Labor Unions Can’t Keep Up With AI

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — “AI SHOULD WORK FOR US” read the lighted banner atop the stage at the convention for the largest labor union federation in the United States.

Sixty-five unions representing more than 15 million workers had gathered for the first time since 2022, when artificial intelligence was still an emerging technology. This time, speaker after speaker rallied the crowd to fight against the unlimited use of AI.

Offstage at the AFL-CIO conference, labor leaders said they’re playing whack-a-mole to protect their workers from the rapid deployment of the technology — and it’s a game they feel likely to stay the underdog in for years to come.

“Not just unions, but any group that’s trying to put guardrails around the use of AI is behind the curve, because there’s such an aggressive agenda by the companies that stand to benefit from AI — and how deep they are into funding and supporting this administration — that I would say everyone’s on their back foot a little bit as this stuff is moving so quickly,” said Gwen Mills, the president of the hospitality union UNITE HERE.

“I don’t think anybody’s on track with the development of technology,” said Brent Booker, the president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, which represents more than 500,000 construction workers.

AI has forced organized labor to confront a once-in-a-generation moment. And without comprehensive federal action to regulate the AI industry, labor leaders believe their members are on the front lines of the economic impact of the technology.

In 2018, the United Food and Commercial Workers counted 12,800 members across 110 Kroger stores in the Dallas area. Now, they have 8,900 members working 3 million fewer hours.

The supermarket chain uses an AI product to collect data on shoppers’ movements within stores and has cut employees’ hours to coincide with times shoppers are most likely to visit each section of the store, Bryan Wynn, the national bargaining director at UFCW, which represents 1.2 million people, said.

“Those 3 million hours that were lost are 3 million hours that don’t go into a pension fund for people for their retirement, it’s 3 million hours that doesn’t go into a health and welfare fund, but it’s also 3 million hours of people’s jobs that have been taken away,” said Wynn, who is currently in negotiations with Dallas Kroger stores.

School districts across the country are signing contracts with AI companies as educators debate how to deal with students’ widespread use of the technology, posing a new challenge for teachers unions.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, started working on AI issues after the late 2022 release of ChatGPT, which she said quickly became a vulnerability for educators.

In what is perhaps the boldest move yet by a union on AI, the AFT partnered with Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic in July last year to launch a $23 million National Academy for AI Instruction in New York City, which will provide free AI training to AFT members.

“We know AI is here to stay. This is not about trying to walk away from it, and clearly we are not anti-technology,” Weingarten said. “But we have to get to a better balance, where the harms and the disruptions are really dealt with and addressed.”

Economists say AI has yet to cause the significant job losses or change in wages that experts have warned about, though widespread changes to wages, job availability and the nature of work could arrive soon.

In the past several years, unions have won some measures to protect their workers from being replaced by AI. Negotiators have made sure workers have a voice on how AI is used in the workplace and won requirements for employers to notify workers six months before new AI tools are rolled out. Many labor unions are now seeking advice on how to research and bargain on AI issues.

One complicating factor: Unions have no standard legal framework to work from. Congress has been mired in a stalemate on whether to slow AI’s rise or rapidly integrate it into the federal and private sectors. AI companies have tremendous influence over the conversation on Capitol Hill, as they pour millions of dollars into campaign donations and White House funds.

That has resulted in hundreds of individual AI bills languishing in Congress, and few concrete policies to regulate the industry.

“The biggest limitation is that they don’t exist … we have hardly any AI policy at all,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director of SAG-AFTRA, who was the chief negotiator during the historic 2023 strike. “It’s really from a public policy perspective, we are in my view way, way behind.”

That has increased the financial burden on unions, who say they are pouring resources into collective bargaining around the technology.

For Wynn, that has meant negotiating “all day long” on provisions to prevent the long-term shrinkage of his union workforce through attrition — when employees depart a company and employers refuse to rehire for that position.

The Culinary Union of Las Vegas, which announced a first contract with the Sphere last week, completed the union’s clean sweep of bargaining agreements with every hotel on the Vegas Strip, as well as the city’s Allegiant Stadium.

In addition to six-month technology notification requirements, retraining opportunities and severance packages, Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the union, said it has won contingency language to renegotiate contracts when AI has changed working conditions.

“There could be another bite at the apple of hours reductions or job modifications, so our language in 2023 also added the issues of being able to come back to the same technology when it’s enhanced with AI and be able to also negotiate the notice, negotiate training, and negotiate severance packages,” Pappageorge said.

Union leaders who began bargaining on AI several years ago are now counseling organizers new to the discussion.

Shane Reedy, the district director of the American Federation of Government Employees, is negotiating the disclosure of AI-collected data on calls to the Veteran Affairs Department’s 24/7 crisis hotline. Union members — many of them veterans themselves — fear the data will eventually be used to replace them and degrade the quality of service to callers in distress.

“It shouldn’t be metrics-based. We shouldn’t be worried about, oh, well, we handled 100,000 calls, but how many of those calls did you handle well?” Reedy said.

In Washington, lawmakers have launched bills in a piecemeal fashion to address issues raised by AI. For example, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) introduced a bill to prevent discrimination in algorithms, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) introduced one to restrict the use of AI in war.

Last week, Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-California) and Lori Trahan (D-Massachusetts) released a bipartisan discussion draft of the Great American AI Act, which would create a federal framework for governing AI.

Organized labor sharply rebuked language in the draft that would preempt state laws and regulations related to the development of AI models. Republicans have overwhelmingly said the federal government must pursue limited AI regulation to facilitate the continued rapid development of technology and compete with China’s rise.

Senate Republicans have said they are against President Donald Trump’s proposal for the federal government to take equity shares in major AI companies, which NOTUS first reported. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who has been vocal about the potential for mass job disruptions, has called for the government to take a 50% ownership stake in large AI companies.

The bleak policy reality in Congress is pushing the AFL-CIO toward legislating at the state level.

“At the state level, we have the prospect to make actual progress,” Lauren McFerran, the AFL-CIO Tech Institute’s executive director, said.

Ultimately, labor leaders are on the same page that securing contracts that offer AI protections cannot come enough.

“The American labor movement is only 10% of labor in America, and if you simply do things sectorally through collective bargaining, you’re not dealing with the wide swath of what’s going on,” Weingarten said. “So you have to do it all, you have to deal with legislation and collective bargaining and education.”

On the convention floor on Tuesday, one former steelworker recalled a layoff at his plant years ago. The jobs never came back.

If unions fumble this opportunity, many more jobs could be permanently lost, he said.

“The most important thing is for people to realize that it’s not too late, and we are not powerless, right?” Crabtree-Ireland told NOTUS. “The importance of making sure that human impact is taken into account, and that those decisions are made with humans at the center — that is a philosophical and policy decision that all of us are qualified to talk about.”