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Last week, two members of the CWA National Artificial Intelligence Committee, with support from CWA Director of Research Nell Geiser and Assistant Director of Research Dan Reynolds, spoke on a webinar aimed at providing insight into the many iterations of AI and their varied impacts on workers.
Audience members learned about CWA’s AI Principles and explored findings from worker surveys and CWA members’ workplaces demonstrating how AI tools have been used by employers in harmful ways that worsen stress and do not improve service quality. Benjamin Harnett, Principal Data Engineer at the New York Times and steward for the New York Times Tech Guild-CWA Local 31003, said, “Many times in the past, I’ve had an initiative foisted upon me without consultation, which more thought and deliberation would have determined to be a tremendous waste of resources and time.” A core recommendation by CWA is that employers be required to bargain over design and implementation of new technologies with frontline workers prior to adoption.
Jerome Morrison, Secretary-Treasurer of the Meow Wolf Workers’ Collective-CWA Local 7055, stressed the need for clear language to distinguish one AI tool from another. “AI is too much of a catch-all term,” said Morrison. “Are we dealing with machine learning, automated management software, surveillance technology? All of these terms are important for you to have strong language for your contract negotiations and for requests for information you may file.”
Geiser spoke to the role labor unions must play, saying, “Technology embeds existing power relations, and there are no quick fixes, but as labor union representatives, we know that collective bargaining can move faster than public policy to address emergent workplace issues. At the same time, policy can be critical in raising the floor so we don’t have to bargain over basic rights like anti-discrimination and minimum wages.”
The Center for Applied Research on Work (CAROW) at Cornell University sponsored the webinar. Dr. Virginia Doellgast, the Anne Evans Estabrook Professor of Employment Relations and Dispute Resolution at Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations School, moderated the discussion, which built upon a conference examining AI impacts on workers held at Cornell last September, co-organized by CWA.