Fearing AI Will Take Their Jobs, Workers Prepare for Long War Against Tech

The current confusion about artificial intelligence has spread like a threat.

It started among engineers inspired by a 2017 research paper. Then came the capitalists eager to profit from the new development. He was followed by the authorities on the run to establish laws.

Now it’s time for work.

More than 200 union members and tech professionals gathered in Sacramento this week for the first conference of its kind to discuss how AI and other technologies threaten workers and prepare for future fights and potential strikes.

The Making Tech Work for Workers event was convened by the University of California workplace, unions, and labor advocates and attracted people representing dock workers, home care workers, teachers, nurses, actors, public office workers, and many other services.

The bottom line of the event: Workers of all stripes are determined to fight – during contract negotiations and in the middle of daily work – to have the right to discuss more about how AI is used in companies. Industry representatives detail the ways in which AI threatens jobs, from photos to taxis to calling people for money.

It takes a toll on your physical and mental health when you use your commute, said Luis, an Amazon employee from California’s Inland Empire who asked CalMatters not to use his last name for fear of retaliation. He felt like he couldn’t stop walking or get help from his co-workers to carry heavy things. This caused 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, explaining why he quit. Then he returned to the job because he had no other options.

Amazon spokesman Steve Kelly responded that “employees are encouraged to work with purpose, not haste and can take a break every time to use the toilet, get water, stretch, or leave their window. In addition, there is nothing unusual about using cameras to help employees stay safe, behave well, or prevent theft – these are common in almost every major retailer in the world. Employees who have questions or concerns about any of these technologies or their jobs are often not allowed, but often encouraged, to bring them up. to their supervisors and are given a number of tools to help them in this work.”

The meeting comes as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to begin his second term in office and shortly before Feb. 21 to provide a budget plan for the current state of the California Legislature. Exactly how Trump will respond to issues related to technology and the workforce is unclear. He has made some seemingly positive promises for big tech, such as vowing to cut regulations he sees as harmful to innovation and vowing to repeal a law signed by his predecessor that protects AI.

But he has also positioned himself as an advocate for the gallery workers left behind by the tech giants: Bus. last month he said that automation destroys workers. Viewers were also left wondering where, exactly, the incoming president stands on issues like H-1B visas for foreign techies or how he might woo popular tech adviser Elon Musk, the ubiquitous tech billionaire.

The participants did not focus much on Trump. Instead, they settled on discussions about how to protect workers from technology that could exploit or discriminate against them. Representatives from both organizations encouraged workers to discuss how AI and other types of technology are being used in the workplace during the consultation process. Many also encouraged workers to become more involved in technology by thinking about how to use technology in planning or pushing for the establishment of committees where management should discuss technology with workers before using it.

About 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 sides will face big fights over automation this year as they negotiate new contracts. Grocery store workers will oppose self-checkout as nurses compete with AI tools that they say could affect their responsibilities of care and prioritize health care and insurance companies’ profits over patients’ health.

Companies have been selling 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 organizations are also using AI as a way to empower employees to improve their workplaces.

Organizations have an uphill climb expanding membership is the power of workers, said the director of the AFL-CIO Tech Institute Amanda Ballantyne, but including AI in the workplace is important, because there are many cases of using AI in the workplace and workers have strong feelings about them because they are experts. in their work and to better understand the security implications of the new tool.

Representatives of several organizations argued at the meeting that workers should find and use the power to stop the release of technology and the possibility of exploiting them, paying respect to them, or taking 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 listed as most at risk of losing their jobs due to automation, and that more than half of the most at-risk workers are Latino. Machines that take away jobs are a big problem for three-quarters of Americans, according to a A Gallup poll was conducted last yearbut AI that predicts employees, manages employees, or they try to track and quantify what they are doing it’s also at high risk, said UC Berkeley Labor Center director Annette Bernhardt. He he told CalMatters they are less concerned about AI taking over jobs than they are about the methods used in the workplace to treat people like machines.

AI has the potential to reduce discrimination and improve the health and safety of workers but it also has the potential to cause job losses, help suppress workers’ efforts, and increase the demands placed on workers, a phenomenon that it has led to a rise in casualties in Amazon’s warehouses.

SAG-AFTRA executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said AI underscores why it’s important for workers to be prepared, because it forces employers to discuss the use of AI during negotiations rather than just thinking about introducing technology into the workplace. . But getting such decisions requires the forethought of the leaders of the organizations, who must create a message that will resonate with the workers and the public.

“We’re up against the biggest corporate interests and political interests you can imagine, and working together is where our strength comes from,” he said. “Especially because we’re going to have a lot of issues in the state in California, we can use public policy to advance the conversation and use the conversation to advance public policy.”

Most of the technology being introduced into the workplace is for employee monitoring, advocates say, and that’s not unusual. “He’s an old boss with new tools,” said California Labor Federation President Lorena Gonzalez. Three years ago, as a member of the assembly, Gonzalez wrote the law prevents algorithms from denying employees time off or violate employee safety.

In the midst of uncertainty as to how the Trump administration will respond to the challenges of cooperation in technology, Gonzalez told CalMatters last week that he is working with colleagues in other states, including Oregon, Massachusetts, and Washington, and Wisconsin to introduce laws to protect the privacy of workers in places like. bedrooms and bathrooms and make sure they know when the employer is collecting information about them or monitoring work progress.

The California Privacy Protection Agency is here Drafting laws that would require businesses to notify job seekers and employees when AI is being used and allow them to opt out of data collection at work without any consequences. California will be the first state to enact this law but the law is still being debated. The California Civil Rights Department also improve laws to protect AI workers who can discriminate against themselves.

Gonzalez said he doesn’t like relying on these laws because they can take a long time to complete and implement, he pointed out to fight to protect the workers in the heata war that has been going on for ten years.

For now, people like Amba Kak see an opportunity to benefit the workforce against technological threats but said it may be necessary to choose the right battles wisely. Kak has previously advised the Federal Trade Commission and is the director of the AI ​​Now Institute, a nonprofit researching the impact of technology on human rights.

Exploiting this opportunity requires attention to issues that can create bridges between workers and others involved in technology. For example, data center events can bring together climate and service stakeholders as well as local data center visitors. it consumes a lot of water and energy.

Kak told CalMatters that he wants to focus on state legislative events in places like California and New York, where. lawmakers are already considering it a law that protects people from AI in a similar way to California’s Senate Bill 1047, a controversial bill calling for AI protections that Newsom voted against last year.

“Workers have been at the forefront of energy reform and making sure the public has a say in how this technology is used and what the situation is,” he said.

The story was was originally published on The Markup and was reprinted under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives permission.