{"id":567458,"date":"2026-07-03T19:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T19:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/567458\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T19:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T19:36:12","slug":"google-deepmind-unionization-talks-are-off-to-a-rocky-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/567458\/","title":{"rendered":"Google DeepMind Unionization Talks Are Off to a Rocky Start"},"content":{"rendered":"

Negotiations between Google DeepMind and its London-based employees over the possibility of unionization<\/a> stumbled this week, after initial talks left union representatives feeling they had wasted their time, WIRED has learned.<\/p>\n

In May, DeepMind employees asked<\/a> Google to recognize the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as joint representatives. The company later denied that request, but agreed to participate in negotiations arbitrated by a third-party body.<\/p>\n

An initial meeting on Wednesday was attended by union officers, DeepMind employees involved in the unionization push, the third-party arbitrator, and DeepMind HR representatives. Those advocating for unionization were left frustrated by the absence of DeepMind leadership figures.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecognition talks not being attended by senior management at the opening stage is a leading indicator that a company isn\u2019t engaging in good faith. It\u2019s just a time-wasting exercise,\u201d claims John Chadfield, a CWU officer, who attended the meeting. \u201cNegotiations have stalled at an early stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeepMind denies that negotiations have stalled. \u201cThe first step in the process is to define who the unions want to represent and the parties agreed on next steps to do this,\u201d says Al Verney, a Google DeepMind spokesperson. \u201cThe appropriate representatives attended this initial meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the meeting, a DeepMind employee read out a prepared letter on behalf of colleagues that support unionization, reviewed by WIRED. \u201cInstead of having meaningful dialogue with its employees about our concerns, Google DeepMind workers have been treated as a problem handed off to HR,\u201d the letter states. The employee reading the statement was interrupted on two occasions by DeepMind HR representatives, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the meeting.<\/p>\n

The letter goes on to allege that Google has attempted to quash open dialogue between DeepMind employees and crack down on dissent, by shutting down or reconfiguring internal chat venues, and preventing staff from responding to company-wide communications about the unionization bid. Employees that sought to dance around restrictions were \u201creprimanded\u201d by HR, the letter alleges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intention was to intimidate,\u201d claims a DeepMind employee involved in drafting the letter, who asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak to the media. \u201cThese are well-established union-busting techniques.\u201d<\/p>\n

“We\u2019ll continue to engage constructively in the\u2026process and have open dialogue with employees,\u201d says Verney. \u201cFor topics outside of this, we continue to offer employees a variety of other channels and opportunities to discuss their views.\u201d<\/p>\n

The push to unionize at DeepMind began in February 2025, when Google\u2019s parent company Alphabet removed a pledge<\/a> not to use AI for purposes like weapons development and surveillance from its ethics guidelines, WIRED previously reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose principles were a big part of why I joined DeepMind,\u201d says a second DeepMind employee, who asked to remain anonymous for the same reason. \u201cWe basically just got rid of them all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Negotiations between Google DeepMind and its London-based employees over the possibility of unionization stumbled this week, after initial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,42573,18,823,19,17,242134,82,30042],"class_list":["post-567458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-deepmind","tag-eire","tag-google","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tech-biz","tag-technology","tag-unions"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116857732234118229","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}