Google DeepMind employees in the UK have asked the government to intervene in a push to unionize the artificial intelligence lab.
On Thursday, the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union—put forward by Google DeepMind staff as joint representatives—filed an application to the Central Arbitration Committee, a government body that resolves disputes between employers and unions.
The application, which was seen by WIRED, asks the CAC to confirm the unions have enough support from workers to trigger a unionization ballot. The company would be required by law to respect the results. If successful, roughly 1,000 staff working in product-focused roles at Google DeepMind would qualify for union membership.
The escalation follows a series of meetings between employees, the unions, and company representatives over voluntary unionization, which left staff with the impression their demands weren’t being taken seriously.
“They’ve been ignored. They feel like their problems have been minimized,” John Chadfield, national officer for technology at the CWU, tells WIRED. “Management has refused to come to the table. They sent it to the HR and labor relations people, who dealt with it as an administrative box-ticking exercise.”
Google DeepMind did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
The push to unionize began in February 2025, when Google’s parent company Alphabet removed a pledge from its ethics guidelines stating that it wouldn’t use AI for purposes like weapons development.
“When I joined, we really made a big deal about the principles—the red lines. We were really looking to benefit humanity and make the world a better place,” a Google DeepMind employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of backlash, tells WIRED. “A lot of this is about reestablishing that ethical and moral framework that we started with.”
The employees pushing for unionization object in particular to agreements between the company and the US and Israeli militaries. If they succeed in unionizing, they intend to demand that Google backs out of those contracts.
“We feel extremely concerned about the direction that this technology is going in,” says a second Google DeepMind employee, who asked to remain anonymous for the same reason as the first employee.
The company has previously defended its deals with government organizations.
“We are proud to be part of a broad consortium of leading AI labs and technology and cloud companies providing AI services and infrastructure in support of national security,” Jenn Crider, a Google spokeswoman, told The New York Times in April. “We remain committed to the private and public sector consensus that AI should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry without appropriate human oversight.”
In an email delivered to all UK staff on Thursday, seen by WIRED, the Google DeepMind employees involved in the unionization push appealed to their colleagues to participate in the ballot, which they expect to take place in the coming months. “We want a union, we want collective bargaining, and we want a say in how AI is developed and deployed,” they wrote.
The group also hopes it can establish a playbook that employees at other major AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic can follow in the UK.
“It’s pretty rare that there’s been an industry that exercises such dominance and power over the economy, where there’s so little opportunity for employees or regulators to have any checks and balances,” the second Google DeepMind employee says. “We want to show what can happen when employees collectively organize and articulate a shared vision for the way their technology should be used.”