The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) has ordered the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to return to the bargaining table with AFGE after the agency refused to bargain artificial intelligence (AI) data rights for nearly 600 bargaining unit employees at multiple Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Resource Call Centers.
HUD has been trying to implement AI within the call centers under a project called the FHA Resource Center IT Modernization. The agency sought to have employees train AI models that would eventually replicate their existing job functions. Per the GSA Centers of Excellence contract language for the call centers, this data would then be released into open-source public domain repositories for use by anyone accessing it.
Given FHA's status as the world’s largest insurer of mortgages, negotiations surrounding FHA’s Resource Call Centers directly influence employee working conditions and the availability of home financing options for Americans.
In 2021, HUD and the AFGE National Council of HUD Locals 222, which represents HUD employees nationwide, met to bargain over the changes in working conditions and reached an agreement on some proposals. But when the union requested additional information, including the statement of work, the agency denied the request, prompting the union to reach out to a mediator to help settle the issue.
Following a mediation session, the agency provided the union with the statement of work and interagency agreement with the General Services Administration, which showed that HUD planned to expand the use of AI at the call centers with the goal of eventually replacing certain bargaining unit work with it.
The union demanded to bargain, but the agency refused, with management officials “growing impatient with what it considered to be lengthy negotiations”. The agency falsely claimed the union failed to file a demand to bargain in a timely manner, prompting the union to file an unfair labor practice charge with the FLRA.
Finding that HUD had engaged in bad faith bargaining, the FLRA directed the agency to return to the bargaining table, a major win for Council 222 and the employees it represents.
“This is a huge win for not only Council 222 but AFGE as a whole,” said Jim Flynn, Council 222 chief negotiator. “The President’s executive order on AI and the OMB memo on AI have instructed federal agencies to engage employee unions in the implementation of AI, and this decision brings us one step closer to that happening.”
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