Fearing that AI will take over their jobs, workers strategize for a long battle against technology

The current frenzy around artificial intelligence has spread like a shock wave.

It started between engineers inspired by a 2017 Research Paper. Then came venture capitalists eager to take advantage of a new boom. They were followed by running government officials impose regulations.

Now it’s work’s turn.

More than 200 union members and tech workers gathered in Sacramento this week in a first-of-its-kind conference to discuss how AI and other technologies threaten workers and to strategize for upcoming struggles and possible strikes .

The Making Tech Work for Workers event was convened by the University of California’s labor centers, unions and worker advocates and attracted people representing port workers, domestic workers, teachers, nurses, actors, state workers, and many other occupations.

A key takeaway from the process: Workers of all stripes are determined to fight — during contract negotiations and in the midst of daily operations — for the right to negotiate more control over how AI is implemented in the companies. Union representatives detailed ways in which AI threatens jobs, from scripting to taxi driving to calling people as cashiers.

There’s a toll on your physical and mental health when technology tracks your every move, said Luis, an Amazon worker from California’s Inland Empire who asked CalMatters not to use his last name for fear of retribution. . He felt like he couldn’t stop moving or get help from co-workers when lifting heavy objects. That led to back pain that made it difficult to sleep at night, and feelings of depression and low self-esteem.

“I couldn’t deal with being a robot,” he said, describing why he quit. Later he returned to work because he had no other opportunities.

Amazon spokesman Steve Kelly responded that “employees are encouraged to work with intent, not speed and can take short breaks at any time to use the bathroom, get water, stretch, or step away from their screen In addition, there is nothing unusual in the use of cameras to help ensure the safety of employees, the quality of inventory, or protect against theft – this is a common practice in almost all major dealers worldwide. Employees who have questions or concerns about any aspect of this technology or their work in general are not only allowed, but encouraged on a regular basis, to bring them to their managers and are provided many tools to support them in that process.”

The meeting comes as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to begin his second administration and shortly before a February 21 deadline to propose bills for the current session of the California Legislature. Precisely how Trump will respond to issues related to technology and workers is unclear. He has made some promises that seem favorable to big tech, such as promising to cut regulations he sees as harmful to innovation and promising to repeal an executive order signed by his predecessor that put safeguards on AI .

But he also positioned himself as an advocate for the blue-collar workers left behind by the tech elites: Just last month he called automation harmful to workers. Observers have also been left baffled by where, exactly, the incoming president stands on issues like H-1B visas for foreign tech talent or how he might be influenced by high-profile adviser Elon Musk, the ubiquitous tech billionaire .

Conference participants did not focus much on Trump. Instead, they focused discussions on how to protect workers from technology that can exploit or automate discrimination. Union representatives unanimously urged workers to discuss how AI and other forms of technology are used in the workplace when they negotiate. Many also urged workers to engage more on technological issues by considering how to use technology to organize or push for the creation of committees where management should discuss technology with workers before implementation.

The roughly 150,000 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union — people who work at stores like Kroger and Albertsons — and 100,000 members of the National Nurses Union both will face key battles related to automation this year as they negotiate new contracts. Grocery workers will challenge the role of self-checkout stands while nurses challenge AI tools they say can affect their duty of care and prioritize profits for healthcare and companies of insurance over the health of patients.

Corporations have long marketed AI to consumers and investors as a technology that will change the world for the better. But meetings like the conference in Sacramento show that unions are also using AI as a way to galvanize workers to organize their workplace.

Unions have a steep hill to climb grow membership and worker power, said AFL-CIO Tech Institute Executive Director Amanda Ballantyne, but including AI in collective bargaining negotiations is key because there are so many use cases for the AI in the workplace and workers tend to have strong opinions about them, since they are experts. in their own work and better know the security implications of a new tool.

A number of union representatives argued at the conference that workers need to earn and exercise power to return the launch of technology with the potential to exploit them, visit indignity on them, or take their jobs.

A report released earlier this year by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found that 4.5 million Californians are in 20 industries labeled at high risk of job loss due to automation, and that more than half of high-risk workers are Latinos. Automation taking jobs is a major concern for three out of four Americans, according to a Gallup poll conducted last yearbut AI that makes predictions about workers, manages workers, or try to track and quantify every move is also a major risk, said Annette Bernhardt, director of the UC Berkeley Labor Center. She he previously told CalMatters she is less concerned about AI taking over a job than she is about the algorithms used in the workplace that treat people like machines.

AI has the potential to reduce discrimination and improve worker health and safety, but it also has the potential to lead to job losses, help suppress worker organizing efforts, and intensify workers’ demands, a phenomenon that led to higher injury rates in Amazon stores.

SAG-AFTRA executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said AI underscores why it’s important for workers to organize, because doing so can force employers to negotiate their use of AI during bargaining. of the contract rather than unilaterally deciding to introduce technology into the workplace. . But obtaining such contract clauses requires foresight from union leaders, who must deliver a message that can resonate with workers and the public.

“We’re up against the biggest corporate interests and the biggest political interests you can imagine, and working together in unity is absolutely where our power comes from,” he said. “Especially because we’re going to have so many challenges at the federal level, in California, we can use public policy to advance collective bargaining and use collective bargaining to advance public policy.”

A lot of technology being introduced into the workplace is simply monitoring workers, advocates say, and that’s nothing new. “It’s the old boss with new tools,” said California Federation of Labor President Lorena Gonzalez. Three years ago, as a member of the assembly, Gonzalez co-authored a law that it prevents algorithms from denying workers break time or worker safety violations.

Amid uncertainty over how the Trump administration will address union concerns around the technology, Gonzalez told CalMatters last week that he is working with his counterparts in other states, including Oregon, Massachusetts and Washington, and Wisconsin to pass legislation to protect worker privacy in areas such as. break rooms and bathrooms and make sure they know when an employer is collecting data about them or monitoring work performance.

The California Privacy Protection Agency is currently Drafting of rules requiring businesses to inform job applicants and workers when AI is in use and allow you to opt out of the collection of data on the job without consequence. California would become the first state to enact such rules, but that regulation is still under negotiation. The California Department of Civil Rights is too Drafting rules to protect workers from AI that can automate discrimination.

Gonzalez said that she does not like to rely on such rules because they can take a long time to finalize and apply, pointing to fight to keep workers safe from hot workplacesa battle that has gone on for the better part of a decade.

Meanwhile, people like Amba Kak see opportunities for workers to gain against technological threats, but said they may need to strategically pick the right battles. Kak previously advised the Federal Trade Commission and is executive director of the AI ​​Now Institute, a nonprofit researching the human rights impact of technology.

Seizing these opportunities requires attention to issues that can build bridges between labor and other actors in the technological justice movement. For example, data center activities can bring together people concerned about climate and work and people in local communities who see data centers. consume a large amount of water and energy.

Kak told CalMatters that he plans to pay more attention to activities in state legislatures in places like California and New York, where legislators are already considering a bill that would protect people from AI in a similar way to California’s Senate Bill 1047, a controversial bill requiring AI safeguards that Newsom vetoed last year.

“Work has been at the forefront of rebalancing power and asserting that the public has a say in determining how and under what conditions this technology is used,” he said.

This article was originally posted on The Markup and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license