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UC Berkeley\u2019s Sproul Hall in March 2022. Credit: Kelly Sullivan for Berkeleyside<\/p>\nUC Berkeley\u2019s Sproul Hall in March 2022. Credit: Kelly Sullivan for Berkeleyside<\/p>\n
More than 2,000 University of California tech workers voted to seek union representation earlier this month, saying they\u2019re concerned about layoffs and want a say in how the university implements artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
If the vote is certified by the state\u2019s public employment relations board, the University and Professional Technical Employees union would have the largest tech worker bargaining unit in the country, union officials said, with 8,400 members including more than 600 at UC Berkeley.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The vote comes as AI is disrupting workplaces of all types and major tech companies are laying off thousands of employees<\/a>. Union activists involved in the organizing drive framed it as a way to ensure that the on-campus workers who best understand AI can, through collective bargaining, help shape the university\u2019s use of the technology.<\/p>\n \u201cHigh-level decisions regarding AI or any technology are often not made by people who are actually implementing these tools, but those are the people that should have a place at the table,\u201d said Max Belasco, a business systems analyst at UCLA.<\/p>\n UPTE already represents about 24,000 healthcare, research and education workers across the UC system, including some IT employees. University of California spokesperson Heather Hansen said in a statement that the Public Employment Relations Board was reviewing the union\u2019s petition and the university was awaiting guidance from the board.<\/p>\n \u201cThe University of California values the contributions of its technical and IT employees and remains committed to maintaining productive relationships with represented and non-represented employees alike,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Dan Russell, the union\u2019s president and a business technology support analyst at UC Berkeley, said job security was the biggest concern he heard from colleagues on campus. Some campus IT departments had seen layoffs in the last six months, he said. At the same time, workers have been following the bloodletting at technology companies in the private sector; just yesterday, Meta announced it will lay off 8,000 employees<\/a> and shift others to AI-focused roles.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019ve seen the university follow some of the trends that you see in the private sector, so I\u2019m worried about that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Belasco said tech workers were concerned that when teams shrank as some members left for other jobs, vacant positions were going unfilled with the university assuming that automation could take up the slack. Hansen did not reply to specific questions about those concerns.<\/p>\n Campus unions across the country are increasingly seeking to incorporate provisions regulating AI into their contracts<\/a>, from faculty worried about their course material being repurposed without their permission, to healthcare workers concerned about patient privacy.<\/p>\n