I’ve made the point before on this blog that technology doesn’t steal jobs; employers do. People worry about the effects of AI on employment for various reasons: the Taylorist argument that it increases productivity and reduces labour needs; the Captain Swing view that it replaces creativity and individual expression; the Weberian view that it centralises control and power.

All of these things can occur simultaneously, and other effects too. The point is that everybody is facing this. If your concern is inadequate training, or redundancy, or unfavourable contracts, the solution is to work together with others to address that. Industrial action, in the form of strikes or what UK law calls “action short of a strike”, is only the big tool at the bottom of the drawer that we workers use when negotiation and conciliation fail. But the negotiations, along with the other actions, succeed more when those doing the bargaining represent all of us.