In mid-February, Governor Hochul signed an amendment to the Legislative Oversight of Automated Decision-making in Government Act (LOADinG Act) that will protect jobs at CUNY as more employers in the public sector embrace artificial intelligence, or AI.
Luke Waltzer (Credit: Erik McGregor).
The first version of the LOADing Act was signed in December of 2024. Co-sponsored by Senator Kristin Gonzalez and Assembly Member Steven Otis, it regulates the use of AI by state agencies. The law requires “disclosure of automated decision-making systems already in use” and “prohibits the unauthorized use of automated decision-making systems by state agencies.” It also mandates “impact assessments” of agency AI use to test for “accuracy, fairness, bias and discrimination,” cyber security vulnerabilities, public health and safety risks, and other threats.
The amendment enacted last month expands the scope of the law to include CUNY and SUNY and ensures that current employees would not face layoffs due to certain duties being shifted from humans to computers. Public workers’ collective bargaining rights and civil servant status could also not be infringed by an agency’s use of AI under the amended law.
The PSC and its state affiliate, NYSUT, worked closely with lawmakers to draft the language of the new amendments and, according to union sources, it will require CUNY to release a public audit of its uses of AI.
Gonzalez told City and State last year that her legislation would require “a specific disclosure of automated employment decision-making tools in state agencies, including tools for hiring, wages, selection for recruitment, discipline, promotion and termination.” She added that in addition to “labor protections” her legislation would bring “transparency, which is deeply impactful on employment decisions.”
She said of the recent amendments, “The bill is the first-of-its-kind legislation that provides labor protections for state employees at the risk of displacement due to the implementation of AI technology. It also requires an inventory of state agencies’ use of automated decision-making technology.”
Union sources said that more work must be done. While the bill protects current employers from being laid off due to advances in AI, CUNY and other public employers could reduce their headcount over time through attrition.
“The LOADing Act is an important step in our efforts to compel transparency and to preserve human agency as AI-infused systems become more deeply embedded in the administrative apparatus and information ecosystems of our universities,” said Luke Waltzer, director of the Teaching and Learning Center at the Graduate Center. “We cannot embrace the promise of efficiency that these systems purport to offer as long as they remain impenetrable, unaccountable black boxes. All decisions that impact the people of New York should be made by people who can justify those decisions.”
The PSC has been measuring how much AI has been embraced across CUNY. Emily Schnee, a community college officer on the union’s executive council, reported on a recent survey of higher education officers by the union: “Thus far, approximately 450 HEOs have responded to the survey and here are some of the results: 32% of respondents report that there have been proposals to use AI tools in their department or program, 21% of respondents report that AI tools have already been integrated into their job duties, 9.5% of respondents report that students on their campus are being encouraged or directed to use AI tools instead of speaking to a HEO, and 45% of respondents report that they are concerned that they or their colleagues could lose their jobs because of AI.”
The use of AI at CUNY has been on the minds of PSC leaders for some time, and the union successfully bargained for language regarding AI in the current contract. To defend against AI outsourcing (and outsourcing in general), the bargaining team secured language in the latest memorandum of agreement requiring that “the teaching faculty/ instructor of record (individual appointed to teach a course) for every course offered in The City University of New York, regardless of modality, will be in an Instructional Staff title.”
The contract also establishes an educational technology labor-management committee that will meet at least twice per semester to discuss “artificial intelligence, technology training, instructional design, and the impact of online teaching modalities on the terms and conditions of employment.”
PSC President James Davis said, “The impact of AI on the work of PSC members is of great concern to the union. For that reason, we were eager to collaborate with NYSUT and the legislators who sponsored the original LOADing Act to extend its provisions to CUNY and SUNY. We are pleased that the governor recently signed the updated bill. Now the legislation does two critical things. It requires the CUNY administration to track and publicly report on the uses of AI, and it says such uses cannot alter our terms and conditions of employment or ‘result in the discharge, displacement or loss of position’ for the CUNY employees we represent. While the AI Revolution is still gaining steam, this is an important new legal tool to monitor the administration’s use and protect our members’ rights.”
Published: March 10, 2026
