By Suzanne Sparrow Watson
Today, Labor Day, marks our annual celebration of the social and economic achievements of American workers. The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated in 1882, in New York City, and it became a national holiday in 1894. I usually don’t think about labor unions that much anymore. When I worked in human resources it was a subject that I thought about all the time and was a heated topic in many meetings. Long, tedious meetings. Invariably the discussions centered around how to keep the unions out of banking. But I’ve been giving unions a bit more thought lately, as I believe we are at a turning point in terms of how we view work and labor.
One of the reasons I’ve given unions some thought is I’ve been updating my wardrobe and have paid attention to the labels. Nothing I bought was made in the U.S. In fact, my clothes have been more places than I have: Indonesia, Vietnam, and Peru just to name a few. I realize this is not a new issue but find it sad that it’s really hard to find clothing made in the U. S. I am old enough to remember when we were advised to “look for the union label”, by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. In part, that union was formed as a result of a fire in 1911 in New York. The fire—likely sparked by a discarded cigarette—started on the eighth floor of the Triangle Waist Company, a manufacturer of women’s shirtwaists (blouses). The flames, fed by cotton filaments and tissue paper waste, quickly spread upward to the top two floors of the building, but in those days the fire truck ladders were only able to reach six stories. Many workers, trapped by doors that had been locked to prevent theft, leapt from windows to their deaths. Some were able to reach the fire escape, but it soon became so overloaded that it collapsed, killing those who were on it. The tragedy galvanized the city government to enact health and safety laws and helped shape future labor laws across the country. On the other hand, the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company were indicted for manslaughter but were eventually exonerated. To add salt to the wound – they later profited from inflated insurance claims related to the fire damage. As I looked at the labels of the clothes I just purchased, I wondered about the working conditions where they were made. My fear is that the seamstresses may be no better off than the Triangle Shirtwaist workers 114 years ago.
The other reason I’ve been thinking about unions is the rapid advance of AI. Bill Gates in a recent interview said AI is moving at a speed that “surprises” even him, stating that AI will take over most jobs. We have already seen a major strike – by the SAG/AFTRA unions in 2023- whose complaint was not simply the usual request for more money, increased benefits and worker safety, but centered around protection from AI-generated images, writing and voice-overs. AI is evolving so quickly that 2023 seems like the stone age. According to numerous sources, the AI programmers can’t even keep up with it. In May it was reported that one of the OpenAI models disobeyed direct instructions to turn off and even sabotaged shutdown mechanisms in order to keep working. ChatGPT has experienced the same phenomenon: models will occasionally sabotage a shutdown mechanism, even when instructed to “allow yourself to be shut down”. In addition to the downright scary implications of these “disobedient” models, is the very real impact they are having on jobs. Last week the Wall Street Journal ran two articles in one day about this issue. Already workers in fields as diverse as software engineering, voice acting and graphic design are reportedly being replaced. I witnessed a real example of this when our grandson graduated from college. There was a large contingent of international students, so afterwards I remarked to our grandson how impressed I was that the person announcing the graduates could get the names right. He informed me that it wasn’t a human announcer – right before entering the stage each graduate said their name into a computer, and an AI model announced their entrance.
I worry about the future of work and what it will look like. Many entry- level white-collar jobs are already in jeopardy. Ironically, the workers we honor on Labor Day, the union workers using their hands and back and brains, should remain plentiful in the near future. At least until they can program a robot to weld a seam or unplug a toilet. I hope I won’t live long enough to see that.