March 07, 2023
See this? Look out for that! CFPB Joins Watch Over Employers’ Use of AI (and more)
On January 31, 2023, you may have read the EEOC hosted a public hearing “Navigating Employment Discrimination in AI and Automated Systems: A New Civil Rights Frontier.”
On March 7th, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced an information sharing agreement or Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), creating a formal partnership between the two agencies to “better protect American families and to address practices that harm workers in the ‘gig economy’ and other labor markets. Two areas of immediate concern include employer surveillance and employer-driven debt.”
Under scrutiny are employers’:
- practices and use of artificial intelligence tools that chill workers from exercising their rights under the National Labor Relations Act;
- requirement for employees to shoulder debt for employer-mandated training or equipment that they might not need, or that may be more expensive or harmful than what they might purchase in a competitive market.
- use of surveillance tools to track things like workers productivity, including outside of work hours.
Concurrently, the Federal Trade Commission has extended the notice and comment period on its proposed rule to effectively ban all new and existing non-compete agreements. Stay tuned for updates on these and other developing activities.
