In today’s CEO Daily: AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler on why business leaders must work with laborThe big leadership story: Melinda French Gates hikes her total investment in women’s health to $600 millionThe markets: Asian markets drop as investors grow wary of techPlus: All the news and watercooler chat fromFortune.
**Good morning. **What if labor unions become catalysts for companies to win in the AI era?
I think they can after speaking with Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, a federation of 65 unions representing 15 million workers that’s holding its constitutional convention in Minneapolis starting this weekend. Like the Olympics and FIFA World Cup, this gathering of the United Nations of American labor happens once every four years. They’re meeting at a time when Gallup says almost 70% of Americans now support unions and U.S. companies spent $1.7 billion last year to stop them from being formed. I spoke with Shuler about why she thinks this is a critical moment for leaders to form productive partnerships with labor.
On AI: “If we’re going to chart the course for an AI future, it could be done pedal to the metal, slash and burn, no voice, no inclusion, imposing Silicon Valley’s will on the economy without any guardrails,” she told me, “or you could partner together, get workers in the lab and develop technology for a workplace with the input of the people who actually do the work.”
**On partnering with Microsoft: **Shuler says the December 2023 deal came about after she and Microsoft President Brad Smith met and found common ground on priorities for preparing workers for the next wave of innovation. Now, she told me, they partner in areas like training and policies for responsible AI. “I wish more CEOs and more leaders would take that leap of faith that working people actually know what we’re doing,” she said. “Who knows best how workplaces function and how work gets done than people who work for a living?”
On challenges to organized labor: AFL-CIO has been fighting the Trump Administration on its union-busting executive order, DOGE cuts, ICE raids, Labor Secretary appointments, cuts to healthcare coverage, and the ongoing attacks on the right to bargain, strike and organize. As corporate profits soar, U.S. workers are taking home a record-low percentage of GDP. “This transition has been brutal. I won’t lie about that,” she told me. “We are essentially catering to—let’s be honest—the tech bros that are running things at this moment.”
Lessons of history: “I don’t think we can point to one industrial transition that’s gone well. The last time, when trade laws basically offshored most production, we did not have a plan. We did not include workers’ voices, and we left them behind. Now look where we are today. Why are we not learning from that?” she said. “Workers are the most important stakeholder in this debate. We’re talking about work. We’re talking about people.” In other words, this is us.Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top leadership news
Melinda French Gates announces new investment in women’s health
Melinda French Gates is putting her estimated $19.2 billion fortune to work in women's health, announcing a $215 million investment that brings her total commitment in the space to $600 million. She told Fortune why she's doing it, and how she hopes other billionaires will follow.
Anthropic's IPO will reveal what Amazon and Google's stakes are really worth
Anthropic's upcoming IPO will reveal how large Amazon and Google's stakes are in the AI company, and the payouts could be enormous. Amazon's original $8 billion investment has swelled to roughly $74 billion on paper, while Google holds approximately 14% equity, a stake worth around $135 billion at Anthropic's current $965 billion valuation.
**Inside one of Europe’s biggest data center players **
Nscale is quietly becoming one of Europe's dominant data center operators, raising nearly $4 billion in just two years since it spun out from Arkon Energy. Founder and CEO Josh Payne is betting that real revenue will eventually catch up to the AI infrastructure boom.
The markets
S&P 500 futures are down 0.4% this morning, following a 0.4% jump yesterday. Asian markets plunged:
South Korea's KOSPI dropped 5.5%,
Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 1.3%, and
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index dropped 1.1%. Korean semiconductor giants Samsung and SK Hynix fell 6.4% and 9.9% respectively.
India's NIFTY 50 dropped 0.2%, while the
STOXX EUROPE 600 is currently up by 0.2%.
Bitcoin dropped to below $63,000.
Around the watercooler
Walmart CEO John Furner worked his way up from the garden center. After 30 years, he’s sharing the one trait that matters most in his job by Preston Fore
I bought peptides with crypto. How my purchase helped fuel a $100 million gray-market, ‘looksmaxxing’ economy by Ben Weiss
‘The next China is still China’: McKinsey’s Joe Ngai and Nick Leung on why global business can’t write off the Chinese economy by Nicholas Gordon
[Scott Bessent says America’s in a ‘manufacturing renaissance,’ so where are the jobs?](https://fortune.com/2026/06/04/scott-bessent-manufacturing-boom-inflation-short-term-blip/) By Nick Lichtenberg
[BT’s CEO is bringing football logic to Britain’s digital future](https://fortune.com/2026/06/04/bt-ceo-allison-kirkby-uk-telecommunications-uefa/) by Francesca Cassidy
[Asia turns to U.S. oil and gas amid Iran war: ‘We get too much into that tree-hugging mode’](https://fortune.com/2026/06/04/asia-turns-us-oil-gas-iran-war-tree-hugging/) by Jordan Blum
CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.
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