Punching In: Labor Agency Leaders Want to Make AI-Ready Workers

Tuesday morning musings for workplace waters

AI Apprenticeships | Con Ed Worker Wants More

Parker Purifoy: The Labor Department is looking to man the AI infrastructure boom in the US with registered apprentices, Deputy Secretary Keith Sonderling announced recently.

AI development and consumerism present the opportunity to expand apprenticeships in big tech, Sonderling said at the State of the Net conference in Washington DC last week.

“The most important thing we can do at the Department of Labor, when we know there’s a desire to build and bring the money in, is to make sure that we have American workers who are trained and ready to get the job,” he said.

Along with trades that have traditionally been involved in apprenticeships, like plumbing and manufacturing, Sonderling said the DOL is endeavoring to “open the aperture” of apprenticeships to bring them to big tech companies.

“We want to continue the apprenticeship chain down the line,” he said. “We want to build these things, but then we want our apprentices to operate them as well.”

The DOL has repeated its messaging on apprenticeships since President Donald Trump set the goal of reaching 1 million active apprentices in his second administration.

During his talk at the conference, Sonderling also emphasized the importance for workers to be retrained and upskilled on AI technology. His comments came ahead of DOL’s release of a framework to guide employers and state workforce agencies on how to teach AI literacy to workers.

The White House’s AI Action Plan, released in July last year, promises very little regulatory red tape and emphasizes that workers are “central” to its AI policy. However, it’s silent on worker protections, a departure from the Biden-era plan. It also tasks the DOL with studying the impacts of the technology on the labor market, like worker displacement.

Sonderling briefly acknowledged during his Feb. 10 speech that employers can be held liable for discrimination if their AI tools in hiring and selecting employees introduce bias.

“At the end of the day we have to have a clear framework within the law that those AI tools need to comply with, just as if a human was making that decision,” he said.

Keith Sonderling during the Web Summit 2022 at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.

Photographer: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile for Web Summit via Getty Images

Robert Iafolla: A former Con Edison employee who won a $200,000 jury verdict against the New York City power company will ask a federal appeals court for a new trial on her discrimination claims, and more money for her lawyers.

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is set to hear oral argument Wednesday in Emily Penzo’s challenge to a New York federal judge rejecting her retrial bid and awarding about a third of the legal fees she requested.

The Second Circuit case arose from Penzo’s 2019 lawsuit alleging Consolidated Edison Company of New York Inc. engaged in disability discrimination and retaliation in violation federal, state, and city laws. She accused the power company of biased treatment and retaliation following her breast cancer diagnosis.

After a four-day trial in 2023, a jury returned a verdict in Penzo’s favor on her retaliation claim under New York City anti-bias law. It dismissed her seven other claims.

The jury awarded Penzo $200,000 in back pay. She had sought $16.2 million in back pay, front pay, and punitive damages, plus an unspecified amount for emotional distress damages.

She applied for $700,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs. US District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Trump appointee to the Southern District of New York, awarded her $258,000.

The judge also rejected Penzo’s request for a new trial that was based in part on allegations of witness tampering by one of Con Edison’s lawyers.

In her appellate brief, Penzo argued that Vyskocil used the wrong legal standards when assessing her new trial petition. The judge also should have held an evidentiary hearing rather than relying on written affidavits that presented major factual disputes, she said.

On the attorneys’ fee issue, Penzo claimed the judge made several mistakes, reducing fees “based on the purported limited success of the lawsuit.”

Con Edison argued in its brief that the judge used the right standards for the type of post-trial request that Penzo made. No hearing was needed given the extensive briefing, the company said.

Vyskocil was within her rights to limit the fees, especially given that Penzo’s lawyers won less than 2% of the money she sought, Con Edison said.

Seyfarth Shaw LLP’s Ephraim Pierre will argue for the company. John Moore of Schlam Stone & Dolan LLP will represent Penzo.

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