Unions have a new role in the AI era

At Singapore’s May Day rally, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong made a declaration regarding AI that every labour leader on the globe should consider: “We may not be able to protect every job, but we will protect every worker.” It is a small shift in words, but a monumental shift in meaning. The prime minister recognised that protecting jobs preserves the past but protecting workers invests in the future.

Singapore’s journey to transition to AI is worth studying because it is a blueprint for labour unions on how to achieve a just transition to AI by ensuring that the doomsday predictions regarding mass unemployment and deepening poverty are mitigated.

The government, unions and employers in Singapore are working together in a structured partnership. Since 2019, joint company training committees have benefited more than 300,000 workers. The tripartite jobs council (TJC), launched in April, co-ordinates AI adaptation across industries. The National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), the leading trade union federation in Singapore, is facilitating millions of dollars’ worth of reskilling and worker support.

The NTUC has partnered with businesses through company training committees to identify skill gaps and ensure that technological change leads to real benefits such as higher wages and redesigned jobs. The TJC is a united effort by unions, employers and the government to manage AI disruption responsibly. Its mission is to turn AI’s potential into secure, fair and inclusive opportunities for workers by helping companies adopt AI in ways that boost productivity while protecting jobs and supporting sustainable growth.

Singapore intends to raise AI fluency across industries through large-scale upskilling, while tailoring training to specific sectors. Public awareness campaigns are being used to build understanding of AI and encourage workers to take part in training and adaptation programmes.

Singapore’s manpower minister Tan See Leng and NTUC secretary-general Ng Chee Meng emphasise that AI must translate into “good jobs for Singaporeans”, ensuring dignity and opportunity remain central.

The government is playing the role of financier and policymaker, committing major funding, such as a $300m (R5bn) grant to subsidise training and AI equipment. It also supports the ecosystem through statutory boards, such as SkillsFuture Singapore, which set national standards and provide credits to help citizens take charge of lifelong learning. This council shows how unions can shape AI policy by steering technology toward worker empowerment instead of waiting for disruption to dictate outcomes.

South Africa does not need to look far for inspiration. Cosatu, by working together with other progressive formations of the liberation movement, helped dismantle apartheid through disciplined, organised power. Post-1994, that same power shaped the Labour Relations Act, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and a generation of hard-won worker protections. Unions built the architecture of worker rights in this country and they can build the architecture of AI readiness too.

When workers organise around a shared vision of a better future and refuse to be passive recipients of change, they win

This is not a comparison between apartheid and algorithms. The moral weight of one vastly exceeds the other. But the principle holds: when workers organise around a shared vision of a better future and refuse to be passive recipients of change, they win. That muscle memory is still alive in South Africa and it needs to be deployed.

At the height of apartheid, no-one imagined that the system could be defeated — but it was. While our current dispensation has many weaknesses, it remains a profound victory that apartheid has been erased from the statute books and that we are now governed by a Bill of Rights and a constitution. Yet one of our greatest shortcomings is that we have not ensured the full fruits of democracy are shared by the majority; the promise of genuine democracy, where the many benefit and not just the few, is still incomplete. This generation must confront widening inequality and find solutions that extend opportunity to all, while also preparing itself for the challenges of the future.

AI is already here. It is reshaping every sector of the global economy. From insurance claims to manufacturing floors, from call centres to legal drafting, AI is automating tasks at a pace no previous technology has matched. For millions of workers, the anxiety is real. But we must not allow fear to paralyse us. Unions must lead, as they have always done, by turning disruption into opportunity.

This task may seem impossible, but South Africa’s workers have done the impossible before, and they can do it again. This time it will require policy, skill and collective intelligence to overcome the digital challenge. And once again, it falls on organised labour to save South Africa.

Union leadership in the AI era means more than opposing retrenchments. It means demanding a seat at the table where AI tools are selected, deployed and evaluated. It means co-designing training programmes with employers rather than inheriting the leftovers. It means pushing the government to fund reskilling at scale — not as a social grant, but as a national investment. Singapore’s government covered up to 70% of AI training costs for businesses. There is no reason South Africa’s sector education & training authorities and the department of higher education & training cannot build an equivalent architecture.

Most critically, unions must help workers understand that AI is not the enemy. The enemy is exclusion. The enemy is a future in which AI’s productivity gains flow only to shareholders while workers are discarded. The mechanisms for worker participation are already in place. Public participation platforms such as Nedlac and the proposed digital workers charter give workers a voice in shaping AI policy and imagining the future of work.

Some will argue that South Africa cannot be compared to Singapore, pointing to GDP, unemployment or poverty. But that view misses the deeper truth.

Organised labour seized the steering wheel of AI policy. It insisted that technology serve workers and not replace them. That kind of leadership requires vision, unity and political will. And South African workers have already proven they possess all three. Workers were fearless in dismantling apartheid, and they were architects of progressive labour laws that uplifted millions.

Now, in the age of AI, the power is once again in our hands. If we choose to lead, we can ensure that this technology becomes an assistant to human innovation, not a threat to human dignity. The future of work should not be written by machines. It must be written by workers who dare to shape society for the benefit of the majority.

South African labour has changed history before. We can, and we must, change it again.

• Hlubi-Majola is a labour communications consultant and CEO of Blaqstar Kreativ.