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Leaders from the AFL-CIO, which represents 2.3 million members nationwide, say Gov. Gavin Newsom needs to focus on the harms of technology to win support for his presidential bid.
If Governor Gavin Newsom wants to be president of the United States, then he needs to address the impact of artificial intelligence on workers. That’s the message sent today in Sacramento by members of the AFL-CIO, a union with 2.3 million members.
Attending a press conference held steps from the California state capitol were AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, California Federation of Labor President Lorena Gonzalez and leaders of five state labor federations, including from traditional early primary states such as Iowa and U.S. fighting for earlier spots on the main state calendar such as Georgia and North Carolina.
The California Federation of Labor wants a variety of statewide regulations to protect workers, including limits on how managers can use predictive AI, advance notice of AI-related job cuts and limits on workplace surveillance. And this has signaled a desire to play hard ball.
“I don’t think you’re going to have a lot of motivation to go around the polls for someone who’s not going to engage working-class voters on the very things that are taking their jobs away,” Gonzalez said of Newsom’s widely expected 2028 run for president.
The campaign to pressure the governor underscores not only how important such protections are to unions, but also how much Newsom is expected to resist them. The state is faced with a a projected budget deficit of $18 billion for the next fiscal year and more and more relies on AI for tax revenue. Meanwhile, tech companies like Meta, OpenAI and startup investor Andreessen Horowitz have formed political action committees to support pro-AI candidates.
“If we hurt the bottom line, it also hurts the state, and I wouldn’t want to be the governor that caused a recession, especially if I might be running for federal office,” Julie Salley, a consultant to the state Assembly’s Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee, said in comments to a group of students Tuesday.
Last year several AI bills supported by unions were vetoed by Newsom or failed to pass the Legislature, including a bill that sought to protect truck drivers from autonomous vehicles that failed after two vetoes by Newsom.
Union leaders on Wednesday identified AI as an issue where the public broadly supports regulation. National A Gallup poll published in September 2025 showed 80% of Americans want regulation to protect them from AI, even if it means slowing innovation. Studies at the end of 2025 from Carnegie California and TechEquity similarly found that the vast majority of Californians want protection from AI. President Trump and some Republicans in Congress have moved to discourage state-level regulation of AI. Meanwhile, some political observers predict that the influence of technology interests will grow rapidly.
“We have this golden moment before it’s too late to pass AI laws at the state level,” she said at Wednesday’s event. “Be on the right side of history.”
Gonzalez announced Wednesday that the labor federation intends to sponsor or support two dozen bills this year to address how artificial intelligence negatively impacts workers, and urged Newsom to support them. So far, she said, the governor has failed to respond to what lies ahead. The governor’s office did not respond to a request to respond to this allegation.
Iowa Federation of Labor President Charlie Wishman said Newsom should expect to hear questions about AI worker protections among union members and voters ahead of his state’s caucuses.
“You are literally the face c the state which can actually help the rest of the nation on the matter,” he said.
For people with jobs, concerns about AI go beyond job loss. Evidence is mounting that the technology can fuel wage theftlead to higher injury rates in warehouses, lower a person’s self-esteem, push people into lower-skilled rolesmonitor workers to prevent union organizing, or turn people into fleshy robots.
This year, the California Federation of Labor plans to support bills including Senate Bill 947restart a bill from last year which, if adopted, will prevent businesses from making management decisions about employees based solely on a prediction from an AI model. In a nod to Newsom, the new version removes the requirement that businesses notify people before AI is used to decide whether to discipline or fire a worker. The California Federation of Labor also supports bills that would require employers to give notice when they plan to replace jobs with AIand a bill to prevent AI-powered workplace surveillance that didn’t get enough support in a vote last fall.
Governor Newsom, now in his final year in office, is walking a political tightrope on AI, trying to strike a balance between regulating the technology and supporting the business interests that benefit from it. For example, a 2023 executive order that affects how the state treats generative AI both plead government agencies to take steps to protect against potential harm and find opportunities to use the technology. Frontier AI Task Force formed at Newsom’s behest introduced recommendations last year on how to strike a balance between guardrails to protect people and innovation that benefits business interests. In his final State of the State address last month, he said “no technology holds more promise and more danger for jobs, our economy, our way of life than artificial intelligence.”
AI proponents are moving quickly to push politicians on their side of the line. Money spent by companies lobbying the governor is not listed in state records, but tech companies spend more on lobbying in Sacramento. For the first time, Anthropic spent $200,000 lobbying Sacramento legislators and governor last year, after OpenAI first venture to advocate for his position in the state capitol. Meta spent $4.6 million to lobby officials in California last year, the most it has ever spent to defend its positions in Sacramento, and earlier this week poured in $65 million in political action committees to support pro-AI political candidates.
Josh Lowenthal, a Democratic Assemblyman from Long Beach, said he was dismayed by the formation of pro-AI PACs because of the potential for even more tech wealth to follow.
“The alarm should be going off for all of us because we have one, two, three years before this money becomes so deeply embedded in the current crop of elected officials that it’s devastating for an entire generation,” he said.