Our Data. Our Work. Our Future
Working Partnerships USA is joining with workers, unions, and community partners across Silicon Valley and California, to make sure technology serves people, not the other way around. Together, we’re fighting for real power over how technology shapes our data, our public services, and our workplaces.
From hospitals and warehouses to schools and public agencies, corporations and employers are using AI and digital technologies make, or heavily influence, decisions that shape our lives.
Companies and institutions are rolling out these technologies fast, often without public debate, meaningful oversight, or any accountability when they cause harm. Bossware is already watching, scoring, and disciplining workers in nearly every industry. Surveillance cameras on our street corners are tracking where we go and collecting our data. And schools, hospitals, and public agencies are handing more decisions about our care, our education, and our benefits to algorithms. And they don’t affect everyone equally: the burdens fall hardest on low-income communities, immigrants, and communities of color.
The fight for democratic control over how technology is used is the fight to stop the unprecedented consolidation of wealth and power by Big Tech’s billionaire class. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to block common-sense safeguards, and buying influence in the very government bodies meant to oversee them.
We’re organizing to change that.
New Report: The Bot Behind The Boss
Warehouse workers tracked by the minute. Drivers whose pay is set by an algorithm they can’t see. Nurses, teachers, and hotel workers scored and disciplined by software. A new report from the People’s Tech Coalition, California and the UCLA and UC Berkeley Labor Centers, shows how “bossware” is changing work for Californians in every industry, and what it will take to put workers back in control.
Winning this fight means organizing on multiple fronts
Building power
Across California, we’re building community-labor coalitions in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Unions are organizing workers on the job, and community organizations are engaging the residents most directly affected by these technologies. When workers and communities move together, we can set the agenda.
Shaping Policy
We’re fighting for rules that stop corporations from using technology to surveil, exploit, and control us. California just passed its first guardrails on bossware, and we’re building on that win. In Santa Clara County, workers are bargaining for protections in their contracts, and we’re pushing for local policies on how the government uses AI. The rules we win here can set the standard everywhere.
Lifting Up Our Stories
Corporations want you to believe the future is already decided. We know better, because we hear from the workers and communities living with these technologies in their workplaces and their neighborhoods. We’re lifting up their stories, backed by research like our new report on bossware in California. What comes next should be shaped by the people living it, not the people profiting.
