Associate Professor Darryn Snell
School of Management, Business and Human Rights Centre at RMIT University
In his opening to the AI symposium, Associate Professor Darryn Snell set the scene for the discussion about the impact of AI adoption on workers’ rights. Darryn argues that current debates about what impact AI will have in the world of work, are failing to adequately address what this ‘disruption’ means for worker voice, job satisfaction or advancements in decent work.
In 2019, Daniela Rus, Director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, made the observation that ‘Dig into every industry, and you’ll find AI changing the nature of work’ (citied in IEE Spectrum, 2021). While this might not have been the case in Australia in 2019, few would disagree that this is the case today. Since the COVID-crisis AI adoption by organisations in Australia has expanded exponentially. According to Australian Industry Group, over 52% of Australian businesses currently utilise some form of AI.
Impact of AI at work
AI tools to ‘assist’ businesses are being developed at an alarming rate, each claiming to help automate and speed up the time it requires to perform various tasks within organisations. Some of these tools focus on Large Language Models to automate research, data gathering and document processing (see Gumloop) while others navigate software interfaces and execute digital tasks without the need for human intervention. AI agents, for example, handle customer support, resolve complaints, and update records without needing human involvement (see Salesforce Agentforce).
It is hard to imagine that workers will not be impacted in one way or another by organisations adopting these AI tools. Not to mention that work is going to be increasingly outsourced to AI software firms to perform. We are now witnessing the intersection of AI and the outsourcing of business processes among major firms like Telstra resulting in local workforce backlash concerned about job loss. The AI jobs debate, however, continues to rage with opposing claims such as ’AI is the great job killer, job disruptor’ or ’AI as job creator, and job augmenter’. Evidence is mounting on both sides. What is missing in much of this debate is a detailed consideration of what’s happening to workers’ rights in all of this ‘disruption’?
The World Economic Forum (2026) would have us all believe that fixed job titles are a thing of the past. According to this report we are going to live in a period of continuous upskilling and changing job roles and be expected to perform new sorts of tasks as we work alongside AI agents. These AI agents will assist us in various aspects of our work and transform how we carry out our jobs.
AI is a tool of management
One thing the World Economic Forum’s report is silent about is what this ‘disruption’ means for worker voice, job satisfaction or advancements in decent work. While many workers have embraced AI to assist them in their work, AI is fundamentally a tool of management. AI will assist management in making all sorts of organisational decisions including which humans should be recruited for the job and tasks that cannot be performed by AI. Management will rely increasingly on Al to monitor worker performance and adopt new algorithmic management techniques that even mainstream economists have associated with a new digital Taylorism.
A challenge to workers’ rights
Globalisation, labour market deregulation and the weakening of industrial relations and collective bargaining legislation have all presented challenges for workers’ rights over the past 3 decades. AI presents a whole new set of challenges for advancing workers’ rights as workers will be asked to train the AI software that will ultimately transform or do away with their work and means to an income. AI can end up intensifying workloads instead of easing them, not to mention the psycho-social harms associated with growing workplace surveillance.
Employees must have a say in how AI technology is deployed and used at work. AI adoption must be built on trust, fairness and care for the people expected to train and use these new tools. Unions are doing their best to advance these fundamental rights through the bargaining process but are confronting resistance by employers who are focused on efficiency and productivity gains (see ACTU, 2026).
While Australia is one of only a dozen countries to set up an AI Safety Institute to identify and manage some of the risks associated with AI, much more will need to be done to protect Australian workers so that management is accountable for ‘structured and equitable employee transitions’. Given the growing pace of AI adoption the Australian government cannot afford to ignore the workers’ rights implications of what has been defined as ‘the most dangerous transition in economic history’.
This article is part of a suite of papers written following the symposium ‘Which Way Forward? AI and Decent Work’. Read more here.