Unions have called for a four-day working week to ensure workers share the fruits of technological change.
The call came at a conference on the Future of Working Time, organised by the Forsa trade union today.
Addressing the conference, Forsa Deputy General Secretary Kevin Callinan said reduced working time was emerging as one of the central issues in international debates about the future of work.
He told delegates that most of the benefits of increased productivity which had been achieved through technological change in the workplace had gone to what he called a small global elite, rather than working people.
He rejected suggestions that trade unions were seeking to impede economic progress in a "21st century Luddite escapade".
He acknowledged that technology has the potential to take drudgery and danger out of current workplace tasks, while increasing prosperity and creating many new jobs.
However, he warned that unions were determined to secure for workers a fairer share of the benefits of economic growth and technological advances - including through reduced working time.
The head of the UK Trade Union Conference, Kate Bell, cited a British government estimate that robots and autonomous technology could boost British GDP by around £200bn a year.
However, she asked whether if workers increased productivity, they could work for four days rather than five to produce the same output.
She told delegates that historically, that was how workers had benefited from improvements in technology - noting that average working hours had fallen from 60 per week 150 years to just over 30 today, and that until the middle of the 20th century, the weekend had been seen as an unaffordable luxury.
