The Economic Policy Institute—along with the Center for American Progress, Congressional Progressive Caucus Center, and National Employment Law Project—released a set of worker-centered policy recommendations for federal policymakers in an era of artificial intelligence (AI). The deployment of AI in the workplace has exacerbated longstanding problems, including discrimination, unsafe working conditions, and loss of privacy. As policymakers continue to focus on the impact of AI on workers, they must recognize and address the underlying labor market conditions that enable employers to use AI in this manner: the imbalance of power between businesses and their workers. 

“U.S. workers would not be well served by having policymakers, researchers, and advocates focus disproportionate amounts of attention on AI deployment at the expense of other crucially needed reforms. It would serve the interests of exploitative employers to lose focus on the longstanding systemic reforms that are needed to restore worker power and give workers a voice in the use of AI,” said Celine McNicholas, EPI’s Director of Policy and Government Affairs/General Counsel.   

“To help workers face the challenges of AI, federal policymakers need to increase transparency, ban abusive practices such as firings without human oversight, and most importantly promote collective bargaining,” said David Madland, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. 

“We must center workers’ perspectives and experiences in federal policymaking on generative AI. This new technology threatens to exacerbate an unfortunate tradition—the ability of employers to implement harmful practices, thanks to weakened labor laws and inadequate worker power,” said Gohar Sedighi, Executive Director of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center. “Workers are the experts in what they do, and with a voice on the job, they can hold big corporations accountable and help build an economy that puts people over profits.”

“We don’t need a crystal ball to see how artificial intelligence and other new technologies will affect workers. It’s happening right now as corporations increasingly turn to algorithmically managed app-based workers for their staffing needs and potentially biased platforms for their hiring needs. It’s happening as they use oppressive monitoring and surveillance systems in ways that increase workplace injuries and suppress collective action and union organizing. We need common-sense regulation of these tools to promote worker power and a good jobs economy,” said Irene Tung, Senior Researcher and Policy Analyst at the National Employment Law Project. 

The policy recommendations released today lay out a clear roadmap for policymakers to establish meaningful solutions that improve outcomes for workers in an era of AI and beyond.