Lax federal oversight over the use of artificial intelligence in the workforce is pushing unions to negotiate safeguards in bargaining contracts, particularly when it comes to job protections and name, image, and likeness concerns.
An AI framework unveiled by President
Other parts of the framework—such as a call to protect workers’ name, image, and likeness—could bolster labor negotiations for unions representing workers in entertainment industries, labor scholars said.
Use of AI in the workplace is fueling general worker anxiety, particularly among recent college graduates and white collar workers. Industries more exposed to AI took an outsized hit in entry-level job losses, according to research from Revelio Labs, a labor market analytics company.
The gap in federal regulations could be filled via labor negotiations, a dynamic that has historically influenced eventual regulatory action.
Concessions won in contract negotiations tend to apply “political pressure to then spread those rights more evenly across the entire workforce,” said Anne Lofaso, a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. “So workers need to embrace AI and see how can we deal with AI without becoming obsolete ourselves.”
Impact on Negotiations
Unions are prioritizing contract language that prevents mass layoffs and overly broad use of the technology, labor observers and union leaders said.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said at a press conference last week that labor groups like the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, an affiliate of UniteHere, had won guardrails that required casinos to give workers advanced notice before implementing new technologies.
The union is “pushing companies to develop tech that centers workers, so that technology makes our jobs better and safer and not degrading and dehumanizing,” she said.
Additionally, the News Guild-Communications Workers of America and The Writers Guild of America also won contract provisions in recent years, like requiring oversight over AI implementation in the workplace or advanced notice if a company wants to license work to train AI models. The CWA is affiliated with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which represents employees of Bloomberg Law.
As the technology evolves, labor groups are likely to seek work preservation clauses in agreements to prevent management from instituting mass layoffs, Lofaso said. Those clauses typically require management to train existing workers to use new technologies or mandate that companies maintain skilled labor, she said.
On the other side of the negotiating table, companies are prioritizing flexibility in contract negotiations so they can respond as the technology evolves, attorneys said. That includes memorandums of understanding and contract language that stipulates management’s rights to use technology.
That would give employers the right to make decisions about AI, “but they still have to give notice to the union and discuss the effects of these technologies on the workforce,” said Adam Forman, a member of Epstein Becker & Green P.C.
Image Protections
While Trump’s framework left out workplace safety and discrimination protections from AI, the policy plan calls for Congress to pass laws preventing the “unauthorized distribution or commercial use of AI-generated digital replicas of their voice, likeness, or other identifiable attributes.”
SAG-AFTRA won key provisions in 2023 requiring studios get consent and pay actors before using AI to replicate their image. The union is currently in contract negotiations where AI and NIL is again expected to play a key role.
The union declined to comment, citing a media blackout during contract negotiations. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s chief negotiator, however, told attendees of the AFL-CIO’s AI in the Workforce summit last month that unions needed to be “proactive” in their negotiations.
“We’ve included protective provisions related to AI in every collective bargaining agreement we’ve negotiated,” he said. “Those protections include provisions requiring informed consent and fair compensation for digital replications of performers, requirements for notice and bargaining related to synthetics, and protections against the use of replicas.”
These kinds of provisions will be crucial to workers who don’t have the individual leverage to negotiate favorable terms, said Nicholas Saady, counsel at Pryor Cashman LLP who has represented athletes and musicians on NIL concerns.
“In relationships where there is significant inequality of bargaining power, unions are going to have a key role,” Saady said. “But I don’t think there’s going to be a silver bullet for any of this here.”
Future Legislation?
Unions’ achievements over the next several years are likely to serve as a testing ground for future federal policy, stakeholders said.
“Historically, it really does take a lot of workplace level, grassroots level, firm level organizing, agitating, pushing the collective bargaining process to address these issues,” said Robert Bruno, director of the Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois. “It really kind of takes that effort from below before it raises to the level of state or even federal policy.”
However, immediate legislation is unlikely because of tight majority margins in Congress and the Trump administration’s general desire to deregulate AI usage.
While unions will play a key role in negotiating short-term protections, their power is limited due to declining membership numbers . Unions that represent a high proportion of industry workers—like UniteHERE with casino workers—will have an easier time winning guardrails, observers said.
“The problem is, in the absence of law, you’re doing it contract by contract, court by court,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
“Only about 10% of working people in the United States have unions, so how do you actually make sure that the benefits of AI are felt by workers and by human beings, but the harms are contained?” she said.
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