Workers urgently need more bargaining power over how AI is adopted in workplaces to ensure the benefits are shared fairly, according to a report from a leading thinktank, backed by the TUC.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is calling for a package of measures to boost employee influence at what it calls a “pivotal moment in the history of work”.
The IPPR report cites polling data showing that while 20% of workers say AI is making their working lives better, 21% say it has made it worse, and 4% believe they have already lost a job because of the technology.
The IPPR distinguishes between three potential impacts of the technology:
- Augmentation: where AI complements and develops human work.
- Degradation: where it undermines the experience of work, for example by being used to monitor and manage staff.
- Displacement: where it replaces workers altogether.
The report’s authors argue: “The question is not whether AI will disrupt working lives, but who will have the power to shape that disruption, and whose interests it will ultimately serve.”
Their recommendations include a statutory duty on employers to consult their workforces about the adoption of AI, as well as a “worker support levy”, which could be funded by companies or workers themselves.
The idea behind the levy is to create a portable “wallet” of benefits that workers could take with them from job to job – such as union membership, insurance or training – with the overall goal of increasing their bargaining power.
The report suggests consultations between employers and employees over AI adoption could take place through existing collective bargaining arrangements with unions, or via new structures, such as worker representation on boards, or a new consultative body.
Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the TUC, who wrote a foreword to the report, said: “Major technological transitions only deliver tangible social progress when they are actively and decisively shaped.”
He added: “The Industrial Revolution – so often cited in passing to describe the potential of AI – saw 50 years of stagnant wages while profits rocketed. It took the difficult birth of the labour movement to steer technological gain towards worker interests and wider social welfare.”
He continued: “To deliver on the promise of technology to improve lives, inside and outside the workplace, AI must be designed, governed and negotiated by and for workers.”
The government has made clear its enthusiasm for AI adoption in the UK, with the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, highlighting the technology as one of three drivers for stronger economic growth, alongside closer relations with the EU and more regional devolution.
In her Mais lecture, the chancellor described AI as “the defining technology of our era”, saying she was determined to “maximise the value added … to the wider economy and the public sector by speeding up its adoption”.
Labour has already introduced a landmark upgrade to workers’ rights since taking power in July 2024, prompting some business groups to warn that the move, alongside tax increases and large rises in the national living wage, had driven up the cost of employing staff.
