幾年前，萬豪酒店在五個城市的酒店推出一款新應用，可以通知客房清潔工哪些房間需要打掃。本意是為了節省清掃人員時間，卻變成一場災難。

結果客房清潔工在不同樓層的房間之間疲于奔命，卻顧不上走廊另一端凌亂的房間。從員工角度來說，他們覺得新應用反而降低了工作效率，還要擔心因為沒法按時完成工作受雇主懲罰?！昂喼笔前踪M勁，”代表萬豪清潔工的工會Unite Here女發言人瑞秋·古伯特如此描述。

工會得知新應用導致問題幾個月后，萬豪酒店的員工舉行了罷工，部分原因就是針對客房管理應用等新技術。經過激烈的談判，12月酒店員工獲得了明顯讓步，新合同要求管理層提前165天通知應用新技術，以便處理相關疑問。

萬豪簽訂的合同凸顯了工會如何努力推動保護員工對抗無情闖入工作的新技術影響。最近，賭場員工、記者甚至職業籃球運動員都在就合同進行談判，合同中規定了一些條款，比如重新培訓因新技術下崗的工人，以及限制企業如何利用從設備中收集到的相關數據。

鮮有企業就該現象公開表態。例如，萬豪只發表了一份聲明，但拒絕評論，聲明稱萬豪已調整了客房管理應用，以便員工更好地掌控日常工作?！熬频瓴扇⌒铝鞒虝r，我們通常會與同事合作，征求反饋意見，” 萬豪表示。

馬修·謝爾勒是Littler-Mendelson律師事務所專攻技術領域的律師，該事務所在勞動事務糾紛中代表企業方。他說，多數企業都忽視了員工對技術日益增長的擔憂。謝爾勒表示，與公司客戶交談時，他建議認真對待員工的疑慮，這樣管理人員可以在問題出現并影響業務之前解決。

“不太清楚美國公司會做出怎樣的反應，也不清楚何時會出現所謂‘衛星時刻’，”馬修·謝爾勒表示。他拒絕討論公司代理的具體企業。

不管怎么說，大家都認同創新會導致一些工作消失，同時打開大門迎來新的就業機會。比如說，應對商店使用自動結賬系統放棄人工收銀員方面，戰爭就已經結束了。

A few years ago, Marriott debuted a new app at hotels in five cities that was supposed to save housekeepers time by telling them which rooms to clean. It was a disaster.

Housekeepers ended up yo-yoing between rooms on different floors, ignoring messy rooms just down the hall. If anything, the cleaners felt that the app made them less efficient, and they worried about being disciplined by their bosses for failing to finish their work on time. “A wild-goose chase” is how Rachel Gumpert, a spokeswoman for Unite Here, the labor union that represents Marriott’s housekeepers, describes the episode.

Several months after the union became aware of the problems the app was causing, Marriott’s hotel workers went on strike, partly because of new technologies like the housekeeping app. In December, after intense negotiations, the hotel workers won a remarkable concession—a new contract that requires management to tell them 165 days in advance about new technology so they can raise any concerns.

The Marriott agreement highlights how unions are increasingly pushing to protect employees from the unrelenting march of technology into the workplace. Recently, casino workers, journalists, and even professional basketball players have negotiated contracts that dictate terms like retraining workers who are displaced by technology and limiting how businesses can use data they collect about employees from their devices.

Corporations have said little publicly about the phenomenon. Marriott, for example, declined to comment beyond a statement that it has since modified its housekeeping app so that employees have more control over their daily work assignments. “It is customary for us to work with our associates and solicit feedback when implementing new procedures at our hotels,” Marriott said.

Matthew Scherer, a lawyer who specializes in technology for law firm Littler? Mendelson, which represents corporations in labor matters, says that most businesses are oblivious to employees’ increasing worries about tech. When talking with corporate clients, Scherer says he recommends that they take worker misgivings seriously so that managers can address them before they bubble over and disrupt business.

“It’s not entirely clear to me how corporate America is going to respond or when it’s going to have its Sputnik moment, as it were,” says Scherer, who declined to discuss specific companies his firm represents.

Whatever the case, everyone agrees that innovation will eliminate some jobs while opening the door to newer ones. The battle is over how to cushion the impact of, say, stores switching to using self-checkout systems instead of employing human cashiers.

過去，工人經常組織起來抵制新技術，有時甚至極力反抗，19世紀歐洲的裁縫就曾燒毀安裝了新式電力織機的工廠。如今，工會領導人采取的抵抗方式則更加克制。

“工作不會消失，”美國最大的工會聯盟AFL-CIO的政策和特別顧問達蒙·希爾佛表示?！皩⒊霈F新的工作崗位，現有工作的內容也會改變?！?/p>

現在許多領導者都在潛心研究人工智能等話題，商業顧問也一樣。西爾弗斯說，AFL-CIO已經會見卡內基梅隆大學、凱西大學和商業咨詢巨頭麥肯錫的專家，探討技術對工人潛在的影響。經常有人諷刺工會落后于時代，現實卻恰好相反。工會表示，關鍵在于不要阻止技術進步，要主動了解工人和企業應如何避免技術導致嚴重破壞。

工會也確實就技術和自動化進行了多年談判。（看看汽車工業就知道）但現在斗爭越發圍繞軟件而不是工業機器人，而數十年來機器人曾奪走大量工作。

凱莉·格里森在大眾民主中心領導“公平工作周”倡議，她表示零售行業里負責安排員工工作時間的軟件是關鍵所在。該軟件可根據商店繁忙或空閑的時間安排員工，實現所謂的準時勞動力。

然而問題在于，商店經理使用軟件給員工排班時，經常安排每天工作短短幾小時，而不讓員工一次上班時間長一些，然后能有機會休息整天。因此，許多員工完全沒法預計上班時間，只能24小時隨叫隨到，也很難找到兼職。

作為回應，一些代表零售業員工的工會最近就合同進行了談判，明確管理層使用調度軟件的方式，避免干擾員工的生活。一個例子是，2014年United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5與梅西零售公司簽訂了合同，要求提前通知員工時間表以及任何變更。

2017年的合同談判中，代表NBA球員的國家籃球運動員協會針對的是可穿戴設備。工會規定，禁止球隊在某些情況下利用健身追蹤器中收集球員的健康和表現數據。

舉例來說，訓練或比賽中收集的心率信息可能顯示運動員身體不適。根據規則，團隊在比賽期間可以使用相關數據協助制定策略。但跟NBA球員個人談判合同時則不能用數據說事，因為正如NBA聯盟副總顧問大衛·福斯特解釋，數據顯示的信息可能不準確。

當然了，現實情況是美國大多數員工并不具備NBA球星的議價能力。非工會企業可以自由使用任何技術，包括收集和分析有關員工績效的數據，只要不涉及種族和性別等因素。

例如，營銷公司可以跟蹤員工在電腦上的打字時間評估業績。打字越多業績表現也就越佳。

“隨著機器學習越來越強大，通過技術監控員工成本越來越低，也越發容易，” 坦普爾大學法學教授布里森·羅杰斯表示?！肮緦⑹占鄦T工表現方面的數據，還會盡可能利用數據降低勞動力成本?！?/p>

代表記者的紐約新聞協會與新聞機構就通過數據評估績效進行了談判。工會關注的是，許多記者的業績與文章的網絡點擊量掛鉤，工會組織主任納斯塔蘭·莫希特稱此舉為“比拼誰底線更低”。

新聞協會表示，接受當今數字世界的現實，但雇主應該根據記者的工作質量評估業績，不要定量安排。因為設定的工作量可能因谷歌或Facebook突然改變算法受到負面影響。

莫希特表示，新聞協會能爭取不提定量安排工作，或者限制在少數新聞機構內。例如，法律新聞社Law360曾要求其記者每天寫四篇報道，不允許例外情況。莫希特在一封電子郵件中稱之為新聞業定量安排工作 “最苛刻也最有問題”的案例之一。

她說，2016年Law360員工終于加入工會后，員工“第一件事便是放松定額工作量，最后徹底取消”。Law360的母公司LexisNexis拒絕置評。

In the past, workers have often organized to resist new technology and, in some cases, even to rebel against it, as in the 19th century when tailors in Europe burned down factories filled with newfangled power looms. But these days, union leaders are taking a more measured approach.

“Work is not going away,” says Damon Silvers, the director of policy and special counsel for the AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the U.S. “There will be new jobs created, and the content of existing jobs will change.”

These days, many leaders immerse themselves in topics like artificial intelligence—much like business consultants. Silvers says that the AFL-CIO has met with experts from Carnegie Mellon University, Case Western University, and business consulting giant McKinsey to discuss technology’s potential disruption to workers. It’s a far cry from the caricature of unions as being behind the times. The point is not to stop technological progress, the unions say, but rather to understand what workers and businesses can do to avoid major disruption caused by technology.

To be sure, unions have negotiated over technology and automation for years. (Just look at the auto industry.) But now the fight is increasingly over software rather than industrial robots, a big job killer for decades.

In the retail industry, software for scheduling employee hours is a big sticking point, says Carrie Gleason, who directs the Fair Workweek Initiative at the advocacy group The Center for Popular Democracy. The technology weighs the hours when stores are expected to be busy or empty to schedule workers, creating a so-called just-in-time workforce.

One problem, however, is that store managers often use the software to slot employees in short blocks of a few hours rather than giving them additional tasks to do during slower periods so they have a full day. As a result, many employees end up with unpredictable schedules that require them to be on call around the clock, thus making it difficult for them to get second jobs.

In reaction, some unions representing retail workers have recently negotiated contracts that spell out how management can use scheduling software, to avoid disrupting the lives of employees. One example is a 2014 contract between the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 and retail firm Macy’s that requires advance notice to workers about their schedules and any changes to them.

In its contract negotiations in 2017, the National Basketball Players Association, which represents NBA players, targeted wearable devices. The union was able to establish rules that prohibit teams, in certain situations, from using player health and performance data that they glean from fitness trackers.

Heart rate information collected during training or games may show that a player is out of shape, for instance. Under the rules, teams can use this data to help strategize during games. But they can’t factor it in when negotiating individual NBA player contracts because, as the NBA union’s deputy general counsel David Foster explains, the information may be inaccurate.

The reality, of course, is that most U.S. workers don’t have the bargaining power of NBA stars. Non-unionized companies are free to use any technology they want, including gathering and analyzing data about employee performance, as long as it doesn’t touch on factors like race and gender.

For instance, a marketing firm could track how much time employees type on their computers to gauge their performance. The more they‘re at their keyboards, the better.

“As machine learning becomes more powerful, it will be cheaper and easier to monitor workers in that way,” said Brishen Rogers, a law professor at Temple University. “Companies are going to be gathering more and more data about how employees are preforming on their job and they will use that data to reduce labor costs wherever they can.”

The NewsGuild of New York, which represents journalists, has bargained with publishers over the use of data to measure employee performance. The union is concerned that many reporters are being evaluated by how many clicks their articles get online, which Nastaran Mohit, the union’s organizing director, calls a “race to the bottom.”

The NewsGuild says it accepts the reality of today’s digital world. But it believes that employers should measure journalists by the quality of their work and not by quotas that can be negatively affected by Google or Facebook suddenly changing their algorithms.

Ultimately, the guild has been able to secure language that eliminate quotas or reduce them at a number of publications, Mohit says. For instance, the legal news service Law360 once required its reporters to write four stories a day with no exception, a mandate that Mohit referred to in an email as one of the most “demanding and problematic” examples of story quotas in journalism.

Eventually after Law360 workers unionized in 2016, the employees were able to “first loosen their quotas, and then eventually remove them altogether,” she said. Lexis-Nexis, Law360’s parent company, declined to comment.

不僅藍領工人擔心技術的影響。會計師或律師助理之類白領工人也一樣擔心，這些人通常不是工會成員，而且一般來說不用擔心技術問題，但如今人工智能支持的軟件可以幫客戶計算稅收或處理法律研究問題，所以同樣面臨風險。

“現在白領階層焦慮情緒嚴重，”哈佛商學院教授威廉·克爾說。

加州大學伯克利分銷勞動力中心的低工資工作項目主任安妮特·伯恩哈特說，到最后工會可能敦促立法者以更廣泛的方式解決科技對勞動力的影響。

“我們發現工會已率先深入探討相關問題，但決策者和我們公眾也要盡快加入討論，” 伯恩哈特表示。

最近谷歌員工抗議公司存在的性騷擾和仲裁政策，但并無工會組織，表明一些白領工人也在模仿工會的策略努力改變公司政策。谷歌的回應是取消了一項規定，此前規定是指責公司存在性騷擾的員工必須走仲裁而不是通過法院系統。

不管怎樣，萬豪酒店的客房清潔工也通過最近的合同獲得了一些保護，條款比較接近去年工會代表拉斯維加斯賭場員工談判的合同。合同要求萬豪向工會提供新技術的信息，還要保證為辭退的員工提供工作培訓。

如此一來，客房清潔工可轉型當廚師，在同一家酒店或附近的酒店工作。常駐舊金山的聯合主席安納德·辛哈表示，合同的措辭囊括了未來兩種情況下技術的影響，一種是比如機器人可以打掃房間的情形，另一種則更貼近當下，比如讓客房清潔工很憤怒的應用程序之類。

“我們沒法提供所有的答案，”他承認。不過，“確實不能僅依靠一些先進的裝置重新定位和訓練美國人?！?span>（財富中文網）

本文另一版本發表于2019年5月出版的《財富》雜志，標題是《當技術和勞動力出現沖突》。

譯者：馮豐

審校：夏林

And it’s not just blue-collar workers who are worried about technology’s impact. White-collar workers like accountants or paralegals, who aren’t typically union members and, generally, have never had to fear technology, are at risk because of software powered by artificial intelligence that can calculate taxes for clients or handle legal research.

“There’s so much anxiety these days among the white-collar class,” said Harvard Business School professor William Kerr.

Annette Bernhardt, the director of the low-wage work program at the University of California at Berkeley’s Labor Center, said unions may eventually push lawmakers to address tech’s impact on the workforce in more sweeping ways.

“What we’re seeing is that unions are the first to dive into these questions, but very quickly policy makers and we as the public are going to have to have this debate as well,” says Bernhardt.

Recent protests by Google employees, who aren’t unionized, against the search giant’s sexual harassment and arbitration policies shows that some white-collars laborers are mimicking union tactics to change company policy. Google responded by eliminating a policy that required workers who accused the company of sexual harassment of going through arbitration rather than the court system.

In any case, Marriott’s housekeepers were able to win some protections in their recent contract, which was similar to one their union negotiated last year on behalf of Las Vegas casino workers. In addition to requiring that Marriott give the union a heads-up about any new technology, it guarantees job training for anyone who is displaced.

A housekeeper could become a cook, for example, and be put to work at the same hotel or one nearby. The contract language covers disruption from both futuristic scenarios like robots that can clean rooms, to more present-day ones like the app that infuriated the hotel’s housekeepers, says Anand Singh, a Unite Here president in San Francisco.

“We don’t have all the answers,” he concedes. However, “you can’t just count on some magical apparatus to reposition and retrain Americans.”

A version of this article appears in the May 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “When Tech and Labor Collide.”