Workers Against Slopaganda, Workers’ AI Counter-Summit

The Digital and Techworker Alliance branch of the Communications Workers’ Union (DATA-CWU) has announced plans to host a counter event to the Government-hosted International AI Summit in October of this year.

No more Slopaganda

The Workers’ AI Counter-Summit will take place across two days, on Saturday 10th October and Sunday 11th October. The Union has opened a call for submissions, inviting workers, researchers, activists and artists to contribute to the event in the form of critical responses to AI, centring on workers and the effects on communities.

The Union says that this event, billed as a Workers’ Counter-Summit, will provide a necessary counterweight to what it calls the “wild claims and hype-manufacturing” rampant in the tech sector and among policy makers.

The event will platform workers at the sharp end of AI and those involved in the creation and maintenance of AI technology – both within the tech sector and wider society. Tech workers are critical to the supposed aims of the Government-hosted Summit, specifically how it will likely deal with “how AI is delivering real-world value” and “workforce transformation”.

At a time when Ireland has positioned itself as Europe’s leading destination for technology investment and AI infrastructure, decisions being taken here will shape not only the future of work in Ireland, but influence how these technologies are developed and governed far beyond Ireland’s shores.

The Union’s event has the tagline “Workers Against Slopaganda”, which expresses the objective to open a space for critical voices, and the rejection of tech products that undermine societal interests and Big Tech’s desire to achieve AI profitability at all costs.

Commenting, CWU Deputy General Secretary, Ian McArdle, said:

“While the Government’s AI Summit in October has a notable deficit in worker representation, the feedback from our members is that token representation would be insufficient in giving workers a meaningful seat at the table.”

Mr. McArdle went on to say that the Union is not opposed to technological advancements.  He said: “We are opposed to the manner in which these tools are being wielded and implemented. We are opposed to changes that line the pockets of billionaires while disempowering, disciplining and displacing labour. For private sector workers in Ireland, the employer veto on unionisation and collective bargaining means that swathes of the workforce are denied a say in how these technologies are being implemented in their workplaces and in their society and communities.”

The Union has pointed to events taking place across the world this year which positions this event in a global context. These include the “Summer of Ludd” festival in New York, Ivy League students booing and walking out of tech CEO’s commencement speeches, to striking Samsung workers in Korea seeking a share of AI profits, to the Union’s own members in Meta outsourcing firm, Covalen, taking to the picket line against AI-driven job losses. The UK sister union of DATA-CWU, the United Tech and Allied Workers, also led its members in frontier AI lab, Google DeepMind, in their unionisation bid earlier this year.

CWU Head of Organising, Fionnuala Ní Bhrógáin, commented:

“This event is part of a global movement of workers in the tech sector and beyond who are determined to have their voices heard. The current framework for discussions around AI – that it is “inevitable” and that “it is happening, so we have to deal with it” or that it constitutes some kind of “revolution” – is not one that ordinary workers accept. To do so eliminates the crucial factors of human agency and decision-making and hides the very real power imbalances experienced by workers being impacted by AI. This Workers’ Counter-Summit will set out that there are, in fact, two sides to the AI story.”

This event will play an important role in opening up the debate around AI and the realities that workers are facing in its implementation. While governments and businesses bet huge sums on this technology, DATA-CWU is demanding that workers are central to any proposed vision of a future radically reshaped by AI, rather than just a fallout casualty, or a statistic.

Remarking on the event organised by the newest branch of the union, CWU General Secretary Seán McDonagh stated:

“It is not surprising that our members in the tech sector are angry and expressing such strong views about this technology and the government’s planned AI event. Their grievances are inevitable when workers are denied access to a real seat at the table with their employers – and by this we specifically mean collective bargaining. The current employer veto on unionisation has to go. There must be a radical overhaul of the voluntarist system of industrial relations we have in Ireland. If workers are not listened to, you can be sure that they will shout loud and be heard!”

To learn more about the Digital and Techworker Alliance branch of the Communications Workers’ Union (DATA-CWU), please go to www.datacwu.ie

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