- There are a lot of elected officials who are so afraid of this billionaire class.

There's so many billionaires who will openly say that they are targeting elected officials who want guardrails on AI.

And they're getting richer by the day, and they're trying to really thwart our democracy.

- Hey everyone from KQED in San Francisco, this is Political Breakdown.

I'm Marisa Lagos.

Today on The Breakdown amid battles over artificial intelligence policy in the state legislature, a ballot campaign for a proposed tax on California billionaires that has split the labor community.

We're sitting down with the president of the California Federation of Labor Unions.

The group represents more than 1300 unions and 2.3 million workers in sectors, including manufacturing, retail, construction, hospitality, healthcare, and entertainment.

As its leader, Lorena Gonzalez is one of the most prominent voices for working people in the state.

She joins me now.

Lorena, welcome back to Political Breakdown.

Thank you.

Well, it's great to have you here in person as we head into literally the final days of this legislative session.

So before we get to the November ballot and the work y'all are doing there, I do want to talk about AI regulation and oversight.

This is something that Cal Labor Fed and others have spent a lot of time on this year.

Before we get to the specifics of the policies y'all are pushing, talk about the framing you're approaching this with, because I feel like in this moment, everything AI related is either dystopian, it's going to ruin the world, or it's going to be our savior, feels a little histrionic sometimes.

So how do you, as an advocate for working people, sort of see this moment?

- Well, it's a great question because it's kind of changed.

We started talking about AI three or four years ago, probably before a lot of other folks because of its implementation in the workforce.

Algorithms, for example, we saw them not only in the gig companies, but also the warehouses, Amazon warehouses, and how that would control, speed up, disengage workers.

And so we started early on trying to get bills passed and really staying in our lane about working people, about jobs.

And the more we've been in it, we do kind of battle with that same question.

We know that AI can't replace people.

There's so many jobs that should not be done by AI, that can't be done by AI.

It doesn't have nuance, it doesn't have empathy, it doesn't have human value.

And we're talking about jobs in healthcare and in teaching and they can put out all they like.

At the end of the day, we're not going to, as a society, acquiesce to robot teachers and robot nurses.

I don't see that actually coming.

And we know humans are better at these jobs than a computer could ever be.

But at the same time, there are companies, corporations in particular, and the AI companies that have you believe that there will be catastrophic job loss.

And our approach is saying, well, there could be catastrophic job loss, but that's a political decision.

So this isn't inevitable.

It's not something that we have to or should accept.

And we really tie it back to NAFTA.

A lot of people, a lot of, especially the tech companies will act like we're Luddites and say, "This is like the industrial revolution.

It's just the next step and how dare you stand in between us in progress."

What we think it's more similar to is NAFTA.

NAFTA was a political decision where the elites in this country decided to outsource jobs to cheaper foreign labor that didn't do it as well, weren't as skilled, and quite frankly, made rich people become much richer and working class people really get hollowed out in parts of this country.

That's what could happen here.

You have companies who want to outsource skilled work to computers, to robots.

We already know the work product will be less skillful.

It'll be less good.

And they do it so that they can get richer, not to benefit a community.

And if we allow it to happen, like we did with some of the bad trade deals, we'll end up not just through the Midwest, but throughout California and New York and everywhere else with communities that are devastated by job loss.

So that's kind of the overall framing.

It took us a while to get there.

I mean, this is all new and we're really at the forefront in California of trying to navigate AI in the workplace.

- Do you see potential upsides for employees?

Are there ways in which these political decisions can not just benefit the companies or the overall economy, but workers, if we see these more as tools than takeovers?

- Sure.

I'm sure there could be.

I don't know that I've been convinced that I've seen that.

We do believe that there should be human oversight, that if somebody wants to tell me that a big rig is safer driven by a computer, okay, well, human should be there as well.

We've had computers flying planes for a long time.

We still insist that there are two pilots there.

And there are always times when the pilots have to intervene.

They have to be skilled enough to understand how to intervene if the computer goes down or if they need to override the computer's decision, which has been done in crashes to save lives.

And so we can approach it that way where, okay, to get the right balance or to ensure that people are between these two lines, they're not distracted, they could help just the same way that staying within the speed limit, you can put on cruise control and that's helpful, but you don't want to do that without a person overseeing it.

And that person has to be skilled enough to intervene.

- Yeah.

All right.

Well, you guys did have a package of bills.

And as you said, you really have tried to focus on things that would affect employees.

Some of these are about using AI for assessing resumes, for surveillance of workers, things like that.

Mixed results so far.

I wonder though, if you could wave a magic wand and pick any one of these bills or areas to get passed, what did you see as the biggest priority this year in the medium term?

- I absolutely cannot.

Everybody asked me this and I'm like, "I cannot pick a priority."

There was one I actually thought would get passed and was such common sense in that it's so necessary, but it got held in the first House Appropriations.

And that was a Nick Schultz bill that said workers should have the right to know what AI tools are being used in the workplace, right?

If you're being surveilled, if you're teaching the computer to replace you, that you should have a basic right to know that.

We don't have that right right now.

I think because it was so obvious is why probably the industry went in and made sure it was the one bill that was killed in appropriations, but it just seems so common sense.

But there are some, we have a bill about keeping, we call it bosses, but AI out of the bathroom.

I mean, there are some places our laws obviously say you can't videotape or audio tape in a, in a bathroom.

Those are outdated laws.

There are a bunch of things that a boss can do now to monitor you in the restroom.

And we know that - I was, - That's funny.

That literally was one of my questions about that.

Like isn't that already illegal?

- Just to audio tape and videotape because the laws as they were written, however, they can heat map you, they can monitor how long you're in there.

Are you in there, you know, fixing your makeup, talking to somebody?

Are you actually in the stall?

They can, they can have a lot of information about you, what comes out of your body.

I mean, some really gross things and they've been advertised, right?

So, so we're like, let's, let's not allow that to happen.

Workers should have a general expectation of privacy in certain areas.

And, and let's start with the most obvious.

I feel like we've really put out some things that are so obvious.

We have a bill to say that, that the computer can't monitor your brainwaves, you know.

They, they have the tools to be able to stick ear pods in your ear and find out if you're happy, sad, you're discontent at work.

You know, with union organizing, that's a big issue.

So obviously and, and it's just a, a sense of privacy.

You don't want the boss reading your mind.

- It's creepy.

- And there are some other things we've already seen in place like you know, Kaiser tried to implement basically, Cal Matters had a great piece on it at nurse triage phone calls.

So somebody calls in or the nurse kind of is supposed to talk them through whether they need to come in, when they, what kind of appointment they need.

And, and they had AI monitoring it for tone, for tone.

And you think at first, well, okay, is this just customer service?

Are they pleasant?

Are they being nice?

But anyone who has had a nurse navigator, and I had one because when I was diagnosed with cancer, your doctor tells you, but they hand you off to a nurse navigator to answer all the questions.

You know, it started off, I was sobbing, of course.

I was like, "I'm going to die.

What's going on?"

And, and we had a long conversation and by the end, I was laughing and so was the nurse because we were making jokes about, you know, it's kind of like human - Which is good customer service.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Human interaction.

But a computer doesn't understand that kind of nuance.

And so what was happening at Kaiser is these nurses could be actually disciplined based on the computer's analysis of what was appropriate tone.

We, we think that doesn't belong.

You know, there, there are traditional ways that you can discipline people.

We don't think the computer should do it.

That's another bill.

You know, there should be human oversight over that.

And then we think that there's some spaces that AI just doesn't belong.

We don't think that, you know we think nurses should be able to override computers when they're wrong and not, not be disciplined for that.

We think that AI doesn't belong in the classroom teaching our children that that is, you know, what we want human beings.

We've had bills on teachers and faculty.

We think that, you know, AI shouldn't be triaging patients and, and shouldn't be deploying critical services.

We, we want to make sure that, that people have the ability to actually do the things that people are uniquely able to do, and that is react to each other.

- Yeah.

Okay.

So we were just talking about all these AI bills and some of them, as you said, have not even made out of committee.

Some of them, you know, a few of them are still pending.

I guess just broadly, like, what do you make of how hard this has been in terms of, you know, we're seen nationally as this deeply democratic state.

I think there's a real sense that, you know, this president and Republicans have no interest in regulating AI.

But you've gotten a lot of pushback from Governor Newsom, from Democrats in the legislature.

What, what does that tell you?

- Well, I will say this.

We always point out when we lose the bill, but by and far, most of our bills have made it through are active.

If anything, I mean, they could die on the floor in the next few days, but we feel pretty good.

And we've been very successful in getting bills out of committee and through both houses.

Ultimately, not that it's easy, but we have been able to using a variety of techniques to really pressure.

And then to the governor's office.

And we've gotten a lot of vetoes, mainly vetoes from this governor.

And so this year we were back at it with a number of bills and a changed landscape.

I mean, the reality is, and we, we started seeing this and we said, how do we ensure that elected officials really respond to what is the public will right now?

And the public will is not to embrace and support innovation at all costs or to allow AI to take our jobs or to allow data centers to go into, you know, communities without regulation and without assurances.

So it, it's been growing and it's not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue.

It really is bipartisan.

Now that's not reflected necessarily in a lot of the votes that are taken in the legislature, but we know from polling that it is absolutely bipartisan.

People do not want AI to take their job.

They don't want AI to de-skill them.

They don't want the boss to surveil them with AI.

And quite frankly, they're fewer and fewer people are, are buying into this idea that there's any good with AI beyond making like a meme or a poster, you know, doing advanced Google searches, you know?

- I mean, it's no secret that this governor is looking at a presidential run.

How is his posturing on AI going to affect how labor you know, thinks about his candidacy?

Like you guys had some pretty strong words at the beginning of this year about that.

And I think, you know, sort of warn that this is a red line.

- It's a red line.

We brought out labor leaders from across this, the nation to be clear that this is an issue.

You're not going to be able to just get out of California and not talk about it.

My colleagues in every state, but especially those early primary states like Nevada and South Carolina, New Hampshire, Iowa, they're very engaged on what is going on here.

They may be a year or two behind us, but they're watching and they want actually advice on how to, how to get this through.

In fact, I was just at the Iowa State Fed Convention and they were basically asking, how do we do some of these bills?

So we know as Governor Newsom goes across the nation, he's going to be asked by labor leaders in every single state, "Hey, you know, what'd you do on AI?"

And they already know.

We're very clear.

We've been telling everybody the AFL - CIO, Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL - CIO came out and said the same thing.

And it doesn't matter if you're Gavin Newsom or Donald Trump, we're going to expect that you put guardrails around AI, that you, you, you promote workers over AI and that you have some realistic expectations.

- Yeah.

All right.

Well, let's pivot to another thing where you have some big disagreements with the governor, which is Proposition 40.

This is a ballot measure that was put on by SEIU-UHW.

They represent healthcare workers.

It would impose a one-time 5% tax on billionaires.

And it is shaping up to be maybe the biggest fight this year on the ballot in California.

It was incredibly controversial before it even qualified for the ballot.

The governor tried to convince Dave Regan, the head of UHW-SEIU, to take it off.

I don't know if you were in the room for any of those negotiations, but thinking back to it, like do you think there was ever a path to get this off of the ballot?

Like this is something that Regan says is really about backfilling these deep healthcare cuts made by the president.

Like was there anything the governor, you know, or legislative Democrats could have offered to avoid this?

- I think the governor could have.

In fact, I had conversations with the governor's chief of staff early on about this.

You know, I would prefer this right now not be on the ballot, but if it's on, we're going to support it.

The, what the governor could have done is really listened to what Dave Regan was saying.

He wasn't looking to go to a press conference to looking for credit for something.

He is sounding the alarm about what's going to happen when those Medicaid, Medi-Cal cuts hit post-November.

And we know it's hitting.

And the number of, you know, we have about 150,000 jobs that are at stake.

We have dozens of hospitals throughout California that probably will shut down.

We're already getting some of the feedback from some of those clinics and hospitals, especially in rural areas that will lose their healthcare.

We know the cost of uninsured Californians will be placed on those of us with insurance.

And so this is real.

And at the same time, if you look at just a general fairness, he cut all this funding for healthcare and - - You're talking about Newsom?

- No.

The president.

Oh, the president.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, you're right.

In HR1, they cut all of this funding for healthcare with one hand and then gave billionaires a tax break with the other.

So it does seem like a reasonable proposal for somebody to come up and say, "Let's tax the billionaires and, and fund the hospitals."

It makes sense given what the amount of wealth they've been able to create under HR1 and under the Trump administration.

So I think if the governor, and some of the pushback was like, "Hey, these, these problems are going to be beyond my governorship.

You don't budget out that long."

And I think that there could have been a more honest engagement about how we are going to fund healthcare.

What is our solution?

Right, but - Do you have any qualms?

I mean, this is a one-time tax.

It is very likely to get tied up in court.

There's two competing measures aimed at kind of nullifying it that we can talk about in a minute.

But why put this much political capital on the line for a one-time tax when these healthcare cuts are permanent as they stand?

- Well, because we actually think, you know, we'll win back Congress this, this cycle, if you will.

That doesn't help because it doesn't mean that it'll get funded.

And then we'll have a new president in two years that will have to refund a lot of these cuts.

So one time and having a bandaid seems like a really smart idea.

And it prevents the kind of criticism of like, well, people will just leave.

They've had to have already left.

We're only going to tax them once.

If they love California, they'll stay.

And there are billionaires who say they'll just pay it, right?

I mean, we've already heard that.

So a lot of this is so much noise about it's not perfect, it's not ongoing, we should do it at the national level.

All, all true.

All true.

But what are we going to do about the cuts to Medicaid today, about the cuts to Medi-Cal that are going to be implemented after this election?

People are going to die.

And we heard from not just SEIU, UHW, but we heard from all of our healthcare unions about how this is already affecting their bargaining, how it's already affecting the level of care because the hospitals and clinics are already previewing what's going to happen.

So if you talk to workers, they get it.

They've seen it already and they're scared about what is coming.

And I think that that's just an obvious one.

And then if you talk to young people, they're so fed up with billionaires and what we've done as far as the status quo and to allow this problem of, of crazed income inequality to exist, that they're ready to tax billionaires for just about anything.

- This has, you know, not just attracted opposition from Newsom and Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for governor, but also, you know, the California Teachers Association, the firefighters, like other unions have lined up against it.

They say that, you know, they're worried that this is only to fund healthcare when there are bigger budget problems.

Why do you think there's this split?

Like what do you attribute it to?

- You know, union leaders did come out opposed to it and, and obviously, you know, there are teachers and firefighters in our federation.

And we got to hear a lot about this when we had a convention.

And quite frankly, I think the argument that this doesn't go just to teachers, that most rank and file teachers understand, yeah, you got to fund healthcare too.

Not everything is going to go to teachers.

And we've heard that over and over.

Our two - So you think there's - A split between the leadership - And - Well, I will tell you, we have two large joint locals, which are CTA and, and AFT.

So the two teachers unions, the two biggest in the, in the state, UTLA and the San Francisco educators are members of my labor council.

The leaders of both those unions spoke in favor of the billionaire's tax.

I can't say like what the disconnect is with official positions coming out of Sacramento, but that's just a fact.

They spoke and supported it.

What about the - Newsom, Becerra?

Like do you think they're just shilling for billionaires?

Like why do you think that they are so opposed to this?

- You know, I don't know.

They'd have to answer that question.

I think that there are a lot of elected officials, and it's not just people who are running for governor or president.

There are a lot of elected officials who are so afraid of this billionaire class.

You have billionaires pouring in so much money.

This is part of the problem.

You know, the president gave them opportunities to become trillionaires and multi-billionaires and they're trying to buy democracy out of it.

And I think when people are an elected official and they're seeing all the just hundreds of millions of dollars being spent against individuals who are willing to take on the billionaires, and we were talking about AI before.

Yeah.

The amazing thing is the connection between these two.

There's so many billionaires who will openly say that they are targeting elected officials who want guardrails on AI, and they're getting richer by the day, and they're trying to really thwart our democracy.

In California, they're trying to, they said straight out, they, they'd like to disempower working people and their unions.

So, you know, I don't know if it's fear.

I don't know if they just really think it's bad policy.

I don't know, you know, I, I think the, the governor has said, oh, it should be national.

And I do understand that's a rational argument, but we're not in rational times.

I mean, yeah, in, in a perfect world, how are we getting that done?

And where was he when Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were calling for a national billionaire's tax?

Yeah, it needs to be done.

And I hope he runs on that.

But in the meantime, we also have to take care of Californians.

And we, we have to really respect what voters care about and, and how voters are seeing this.

- It is, I mean, the tax itself is not very complicated, but you know, the billionaires have already bought, I think, almost $90 million in TV ads.

Your side is not going to be that well-funded.

You're not billionaires.

And then there's these two competing measures, Prop 41 and 42.

41 would require audits of these types of special tax, you know, funded programs, but it also kind of has this poison pill so that you can't enforce taxes that are not subject to the state spending limit that would undercut Prop 40.

42 is another attempt, you know, has other poison pills in it.

Like what does this campaign look like?

How do you convince people when you're going to be so outspent and when there are big guns, not just the billionaires, but like the governor on the other side?

- Well, you know, that, that is a political reality that we're facing in general.

The billionaires will always have more money to spend.

And I tell, I've traveled the state talking to union members, talking to activists, talking to students, and I said they will always outspend us.

That's not a question, but people see that.

We just saw it in a Bay Area race recently up here where Aisha Wahab was running a special race to become a congressional member and billionaires and, and some of their special interests came in hard spending upwards of $8 million in the last few weeks.

And people were complaining for another Democrat, right?

Right.

People were complaining about getting, you know, seeing every single ad and getting multiple, multiple mailers in the mail every single day.

Voters aren't stupid.

Yeah, there's - A saturation point.

- For sure.

Some - Of the Elon Musk money in 2024, right?

In the - Midwest.

Exactly.

And so we said what, what we're going to do is what we do best.

That's to talk to people, to reflect what voters actually believe and to ask people every time you get something, any political mail, any message that is coming through, you got to ask yourself who paid for that?

Yeah.

And that is the number one question we're asking union members to, to remind their family, friends, coworkers, who paid for that and why?

And you know, it's Sergey Brin.

It, it is billionaires.

And it's not true too.

We're already seeing Sac Bee just did a kind of fact check on the first ad that's out.

That was of course by the California Business Roundtable.

And they're like, "This isn't even true."

Right.

Made with AI slop.

I mean, the connections are, are quite interesting.

- Yeah.

- But - That's, that's the - Race.You - Know, the polls show it really close and generally, you know, it's better to start on the yes side with over 60% support.

Sure.

This is in the 50s.

Do you, do you have concerns about the bigger progressive movement nationally if they can beat this in California?

- No.

What - That says.

- I actually don't.

I think people understand.

And I think California's positioning as the progressive beacon is really taking a hit.

It's taking a hit on on tech, on controlling tech.

We're, we're seeing ourselves outpaced by Maryland, by Illinois, by New York.

It's taking a hit on how we cater to billionaires, what you just saw with billionaires taking over and big tech taking over the San Francisco Democratic Central Committee and the effects of that.

So - - The, the local party just chose to endorse a no vote on Prop 40.

- Which I didn't even know they could do that.

Like I don't know what it says about - They have - To change their bylaws, I believe, to - Do - It.

Yeah.

- I also don't know what that says about our party structure.

So how, how does a state party even matter then?

Yeah.

But you know, to largely, I think we have to acknowledge that we are not leading the economic populist progressive fights anymore.

And if you look across the nation, you see other people really pushing in that direction.

And California's just got a little too comfortable.

California politicians in the California Democratic Party got a little too comfortable with big tech.

And we're seeing the.

So I'm not worried.

I'd be really worried if the party as a state organization and labor as a state organization did not support a billionaire's tax, because then you wonder, did we mi - did we lose our entire movement?

You know, our infrastructure.

Are we going to be out of touch with young people?

And so I was glad to see at least the shells of the infrastructure are continuing to support what's right.

- Yeah.

I mean, it does seem like we're in an inflection point for the Democratic Party, right?

You have these fights happening, not just over the billionaire tax, but over Democratic socialist candidates winning primaries.

I mean, you mentioned Aisha Wahab, you know, was the sort of more progressive candidate in that race.

She did win, but she'll be facing off against Melissa Hernandez again this fall.

I guess just from where you sit as a representative working people, like how are you thinking about those internal battles?

Do you feel like the party needs to be a big tent?

Obviously you're on the more progressive side too, but like I just wonder how you're thinking about it more broadly.

- You know, I, we say this all the time and I don't think people believe us but we're, you know, the labor movement isn't partisan, right?

We have lined up with the Democratic Party because the Republican Party has tried to destroy us.

But we see the faults in the Democratic Party, and I just think that they're highlighted more than ever.

So you've seen prominent labor leaders step away from the DNC.

Of course we're still going to fund it.

Of course, most, most of the time, a Democrat will be better for organized labor than a Republican.

However, that's not across the board.

And I think we're seeing more and more Republicans who are saying, "Hey, I, I believe in collective bargaining."

And that's going to really challenge some of the Democrats who, who take labor for granted.

We're seeing the kind of proliferation in the Midwest of independent candidates or libertarian candidates who don't follow the, the libertarian, they're, they're economic progressives, you know?

And so I think we are going to have a reckoning and, you know, I, I'll be honest with you.

Gosh, I'm sure the head of the Democratic Party will love this, but there isn't a day that goes by that.

Well, maybe there's a day that goes by, but days after days, I'll say, "I'm going to quit being a Democrat.

This is ridiculous.

Like, come on, what are we about?"

I do believe in the principles of the Democratic Party.

I believe in fighting Trump.

That's all important.

I believe in a woman's right to choose, but I really believe in unions and I know that our economic structure has to change.

And so if the Democratic Party can't rise to that, I think they're going to have a real problem.

- All right.

Got to leave it there.

Lorena Gonzalez is President of the California Federation of Labor Unions.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- That is going to be a wrap for Political Breakdown.

We're a production of KQED.

Our engineer today is Jim Bennett, and our producer is Izzy Bloom.

Our video team includes Jim McKee, Derek Lartaud, Kate Lowpensky, and Vivian Morales.

I'm Marisa Lagos.

See you next time.