Inteligencia artificial y digitalización: una cuestión de vida o muerte para los trabajadores En este informe de la CSI se identifican daños físicos y psicosociales generalizados en el trabajo asociados al uso de estas tecnologías, desde la sobrecarga cognitiva que supone para los humanos tener que trabajar en tándem con robots – cobots o robots colaborativos – hasta lesiones por movimientos repetitivos, estrés y depresión como consecuencia de objetivos inalcanzables determinados y controlados por algoritmos. Descargar aquí
Le présent rapport – Intelligence artificielle et numérisation : une question de vie ou de mort pour les travailleureuses – identifie les dommages physiques et psychosociaux couramment associés à l’utilisation de ces technologies sur le lieu de travail, lesquels vont de la surcharge cognitive touchant les personnes obligées de travailler en tandem avec des robots – les « cobots » – aux blessures dues à la fatigue, au stress et à la dépression en raison de quotas irréalisables fixés et suivis par des algorithmes. Télécharger ici
The 28 April ITUC report Artificial intelligence and digitalisation: A matter of life and death for workers identifies widespread physical and psychosocial harms at work associated with the use of these technologies, from cognitive overload as humans are required to work in tandem with robots — cobots — to strain injuries, stress and depression as a consequence of unachievable quotas determined and policed by algorithms. Download here
Journée internationale de commémoration des travailleuses et des travailleurs morts ou blessés au travail 2025 : protéger les droits des travailleurs à l’ère de la numérisation et de l’intelligence artificielle
À l’occasion de la Journée internationale de commémoration des travailleuses et des travailleurs morts ou blessés au travail, du 28 avril 2025, la CSI réclame des actions urgentes pour préserver la vie et les droits des travailleuses et des travailleurs à l’ère de la numérisation et de l’intelligence artificielle (IA).
Jornada Internacional de Conmemoración de los Trabajadores Fallecidos y Lesionados 2025: Proteger los derechos de los trabajadores en la era de la digitalización y la inteligencia artificial.
Con ocasión de la Jornada Internacional de Conmemoración de los Trabajadores Fallecidos y Lesionados, que se celebra el 28 de abril, la CSI ha hecho un llamamiento para que se adopten medidas urgentes destinadas a salvaguardar la vida y los derechos de los trabajadores en la era de la digitalización y la inteligencia artificial (IA).
Para descargar los gráficos y obtener mayor información, visiten aquí
International Workers’ Memorial Day 2025: Protecting workers’ rights in the age of digitalisation and artificial intelligence
The ITUC is using this year’s International Workers’ Memorial Day, 28 April, to call for urgent action to safeguard workers’ lives and rights in the age of digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI).
Nautilus commemorates maritime professionals on International Workers Memorial Day
29 April 2025
Nautilus strategic organiser Martyn Gray. Image: Nautilus International
Nautilus International officials laid a wreath in remembrance of maritime officials killed, disabled, injured, or made unwell in performance of their duties to mark International Workers Memorial Day (IWMD), which is held each year on 28 April.
The wreath-laying took place on the first day of the STUC Annual Congress, which is taking place in Dundee between 28 and 30 April. Nautilus director of organising Martyn Gray attended the IWMD event at Caird Hall on behalf of Nautilus, where he laid a wreath along with several other STUC affiliates. The wreaths have now been positioned at the city’s remembrance tree.
The International Labour Organization estimates that every year, 2.93 million workers die as a result of work-related factors with millions more suffering non-fatal work injuries. On April 28, International Workers’ Memorial Day (IWMD), we mourn those workers and commit to fighting for the living.
As our climate warms, workers face an increased risk of exposure to excessive heat, which can be fatal. In all IUF sectors — in fields, in kitchens, in factories, in hospitality and tourism — workers risk being exposed to excessive heat. A report produced by the ILO confirms that 71% of the working population is exposed to excessive heat, resulting in 22.85 million injuries and 18,970 deaths annually.
For IWMD 2025, the IUF has produced a leaflet to raise awareness and propose measures unions can take to protect workers.
The leaflet — Heat Kills — spells out that heat at work must be dealt with immediately, that employers have to fulfill their responsibilities to provide safe and healthy workplaces and that governments must develop legal protections.
IUF Acting General Secretary Kristjan Bragason comments: “Our members are on the front line of the climate crisis every day, and they need better protection to match the ever-increasing danger from rising temperatures that is already evident in all our regions.”
The IUF will develop more materials on the dangers of excessive heat, will challenge companies to engage with us on how to tackle excessive heat at work, and will work with our sister Global Union Federations to ensure international standards are in place to protect workers.
The IUF 28th Congress in 2023 adopted new commitments on tackling the climate crisis, which is driving the increase in temperature and increasingly unstable weather patterns that affect all workers.
This 28 April, International Workers’ Memorial Day (IWMD), the global trade union movement is focusing on technology and workplace health and safety.
UNI is bringing together content moderators from around the world for the first-time ever to Nairobi, Kenya, to build a shared strategy for making their jobs safe, sustainable and union.
Content moderators, who shield billions of social media users from harmful and traumatic material, are exposed to hundreds of videos, images and texts every day depicting extreme violence, sexual abuse, hate speech and other egregious behaviour. Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleeplessness and suicidal thoughts as a result from this work is all too common.
For two years, I spent up to ten hours a day staring at child abuse, human mutilation, racist attacks and the darkest parts of the internet so you did not have to.
You could not stop if you saw something traumatic. You could not stop for your mental health. You could not stop to go the bathroom. You just could not stop. We were told the client, in our case Facebook, required us to keep going.
Kgomo highlighted not only the disturbing nature of the content but also the intense pace demanded by her employer, the outsourcing firm Sama. Moderators’ performance was closely tracked, often given just seconds to evaluate each piece of troubling content.
Such precise and constant monitoring is increasingly enabled by algorithmic management systems and artificial intelligence. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is focusing this year’s IWMD on the consequences of digital surveillance and automation for workers’ health as part of their campaign ahead of important discussions at this year’s International Labor Conference.
Across nearly all economic sectors, this technology is squeezing workers to meet inhumane production targets and deteriorating workers’ mental and physical wellbeing with the extreme pressure of constant, real-time micromanagement and automated assessment.
For example, Amazon’s performance monitoring systems make workers feel “stressed, pressured, anxious, like a slave, robot and untrusted,” according to an international study of Amazon employees. Nearly 60 per cent of the over 2000 Amazon worker respondents from eight countries
UNI Global Union General Secretary Christy Hoffman said:
Job titles like ‘content moderator’ and the extreme surveillance workers now endure were unimaginable just a short time ago, but workers organizing for safe jobs and a real say about their conditions is as old as the labour movement itself. Unions have always fought and won protections against technological abuse. With every new form of workplace tech, the urgency grows to make it serve rather than hurt workers.
UNI has compiled many examples of unions pushing back against the expansion of bossware and digital surveillance in its report, Algorithmic Management: Opportunities for Collective Action. Showing yet again that it is union workplaces that are safe workplaces.
International Workers Memorial Day is the day that the trade union movement unites to remember workers at home and across the globe who have paid the ultimate price, those who left for work and never returned, as well as those whose lives have been altered by workplace injury or harm.
The ITUC is using this year’s International Workers’ Memorial Day, 28 April, to call for urgent action to safeguard workers’ lives and rights in the age of digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI).
AI is transforming the world of work at unprecedented speed. But behind the promise of innovation lies a darker reality: algorithmic management, constant surveillance, impossible productivity targets, and dangerous working conditions. Technology is being used not to improve working conditions and safety, but to exploit them — putting lives and health at risk.
AI-driven management is already intensifying pressure on 427 million workers worldwide.
80% of large employers use AI to track individual worker productivity.
Workers are facing burnout, injuries and unbearable stress from non-stop monitoring, unrealistic targets and zero input on how technology is used.
“Too often artificial intelligence is being deployed not as a tool for progress but as a weapon against workers.”ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle
“From warehouses to hospitals, delivery bikes to data labs, workers are under pressure like never before. The deployment of new technologies must respect the norms of any other changes in the workplace: workers have a right be consulted and included. This basic, democratic, workplace right will ensure the use of AI is designed with safety, fairness and dignity at is core. Workers and their unions must have a seat at the table for the benefit of all.”
Deployment of new technologies, such as AI, without proper consultation with workers and their unions is already causing serious problems around the world:
In the Philippines, 19-year-old delivery rider Jasper Dalman died while working for Foodpanda. His union, RIDERS-SENTRO, won recognition and insurance rights after his death highlighted the deadly consequences of algorithmic exploitation that set impossible productivity targets.
In Turkey, TikTok content moderators employed by Telus were sacked after organising against inhumane AI-managed workloads and trauma-inducing content.
In the US, nurses working through platforms face AI-controlled shift apps that bypass worker protections that create dangerous conditions for them and their patients.
The ITUC is calling for:
Full involvement of unions in the design and deployment of workplace AI.
Transparent, human-centred technology that upholds rights and safety.
Inteligencia artificial y digitalización: una cuestión de vida o muerte para los trabajadores En este informe de la CSI se identifican daños físicos y psicosociales generalizados en el trabajo asociados al uso de estas tecnologías, desde la sobrecarga cognitiva que supone para los humanos tener que trabajar en tándem con robots – cobots o robots colaborativos – hasta lesiones por movimientos repetitivos, estrés y depresión como consecuencia de objetivos inalcanzables determinados y controlados por algoritmos. Descargar aquí
