Last week the NSW government introduced an amendment to the proposed Workers Compensation Legislation Amendment (Reform and Modernisation) Bill 2025 to regulate the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in workplaces.
The proposed changes will require employers to ensure that the use of ‘digital work systems’ is without risks to the health or safety of any person and would grant unions specific entry rights to inspect those systems. It defines ‘digital work system’ to mean an algorithm, artificial intelligence, automation, online platform or software.
Employers would be required to ensure that their use of AI does not result in –
- excessive or unreasonable workloads
- the use of excessive or unreasonable metrics to track and assess worker performance
- excessive or unreasonable surveillance or monitoring of workers
- discrimination in the conduct or decision-making of the business
Unions NSW secretary Mark Morey said the AI amendments would serve as a base of protection as technology accelerates over the next few years and changes how work is done and allocated. “We’re trying to bring health and safety laws into the 21st century,” he said.
Employer groups claim that the proposed changes are unnecessary, will interfere with industry attempts to improve productivity, and that work health safety legislation already mandates employers to provide safe work environments and work systems.
Yet, as we have seen with employers such as Woolworths, Uber and Amazon, existing workplace health and safety laws are being routinely side-stepped by employers who are focused on productivity and increased profit.
As outlined in the VTHC submission to the recent Victorian parliamentary inquiry into workplace surveillance, employers are increasingly using surveillance in the workplace leading to work intensification, increased stress and fear, and impeding the ability for workers to exercise their workplace rights.
Last year, United Workers Union members took industrial action at Woolworths distribution centres to protest the supermarket giant’s new algorithm-based performance system, which sets strict productivity targets for workers. UWU said that Woolworths’ use of their algorithm based ‘Framework’ to set and monitor employee KPIs was a high-risk management approach that imposed unsafe, unsustainable and unfair pressure on employees.
VTHC made a submission at the consultation stage of the development of the psychological regulations that you can read here, requesting the inclusion of ‘intrusive workplace surveillance’ as a distinct hazard. Currently, AI or surveillance as a distinct OHS risk is not recognised in WorkSafe’s list of psychosocial hazards, nor are they addressed in the draft psychological regulations due to be enacted later this year.
Read more: Financial Review | Unions to get power to challenge how businesses use AI