AFL-CIO's Shuler says AI will be labor's next big battleground
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said Tuesday that unregulated artificial intelligence represents “the single biggest threat to working people of our lifetime,” and pledged robust action from the labor movement to protect workers from its misuse.
“This is not about workers being anti-technology,” Shuler said during a Headliners Coffee & Conversation event at the National Press Club. “What we are is anti-greed.”
Invoking the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election, Shuler said that the AFL-CIO is prepared to pressure lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to adopt AI policies that could protect workers.
“We have so much potential with legislation, but no one has the will,” Shuler said. “We don’t care if you’re Gavin Newsom or Donald Trump. We are holding you accountable on who you stand with in this fight -- workers or big money.”
Shuler said there’s been a void in both parties when it comes to reining in AI, despite signs that this a bipartisan concern among workers.
Citing a four-month-long survey conducted by the AFL-CIO among more than 1,200 workers, Shuler noted that 95% of respondents said that AI should not be used for hiring, firing or setting pay.
Ninety-four percent said that they should be informed if AI is being used to monitor them.
“There is no worker, no industry [that] this does not touch,” Shuler said. “Every job is now a technology job. Period.”
In the absence of congressional or regulatory action, Shuler said that the labor movement will continue to pursue a worker-first AI agenda, using collective bargaining and strikes to win small victories whenever possible.
Shuler laid out a myriad of ways that AI is encroaching on workers’ day-to-day duties, and often supplanting human judgment.
In some instances, this means Las Vegas bartenders being replaced with AI programs that weren’t able to determine when a guest was overserved, or medical staff hamstrung by AI protocols that prevented them from treating patients.
In one example, Shuler pointed to an Amazon factory worker suffering from back pain who was denied a reassignment because of an AI algorithm.
The decision resulted in the worker dying on the job site, and co-workers being instructed to work around the worker’s body.
“A hundred years ago, worker safety meant not getting your hand chopped off at the job,” Shuler said. “Today, it’s workers being fired, hurt, even killed by companies that use AI without guardrails.
Addressing members of the press, Shuler’s advice for handling AI in their workplace was straightforward: Form a union.
“The more you can lean into unions and for those who have not yet formed unions in your newsrooms, please do so,” she said. “That is the single most effective tool in fighting back against AI encroachment in your work.”