California Executive Order Directs Businesses and State Agencies to Prepare for AI-Driven Workforce Disruption (kqed.org) 35
Thursday California's governor issued an executive order "directing state agencies to prepare workers and businesses for AI-driven workforce disruption," reports San Francisco's KQED. In a statement the governor said "This moment demands that we reimagine the entire system — how we work, how we govern, how we prepare people for the future."
The order mandates agencies to explore a range of policy options, including severance standards, expanded unemployment insurance, job retraining programs aimed specifically at white-collar workers, worker ownership models and a concept the governor called "universal basic capital," giving all residents a stake in assets such as corporate stocks, bonds or wealth funds...
Tom Kemp, executive director of the California Privacy Protection Agency, applauded the fact that the order named data privacy as a consumer protection concern and highlighted the CPPA's automated decision-making technology regulations, which he called "the nation's most comprehensive." Others are more skeptical. "Catastrophic job loss from AI is not inevitable, it's a political choice," Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, wrote in a statement. However, Gonzalez noted one area of genuine agreement: the order's emphasis on collective bargaining as a tool for protecting workers from AI displacement...
According to Stanford HAI's 2026 AI Index, software developers ages 22 to 25 are among those most likely to see their skills made redundant earliest. This year, U.S. employment fell nearly 20% from 2024, even as headcount for older developers continued to grow. Following the job cuts announced at Meta, a union of Alphabet workers in the U.S. and Canada released a statement that suggests Silicon Valley's own labor force may seek to organize... "It's undeniable that our whole industry is being transformed by the corporate push to adopt new AI tools," [Alphabet Workers Union-CWA Local 9009 said in a statement]. "It's hard not to feel anxiety and fear when we can see more and more tech companies cutting huge portions of their workforce both in anticipation of replacing them with AI, and to fund their multi-billion-dollar bets on AI as the future of the industry..."
In February, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and Gonzalez delivered what amounted to an ultimatum to Newsom: regulate AI or lose labor's support for any future presidential run. Shuler called a potential AI-driven economic collapse a coming "crisis." In August 2025, Newsom announced a partnership with Google, Microsoft, IBM and Adobe to expand AI education in California schools and community colleges, a workforce preparation push that now looks like a precursor to Thursday's more sweeping order.
The article notes that after signing the bill the governor shared this comment on X.com. "California will pursue new policies that make sure working Californians — not just Big Tech — benefit from the wealth and breakthroughs coming out of this space."
Newsom telegraphed Thursday's order earlier this week, when he appeared at the Center for American Progress IDEAS Conference in Washington. "Businesses are going to make a fortune, and that's why you cannot continue to have a payroll tax system that taxes jobs and then subsidizes automation."
Tom Kemp, executive director of the California Privacy Protection Agency, applauded the fact that the order named data privacy as a consumer protection concern and highlighted the CPPA's automated decision-making technology regulations, which he called "the nation's most comprehensive." Others are more skeptical. "Catastrophic job loss from AI is not inevitable, it's a political choice," Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, wrote in a statement. However, Gonzalez noted one area of genuine agreement: the order's emphasis on collective bargaining as a tool for protecting workers from AI displacement...
According to Stanford HAI's 2026 AI Index, software developers ages 22 to 25 are among those most likely to see their skills made redundant earliest. This year, U.S. employment fell nearly 20% from 2024, even as headcount for older developers continued to grow. Following the job cuts announced at Meta, a union of Alphabet workers in the U.S. and Canada released a statement that suggests Silicon Valley's own labor force may seek to organize... "It's undeniable that our whole industry is being transformed by the corporate push to adopt new AI tools," [Alphabet Workers Union-CWA Local 9009 said in a statement]. "It's hard not to feel anxiety and fear when we can see more and more tech companies cutting huge portions of their workforce both in anticipation of replacing them with AI, and to fund their multi-billion-dollar bets on AI as the future of the industry..."
In February, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and Gonzalez delivered what amounted to an ultimatum to Newsom: regulate AI or lose labor's support for any future presidential run. Shuler called a potential AI-driven economic collapse a coming "crisis." In August 2025, Newsom announced a partnership with Google, Microsoft, IBM and Adobe to expand AI education in California schools and community colleges, a workforce preparation push that now looks like a precursor to Thursday's more sweeping order.
The article notes that after signing the bill the governor shared this comment on X.com. "California will pursue new policies that make sure working Californians — not just Big Tech — benefit from the wealth and breakthroughs coming out of this space."
Newsom telegraphed Thursday's order earlier this week, when he appeared at the Center for American Progress IDEAS Conference in Washington. "Businesses are going to make a fortune, and that's why you cannot continue to have a payroll tax system that taxes jobs and then subsidizes automation."
Re:giving all residents! (Score:5, Interesting)
Have to love the left, always wanting to seize and give away someone else's stuff.
Absolutely, much better for everyone if they just got rid of the peasants [existentialcomics.com]
That comic makes no sense (Score:3)
The problem AI solves is paying wages. But what that means is you have a machine doing work that you used to have to pay wages for. That means the people you used to pay wages no longer have any bargaining power over you. They cannot threaten to withhold their labor.
Now they could threaten to start their own busines
Re: (Score:3)
Did you post this also when Musk said THE EXACT SAME THING?????
Unemployed people can't buy stocks.
More seriously, both this and Musk sound like the government seizing company assets and distributing it evenly to everybody. This is basically UBI, and it is a huge tax no matter how it is collected. It may work however, needs to be investigated with some seriousness and by people without preconceived notions of what will happen.
Re: (Score:3)
Because, not having an income tends to mean not being able to afford stuff (AKA: poor). Because, not many people live like you do.
Lots of people live paycheck-to-paycheck, and don't have tens of thousands saved up... and that $3k severance package the person got when they lost their job to AI isn't going to do much.
And, as AI replaces meat-sacks in the job market, more and more will be unemployed, and SNAP and those programs are going to be stretched beyond what they can possibly do to help. Retraining 15
Re:giving all residents! (Score:5, Insightful)
Check your beliefs, it is the right wingnuts that are grabbing everyone else stuff and giving it away to themselves. What do you think the Big Stupid Bill was all about? Girl Scout cookies? Look at what el Bunko is going with his Monuments to his Ego. Or his stealing $1.76 Billion to pay off his thugs. Or his turning bits and bobs of the Fed. Government over to his rich friends for tidy little kickback under the table. Or protecting the Oil and Gas industry to keep a lock on U.S. energy markets and those big fat contributions to Republicans flowing, minus bit off the top for his own bank account.
I'm sure the poor will belly right up the corporate stocks, bonds, and wealth funds will all the money the rich haven't yet taken from them. Tell you what, quit your job, move to Smalltown, U.S.A., try to find a job, and attempt to make ends meet. Oh, and you'll be wanting to pay for your health insurance by yourself.
Re: giving all residents! (Score:2)
Yes, because fuck one person, one vote. The decisions in this country belong to the ones who own it, not the ones that live there.
The Presidential Campaign (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:The Presidential Campaign (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Presidential Campaign (Score:5, Informative)
And he is a careerist wife cheater
Unlike that tower of morality Trump who has cheated on all three of his wives, assaulted multiple women, and is a pedo.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
His name is spelled "Newsom". And he is a careerist wife cheater who doesn't appear to hold any particularly strong convictions except those that blow best with the wind. These are performative executive wishes that don't do anything to stop job destruction, slipping standards of living, stem inequality, or create jobs for the zillions of people out-of-work.
But ... but ... his great hair??
Re: (Score:3)
Unfortunately incompetence doesn't seem to be an impediment to being elected.
Re: (Score:2)
Newsom promised we wouldn't pay PGE for burning down Paradise, but here we are and... we are.
Will he step down if he loses an election? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also none of you fuckers give a shit about Trump fucking kids so you can piss right off with your infidelity bullshit.
Everything is performative wishes as long as guys like you keep voting for Trump and telling us you didn't. You're not the silent majority you're the silent minority with voter suppression making sure you get to pick your guy. Or rather billionaires pick your guy and you follow along.
I will remind everyone that the $22 an hour minimum wage for fast food workers which is boosted wages for all workers in California was signed by Gavin newsom. And he absolutely could have vetoed it.
Never let perfect be the enemy of good. Newsom is a huge step up from where we are right now.
Re: The Presidential Campaign (Score:2)
I sure wish we had funded civics classes in public schools. Then I wouldn't have to explain that a governor is the executive of their respective state. And the pattern repeats for mayor in many (but not all) cities.
Re: (Score:3)
Most likely they meant that unemployment (or something similar) increased by 20%
Re: (Score:3)
My theory is that their employment of brain cells decreased by 20%.
Re: (Score:1)
Statistical cherry picking (Score:2)
"This year, U.S. employment fell nearly 20% from 2024."
Were that true, we would be living through the worst of the Great Depression era. I asked perplexity ai for comparable statistics, and it claims that it took three years of the Great Depression for US employment to contact 20%.
That was the rebound year from Covid. It's a statistical anomaly, and chosen by a lot of news reports to highlight the severity of whatever point they're making.
Comparing today's employment against, for example, 2019 is also difficult due to the estimated 10 million illegal immigrants that entered under the Biden administration. For example, today there is about 4.3% unemployment, the average [ycharts.com] is 5.7%, so we're doing pretty good on that front.
Statistics can lie. Our 4.3% represents 7.4 million unemployed wor
You'll own nothing and you'll be happy :o (Score:1)
‘"You'll own nothing and you'll be happy" (alternatively "You'll own nothing and be happy") is a phrase published by the World Economic Forum (WEF)[1] and based on a 2016 essay by the Danish politician Ida Auken about a future in which a hypothetical person relies on the sharing economy for many of their needs.[2] The phrase from the article "Welcome to 2030", and the philosophies expressed within it, have been used b
It also "directed" them ... (Score:1)
... to implement world peace.
Solved! Who knew it was so easy?
Another train to nowhere (Score:2)
job retraining programs aimed specifically at white-collar workers
Those poor white-collar folks, how will they ever get by?
You can begin by stopping treating "resources" as infinite; when one thinks they're infinite one makes all kinds of bad decisions. Universal Basic Inflation, indeed.
AI driven crash (Score:2)
When there is a rolling black out, does that now mean our economy comes to a grinding halt?