A recent global economic shift has been the automation of work. What are the consequences of automation for redistributive politics? I develop a model of distributive conflict between firms owners and workers to investigate the effect of automation on the redistribution of resources. Automation affects the incentives to allocate resources into politics, and the amounts of these resources shape redistribution in turn. The main trade-off comes from investing resources into political participation (lobbying, campaign contributions, etc.) instead of productive activities. I find that it is important to distinguish between automation that substitutes or complements workers, like robot adoption, and automation that is deskilling, like AI. When automation is deskilling the distributive conflict between firms and workers increases, but when it is not there are stark differences regarding the rent-seeking behavior between skilled and unskilled workers, leading to lower distributive conflict and a non-monotonic increase in inequality, to the benefit of firms.