There is a major policy opening for worker power on technology right now

Millions of workers experience technologies tracking their location or mouse clicks, setting targets, dishing out bonuses or sanctions, and automating hiring and firing decisions. More often than not, workers have no say in the matter. That's because employers have no legal duty to engage workers, or even to be transparent.

The result is Amazon's opaque algorithmically-set targets squeezing workers for everything they've got. Royal Mail's use of GPS tracking, ostensibly for health and safety, was used to improperly monitor workers and intensify work. Uber's use of dynamic pay: the scandal of a moving pay rate that pits drivers against each other and takes more and more from them. In 2025, the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) found that one in three employers reported using “bossware” to monitor the online activity of employees.

With every union survey showing workers have never been engaged, there have long been calls for regulation to establish worker voice and power on these algorithmic management tools. There is a major opportunity to do that right now, helping pave the way for wider worker influence on tech at work.

Making good on the Plan to Make Work Pay

“At a minimum [a Labour government will] ensure that proposals to introduce surveillance technologies would be subject to consultation and negotiation, with a view to agreement of trade unions or elected staff representatives where there is no trade union. Where there is a collective agreement relating to surveillance this will not override it.”

This was the strong commitment set out in Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay, the party’s 2024 election commitment to rebalance power and prosperity towards workers. Now, a government consultation on ‘Workplace Monitoring Technologies’ (WMT) to determine if and how they should act on that commitment has just finished taking submissions.

The TUC has a clear answer to this question: new legislation is needed to ensure rights on WMT are collective, enforceable, and allow workers to influence decisions before tools are introduced.

Though generative AI is not the focus of this consultation, the unilateral imposition of technology is a driver of the vast majority of British workers seeing genAI as a threat right now. If 80% of CWU members do not trust employer use of technology, why would they trust generative AI will be in their interests?

Making good on the MWP commitment is an opportunity for government to empower workers to have voice, rights and a fair share of technology at work.

The need for a better system

Workers have long been underserved by the legal regime on WMT: the UK GDPR.

Employers make decisions on WMT in private, with no duty to engage workers, or to be transparent on the expected or actual impact of these technologies. Individual rights only kick in after technologies have been deployed, and are notoriously hard to enforce.

When it comes to having a stake in technology, workers must act collectively to address the power imbalance that exists between them and their employer. And rights on paper must be enforceable to carry real weight. Establishing real worker power on algorithmic management could be a stepping stone for workers to shape technology in other ways.

Changing the system is a win-win for workers and decent employers.

CMI research found that 42 per cent of managers were opposed to invasive forms of WMT as it damaged trust. The CMI found that “Effective management [of WMT] depends on trust, fairness and confidence”. However, the current regime relies entirely on voluntarism to establish these conditions.

Improper use of WMT also produces perverse outcomes such as “productivity theatre”. Research from Asana found that 67 per cent of workers engage in behaviours designed to appear productive in response to excessive monitoring. A search for mouse ”jigglers” (to give the impression of working to a WMT system) returns 3,000 results on Amazon marketplace.

Failing to engage workers also leads to industrial relations conflict. At Bristol Temple Meads, Mitie's imposition of WMT without consultation on Network Rail and TfL contracts is causing industrial unrest among RMT members.

Why we need legislation to empower consultation and negotiation on WMT...

Legislation enabling collective voice is vital to drive up standards on tech deployment at work for a myriad of reasons.

• A mandatory minimum standard is good for workers, and for good employers – workers have protections, and undercutting by exploitative employers is reduced.
• Consultation and negotiation is pre-emptive, not reactive. This enables real worker voice that supports fair and effective use of WMT, reducing industrial relations conflict and negative workplace morale.
• Legislation provides the backstop to enable unions and employers to negotiate and agree on WMT appropriate to particular technologies and workplaces. A Code of Practice can support this.

Unions are already showing what this looks like. The CWU negotiated with Openreach so that a lone worker safety app only captures location data when an alarm is triggered. ASLEF members on the Elizabeth line shaped a safety app so that data is held at depot level, not individual level. But these wins rely on union strength and employer good faith. When GB Railfreight used fatigue monitoring outside the parameters agreed with ASLEF, the union was left with no option other than to withdrew from the trial. Legislation provides a minimum backstop for better industrial relations that support effective technology deployment everywhere.

...and how to do it

In our response to the government, the TUC has set out detailed propositions for regulation and primary legislation. These can seen in our full consultation response. The primary need is to make rights collective and pre-emptive, not individual and reactive as is currently the case.

At the heart of the proposals is a foundational legal right for workers to be consulted about and negotiate on WMT. Avenues to achieve this range from turning voluntary provisions in the GDPR concerning consultation and negotiation with workers into firm mandates, and ensuring meaningful enforcement mechanisms if employers ignore this. An alternative route would be through amending the Trade Unions and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992: by explicitly adding WMT (or technology generally) to the topics of voluntary bargaining (s178) and the mandatory topics of bargaining in statutory trade union recognition. We also set out a framework for giving force to transparency, redress and collective data access.

There are positive use cases for WMT, and these will be increased when workers have a proper say. However, some are negative or even abusive with ‘dynamic pay’ setting being one such case. Hundreds of thousands of workers are subject to the manifest unjustness of pay that is not transparently set and is changeable through algorithmic technologies based on WMT. No amount of consultation can change that fact, so dynamic pay should be prohibited under all circumstances. The government must confront this degradation of working lives.

What’s next?

The government’s consultation closed on 30 September. It is now up to unions, workers and others to push on this opportunity to deliver legislation that drives up standards on pro-worker technology.