{"id":410642,"date":"2026-07-24T11:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T11:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/410642\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T11:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T11:06:15","slug":"staff-of-san-francisco-based-wikipedia-demand-union-recognition-raise-concerns-over-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/410642\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff of San Francisco-Based Wikipedia Demand Union Recognition, Raise Concerns Over AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Workers said they want more of a say in how the Bay Area-based foundation behind the world\u2019s largest encyclopedia uses artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The building at 1 Sansome St. (center), home to the Wikimedia Foundation headquarters, in San Francisco, on July 23, 2026.\u00a0(Nina Glick\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Workers at the Wikimedia Foundation \u2014 the San Francisco-based foundation that hosts Wikipedia<\/a> \u2014 demanded voluntary recognition of their union, Wiki Workers United U.S., on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The staff who run the platform say they want a stronger voice in their workplace, better job protections and an end to common practices that make life \u201cprecarious for everyday workers,\u201d according to Jeremy Bernick, one of the union organizers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They gave the foundation until Friday to respond to their request for recognition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wikipedia, the world\u2019s largest encyclopedia, hosts roughly 65 million entries<\/a> in 364 languages<\/a>. It is considered a backbone of the internet \u2014 boasting an average of 508 million views per day for the past decade, according to Pew Research Center<\/a>. While Wikipedia is the nonprofit\u2019s largest and most well-known project, the Wikimedia Foundation, which did not respond to requests for comment, supports over a dozen related \u201csister\u201d projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"A Wikipedia homepage on March 11, 2011. <\/p>\n

Bernick said that this campaign is the workers\u2019 third attempt at unionizing and the farthest they\u2019ve gotten in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is a lot of fear right now,\u201d Bernick said \u2014 highlighting the Trump administration\u2019s attacks on public media, the cost of living crisis and concerns about artificial intelligence as some of the factors driving more staff toward unionization.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As employers make decisions about how and when to integrate AI, Bernick wants to see \u201cworkers in the loop.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout our say, these systems are not really effective,\u201d Bernick said. \u201cA lot of the time they can make our work less impactful or more strenuous.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Workers said they want more of a say in how the Bay Area-based foundation behind the world\u2019s largest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-410642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}