Google DeepMind Workers Vote To Unionize Over Military AI Deals
Source: Slashdot
Background
Employees at Google DeepMind in London have voted to unionize as part of a bid to block the AI lab from providing its technology to the US and Israeli militaries. The move follows Alphabet’s removal of a pledge from its AI ethics guidelines that had barred uses such as weapons development and surveillance — a change that sparked the union drive in February 2025【source】(https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/2217224/google-removes-pledge-to-not-use-ai-for-weapons-from-website).
Unionization effort
In a letter addressed to Google’s managing director for the UK and Ireland, Debbie Weinstein, the workers asked the company to recognize the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and Unite the Union as joint representatives for DeepMind employees【source】(https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VMj5MYHkfbc6vt-yGdI-9s215G0r-zSf/view).
“Fundamentally, the push for unionization is about holding Google to its own ethical standards on AI, how they monetize it, what the products do, and who they work with,”
— John Chadfield, national officer for technology at the CWU, told WIRED.
“Through the process of unionization, workers are collectively in a much stronger place to put [demands] to an increasingly deaf management.”
If the staff succeeds in unionizing in the UK, they are likely to demand that Google pulls out of its long‑standing contract with the Israeli military, seeks greater transparency over how its AI products are used, and obtains assurances regarding layoffs driven by automation. Should Google refuse to engage, the letter states the employees will ask an arbitration committee to compel the company to recognize the unions.
Wider impact
Since the start of the year, both Anthropic and OpenAI have announced large‑scale expansions of their operations in London. The CWU hopes the DeepMind unionization effort will inspire workers at those labs to take similar action.
“These conversations are happening,” says Chadfield. “The workers at other frontier labs have seen what Google DeepMind workers have done. They’ve come to us asking for help as well.”
A DeepMind employee told WIRED:
“A lot of people here bought into the Google DeepMind tagline ‘to build AI responsibly to benefit humanity.’ The direction of travel is to further militarization of the AI models we’re building here.”
Original report: Wired – “Google DeepMind Workers Vote To Unionize Over Military AI Deals” (https://www.wired.com/story/google-deepmind-workers-vote-to-unionize-over-military-ai-deals/)