What I worry about is that for example, what I understand about the author's situation would be for example hyper-personalized ad copy. The author feels threatened by AI writing the copy because either they do that now, or they don't have systems / methods for proper tracking, or they just don't like the idea... whatever.

Now, why would your boss listen to you if this actually works? If these hyper-personalized ads have actually better conversion rate, why not¹? Like isn't that the whole goal of the ad business?

Let's say you start a union and together you find a way to make your employer lose the opportunity to have higher performance. This means your employer will be outcompeted. Especially in the ad business which moves extremely fast. You save your paycheck now, maybe for a couple of years, but eventually you'll sink the ship. All for some moral incentive that AI is bad? If it's more than just a dislike, there already is a solution. If there is a real issue, then you don't need a union. Just need to solve the issue... so why is the pressure tool needed?

The more I think about it, the more I read the article as: how to keep your job despite being wrong, at the cost of the business