Liz Shuler

Liz Shuler (born 1970) rose from organizing clerical workers at Portland General Electric through the Electrical Workers union to become, in 2021, the first woman to lead the AFL-CIO — the federation of 63 unions representing some 12.5 million American workers. Under her presidency, AI has become labor’s defining fight.

Labor’s next battleground

At a National Press Club appearance on April 28, 2026, Shuler called unregulated artificial intelligence “the single biggest threat to working people of our lifetime,” warning that employers are deploying AI “without our input” and “at great risk.” The speech capped an escalating campaign: in October 2025 she launched the AFL-CIO’s Workers First Initiative on AI, pushing model state legislation and federal guardrails against algorithmic surveillance, automated firing, and unconsented data extraction from workers.

Shuler is careful to say the movement is “not anti-technology” but “anti-greed” — and she has backed that nuance with action, negotiating a 2023 partnership with Microsoft that gave unions a formal channel into AI development alongside neutrality commitments for organizing. But her defining public posture is the warning: without worker voice and enforceable rules, she argues, AI will be used to deskill, surveil, and displace. Bipartisan letters in Congress have since endorsed the AFL-CIO’s AI principles.