New Washington bill would let state workers influence how agencies use AI
By Sophia Fox-Sowell for StateScoop, February 13, 2025
Washington state lawmakers last month proposed a bill that would grant state government employees bargaining power over how artificial intelligence tools are used inside their agencies.
“Our state employees, our public sector employees, are asking to be able to bargain on AI where it impacts their job description and their salaries,” Rep. Lisa Parshley, the primary sponsor of House Bill 1622, told StateScoop in an interview. “And this makes some sense to me, because AI is going to potentially impact these areas.”
The bill would create an exemption within the Personnel System Reform Act of 2002, which gave managers the authority to decide how technologies are used. But when the law was enacted, Parshley said, the digital technologies it referred to were things like pagers and flip phones.
