Union leaders’ support for Newsom hinges on AI stance

By Dan Walters, CalMatters

This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

National labor union leaders, and those from California and early presidential primary states, are gathering in Sacramento this week to bluntly warn Gavin Newsom that union support for his 2028 presidential campaign hinges on protecting jobs from artificial intelligence.

The event, organized by the California Federation of Labor Unions, calls AI “the biggest existential threat facing working Americans today.” The group wants Newsom “or any candidate looking forward to the 2028 election” to know “loud and clear” that “our members want a leader who works with organized labor to protect jobs and create guardrails on artificial intelligence.”

The event evidently singles out Newsom due to his frontrunner status in very early pre-campaign polling, as well as the leading role California’s high tech industry plays in developing AI and Newsom’s somewhat ambivalent attitude toward AI’s potential effects.

“The proliferation of artificial intelligence in recent years has been nothing short of explosive,” a background paper for the event declares. “Employers have latched on to AI for everything: from using it to monitor and surveil workers to setting workers’ wages to outright replacement of workers.

“Artificial intelligence is a multi-billion-dollar industry that continues to proceed unchecked, without common sense guardrails in place, leaving workers’ livelihoods ruined and even lost in its wake.”

The briefing paper pointedly cites Newsom’s veto of last year’s Senate Bill 7, a union-backed bill to bar employers from using AI to make employee discipline and termination decisions. In rejecting it, Newsom said the measure was “overly broad” and would prevent even innocuous uses of AI.

Newsom’s veto exemplifies his efforts, as the AI industry explodes, to satisfy both the tech industry, with which he has…

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