New Jersey bill would limit employers’ ability to use AI to monitor workers or make changes to their jobs

As tech CEOs debate the looming threat of artificial intelligence to worldwide safety and economic stability, lawmakers in New Jersey have begun taking steps to protect the workforce from fast-moving changes that have already disrupted how many do their jobs.

The state Senate Labor Committee last week voted unanimously to approve a bill that would regulate how employers use AI to monitor, evaluate, and ultimately replace workers.

The bill, which comes amid a broader backlash to AI and surveillance technology, now moves to the Senate budget committee for consideration before a vote by the full chamber. The “Fair Act” would require private- and public-sector employers to provide 60 days notice before implementing AI that would impose significant changes to job expectations. Employers who eliminated jobs because of AI advances would be required to offer training, extended severance pay, and benefits, according to the bill.

It would also regulate how employers use electronic monitoring tools to collect information about employees’ productivity, and how “automated employment decision-making systems” are used to hire, promote, and fire people.

“It makes sure employers can’t spy on you when you are off the clock. You’re boss should not be able to follow you home,” said Charle Wowkanech, president of the New Jersey State AFL-CIO, which represents 1 million public- and private-sector workers and their families, who spoke at a recent rally outside the Statehouse to draw attention to the bill.

Artificial intelligence is already monitoring the productivity of thousands of people who work in grocery stores, factories, and cannabis operations in the state, said Daniel Ross, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 152, which represents workers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. “The time-test matrix is so unreasonable that workers skip bathroom breaks, they don’t take water breaks, to avoid falling behind,” Ross said.

“Surveillance is not mainly harmless oversight, as it’s sold by employers,” Ross said. “Workers subjected to these practices experience elevated stress levels, declining mental health, and [increased] injury rates.”

Other states have already taken up the issue.

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, and New York have enacted various workplace protections from AI, according to Multistate, a clearinghouse for state legislation across the country. Pennsylvania has introduced its own bill to regulate AI in the workplace.

However, New Jersey business and industry leaders urged the committee to rethink some of the most sweeping provisions of the bill.

Most of the 1,300 members of the Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey are small businesses, which are not equipped with vast human resource or legal departments to implement the law, said Adam Guzjewski, president of Katz Government Affairs.

The bill requires employers to comply with vague requirements to ensure AI does not undermine “an employee’s autonomy, dignity, or welfare.”

But Jack Kelly, a lobbyist for the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, said it’s unclear how these requirements will be enforced for businesses.

“Large corporations may have dedicated legal compliance and technology teams. Many New Jersey businesses do not. For small businesses, these requirements create significant barriers to entry,” Kelly said.

New Jersey’s legislation is not out of step with how other states have regulated AI use, said Tony L.J. Lin, an associate professor of accounting at Rowan University who studies artificial intelligence in the workplace.

“If AI materially restructures jobs, we need a mechanism for retraining and redeployment,” Lin said.

States should push back on efforts to evaluate employees through invasive means like monitoring keystrokes, simply because this strategy likely does not fully show a worker’s productivity or value, Lin said.

Lin said there is great potential to improve jobs using AI. A nurse-practitioner, for instance, would benefit from technology that handles automated tasks. But a nurse-practitioner will always be valued for the “human judgment, contextual understanding accountability” aspects of the job, he said.

Debbie White, president of the largest nurses union in New Jersey, isn’t so sure.

“Healthcare employers are increasingly using AI and electronic monitoring systems to track worker productivity, evaluate performance, and influence staffing decisions,” White testified during the Oct. 1 hearing in Trenton.

However, White said these systems fail to measure “the reality of nursing care,” which often involves time comforting ailing patients and educating their families among other overlooked aspects of the job.

“AI can be useful, but it can’t replace the judgment of a nurse at the bedside,” she said.