Negotiations between Google DeepMind and its London-based employees over the possibility of unionization stumbled this week, after initial talks left union representatives feeling they had wasted their time, WIRED has learned.
In May, DeepMind employees asked Google to recognize the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as joint representatives. The company later denied that request, but agreed to participate in negotiations arbitrated by a third-party body.
An initial meeting on Wednesday was attended by union officers, DeepMind employees involved in the unionization push, the third-party arbitrator, and DeepMind HR representatives. Those advocating for unionization were left frustrated by the absence of DeepMind leadership figures.
“Recognition talks not being attended by senior management at the opening stage is a leading indicator that a company isn’t engaging in good faith. It’s just a time-wasting exercise,” claims John Chadfield, a CWU officer, who attended the meeting. “Negotiations have stalled at an early stage.”
DeepMind denies that negotiations have stalled. “The first step in the process is to define who the unions want to represent and the parties agreed on next steps to do this,” says Al Verney, a Google DeepMind spokesperson. “The appropriate representatives attended this initial meeting.”
During the meeting, a DeepMind employee read out a prepared letter on behalf of colleagues that support unionization, reviewed by WIRED. “Instead of having meaningful dialogue with its employees about our concerns, Google DeepMind workers have been treated as a problem handed off to HR,” the letter states. The employee reading the statement was interrupted on two occasions by DeepMind HR representatives, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the meeting.
The letter goes on to allege that Google has attempted to quash open dialogue between DeepMind employees and crack down on dissent, by shutting down or reconfiguring internal chat venues, and preventing staff from responding to company-wide communications about the unionization bid. Employees that sought to dance around restrictions were “reprimanded” by HR, the letter alleges.
“The intention was to intimidate,” claims a DeepMind employee involved in drafting the letter, who asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak to the media. “These are well-established union-busting techniques.”
"We’ll continue to engage constructively in the…process and have open dialogue with employees,” says Verney. “For topics outside of this, we continue to offer employees a variety of other channels and opportunities to discuss their views.”
The push to unionize at DeepMind began in February 2025, when Google’s parent company Alphabet removed a pledge not to use AI for purposes like weapons development and surveillance from its ethics guidelines, WIRED previously reported.
“Those principles were a big part of why I joined DeepMind,” says a second DeepMind employee, who asked to remain anonymous for the same reason. “We basically just got rid of them all.”
Employees across the AI industry have raised concerns about the militarization of the models they are developing. In late February, staff at DeepMind and OpenAI signed an open letter in support of Anthropic, after the US Department of Defense sought to designate the lab a supply chain risk over its refusal to allow its technology to be used in autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.
In April, The New York Times reported that Google had entered into a deal allowing the Pentagon to use its AI for “any lawful government purpose.” Roughly 600 US-based Google employees reportedly signed a letter protesting the permissive terms of the deal. The US Department of Defense later confirmed that it had reached deals with seven leading AI companies—including Google, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Microsoft—to use their models on classified networks.
Google has previously defended its deals with government organizations. “We are proud to be part of a broad consortium of leading AI labs and technology and cloud companies providing AI services and infrastructure in support of national security,” Jenn Crider, a Google spokeswoman, told The New York Times in April. “We remain committed to the private and public sector consensus that AI should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry without appropriate human oversight.”
In 2021, Google employees in the US formed the Alphabet Workers Union. The union is not recognized by Alphabet for collective bargaining purposes but has previously succeeded in negotiating agreements on behalf of Google contractors.
If negotiations in London do not progress, says Chadfield, the CWU representative, employees will ask an arbitration committee to force Google to recognize the unions.
“We’re hoping that Google genuinely comes to the table and we can agree something amicably,” claims Chadfield. “[But] both sides have to come to the table with some concessions. Google is coming with no concessions whatsoever.”
