Stories and links that are of interest or relevance to union leaders, strategists, campaigners and organisers.
Unions, workers and the economy

Trade unions and the well‐being of workers
Analyses for Europe since the 2000s confirm the positive association between union membership and worker well-being is apparent elsewhere. A positive union association with other aspects of worker well-being including life satisfaction, happiness and trust is apparent in cross-sectional data for Europe. Union members are also less likely to be stressed, worried, depressed, sad or lonely.

Are unions the cure to the rise of right-wing political ideology?
Going back to at least the late 1990s and 2000s, more and more research has conclusively linked the prevalence of job insecurity and economic insecurity to the rise of right-wing extremism.

Capitalism Is Making You Lonely
Long before the coronavirus pandemic, we were amid a growing crisis of loneliness. The problem isn’t social media, popular culture, or city living — it’s capitalism.
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What the hard-won HarperCollins union contract means for the future of books
Almost 250 employees spent 66 days on strike for higher wages and increased diversity.
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Tesla fired dozens of Gigafactory workers after Tuesday’s union announcement: NLRB complaint
Organizers claim the layoffs were in retaliation for organizing.
Recession in 2023? Here’s how trade unions are gearing up
Global growth is slowing, and the economic outlook for 2023 indicates a recession. Workers the world over face stagnating wages and rampant inflation. Here’s how trade unions are getting ready.
Growth and union operations

“Evidence of growth everywhere”: Publishers of all sizes, from global to local, continue adding new digital subscribers
“Publishers will continue to see growth in 2023 despite economic headwinds.” Publishers across the world are growing subscriptions despite economic challenges.

The thermocline of truth
What the Royal Mail IT scandal can teach us about the nature of truth inside organisations, and why things often look perfectly fine until right before they fall apart.

Dysfunction
Most unions are large organisations, and the larger any organisation gets, the more complex it becomes. Complexity and bureaucracy are major inhibitors to growth.
Artificial intelligence/ large language models/ ChatGPT

Exclusive: The $2 Per Hour Workers Who Made ChatGPT Safer
A TIME investigation reveals the difficult conditions faced by the workers who made ChatGPT possible.

Decoding the Hype About AI
How worried should we be about AI? For an informed perspective, read an interview with Princeton computer science professor Arvind Narayanan, who is currently co-writing a book on “AI snake oil.”

Don’t be sucked in by AI’s head-spinning hype cycles
Let’s all chill out. AI is a promising new technology, but the conversation isn’t always genuine, and it’s generating more heat than light.

Tech firms say laws to protect us from bad AI will limit ‘innovation’. Well, good.
For too long, the industry has escaped legal liability in the pursuit of its own interests – and the EU has had enough

ChatGPT Stole Your Work. So What Are You Going to Do?
Creators need to pressure the courts, the market, and regulators before it’s too late.

Our Obsession with Cheating is Ruining Our Relationship with Students
AI detection isn’t going to work—but that’s not going to change our desire to have a tool to detect what work was written by a human vs. generated by an AI transformer.
How to Detect AI-Generated Text, According to Researchers
ChatGPT is not as random as a human—for now.

RightWingGPT – An AI Manifesting the Opposite Political Biases of ChatGPT
The Dangers of Politically Aligned AIs and their Negative Effects on Societal Polarization
AI and the future of work

ChatGPT and the Future of the Professions
Professionals must learn to work with the machines or they will be replaced by them.

The AI industrial revolution puts middle-class workers under threat this time
In the past, leaps in technology replaced low-paid jobs with a greater number of higher-paid jobs. This time, it may be different

From retail to transport: how AI is changing every corner of the economy
Artificial intelligence has implication across the board, solving problems and raising others