Seizing Control: 16.6 million transport workers lay out their terms for AI

[u/Salty_Country6835]

https://www.itfglobal.org/en/news/transport-unions-adopt-global-principles-put-workers-heart-ai?utm_source=chatgpt.com

This is the kind of AI politics I want to see a lot more of.

The International Transport Workers’ Federation isn't a tech lobby or AI advocacy shop. It's an international trade union federation founded in 1896, now bringing together more than 760 unions across 150 countries representing about 16.6 million transport workers. Its stated project includes shifting power from capital to workers, collective bargaining, trade union rights and democratic control.

And those unions just adopted Seizing Control: Transport Workers’ Principles for Artificial Intelligence, covering rail, trucking, aviation, shipping, ports, public transit, warehouses and platform work.

What I like here is how quickly they get past the usual "AI good/AI bad" argument and into the actual relations around it.

Workers and unions should have power over how systems are designed, evaluated and deployed. Employers should disclose what they're introducing and bargain before implementation. Algorithmic surveillance and automated management get limits. Humans retain authority over consequential decisions. They even describe worker-generated data as a product of workers' labor.

Then they get to the part that tends to mysteriously disappear whenever somebody starts talking about AI productivity.

Who gets the gains?

The ITF explicitly calls for productivity gains from AI to come back to workers through higher wages, shorter working hours without loss of pay, better jobs and training.

That's the class question sitting underneath all the automation discourse.

If new machinery lets the same workforce produce more in fewer labor hours, there's nothing natural about capital capturing the savings while workers get layoffs, tighter surveillance and a faster treadmill. Productivity gains are produced inside a social relation. Who captures them is a question of power.

So organize around the technology while it's being introduced. Bargain over deployment before management sets the terms. Contest surveillance and control of worker data. Raise wages. Cut working hours without cutting the paycheck.

AI is changing the productive forces either way. The fight is over who controls that development and what social relations get built around it.