Google AI workers in the UK have voted to seek union representation over concerns the company’s technology is being used by Israel and the US military.
In a vote of Communication Workers Union members at DeepMind, 98 per cent backed the move for union recognition, which would secure representation for at least 1,000 staff in its London office.
One DeepMind employee told The National that workers’ concerns about the use of the AI technology they work on had not been listened to.
“The company’s messaging is all about the use of AI to benefit humanity and there’s people working on genuinely worthy stuff such as predicting weather events,” said the software developer, who asked for their name to be withheld.
“But these models can also be used by Israel to analyse drone footage in Gaza, for example, and there’s also been a deal with [US President Donald] Trump’s Department of War. So a lot of the people who signed up earnestly believing in the use of these technologies to better humanity feel quite betrayed.
“There’s been a lot of attempts to engage with leadership on this but people are being broadly ignored.
“There was a couple of petitions, both getting hundreds of employees signing them, which were ignored and this was raised at town halls as well. We just got non-answers that the corporate comms team had come up with.”
The employee said workers would now get the chance to formally raise concerns through their union in negotiations, with direct action by workers on the table if these are ignored.
“We would discuss doing a research strike, or stopping work any on improvements to Gemini,” said the DeepMind worker, referring to Google's chatbot technology.
John Chadfield, the Communication Workers Union's national officer for tech workers, has written to Debbie Weinstein, the head of Google UK, giving her 10 days to recognise the CWU and Unite unions under British law.
“This is a really important moment where tech workers at Google's frontier AI lab are connecting with some of the most oppressed people in communities around the world in meaningful ways, based on foundational values of solidarity and trade unionism,” he said.
“By exercising their rights to collectivise they are in a strong position to demand their employer stop circling the ethical drain of military-industrial contracts, echoing the sentiment of many working people in the UK and elsewhere.”
In recent years Google workers have raised concerns about the use of the company’s technology by the Israeli military.
Google fired 28 employees in 2024 who engaged in protests against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint contract with Amazon to provide the Israeli government and military with artificial intelligence and cloud services.
