On September 29th, 2025, the Shift Project community gathered for the first monthly meeting of the fall semester to learn about Lisa Kresge’s research on how unions are bargaining over AI and digital workplace technologies.
Guest Speaker
Lisa Kresge is a Senior Researcher in the Technology and Work Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, where she studies topics at the intersection of technology and labor and employment relations. Her research examines artificial intelligence and other digital workplace technologies, with a focus on their impact on job quality and worker rights. She also studies how collective bargaining can advance worker-centered approaches to technological change, and the strategies unions and the broader labor movement are developing to shape the design and governance of these systems. Most recently, she published Negotiating Tech: An Inventory of U.S. Union Contract Provisions for the Digital Age, an online resource documenting technology-related collective bargaining provisions. She has provided research and technical assistance to unions, worker organizations, and policymakers, and previously researched farmworker health and labor conditions at the California Institute for Rural Studies. Her academic background is in the social sciences, with degrees in anthropology, sociology, and community development.
Presentation:
Negotiating Tech: How Unions Are Bargaining Over AI and Digital Workplace Technologies
High-profile strikes by Hollywood writers and actors have drawn attention to how unions are negotiating over artificial intelligence. But how are unions beyond Hollywood responding to AI and other digital workplace technologies? Based on my analysis of more than 500 collective bargaining agreements from unions across both public sector and private industries, this talk explores how unions are addressing emerging technologies in recent agreements while also showing how long-standing provisions remain relevant in today’s rapidly evolving digital workplace. The presentation will highlight the central problems unions are working to address, from job loss and work reorganization to surveillance and the challenges of working with digital technologies. I will discuss the diverse strategies unions have used to confront these issues—including securing foundational rights and protections, shaping how technologies are introduced and used, and establishing governance mechanisms—and introduce the Negotiating Tech Inventory, a new searchable resource that documents these strategies through provisions from over 175 agreements. Taken together, the talk shows how unions are not only responding to the harms of digital technologies but also actively participating in their design, implementation, and governance.
