# Lessons from Workers Governing Technologies **Author:** Ashique Ali Thuppilikkat **Published:** 23 January 2026 **Length:** 8 mins (1,985 words) ## In Summary Drawing on a 2025 University of Toronto workshop, Ashique Ali Thuppilikkat examines how workers collectively shape the technologies affecting their livelihoods. Examples include screenwriters securing protections against generative AI, game developers organising around technological change, and Latin American cooperatives developing worker-owned digital infrastructure. Challenging narratives of technological inevitability, the article positions trade unions, collective bargaining and digital solidarity economies as mechanisms for democratic governance. It argues that technological futures are shaped through social relations, political choices and organised labour. **Source:** [https://creativelabourcriticalfutures.ca/blog/lessons-from-workers-governing-technologies/](https://creativelabourcriticalfutures.ca/blog/lessons-from-workers-governing-technologies/) ## What might this mean for us? Could Higher Education approach AI adoption as a question of collective governance rather than individual technological competence? Electric Dreams' work with teaching teams offers opportunities to consider how academic and creative workers participate in shaping institutional technologies. What structures would enable staff and students to influence technological decisions, retain agency over their work and challenge assumptions that innovation is inevitable? ## Links in this reading - [Workers Governing Technologies: Collective Strategies Across Contexts](https://creativelabourcriticalfutures.ca/blog/workers-governing-technologies-workshop/) - [Writers Guild of America East](https://www.wgaeast.org/) - [Arte es Ética, creative workers' collective](https://arteesetica.org/) - [Digital Solidarity Economies, Weizenbaum Journal](https://ojs.weizenbaum-institut.de/index.php/wjds/article/view/5_1_6/185) - [Homeless Workers' Movement, Brazil](https://mtst.org/) - [Alternativa Laboral Trans, technology cooperative](https://altcooperativa.com/) - [Hire a Co-op, University of Toronto initiative](https://hireacoop.tech/en)