Google DeepMind Staff Tap the UK Government to Escalate Their Unionization Fight
After initial talks stalled, workers at Google DeepMind are trying to bypass company management in their bid to unionize.
On Thursday, Google DeepMind staff, represented jointly by the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union, submitted an application to the Central Arbitration Committee, a government body tasked with resolving disputes between employers and unions. The application aims to determine whether the unions have sufficient support from workers to initiate a unionization ballot.
Successful completion of this process would obligate the company to respect the ballot results. This move follows several meetings between employees, union representatives, and company officials regarding voluntary unionization, which left workers feeling their concerns were not being addressed adequately. John Chadfield, national officer for technology at the CWU, expressed frustration, stating, "They've been ignored.
They feel like their problems have been minimized. Management has refused to come to the table. They sent it to the HR and labor relations people, who dealt with it as an administrative box-checking exercise." The unionization push began in February 2025, following Alphabet's removal of a pledge from its ethics guidelines prohibiting the use of AI for purposes such as weapons development.
A Google DeepMind employee, who wished to remain anonymous due to potential backlash, remarked, "When I joined, we really made a big deal about the principles—the red lines. We were really looking to benefit humanity and make the world a better place." "A lot of this is about reestablishing that ethical and moral framework that we started with."
The employees advocating for unionization are particularly concerned about agreements between the company and the US and Israeli militaries. If they succeed in unionization, they intend to demand that Google terminate these contracts. Another anonymous Google DeepMind employee emphasized their concern over the direction the technology is heading.
"We feel extremely concerned about the direction that this technology is going in," they stated. The company has defended its collaborations with government entities, stating, "We are proud to be part of a broad consortium of leading AI labs and technology and cloud companies providing AI services and infrastructure in support of national security," according to a Google spokeswoman.
The Google DeepMind employees involved in the unionization efforts are reaching out to their colleagues to encourage participation in the upcoming ballot, which is expected to occur in the coming months. They expressed their desire for collective bargaining and a say in the development and deployment of AI. Additionally, the group aims to establish a framework that could serve as a model for employees at other major AI labs, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, in the UK.
"It's pretty rare that there's been an industry that exercises such dominance and power over the economy, where there's so little opportunity for employees or regulators to have any checks and balances," the second Google DeepMind employee noted. "We want to show what can happen when employees collectively organize and articulate a shared vision for the way their technology should be used."
Written by urgent.news from Wired Business's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
