Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party spoke at a press conference in Washington, DC on April 21, 2026.Courtesy Working Families Party
Voters are anxious about losing their jobs to artificial intelligence, and key players across the political spectrum have started to notice.
Now, the Working Families Party has rolled out a slate of policy proposals for the midterms, backed by more than two dozen Democratic candidates and representatives, that aims to address that anxiety. Their plan to counter AI-related job losses? Not a direct cash dividend, but a program seeking to place Americans in union jobs.
A recent Quinnipiac poll showed that over half of Americans believe AI does more harm than good in their day-to-day lives, and 70 percent think that broad AI adoption will decrease the overall number of available jobs.
With the midterms coming up, corporations and politicians are looking to address these fears. This month, OpenAI proposed creating a “public wealth fund” that would “provide every citizen with a stake in AI-driven economic growth.” Yesterday, New York Assemblyman Alex Bores proposed a taxation framework designed to redistribute wealth from major AI corporations to people whose jobs might be displaced by their products, calling it an “AI dividend.”
The Working Families Party, meanwhile, is proposing what looks like another Green New Deal-style jobs program to solve the same problem.
Julie Gonzales, who is running for U.S. Senate in Colorado, said the WFP’s union jobs would be in green infrastructure and healthcare, though the platform itself doesn’t specify how this jobs program would work. “Corporations and the do-nothing Dems they support have shipped jobs overseas, cut wages, and busted unions to boost their own profits,” Gonzales said.
A jobs guarantee hasn’t seen much success since the Works Progress Administration of the 1940s—despite broad popular support for such a policy. The new WFP platform, called the “Working Families Guarantee,” also includes guaranteed low-cost health and childcare. They plan to fund this program by (you guessed it) increasing taxes on the rich. “The working families guarantee is what working people deserve, and we are coming to collect,” said Maurice Mitchell, the group’s national political director. The politicians endorsing the Working Families Guarantee include Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-IL). Several prominent candidates—among them Brad Lander in New York, Charles Booker in Kentucky, and Graham Platner in Maine—have also signed on.
The Working Families Guarantee platform is part of an ongoing struggle over the future of AI policy within the Democratic Party. The Searchlight Institute, a moderate think tank which pitches itself as the leader of a “realignment” within the party, has vocally opposed efforts to limit datacenter buildout. (Searchlight, however, is backed by Nvidia-linked donors.) Third Way, another centrist Democratic think tank, has taken similar positions.
The WFP, a relatively small left-wing party with big influence, wants to push moderate candidates further to the left. They’ve found a foothold among younger voters, who increasingly distrust both major parties. Ravi Mangla, National Press Secretary for the Working Families Party, told Mother Jones “people want leaders with backbone, yet groups like Third Way and the Searchlight Institute are telling Democrats to avoid taking positions on things like guaranteed health care and AI regulations.”
“That,” Mangla said, “is a losing position.”