Google union organizer on AI job impact, working conditions
In this podcast, Shannon Wait explains her fight for fair pay and decent conditions for data center workers and why more protections are needed when AI comes for people's jobs.
AI advocates typically respond to concerns about job loss with reassurances that AI will ultimately create more jobs. They also assert that if AI displaces jobs, organizations will upskill workers for new, more valuable jobs or train them enough on AI to remain employable in the AI-driven workplace of the future.
That case faced setbacks in the past two months as evidence mounted that AI is already destroying jobs. Amazon announced it was laying off 14,000 corporate workers so it can be more nimble. The cuts weren't portrayed as directly resulting from AI, but in June, CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon's workforce would shrink as the company embraces AI. Target and UPS announced similar layoffs.
But the reductions most explicitly caused by AI were at software vendors, including Salesforce, which said in September it would cut 4,000 customer support jobs. Earlier in the year, CEO Marc Benioff said AI was already doing nearly half the work in the department.
The loudest voices on AI's impact on jobs tend to be executives at vendors that make AI software or their biggest customers. Skeptics are harder to find.
In this episode of Enterprise Apps Unpacked, Shannon Wait, a senior organizer at the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), discusses the issue from the tech worker's point of view. Her job has mostly involved advocating for the rights of the workers who labor behind the scenes to make AI possible, which she details in the podcast. She also explains how those same workers are increasingly worried about losing their jobs to automation through AI.
"When people think about AI, they think innovation and curing cancer," Wait said. "We're going to move America into a new age and try to beat China in this race. Those are the talking points, when in reality the talking points should be the layoffs and job losses. We're streamlining shopping through ChatGPT instead of curing cancer."
Google's expensive water bottle
Shannon Wait
Wait made international news in 2021 when the AWU, part of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), filed an unfair labor practices action on her behalf against Alphabet, Google's parent company, and Modis, the contractor that had employed her since 2019 at a Google data center in South Carolina.
Wait noticed the pay and advancement opportunities of contractors weren't comparable to those of Google employees at the same facility. Nor were the working conditions. The contract workers' jobs involved difficult physical labor, such as swapping out server hard drives and heavy batteries in hot data centers that could hit 85 degrees.
After a series of unmet promises, minimal responses to complaints about unfit conditions and other disappointments from her employer, Wait accidentally broke her company-issued water bottle and was refused a replacement. It was the last straw. She complained and was escorted out of the building. So she immediately invited coworkers to join the AWU but was suspended with pay.
The union action succeeded, Google and Modis settled, and Wait was back at work within two weeks. Her victory garnered widespread press coverage. The BBC posted an article on its website titled "The woman who took on Google and won." Google, which the workers had accused of discouraging unionization, signed a document saying employees had the right to discuss pay and working conditions.
Since then, Wait has been a full-time advocate for the union. Much of her work has focused on the plight of raters, whose job is to evaluate the quality as well as the accuracy of webpages and search results to help improve Google's algorithms and AI. In a recent survey, some raters said they know they're training new AI that is meant to replace them. Some have been subjected to automatic suspension by "robo-bosses" for not meeting certain quotas and must go through a long process with a human to get reinstated.
"You would think that these companies would want the people working on AI to have feedback on how to do better and be given clear metrics on how to make these tools safer and easier to use," Wait said. "Instead, you're just an outlier -- you're suspended -- hope you get re-onboarded at some point in the future. I just don't think that's a good way to do business in any part of the world."
Wait volunteers as policy advisor for the TechEquity collaborative, which partnered this year with the AWU-CWA to publish a report titled "Ghost workers in the AI machine: U.S. data workers speak out about big tech's exploitation," which surveyed raters and other workers in behind-the-scenes roles at AI providers.
Other topics discussed in the podcast include the following:
- The odds of passing a bipartisan bill calling for transparency about AI's impact on jobs, introduced this month in the U.S. Congress.
- Hopeful signs in an AI agreement the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) reached with Microsoft.
- How unions can support workers without stymieing AI advancements that potentially benefit everyone.
- Wait's expectation for the future labor market if AI continues to take over more tasks.
David Essex is an industry editor who covers enterprise applications, emerging technology and market trends, and creates in-depth content for several TechTarget websites.
