CANBERRA, Australia — Melissa Donnelly has begun her tenure as secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions by making artificial intelligence and the cost of living central to her agenda.
Donnelly, 44, took office on 31 August after seven years leading the Community and Public Sector Union. In an interview discussed publicly on 4 September, she said workers should have a say in when and how AI is used, while making clear that consultation would not amount to an automatic veto.
That distinction is important. Employers need room to test tools that can remove repetitive work or improve services. Workers need enforceable influence when the same tools affect staffing, surveillance, workload, pay or the professional judgment embedded in a job.
Consultation after a contract has been signed is not meaningful participation. Unions should be able to examine what data train a system, how performance scores are generated, which decisions remain human and who is accountable when an automated recommendation causes harm.
Donnelly arrives with evidence that she can convert organising into employment conditions. The ACTU says CPSU membership grew by 23% during her leadership, while campaigns delivered expanded parental leave, work-from-home protections and the return of some outsourced functions to the public service.
She now represents a federation of 38 unions covering about 1.8 million workers. That breadth creates tension as well as influence. A nurse facing automated rostering, a writer confronting synthetic content and a warehouse employee monitored by productivity software do not need identical rules.
Generational renewal is another challenge. Donnelly is among the youngest people to lead the ACTU, while union membership is particularly low among workers in their teens and early twenties. Younger workers are often concentrated in casual, platform-based or insecure jobs where an algorithm can function as a manager without being available for negotiation.
Her gender matters in a movement historically associated with male-dominated trades, but representation should show up in priorities. AI bargaining needs to account for women’s concentration in care, administration, education and service work, where technology is often sold as efficiency while understaffing remains the underlying problem.
The ACTU should publish model clauses on worker data, notice, testing, appeals and retraining, then report which employers accept them. It should also acknowledge where AI can improve safety or accessibility.
Donnelly’s approach begins from a democratic proposition: people affected by a workplace system should help set its terms. Her leadership test is to turn that proposition into agreements before the technology becomes too embedded to negotiate.
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