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Annette Bernhardt is director of the Technology and Work Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. Previously she was a visiting professor in the UC Berkeley Sociology Department, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and policy co-director at the National Employment Law Project. A leading scholar of low-wage work, Dr. Bernhardt has helped develop and analyze innovative policy responses to economic inequality, the restructuring of work, and technological change in the United States. Her current research focuses on the impact of artificial intelligence and other data-driven technologies on front-line workers, as well as public policy models for tech regulation. Dr. Bernhardt has authored multiple books and published widely in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, and the Journal of Labor Economics, among others. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1993.
AI in the workplace isn’t just automation. Workers report discrimination, intensified workloads, and even automated firing. New state policies aim to center workers, write Mishal Khan and Annette Bernhardt in this Tech Policy Press article.
Updated September 2025. An overview of current U.S. public policy that regulates employers’ use of digital workplace technologies.
It is our assessment that the current proposed regulations do not provide the protections that consumers and workers deserve under the CCPA and that the law itself clearly intended.
Accessible, non-technical FAQ answering common questions about AI and other digital technologies in the workplace, how employers use them, and how workers are impacted.
Prepared Testimony by Dr. Annette Bernhardt, Director, Technology and Work Program, UC Berkeley Labor Center for the Joint Informational Hearing, California State Assembly, Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection and Committee on Labor and Employment. August 7, 2024, Sacramento, CA.
This year I will be watching for progress in legislation to establish guardrails around electronic monitoring and algorithmic management, addressing harms such as automated firing, discrimination, invasive surveillance and profiling of union organizers.
“This is such a lost opportunity,” said Bernhardt, director of technology and work programs at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. “California had the chance to lead the country in protecting workers in the age of algorithmic management.”
“None of this is controversial,” Bernhardt said. “Workers should have the right to know which systems their employer is using, and they have the right to expect that it’s a human, not an algorithm, that is making critical decisions impacting their economic future.”
More than 200 trade union members and technologists gathered in Sacramento this week at a first-of-its-kind conference to discuss how AI and other tech threatens workers and to strategize for upcoming fights and possible strikes.
“California is the first and only place in the U.S. where workers are starting to gain basic rights over their data and how employers use that data to make critical decisions about them,” said Annette Bernhardt.
California is the first and only place where employees are getting critical info about their data, UC Berkeley Labor Center Director Annette Bernhardt told the board during public comment ahead of the vote, and recent amendments threaten to deprive workers of agency over algorithmic tools.
“Intense monitoring can push warehouse workers to the point of injury, biased hiring algorithms can shut women and workers of color out of opportunity, and gig platform workers can end up making below the minimum wage,” said Annette Bernhardt.
“We need to assure that workers have a seat at the table on these technologies from the outset, not just when they’re being implemented,” said Annette Bernhardt
“It is necessary to ensure that impactful decisions are still made by a human,” said Annette Bernhardt, Director of the Technology and Work programme at the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
The role of AI as a tool for school and business was a key theme of the symposium. Annette Bernhardt, director of the technology and work program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, emphasized the balance between worker privacy and the benefit of highly productive AI tools.
