Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK employment myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Banks, insurers and accounting firms should be braced to pay for the retraining of millions of employees whose jobs could be displaced by artificial intelligence, UK unions will warn at the Trades Union Congress next month.Accord, which represents banking workers, will call on financial services groups to prepare to fund a “major” programme to reskill many of their almost 2.5mn UK staff in a motion to the labour movement’s annual conference.A report from Citigroup in June warned that half of banking jobs were at risk from automation.“Congress notes with concern a report from June 2024 stating that up to 54 per cent of banking jobs and 48 per cent of insurance roles could be displaced by AI in the future,” according to the Accord motion published on the TUC website.“AI-driven job displacement is predicted to be higher in financial services than in any other sector of the economy,” it adds.Meanwhile Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, one of the largest unions, told the Financial Times that Britain was “falling behind” and needed to back “new technologies”.“That means government and employers working with unions to build a better future for all that will avoid the very real dangers of AI-generated unemployment, inequality and prejudice,” she said.Several trade union leaders are set to increase pressure on Labour ministers to introduce legislation regulating employers’ use of AI at the conference in Brighton next month.Union delegates will debate four separate motions on the fast-evolving technology, including the one put forward by Accord, according to the TUC website. Any motion that passes will become official TUC policy.For the past 14 years, the Conservative government often ignored the TUC, but the landslide general election victory by Labour — which receives millions of pounds in donations from union supporters — means that is set to change.Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is pushing through a package of “New Deal” employment reforms that represent a virtual wish list for the union movement, including scrapping all Tory anti-strike legislation from the past decade.Starmer’s government is also working on an AI bill to regulate the fast-moving sector, but the proposed legislation will fall short of addressing concerns raised by the TUC and unions that belong to it about the future of jobs.It will instead have a very narrow remit, focusing on safety testing and government oversight of the most advanced and largest AI models being developed by tech groups such as OpenAI, according to people briefed on its contents.Last year the TUC published a blueprint bill to regulate AI in the workplace, setting out new legal rights including a duty of transparency when employers use AI and protections against unfair dismissal by the technology.TUC assistant general secretary Kate Bell said AI was already making “life-changing calls” in the workplace including over how people were hired, managed and fired.“Other countries are regulating workplace AI so that staff and employers know where they stand,” she said, citing legislation in the US, China and Canada. “The UK urgently needs to put new safeguards in place to protect workers from exploitation and discrimination.”Jana Mackintosh, managing director of payments, innovation and resilience at trade body UK Finance, said: “As a highly regulated sector, firms are proceeding carefully with their adoption of AI. As well as recruiting in this area, firms are discussing best practice, training staff on new skills and upskilling their wider workforce on applying AI effectively and responsibly in their roles.”The government has been contacted for comment.The three other motions to be presented at TUC’s conference have been drawn up by Unite, Artists’ Union England and the TUC Young Workers’ Conference. The motion by Unite warns that AI is increasingly being used to “control workers through observation”, with low-paid, outsourced staff from ethnic minority backgrounds the most vulnerable.It will call on the government to enact legislation that gives unions the right to be consulted over the use of AI at work, makes sure recruitment is free from bias and discrimination, protects workers from AI-powered decision-making and “provide rights for human involvement when technology makes ‘high-risk’ decisions like hiring and firing”.Artists’ Union England is urging the government to “strengthen democratic systems” against possible threats from AI.Its motion will call on the TUC to lobby for legislation to protect artists’ and creative workers’ intellectual property rights, and demand “the prohibition of the use of AI in workplaces without explicit collective agreement”.The fourth motion from the TUC Young Workers’ Conference calls for employers to consult workers over the use of new workplace technologies.
