When union leadership announced to staff that we should all begin using Claude, the “ethical” A.I. of choice, I was disgusted but not surprised.

Since I’d joined the union as full-time staff, use of A.I. had become increasingly normalized. Rally flyers featured raised fists with six fingers. Emails to union members were overrun with em dashes and emojis.

The allure of A.I. as a way of boosting productivity is difficult to resist, especially under constant, high-intensity, emergency organizing conditions. Like many similar organizations, our union is chronically under-resourced and understaffed. Each organizer is responsible for thousands of workers. Each grievance representative juggles dozens of cases. 

In such an environment, A.I. can seem like an easy way to help keep our heads above water. With it, generating new organizing raps, phone banking scripts, and campaign talking points takes minutes instead of hours. Just like any group of workers, union staff members are not immune to the desire to make our jobs easier by using new tools. But I worry that organized labor is facing an ideological inflection point — and coming out on the wrong side. 

Instead of remaining a shameful open secret, systematic use of A.I. is now promoted as the standard and expectation within my union. When our management explained that a representative from Anthropic had been present at the national executive board meeting, it felt like we had aligned ourselves with a company whose technology has been used in a war in which children are bombed. In meetings with union heads, Anthropic was marketing its chatbot as “labor movement-approved.”

Instead of challenging the techno-fascists who are enemies of the working class, our leaders are inviting them in and prioritizing short-term wins in productivity and the promise of unionized data center jobs over a long-term movement. Instead of organizing vigorous, worker-led conversations, they are rolling over and making undemocratic, closed-door deals. I wonder how this response reveals our current limits as a vehicle for building real collective, working-class power.