For decades, trade unions held next to no sway in the UK’s tech sector, as an abundance of high-paying jobs and the freewheeling attitude of industry leaders kept their membership numbers low.

But an increasingly rigid labour market coupled with the rise of AI has sparked greater concerns on job security – and union bosses are seizing the moment.

“It was such a saturated sector that if you lost jobs somewhere, you could always get something somewhere else,” says Sarthak, a software developer at Deliveroo, who has worked at the firm since 2022 after a spell in the banking sector.

He now worries there is a lackadaisical quality to the hiring and firing of workers. “People are being treated like they’re disposable”….