Government urged to expand health, safety laws to cover AI-related workplace risks

Unions express support for Senate report's recommendations

BY Dexter Tilo 28 Nov 2024

The Australian government is being urged in a new Senate report to expand the coverage of the existing work health and safety legislative framework to also address the workplace risks posed by the adoption of AI.

The report, introduced by the Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence, stated that Australia's industrial framework must be updated for the AI era.

It noted that Australia's longstanding and uncontroversial tripartite approach to occupational health and safety (OH&S) includes positive duties on employers to identify and minimise workplace risks, which can be expanded to cover AI-related risks in the workplace.

"The proposition that this existing approach to OH&S regulation could be applied to manage the workplace risks posed by AI was supported by a broad range of stakeholders, including trade unions, local AI vendors, not-for-profit organisations, workplace lawyers, and think tanks," the report read.

Recommendations in the report

This is just one of the 13 recommendations outlined by the Select Committee in the 222-page report, which was tabled on Wednesday. Some of the recommendations that involve AI's impact on workplaces include:

That the Australian Government introduce new, whole-of-economy, dedicated legislation to regulate high-risk uses of AI
That, as part of the dedicated AI legislation, the Australian Government adopt a principles-based approach to defining high-risk AI uses, supplemented by a non-exhaustive list of explicitly defined high-risk AI uses.
That the Australian Government ensure the non-exhaustive list of high-risk AI uses explicitly includes general-purpose AI models, such as large language models.
That the Australian Government ensure that the final definition of high-risk AI clearly includes the use of AI that impacts on the rights of people at work.
That the Australian Government extend and apply the existing work health and safety legislative framework to the workplace risks posed by the adoption of AI.
That the Australian Government ensure that workers, worker organisations, employers, and employer organisations are thoroughly consulted on the need for, and best approach to, further regulatory responses to address the impact of AI on work and workplaces.
That the Australian Government continue to consult with creative workers, rightsholders and their representative organisations through the CAIRG on appropriate solutions to the unprecedented theft of their work by multinational tech companies operating within Australia.
That the Australian Government urgently undertake further consultation with the creative industry to consider an appropriate mechanism to ensure fair remuneration is paid to creators for commercial AI-generated outputs based on copyrighted material used to train AI systems.

Unions welcome recommendations

The recommendations were met with a warm reception from unions, who lauded the report for outlining proposals to protect employees' rights amid widespread AI adoption.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has welcomed the recommendation to use the OH&S framework of tripartism to bring more oversight into the introduction of AI.

"Unions support the Committee's proposal to extend the existing and well-respected OH&S framework to the introduction of AI systems to ensure employers are aware of their responsibility to identify and mitigate the potential risks of these AI tools," said Sally McManus, secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, in a statement.

According to the ACTU secretary, workers are "rightly wary" that AI could be misused to undermine wages and conditions, as well as to terminate employees as part of cost-cutting exercises.

"The Senate Inquiry has recognised that commonsense protections need to be introduced or strengthened to ensure that working people’s basic rights are preserved, including the right to meaningful consultation," McManus said.