December 23, 2019
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Artificial Intelligence May Make HR's Job Easier, but Employment Discrimination Still Abounds

Proponents of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have promised tools will usher in a new age of digitized work. AI tools can now be used scan thousands of documents and reduce repetitive work tasks, algorithms can predict your shopping habits and recommend products before you even think of them, and machine learning software can be trained to identify cancer from MRIs. Often, the creators and designers of these tools tout AI's supposed objectivity. However, what technologists are less interested in publicizing is how AI can be used to reinforce discriminatory policing, violate civil rights, enable employment discrimination and reinforce class, gender, and race disparities

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Dr. Ifeoma Ajunwa of Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School highlighted hiring companies and HR departments increased use of these tools. Ajunwa points out that employers are not merely utilizing these technologies to screen candidates, but  are actively barring candidates from being considered for employment. As an example, she posits a company that relies on a hiring algorithm trained to seek candidates without gaps in their employment. Ajunwa notes, such a stipulation would automatically screen out women applicants who have taken time off for child care or for those who have had long-term medical issues. And, because AI relies on specific rules created by humans, there is no way for the technology to check itself against employment law or ethical norms about employment discrimination. It would simply filter out applicants who don't meet the criteria.

Dr. Ajunwa is not the only one sounding the alarm about employers increasing reliance on AI and other tools, which creators purport to be objective. According to Cathy O'Neil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction, such algorithmic bias is common in hiring, especially in low-wage jobs where massive retail companies rely on sophisticated AIs that consider aspects of your life you would not think have any bearing on employment, such as your credit score, medical and mental health histories, personality tests, and driving record.

In recent years, several lawsuits and investigations regarding AI discrimination have appeared and several researchers in tech have started to develop methods to illuminate the hidden bias in machine learning and AI technologies. However, as Dr. Ajunwa notes, there are few concrete laws on the books that can protect applicants from algorithmic discrimination. Moreover, the Harvard Business Review cautioned that unlike other forms of employment testing, many of these AI-based tools remain empirically untested, leaving the door open to to ethical and legal problems.

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The Rhetoric of Choice Obscures Our Social Obligations to Parents

January 30, 2020
Paid Family Leave
FMLA
Pregnancy Discrimination
Leave
Who should foot the bill or take responsibility for social reproduction as more women were pressed into the workforce, government or the individual? In the US, the answer was resounding: the individual. And this has had significant consequences for working parents since. By placing the responsibility on the individual, almost always the mother, parents have been in a bind for decades and any "choices" available reside in an astonishingly thin sliver of options constrained by structural inequalities

Female Flight Attendants and Pilots File Discrimination Suit Against Frontier Airlines, Alleging Discrimination against Pregnant and Nursing Mothers

January 13, 2020
Gender Discrimination
Pregnancy Discrimination
Two lawsuits were filed against Frontier airlines alleging that the Company required pregnant employees to suspend work duties months before they were scheduled to give birth, forcing employees to use their vacation days in lieu of paid time off, take unpaid maternity leave without Frontier providing alternatives for work, and refuse to accommodate breastfeeding and pregnant workers.

New Report from Uber Highlights the Risks of Driving in the Gig Economy

January 6, 2020
Sexual Harassment
Among the most significant risks to Uber drivers were those in the form of sexual and physical assault on the job, with 42% of assault cases being reported by drivers. The most common assault reported by drivers and riders was "non-consensual touching of a sexual body part," with 1,560 cases reported in 2018 alone.

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