IUE-CWA Stands with Workers

Community Standing Strong
Last month, in response to an urgent request for aid, grievance team members from IUE-CWA Local 81381 responded to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in progress on a roofing job in Monroe County, N.Y. Members arrived to find two roofers still on a rooftop while hundreds of community members surrounded the house. One roofer, who had been a legal working resident of the United States for several decades, had already been taken into custody by ICE.

When a cadre of state legislators attending an unrelated press conference nearby arrived, ICE agents fled the scene.

"The experience was empowering,” said CWA Local 81381 President Christina Christman. “Labor leaders, politicians, clergy, and concerned neighbors came together to protect workers in our community from harassment, detainment, and possible deportation. The day after the Supreme Court issued a ruling overturning racial profiling, we as a community stood up for the workers this would negatively impact.”

A Voice for Workers’ Rights and FAIR Treatment
Also last month, IUE-CWA Local 81201 President Adam Kazinsky participated in a N.Y. State House panel discussion on the potential harms of artificial intelligence in the workplace.

Kazinsky gave details of the poor performance of AI systems, especially in the administration of benefits, including workers’ comp, health insurance, PFMLA, short-term disability, and payroll. He cited instances where doctors had stopped accepting employers’ insurance due to needless hurdles imposed by AI. He also spoke about compromised privacy with multiple instances of private medical records being sent to the wrong members. AI systems are also being successfully breached, potentially putting sensitive medical data in the hands of criminals.

“These systems make frequent mistakes,” said Kazinsky, “but never in the worker’s favor. The AI drives and amplifies the old ‘delay, deny, and discourage’ strategy insurance companies have long used. Third-party administrators openly advertise how much money they save employers in claims and missed days by using AI—but those ‘savings’ come directly at the expense of working families.”

Kazinsky urged lawmakers to pass the FAIR Act (Fostering Affordability and Integrity through Reasonable business practices), saying it is “critical to protect timely access to benefits, safeguard medical privacy, and ensure that technology serves people instead of being used to deny them care and income.” The legislation, if passed, would significantly expand consumer protection laws by enabling the Attorney General to take action against unfair, deceptive, and abusive business practices. This act would also lower the threshold for legal action against such practices, broaden the scope of businesses subject to enforcement, and increase consumer protection in the state.

As of this writing, the legislation has passed both the N.Y. Assembly and N.Y. Senate and is awaiting approval by the Governor.

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This post originally appeared on cwa-union.org.