On Wednesday, the largest U.S. labor union group called on employers and policymakers to join what it calls the “worker-first AI initiative.” Functionally, effort by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is to strengthen collective bargaining in the workplace and advocate for legislation to limit the negative impact of artificial intelligence on workers, in addition to an educational campaign.
“We reject the false choice between American competitiveness on the global stage and respect for the rights and dignity of workers,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a press release. AFL-CIO members include 63 unions and nearly 15 million workers, from professional hockey players to nurses and merchant mariners.
The AFL-CIO released a list of top priorities for a “worker-centric technology future.” These priorities include stronger enforcement of workers’ rights against workplace surveillance or AI-enabled firings; protection against copyright infringement; programs to retrain workers to enter the AI-based labor market; and transparency of artificial intelligence systems purchased with taxpayers’ money.
While the AFL-CIO’s priorities are clear, the group does not specify what “serious consequences” employers should face “for using technology to undermine democracy and civil rights.” However, says AFL-CIO Technology Institute interim director Ed Wytkind Edge that possible remedies that have been used for decades to protect workers include lawsuits, fines or criminal charges.
Wytkind calls collective bargaining “one of the best tools available to manage the transition” toward an AI-powered future. It highlights how the UAW worked with automakers to automate the auto sector, starting in the 1950s. “That’s why some transportation sectors have state-of-the-art equipment and the workers are quite good at using that equipment,” he says.
The group also says it will utilize the power of collective bargaining to fight artificial intelligence-based workplace surveillance. Wytkind says contract negotiations are a proven and effective method for preventing employers from hiding workplace video cameras or other surveillance problems that began in the 1980s. (Now, however, most office technology can monitor employees, he says.)
The AFL-CIO also argues that workers should be involved in the development of artificial intelligence. This is a massive challenge from tech companies, but the AFL-CIO points to government-funded artificial intelligence research as a place for workers and unions to have their say. “Including the voices of workers and unions in these research initiatives should be a national requirement and priority,” says the AFL-CIO. In practice, Wytkind says employees can lend a hand companies save money by avoiding purchasing useless or unsafe technology.
In addition to labor efforts, the AFL-CIO is focused on state and national laws regulating artificial intelligence. “There are ways to introduce into law and regulation the requirement for employee involvement in the future of new technologies,” Wytkind says.
Regulating AI has been an uphill battle at both the state and federal levels. When bipartisan efforts came together to cut the artificial intelligence moratorium on state-level regulation from President Trump’s massive pretty bill, it was an action that Endorsed by the AFL-CIOTrump returned to this idea in his AI action plan. In California, the legislature passed a bill supported by the AFL-CIO Senate bill 7requiring humans to supervise layoffs using artificial intelligence and all workplace disciplines. Then California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the No Robo Bosses Act. October 13.
Wytkind calls Newsom’s veto a disappointment, but not a deterrent. The AFL-CIO will continue to bring “strong, common-sense guardrail policy to state legislatures — and that, by the way, is one of the issues that unites Republicans and Democrats in a way that we don’t see in almost any other area,” Wytkind says.
The AFL-CIO faces wealthy adversaries. AI super PACs are heated this year. In August, Meta formed its own AI-supporting California super PAC to funnel money into ads promoting the company’s own political agenda. The AFL-CIO’s California chapter made more than $2 million in political contributions to elected officials in California in 2024, according to the most recent data available in California. CalMatters Digital Democracy Database. That’s more than 30 times the $70,000 the group spent in 2023 in California.
Wytkind says the AFL-CIO has never before passed such a unified technology agenda. Past technology programs have typically focused more on one sector or type of worker than others. Not with artificial intelligence, Wytkind says. “It is impossible to point to a single sector of the economy or public services that will not be impacted by artificial intelligence, at least moderately, if not overwhelmingly.”