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This commitment is for Big Tech and facilitates the unionization of some 100,000 workers.
By Noam Scheiber
In a year of major advances for unions, Microsoft announced that it would remain impartial if a U. S. -based organization tried to unionize.
About 100,000 employees would be eligible to unionize under the framework, which Microsoft President Brad Smith and A. F. L. -C. I. O. President Liz Shuler revealed Monday at a forum at the union’s headquarters in Washington.
The agreement greatly expands a neutrality agreement between Microsoft and a core union, the Communications Workers of America, under which much of the company’s video game staff unionized earlier this year without a formal national labor election. Officially, it provides a framework within which any Microsoft staffing organization can negotiate its own tied neutrality agreements.
As part of Monday’s announcement, Microsoft and A. F. L. -C. I. O. They said they would work together to address issues arising from the adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace.
Smith and Shuler said the partnership would come with meetings in which Microsoft’s synthetic intelligence experts would brief union leaders and staff on expansions in the field. Microsoft experts will also seek input from staff so they can scale up the generation to address their concerns, such as the threat of task cuts.
Both sides said they would work together to enact policies that would prepare employees for jobs that incorporate artificial intelligence.
“Never before in the history of these American tech giants, dating back 50 years or so ago, has one of these companies made a broad commitment to labor rights,” Ms. Shuler said at the forum. “It is historic. Not only have they made a commitment, they formalized it and put it in writing.”
Workers’ anxiety about synthetic intelligence has increased in recent years. Hollywood writers and actors have expressed fears about AI as a major reason for their month-long moves this year, while Shuler pointed to a recent vote that seemed widespread. fear among staff that synthetic intelligence could simply charge them their jobs.
“I can’t sit here and say it’s never going to take a task away from me,” Smith said at the forum, alluding to synthetic intelligence. “I don’t think that’s honest. ” But he added that “the key is to try to use it to improve tasks,” saying that the generation could simply eliminate responsibilities that other people bore us.
The filing of the A. La move comes weeks after the board of directors of startup OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, fired the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, only to settle for his reinstatement a few days later. This episode adds to widespread considerations about how to get corporations to expand and deploy synthetic intelligence safely.
Microsoft is the investor in OpenAI and played a role in bringing in Mr. Altman.
Asked if the OpenAI controversy was an impetus for the new partnership with organized labor, Mr. Smith demurred and said the labor initiative had been in the works for months.
“I wouldn’t say that what happened in the OpenAI boardroom was a game-changer,” he said in an interview after Monday’s forum. “But it has raised questions about how AI is governed, and that would have possibly given even more credence to the type of partnership we announced today.
When Microsoft announced an impartial agreement with the Communications Workers of America in June 2022, the conditional offer: the company in the process of acquiring video game maker Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion. Microsoft has pledged to remain impartial in Activision’s union elections. if the acquisition is successful (since then, the acquisition has been completed).
A few months later, when about 300 employees tried to unionize at ZeniMax Media, a video game company owned by Microsoft, Microsoft agreed to honor the neutrality agreement in that case as well. The agreement allowed them to imply their preference for a union. either by signing authorization cards or anonymously on an electronic platform, a more effective procedure than an election of the N. L. R. B.
The 300 workers are unionized (a rarity at big tech companies) and negotiate an employment contract that includes provisions restricting the use of AI in their workplace.
The Communications Workers of America is one of several dozen unions affiliated with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the country’s largest labor federation. After the ZeniMax campaign, communications union officials believed that Microsoft would probably agree to stay neutral if the union sought to organize workers elsewhere at the company. But Microsoft had never explicitly agreed to do so beyond Activision or ZeniMax.
Noam Scheiber is a Chicago-based journalist covering personnel and the workplace. He spent approximately 15 years at The New Republic, where he covered economic policy and three presidential campaigns. He is a member of “The Escape Artists”. More about Noam Scheiber
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