The AI Layoff Wave Is Here. Here's How Workers Are Fighting Back.

This past week, we launched the first iteration of our pilot program with the AI Commons Project — paying participants $1,000/month fo up to 12 months, for workers who have lost their jobs due directly to AI disruption, while providing reskilling training and community support. The Fund for Guaranteed Income has distributed over $25 million fighting for a stronger safety net, and we're grateful to the AI Commons Project for their support in our early stages of growth.

This Past Week in Layoffs

We are looking at a massive shift across Big Tech, as firms like Oracle and Atlassian explicitly cite "AI rebalancing" for significant workforce reductions. While companies redirect capital toward infrastructure, the labor movement has to move faster than ever to ensure workers aren't left behind in the automation wave.

• Oracle is weighing cuts of 20,000 to 30,000 positions — roughly 12–18% of its global workforce. Analysts suggest the move is a "cash-flow play" to fund a massive $156 billion build-out of AI-focused cloud infrastructure.
• Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes announced 1,600 layoffs, stating it would be "disingenuous to pretend AI doesn't change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required" — one of the most explicit links between AI and job cuts this year.
• Meta is cutting 20% of its workforce (15,000 jobs) while doubling its AI spending to $135 billion.
• The $100,000 H-1B fee: in an Oakland courtroom, government attorneys revealed that only around 70 employers have paid the new fee since its inception — supporting the legal argument that the fee is an illegal regulatory hurdle designed to kill the program.

We believe these layoffs are not due primarily to AI increasing productivity, but simply due to the fact that AI is expensive. Tech giants are making dangerous bets with our economy and our country.

CWA's Blueprint for Worker-Centered AI

While tech executives promise "AI efficiency," workers on the ground are often the ones correcting AI errors while facing intensified surveillance and job insecurity. In a new strategy memo, CWA President Claude Cummings Jr. argues that union contracts are the only tools that move at the speed of technological change.

• The "Seat at the Table" Mandate: CWA rejects the idea that AI displacement is inevitable, prioritizing contract language that requires management to provide advance notice and allow workers guidance on how AI is implemented.
• Bargaining for Gains: The union is pushing to ensure that the economic wealth generated by AI productivity is shared with workers, not just funneled to investors.
• Progress, Not Exploitation: By treating AI as a tool to enhance human potential rather than deskill it, the CWA is building a cross-sector movement for dignity at work.

Why "What We Will"?

Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will.

Our name is a tribute to the vision of Ira Steward. The New Deal protections we now consider standard — the five-day work week, Social Security, the abolition of child labor — were not innovations handed down from the top. They were hard-won victories secured by organized workers who refused to accept the status quo of the first Industrial Revolution.

Today, the rapid pace of AI development is forcing an economic shift of a similar scale. As Brian Merchant wrote in Blood In the Machine, there are parallels between our current age of automation and the last. The question is not whether technology is useful in itself, but who owns and controls the machines? For whose benefit?

We advocate for quality jobs and worker control over technology adoption. We are fighting for a 32-hour work week so each worker gains from AI productivity, portable healthcare benefits not tied to employment, and expanded unemployment insurance with full labor rights for all gig and contract workers. Large language models have been trained on the intellectual and artistic work of everyone in society — and we all deserve a share in the wealth generated by AI. The future of AI dominance is not inevitable. We are fighting for shared prosperity, and organizing to ensure the next technological era serves the people who create it.