DUBLIN — The Irish capital, which doubles as Europe's de facto tech capital, hosted two very different AI summits in the past week. Most eyes were on the International AI Summit, the signature tech event of Ireland's six-month presidency of the Council of the EU, where top brass from the world's biggest tech firms discussed ways to harness artificial intelligence and minimize safety risks. But the weekend before, a very different conversation was taking place at the Workers' AI Counter Summit, as Ireland's tech workers demanded a say in how the burgeoning technology reshapes the workplace and society.
Ireland's lucrative tech sector has been rattled by waves of AI-driven layoffs — and the country's fledgling tech union has seen an exponential spike in sign-ups from workers who are worried about their future. There’s an “awakening” happening right now among workers in Ireland’s tech sector, and a growing “awareness that they’re not bulletproof,” said Sinéad Gibney, a social democrat lawmaker who previously worked for Google. "They won't have the same labor power and therefore we're going to see a drop in quality of work, we're going to see more zero-hour contracts, in more places than we already see it.” The labor movement brewing in Ireland, where many of the world's tech giants have their EU bases, is part of a wider trend among tech workers globally, who have seen their work disrupted by rapidly evolving AI.
Ireland’s dedicated union for tech workers, the Digital and Techworker Alliance (DATA), has seen a five-fold increase in membership since it was first founded in 2023. In its first year and a half of existence, membership hovered around 270 people. In the past year-and-a-half, it's jumped to more than 1,350 members, DATA organizer John Bohan told POLITICO.
He added that this number tends to spike around layoffs and other actions. We started to see more people wanting to get organized around redundancies.” The spike in sign-ups coincides with a wave of layoffs in Ireland’s tech bubble (and the tech sector globally), as companies corrected pandemic-era overhiring, and diverted investment to AI. Ireland hosts the EU headquarters of most of the world’s largest tech companies, and more than 170,000 people are employed in the tech sector, according to the country's statistics institute.
Social media giant Meta has roughly halved its workforce in Ireland since the pandemic, axing well over 1,000 roles to offset AI investment and boost efficiency. Separately, Meta subcontractor Covalen also announced massive layoffs earlier this year, cutting more than 700 people. Video-sharing platform TikTok announced this year it would shed around 300 Irish jobs, mostly from its trust and safety team, shifting the work to other countries, outsourced vendors or automated AI solutions.
A report by the IMF earlier this year warned that Ireland’s labor market is “relatively more exposed” to AI than many advanced economies, partly due to its concentration of tech workers. The AI race is also creating new jobs on the Irish market – as AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI are setting up Irish bases and trying to lure Big Tech workers with even bigger salaries. Amid the uncertainty and volatility of the AI boom, tech workers are turning to unions for the first time as a safety net.
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