Quick Take

Who Will Speak for Workers in the Age of AI?

May 6, 2026

On 1 May 1933, approximately one million people gathered on Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin for one of the largest mass rallies of the Nazi period. Organized by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, the event had a carefully constructed purpose: to ideologically rebrand International Workers’ Day—observed since 1889 as a symbol of labor rights and solidarity—as the “Day of National Labor,” subordinating workers’ interests to the interests of the state. The following day, trade union premises across Germany were occupied, leading functionaries were arrested, and some tortured and murdered. It was one of the first and most deliberate acts of institutional dismantling by the regime.

The lesson of that moment is not only historical. Institutions that speak on behalf of workers are fragile. They can be dismantled quickly, and their absence is felt for generations.

On Labor Day 2026, the world of work stands at another crossroads—and the institutions that have historically represented workers’ interests are again under pressure.

The promise and the risk of AI

The AI for Good Summit in Geneva later this summer will bring together governments, technology companies, and civil society to explore how artificial intelligence can become a force for good in global society. The opportunities are real. AI has the potential to reduce dangerous and repetitive work, improve access to healthcare and education, and support more productive and dignified working conditions. The excitement among technology companies is genuine and, in many respects, justified.

But the same technology that promises to liberate workers can also be used to surveil them, replace them, and hollow out the labor protections that took generations to build. The question is not whether AI will transform the world of work—it will. The question is who will have a say in how that transformation unfolds, and whose interests it will serve.

A shrinking coalition for workers’ rights

Trade unions have traditionally been the primary societal institutions representing workers’ rights. In the early 1930s, they were among the first targets of authoritarian consolidation, not by accident, but because they represented an organized counterweight to unchecked power. Today, union membership is in long-term decline across much of the world, and in many countries union activity is actively suppressed and union leaders are discriminated against.

This is a problem in itself. But it also points to a broader challenge: in a world where AI development is being driven by a small number of powerful technology companies, and where many governments such as the United States are rushing to deregulate in the name of competitiveness, the coalition of actors capable of demanding a human-centred future of work is narrowing. Trade unions alone cannot carry this responsibility. A wider coalition including civil society, academia, investors, and business itself needs to step into that space.

The role of business and business education

This is where business schools have a responsibility they have been slow to accept. Future managers will make decisions about how AI is deployed in their organizations and supply chains. They will decide whether new technologies are used to empower workers or to extract more value from them at lower cost. They will determine whether the companies they lead treat workers’ rights as a cornerstone of sustainable business success or as a cost to be minimized.

These are not abstract ethical questions. As our forthcoming book on transformational business models demonstrates, companies that integrate workers’ rights into their core business operations, not as a compliance add-on but as a design principle, build more resilient, more innovative, and more successful enterprises. The evidence is there. What is missing, in too many business school curricula, is the willingness to teach it.

Our colleague Professor Michael Pirson calls this humanistic management. We call it business and human rights. The label matters less than the commitment: to prepare future leaders who understand what is at stake, who see workers’ rights as inseparable from democratic societies and long-term business viability, and who will use the tools available to them, including AI, to build businesses that serve society, not just shareholders.

May 1 was Labor Day in many European countries, and International Workers Day in the US, making this an apt moment to ask whether we as business school instructors are doing enough to make that future possible. The institutions that protected workers in the past are weakening. The question is what we are building to replace them, and how we empower the next generation to imagine a world of work that is good business—good for business and for society.