Supporting Worker-Centered Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Policy

WHEREAS, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies are rapidly transforming workplaces across Connecticut’s public and private sectors, affecting how workers are hired, supervised, evaluated, scheduled, and disciplined, and

WHEREAS, technological innovation can improve productivity, workplace safety, public services, and economic opportunity when developed and deployed with meaningful worker participation and oversight, and

WHEREAS, workers possess unique expertise about their jobs, workplaces, and industries and must be recognized as essential stakeholders in the design, implementation, and regulation of workplace technologies, and

WHEREAS, employers are increasingly deploying artificial intelligence systems and algorithmic management tools to monitor workers, evaluate performance, make employment decisions, and collect workplace data, often without transparency, accountability, or worker consent, and

WHEREAS, unregulated artificial intelligence systems have been shown to produce discriminatory outcomes, threaten worker privacy, facilitate excessive workplace surveillance, undermine professional judgment, and create risks to worker and public safety, and

WHEREAS, so-called “bossware” technologies allow employers to engage in unprecedented monitoring of workers through keystroke tracking, location monitoring, automated productivity scoring, communication analysis, and other intrusive surveillance practices, and

WHEREAS, the AFL-CIO Tech Institute was established to ensure that technological change benefits everyone by centering worker knowledge, expertise, and interests in technological innovation, public policy, and workplace implementation, and

WHEREAS, the AFL-CIO Tech Institute has advanced a worker-centered framework for artificial intelligence that emphasizes transparency, accountability, worker participation, collective bargaining rights, protection from discrimination, and meaningful human oversight of automated systems, and

WHEREAS, states have an important role to play in protecting workers from harmful and dangerous applications of artificial intelligence and should not be prevented from adopting safeguards that address emerging workplace risks, and

WHEREAS, recently surveyed working voters overwhelmingly support a pro-worker artificial intelligence (AI) policy agenda, favoring a Union’s pro-worker AI policies by overwhelming margins across all political affiliations; and

WHEREAS, the survey demonstrates that workers trust labor unions to stand up for them and fight against harmful uses of AI and the specific agenda of AI corporate executives; and

WHEREAS, survey respondents were presented with a series of specific protections that labor unions might fight for, with most of these protections receiving support from over nine in ten workers; and

WHEREAS, these highly supported protections include a requirement that humans be the final decisionmaker on issues that affect individual employees, as well as strict requirements for training, transparency, and accountability; and

WHEREAS, every individual worker protection tested in the comprehensive survey is supported by more than three in four workers;

WHEREAS, Connecticut has the opportunity to become a national leader in advancing worker-centered artificial intelligence policies that promote innovation while protecting workers’ rights, dignity, safety, privacy, and economic security, so

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Connecticut AFL-CIO supports the development of worker-centered artificial intelligence policies that ensure transparency, accountability, fairness, and meaningful human oversight in workplace technology systems, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Connecticut AFL-CIO supports policies requiring employers to disclose the use of artificial intelligence systems that affect hiring, promotion, scheduling, discipline, termination, compensation, staffing, workplace surveillance, or other terms and conditions of employment, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Connecticut AFL-CIO supports workers’ and unions’ rights to bargain collectively over the introduction and use of artificial intelligence and other workplace technologies that affect jobs, working conditions, safety, and professional judgment, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Connecticut AFL-CIO supports strong protections against algorithmic discrimination, invasive workplace surveillance, unjust automated decision-making, and the misuse of worker data, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Connecticut AFL-CIO will work with affiliated unions, policymakers, researchers, employers, and community partners to ensure that emerging technologies augment and support workers rather than replace, exploit, or diminish them, and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that the Connecticut AFL-CIO reaffirms that the future of artificial intelligence must be shaped by workers and their unions so that technological progress benefits working people, strengthens public services, and promotes broadly shared prosperity.

Submitted By: Resolutions Committee

Convention Action: APPROVE REJECT