An executive order and subsequent OMB guidance have instructed agencies to engage employee unions in the implementation of AI. Image: TSViPhoto/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffAn FLRA administrative law judge has ordered HUD to go back to the bargaining table in a case that is an early test of federal agencies’ duty to bargain with unions over the impacts of the widening uses of artificial intelligence in federal workplaces.
The ruling told the agency to return to the status quo of early 2022 when the AFGE union made several proposals, including one involving HUD’s “resource center modernization project” at call centers of its Federal Housing Administration. The agency had invited the union to make proposals, the decision recounted, and “it can reasonably be inferred that the Agency agreed to at least consider them at the bargaining table.”
However, the agency did not negotiate over them, asserting they had been submitted too late and covered non-negotiable topics, and instead imposed its “last-best offer.” The union then filed an unfair labor practice charge, ultimately resulting in the ALJ’s decision that the agency’s actions constituted bad faith and a lack of intent to reach agreement.
While the decision did not specify the proposals at issue or determine that they must be negotiated, the AFGE has said the key issue was that the modernization project would “have employees train AI models that would eventually replicate their existing job functions . . . this data would then be released into open-source public domain repositories for use by anyone accessing it.”
“Given FHA’s status as the world’s largest insurer of mortgages, negotiations surrounding FHA’s Resource Call Centers directly influence employee working conditions and the availability of home financing options for Americans . . . HUD planned to expand the use of AI at the call centers with the goal of eventually replacing certain bargaining unit work with it,” the union said.
President Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence and subsequent OMB guidance “have instructed federal agencies to engage employee unions in the implementation of AI, and this decision brings us one step closer to that happening,” the union said.
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