Artificial intelligence has become a key workplace issue, but the terms of its use need to be negotiated to ensure workers as well as employers feel the productivity benefits it presents, a union event on the subject heard on Monday.
Fórsa general secretary Kevin Callinan said the union’s 100,000 members across public services “are not afraid of the tools” the technology will bring “but of the terms” on which staff will be asked to work with them.
The meeting was attended by politicians, union officials and leaders of a number of NGOs.
He said those working for the State had to be authors of the coming change in work practices and not just audience members for a process exclusively driven by management.
“When the HSE published its AI for Care strategy, covering imaging, clinical-decision support and clinical documentation, it consulted a stakeholder group of more than 30 organisations. Not one of them represented workers,” he said.
“Patients were consulted. The people who will work with these systems every day were not consulted at all.
“Let me be clear about Fórsa’s position. We do not stand in outright opposition to this technology. We stand for frameworks that are negotiated before the technologies are deployed; against AI adoption that is premised on cutting jobs; for a named, accountable person being in command of every consequential decision; and for the sharing of AI’s productivity benefits through time and flexibility, through pay and reinvestment in services.”
AI consultant Shaadi Valadkhani said unions were ensuring they were better equipped to deal with the issues arising around the deployment of the technology as “AI is not an act of nature, it is a series of decisions” and staff needed to have a voice in how those were made.
She said the union would have red lines around any attempt to use AI in hiring or firing, surveillance and ongoing governance.
Joe O’Connor, a former official with the union who advises businesses and unions on work practices, said companies such as Ikea had shown how AI could be integrated into systems while the roles of displaced staff displaced were developed to bring benefits to them and the employers.
More commonly, however, management and workers tended to have very different views regarding the potential impact of the technology, he suggested, with one survey indicating 76 per cent of leaders felt their staff were enthusiastic, whereas just 31 per cent actually were.
In relation to negotiations on a new pay deal, Callinan said there were provisions in the last one for consultation on technological change but Fórsa had not been involved in any centralised consultation on it.
“It’s an extraordinarily important issue,” he said. “And we have seen after other technological transitions ... work has been devalued, often that of women. But not this time.”