stealing avatars.

What’s new: Equity, a union of UK performing artists, launched a campaign to pressure the government to prohibit unauthorized use of a performer’s AI-generated likeness. The union published tips to help artists who work on AI projects exercise control over their performances and likenesses. ..."

The Batch by Andrew Ng

No More Government Unions in California!

Good news! Keep your fingers crossed for this important ballot initiative!

"Few states have been as profoundly shaped by their public-sector unions as California. Government labor groups there elect their own bosses and number among the biggest spenders on ballot campaigns to raise taxes and expand government. They have engineered some of the richest retirement benefits in the public sector—at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars in public debt.

But one California businessman thinks that he can change all that. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper has filed a petition with the California attorney general’s office for a ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to outlaw public-sector unions. “Public employment costs have exploded, including taxpayer funded pensions and lifetime health benefits not enjoyed by employees in the private sector,” the petition reads. “Worse yet, some public employee unions have used their money and power to protect bad employees engaged in unspeakable misconduct and others who have completely failed at their jobs.”

Draper faces a strenuous uphill battle. He must collect close to 1 million signatures to qualify an amendment to the state constitution for the ballot—a path likely to be made more difficult by union-friendly election officials, who will throw obstacles in his way. If he succeeds, he’ll then face an election against the most well-heeled opponents: Golden State public-sector unions spend hundreds of millions of dollars every election cycle, and they’ll empty their coffers to defeat him. ..."

No More Government Unions? | City Journal A proposed California ballot initiative would outlaw public-sector labor groups.

Notice: Tim Draper wears a bitcoin tie!

Switzerland’s labor Unions Must Become More Transparent

Even the moderate Swiss think that labor unions are too powerful and their financing/spending of money is too intransparent!

"By European standards, Switzerland’s trade unions are a pretty mild bunch. Germany’s train drivers are threatening (yet another) strike; Italy’s trade unionists are almost permanently grumpy; and the less said about France’s often disgruntled leftist unions the better. ...

Against a background of mounting transparency, disclosure about party financing and spiraling corporate reporting standards, union financing remains murky.

The opacity is all the more striking given unions’ ever louder voice in recent critical political decisions. Concerns among organized labor about greater risks of wage dumping was central to the collapse of Switzerland’s years long talks with the European Union about a new Framework Treaty on bilateral relations. And the unions have been similarly inflexible on any further liberalization of the domestic labor market. ...

“The annual report of Travail Suisse (another employees’ umbrella body) is richly illustrated, but reveals no information about financial flows. Meanwhile, the ever more radical Unia (Switzerland’s biggest trade union) discloses fat income of CHF 143 million for 2019, but leaves the reader in the dark about any details of its sources of income” ...

The opacity of union accounting is all the more striking given the fact that some proportion of their funds derives, directly or indirectly, from the public sector, i.e. from tax payers. The concept of “social partnership” comprising unions, government and private business – popular in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, but relatively unfamiliar in the English speaking world – involves, among other things, setting minimum wage and working condition agreements for different sectors of the economy. ..."

Switzerland’s Unions Must Become More Transparent | Avenir Suisse Increasing politicization means era of opacity must end

Marco Rubio says he ‘stands with’ Amazon warehouse workers

It looks indeed that U.S. Senator Marco Rubio is confused or a RINO or both? His understanding of free market economies is very poor! His selective solidarity with workers is dubious!

"Rubio writes [in the USA Today op-ed],

Here’s my standard: When the conflict is between working Americans and a company whose leadership has decided to wage culture war against working-class values, the choice is easy — I support the workers. And that’s why I stand with those at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse today. ..."

"... Republicans have rightly understood the dangers posed by the unchecked influence of labor unions. Adversarial relations between labor and management are wrong. They are wrong for both workers and our nation’s economic competitiveness. ...

Adversarial labor relations are generally harmful. When it is a good American company — for example, certain American automakers — adversarial relations risk hurting labor and management alike by causing American industry to lose ground to foreign competition. ..."

Marco Rubio says he ‘stands with’ Amazon warehouse workers | TechCrunch

Here is the link to Marco Rubio's USA Today op-ed:

Sen. Marco Rubio: Amazon should face unionization drive without Republican support Amazon is waging a culture war against working-class values and is not helping workers or our economy.

Free the Freelancers by Prager University

Very recommendable!

7 Reasons to Say Goodbye to Teachers Unions

The headline misses the point! We should be saying goodbye to government run public education! In the age of online learning there are fewer and fewer good reasons why government runs our public schools!



One reason: "They [teacher unions] have more money in politics than just about everyone

Both Republicans and Democrats complain about money in politics. Both sides have their boogeyman: George Soros and the Koch Brothers. And yet, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NEA was the second largest contributor to political campaigns of any individual, corporation, or union in 2014. In 2016, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and NEA collectively gave $64 million in political contributions compared to only $11 million and $28 million by the Koch brothers and George Soros, respectively."



7 Reasons to Say Goodbye to Teachers Unions - Foundation for Economic Education I stand with teachers—not unions.

Why does ARGENTINA have the most POWERFUL trade UNIONS in the WORLD?

Very recommendable! I did not know that Argentina has been run by powerful and unaccountable labor unions since about the 1940s. No wonder this country had so many severe economic crisis!

Uber & Lyft Drivers Plan To Strike At IPO

Posted: 5/7/2019

Just read Drivers Plan Global Strike In Honor Of Uber's IPO

Caveat: I do not know much about the background or details of this situation, but I speculate anyway.

Offering here my speculations about this news:

1. The Forbes news article is more hot air than anything
2. What a joke if indeed some drivers strike! These drivers are only accelerating the introduction of autonomous driving vehicles
3. Looks like a publicity stunt by labor unions to organize drivers
4. Are these drivers really so badly paid as the media and some non profit organisations will have us believe? Or is it possible that e.g. a lot of people want these jobs (e.g. to supplement their income etc.) therefore driving down pay. Or if it was paid so badly, why do so many people become drivers in a booming economy where so many other jobs are available

P.S.

Sites like LinkedIn (now Microsoft owned) also celebrate the strike by Uber & Lyft drivers. It was today’s (5/7/2019) LinkedIn Daily Rundown (US) how I became aware of this strike.