Union of the Future Unemployed
Displaced Knowledge Workers Cooperative
AI is reshaping work. Many workers are being left behind.
We're building support systems and the People Power that knowledge workers need to upskill, survive layoffs, rebuild careers, and win a just AI economy.
Crisis Layoff Support
In the first 48 hours after layoff, we provide:
- A secure, anonymous platform to share and compare severance agreements
- Plain-language guidance on severance, benefits, and negotiation
- Referrals to legal, immigration, and healthcare resources
- Peer support and mutual aid during the shock period, with focus on vulnerable workers with health or immigration concerns
- Close information asymmetry between workers and employers
Collective Transparency
By aggregating real severance data, workers can:
- Identify unfair or discriminatory severance practices
- Support strategic, worker‑led media storytelling
- Strategize pressure campaigns and collective bargaining
- Build evidence for legal challenges and policy reform
The NLRB issued landmark decision McLaren Macomb (Feb. 2023), ruling that blanket confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses in severance agreements violate Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. This means employers cannot lawfully retaliate against employees for discussing severance, pay, or working conditions to organize collectively.
Workforce Development
Connecting laid‑off workers and aspiring junior workers:
Advocacy & Organizing
Direct services allow us to engage in base-building for collective action. By building a cross-sector coalition, we can organize for:
- Basic income support during retraining, and modernization of Unemployment Insurance system which is insufficient to cover scale of upcoming labor disruption
- Portable benefits
- Stronger layoff protections (extended WARN notices)
- Worker voice in technology governance
- A worker-centered AI New Deal
AI policy references: CWA Principles for AI (Dec 2023) · ZeniMax Workers United–CWA AI agreement · AFL-CIO Workers First Initiative on AI · AFL-CIO & Microsoft AI partnership
Understanding the Problem
AI productivity gains were cited in 59% layoff rationales in 2025. The impact falls disproportionately on women and people of color, coinciding with widespread corporate retreat from DEI commitments. Multiple forces drive this shift, including pandemic over-hiring corrections, management reasserting leverage over workers, and economic uncertainty. But the impact of AI is distinct and measurable: occupations with higher AI exposure experienced larger unemployment increases between 2022 and 2025, with entry-level positions in AI-exposed fields declining sharply while companies favor experienced workers. Since 2023, there's been a 40% drop in hiring for entry-level workers in highly AI-exposed roles. The full empirical picture will take years to emerge, but waiting for definitive proof of large-scale displacement before organizing to build support systems will leave workers without pathways when they need them most.
Who's Affected Most?
Entry-Level Workers
Entry-level tech postings fell double digits vs 2022 (Revelio Labs, Aug 2025), leading to a broken junior-to-senior talent pipeline. "Soft attrition" of these roles means that vacated junior positions aren't being refilled.
Immigrant H-1B Visa or F-1/OPT Holders
With only 60 days to land a sponsor after layoff, a new $100,000 petition surcharge freezing employers, wage-based selection tilting toward the highest-paid roles, and tighter OPT/STEM OPT rules, laid-off immigrant workers face a hiring chill that makes organizing or negotiating feel perilous.
Women, Hispanic and Black Workers
Women made up roughly a third of tech, yet accounted for a disproportionately large share of layoffs in 2022–23. Black and Hispanic workers were also overrepresented among those laid off, many occupying clerical/knowledge roles with high AI exposure. Recent reporting shows major tech firms pulling back DEI disclosures, while citing AI's role in productivity gains, obscuring how deeply these cuts erode diversity progress.
Workers Over 45 Years of Age
Older workers have long faced discrimination in the tech workforce, with recent layoffs potentially masking age discrimination in role restructuring that emphasizes ‘AI-enabled’ job requirements.
Federal Workers Laid Off by DOGE
Federal staff affected by Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts face expiring clearances, relocation or hiring freezes, and difficulty translating public-sector experience to new roles.
The Worker Center Model
Worker centers in the Alt-Labor movement demonstrate that service delivery can successfully build organizing bases. We believe tech workers' relatively high economic resources while anxiously employed creates opportunity for mutual aid, cross-sector advocacy, and new forms of insurance against AI displacement.
| Organization | 2024 Revenue | Primary Funding | Key Innovation |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Domestic Workers Alliance | $28,049,487 | Foundation grants (95%) | Piloted and won Domestic Worker Bill of Rights campaigns across states; built the Alia portable benefits platform. |
| Street Vendor Project | Fiscally sponsored (Urban Justice Center - $34.5 million across all projects) | Foundations + corporate partnerships | Led the “Lift the Caps” campaign on vending permits; secured $2.1B in excluded worker relief during COVID; legal and advocacy backbone for vendors. |
| National Day Laborer Network | $3,928,326 | Foundation grants + union partnerships | Scaled a 50+ center network; pioneered national day-laborer standards, wage-theft clinics, and rapid disaster-response worker mobilization. |
Service-to-Organizing Pipeline
Crisis Contact
Worker seeks help with immediate crisis during layoffs or post-graduate unemployment
Service Delivery
Organization provides concrete assistance with severance negotiation, immigration emergency planning, benefits navigation, mental health and peer support groups for job search and upskilling.
Community
Local chapters and sector support groups, crowdsourced job postings and learning content, leadership development opportunities. As laid-off workers find jobs within new companies, we grow our network of potential organizers in new workplaces.
Consciousness & Building Alternatives
Political education about systemic issues in Big Tech, AI, and the global economy. Project-based learning opportunities to build skills while creating human-centered civic tech alternatives.
Winning Campaigns
Activated members join strategic campaigns in coalition with other unions to organize for legislative victories: worker-centered just transitions and shared prosperity in the age of AI.
Our Mission & Vision
Mission Statement
We organize workers across multiple sectors affected by technological change, starting with tech-adjacent workers, to build collective power through immediate crisis support, career transition resources, and collaborative action—winning legislative campaigns for just transitions, creating worker-centered alternatives, and ensuring shared prosperity in the age of AI.
Vision
We believe that collective power—not individual reskilling alone—is necessary to shape social and technological outcomes. When workers organize together across sectors, we can transform the political and economic system, and care for one another.
We envision a future where workers can navigate technological change without fear. Job transitions are supported by strong income guarantees, portable benefits, public retraining pathways, and worker voice in technology governance.
Theory of Change
Crisis Response → Community → Consciousness → Campaigns → Structural Change
- Workers experiencing layoff/displacement seek help
- 24-hour rapid response + peer support builds trust & community
- Educational programming + organizing spaces develop political consciousness
- Active members join strategic campaigns for policy wins
- Coalition power achieves legislative victories & builds alternatives
Core Values
Worker-Led Solutions
Workers are experts in their own lives and labor. We believe lasting change comes when workers directly shape the solutions, institutions, and technologies that affect them.
Equity and Justice
Technological change must not deepen racial, gender, economic, or geographic inequality. We prioritize workers who have been historically excluded or harmed.
Innovation in Service of Human Dignity
Innovation is not an end in itself. Technology should serve human needs, not replace human worth.
Collective Power and Solidarity
We believe workers win lasting gains when they act together. We build coalitions across sectors, geographies, and identities.
Democratic Governance
Economic transitions must strengthen democracy, not undermine it. We support transparent, participatory decision-making.
Sustainability and Long-Term Impact
We pursue solutions that are durable, scalable, and rooted in public good. Our aim is systemic change across generations.
Our Programs
1. Crisis Response & Service Delivery
24-Hour Layoff Response System
Anonymous Intake
Triage vulnerability of worker based on immediate needs, role, tenure, visa status, severance, company, and location.
Resource Interface
24-hour responsive interface providing relevant resources, while routing to a trained human organizer. Fine-tuned on severance negotiation, benefits navigation, legal referrals, and company-specific layoff data.
Human Support
Trained organizer with personalized support planning. Access to secure platform with peer support groups, mutual aid in the model of Coworker.org, learning content, and career resources.
A Layoff Guide by Collective Action in Tech
Benefits Navigation
Take-up Rate: Only 61% of eligible unemployed workers claim unemployment benefits, meaning 39% of eligible workers never apply. Of eligible nonrecipients, about one-third do not file because they do not want the hassle of "government red tape", and another third did not need the money or expected to have another job soon. (BLS) Frequently, workers delay applying for benefits for many weeks due to administrative overwhelm, or uncertainty about eligibility. States differ widely in processing time, backdating limits, administrative barriers to access, and insurance amount ($235 weekly max in Mississippi, $1104 weekly max in Massachusetts). A worker who is eligible for 26 weeks of UI at an average of $400/week, who gives up on UI due to administrative burden, would be missing $10,400 in benefits. By helping workers in different states quickly navigate the UI system, we can help workers claim hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in missing benefits.
Services Offered:
2. Workforce Development Platform
Reimagining the Tech Ecosystem
Community-Driven Skills-Building, Work-Sharing, and Capital Formation
Track 1: Upskilling with Civic Tech
Mentorship & Civic Tech Cooperative
- Peer support groups, unemployment resources, interview prep, and shared job application tracker with aggregated insights on hiring trends and labor market conditions.
- Project-based learning platform for system design, cloud architecture, AI engineering, AI evaluation and safety. Mentorship connecting senior engineers with junior developers for building human-centered alternatives.
- Connect with laid off Federal workers from USAID and Technologists for the Public Good to learn: civic technology fundamentals, user-centered design and accessibility, security and data sovereignty, and government contracting
- Volunteer training in peer support for layoff crisis, in the Empower Work model and Relational Training (Jane McAlevey model) for durable, care-centered "whole worker" organizing.
- Support for forming cooperatives, applying to incubators, and relationship-building with government partners for civic tech contracts in Tulsa and NYC
- Discounts on certification pathways (AWS/Azure/GCP, Kubernetes), with partnerships for discounts with other educational organizations
Track 2: Freelancing Cooperative Platform & Self-Employment
Build Small, Serve Local
- Freelancing cooperative platform for workers to source contracts & bids in a mutual aid model, share resources, and collaborate cross-functionally.
- Hyperlocal Labs for forward-deployed engineering and small business incubation: Cohort interviews neighbors and local small businesses to discover unmet needs that serve worker-owners. Surface ways in which low-cost technology can be tailor-built to better solve real community problems.
- Technical training on building and evaluating AI agents/apps using low-cost open source tools, with ethical AI practices and bias mitigation.
- Open portal for work, like Upwork or Fiverr, but with a non-exploitative, cooperative structure, and specialization in AI-agent-building. Potential customers can consult our freelancers to co-design an idea, with co-ownership possibility, rather than only competitive wage-diminishing bidding for projects.
- Mentorship on coop/sole-prop models, pricing, and operations; benefits consultation with Freelancers Union
- Support applying to local/state small business grants, cooperative microloans, and incubators; guidance on pitch decks, budgets, and compliance.
Track 3: Career Transition
Leaving Tech
- Economic data dashboard (hiring sectors, wage trends, transferable skills, salary benchmarks) for non-tech roles. Potential partnership with Revelio Labs.
- Pathway mapping (“From Software Engineer to X”) with templates for resumes, portfolios, and interview stories tailored to target sectors.
- Career counseling and credentialing references (bootcamps, community college, apprenticeships) with vetted scholarships/discounts and financing guidance.
- Evidence-based career retraining support from high-displacement to low-displacement sectors, such as healthcare, education, social services, and skilled trades, with realistic timelines and training pathways.
- Peer support groups by specialization, location, and affinity.
- Employer spotlights and warm intros to sectors hiring career-transition candidates.
- Advocacy in coalition with state and municipal organizations for increased public funding towards job retraining. Within 5 years, we aim to secure government contracts for our workforce development platform.
Civic Tech Worker Cooperative
Structure:
- Legal form: Worker cooperative (1 worker = 1 vote)
- Membership: Laid-off tech workers completing civic tech skills-building through project-based work-sharing and mentorship
- Revenue: Government contracts with Office of Mass Engagement (NYC) and Tulsa City Council (Tulsa) + foundation grants + progressive nonprofit clients
- Surplus: 50% reinvested, 30% to workers, 20% to parent org
Year 1 Formation:
- Recruit 10 senior engineers in the Civic Tech & maker movements as founding members
- Form project teams: 2 seniors + 4-6 juniors
- Start with internal projects (member platform, organizing tools, job application tracker, layoff crisis support application)
- Win first contracts and/or funding ($200K target)
Outreach to Laid Off Federal Workers Under DOGE
Vision:
- Many Federal workers laid off during DOGE reorganization are still struggling to find new roles. Mutual aid models for worker support like FedsForward provide inspiration for how we can support other sectors of workers.
- We are actively reaching out to these workers with help from our advisor (formerly at USAID), to form collaborative projects.
- We hope to pair these workers with technologists to build civic tech tools, empowered with real, deep domain expertise.
Worker-Driven Capital Formation
Vision:
What happens when tech workers, in collaboration with other sectors of workers, re-invest in our own cooperatives and technology platforms?- Would tech workers with capital be willing to invest in each others' innovation projects?
- Currently, the costs for developing software technology has significantly decreased, allowing for a microfinance approach to building new technology at scale that used to take millions of dollars in venture capital investment.
- As a growing share of VC funding is moving towards big technology investments, with 40% of Seed and Series A dollars now going into $100M+ rounds, this is a dangerous shift for our economy with risky bets where exits are uncertain. Early-stage investing is losing its function as a discovery mechanism for risk-taking and innovation. Overfunded companies converge faster on consensus thinking. Entire categories of founders are missed because they lack access to funding.
- What happens if as an alternative to venture capital, we create a system for worker-driven capital formation and credit unions, where workers invest in each others' innovation projects, in a cooperative structure that allows for shared ownership and decision-making? Patronage-based returns, democratic governance, investment caps, and asset locks can ensure capital serves workers, rather than the reverse.
- We all know that the current system is broken. Big Tech surveillance-driven power structures, in bed with authoritarian government, is dangerous for humanity. How can we build and fund necessary human-centered alternatives, and re-shift power to democratic ownership of technology?
3. Media & Research, Events & Political Education
Goal: Annual National Conference on AI displacement and cross-sector organizing (500 attendees by Y3)
Gatherings
- Monthly Virtual Town Halls
- Quarterly Regional In-Person Gatherings
- Chapter-based and sector-specific meetings -- ad hoc as needed
Media Strategy
| Platform | Content Type | Target Audience & Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Newsletter | Weekly layoff tracking, job market analysis, AI tutorials & policy | General public: workers anxious about AI displacement. Provide value and pique interest. Updates for current members and supporters. |
| Podcast & YouTube (Long Form) | Monthly interviews with labor organizers and policy experts | General public. For strategic framework-building and coalition relationships |
| TikTok/Short-Form | "Layoff Diary" series, "AI Myths Exposed", "Your Rights in 60 Seconds" | Young unemployed, students. For mass movement building and youth engagement. |
| Quarterly Publication | "Just Transition Journal" — worker essays, policy analysis | Thought leaders, academics, policymakers. For engaging with institutional power. |
Sample Political Education & Tech-Integrated Curriculum
Module 1: Labor Law, AI, and Layoffs
Understanding labor laws around layoffs; overview of pending AI/automation legislation affecting jobs; major political and industry actors shaping these rules.
Lesson: Know the legal landscape and advocacy ecosystem defending workers’ rights as AI-driven restructuring accelerates.
Module 2: Tech Labor History
Electronic Arts, Google walkouts, Alphabet Workers Union, Tech Workers Coalition (TWC) & Circuit Breakers conferences
Lesson: Tech workers have always organized; here are the ways they've won or lost
Module 3: Alternative Models
Platform cooperatives, UBI, job guarantees, sectoral bargaining
Lesson: Other futures are possible and being built
Module 4: Organizing Fundamentals
Power mapping, relational organizing, coalition building, the ABC's of local and Federal-level advocacy, legislative timelines, media strategy, our campaigns and preparations for Lobby Day.
Lesson: How we build power collectively towards legislative wins
Module 5: Civic Tech Foundations
What civic tech is, common challenges (funding, procurement, trust), examples from municipal and federal deployments, and guest speakers from government digital service teams.
Lesson: How worker-led teams can partner with public agencies while protecting equity and accountability.
Module 6: Open Source AI & Algorithmic Fairness
Building and stewarding open source AI projects with a focus on data privacy and security; algorithmic fairness and bias detection with AI evaluation frameworks; red-teaming and transparency practices.
Lesson: Practical ways to design, measure, and mitigate harm while keeping models accountable to workers and the public.
Project-Based Syllabus
Building an open source tool to detect discrimination in layoff notice and severance data.
4. Advocacy & Campaigns
Short-Term Campaigns (6-24 months)
To be viable as a new advocacy organization, we need to first secure a few smaller wins to gain credibility, and build relationships in coalition with existing organizations in this issue space. This empowers us to lead future campaigns focused on Next Generation UI modernization, to address large-scale labor disruption in the years to come.Campaign 1:
Workforce Stabilization Act (S1854 / A5429)
State: New York
Legislation: Imposes 2% corporate surchage on companies using AI for data mining or displacing 15+ workers. Revenue dedicated to unemployment benefits, workforce development, and retraining. Creates precedent for tax automation to fund transition.
Status: Pending in the Senate and Assembly Labor Committees, amended on May 23, 2025 as S1854A, Sponsors: Senators Michelle Hinchey, Kristin Gonzalez, Robert Jackson, John Liu, Julia Salazar, Assemblymember Harry Bronson
Campaign 2:
"No Robo Bosses Act" (SB7)
State: California
Legislation: Requires 30-day advance notice before deploying automated decision systems. Mandates human oversight for discipline and termination cases. Creates worker appeal process. Sponsored by California Federation of Labor/AFL-CIO.
Status: Vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on October 13, 2025, after passing the state Senate on a 28-9 vote and the Assembly on a 45-17 vote in September 2025. Newsome cited concerns that it imposed "overly broad restrictions" on businesses, failing to distinguish between high-risk AI tools and basic administrative software.
Sponsor: Senator Jerry McNerney. Expected revised bill in April 2026 to address governor's stated concerns.
Campaign 3:
Artificial Intelligence Workforce Impact Transparency Act (S8928)
State: New York
Legislation: Amends New York's WARN Act to require employers to disclose in layoff notices whether the use of artificial intelligence or automation as a factor in workforce reductions. Establishes a 2-year pilot program for the AI Innovation and Workforce Tracking Initiative, to provide real-time insight into how AI adoption affects jobs across industries to support evidence-based policy for retraining.
Status: Recently introduced on Jan. 16, 2026 by NYS Senator Cooney.
Other Current Policy Initiatives
- AFL-CIO / CWA AI workforce demands: bargaining over AI deployment, transparency on data/algorithms, worker consent and privacy protections, no surveillance/automated discipline, and guaranteed training/upskilling with retention wage protections.
- Establish AI Workforce Centers of Excellence (regional + national) to scale AI skills and share best practices.
- Create a Digital Transformation Fund to modernize labor-market data and deploy AI-enabled career navigation tools.
- Pass the Investing in American Workers Act (federal employer tax credit) and raise WIOA caps for incumbent-worker training.
- Codify and expand the Youth Apprenticeship Readiness Grant (YARG) Program with AI literacy and pre-apprenticeship on-ramps.
- Boost RESEA funding for rapid reemployment plus digital/AI readiness, and move the Digital Skills for Today’s Workforce Act to make AI/digital literacy baseline in public training.
- Align with the federal AI Workforce Research Hub and America’s AI Action Plan/Talent Strategy to coordinate evaluation and avoid duplication.
Medium-Term Ideas in Development (1-4 years)
- Unemployment Insurance Modernization: Expand UI coverage for workers in AI-exposed roles. Creation of AI Transition Basic Income pilots as public/private partnerships with foundations interested in researching impact of effective career retraining and upskilling systems deployed at scale.
- AI Impact Assessments & Worker Voice in AI Governance:
- CWA and IATSE (2023 AI principles) call for worker seats on company AI ethics boards and consultation before deployment.
- Italy Law No. 132 (effective Oct 10, 2025) requires employers to consult trade unions on workplace AI and establishes a National Observatory on AI in the Ministry of Labor to monitor impacts and promote training.
- The European Parliament recommended consultation when AI systems affect pay, evaluation, task allocation, or hours (451 votes in favor).
- Portable Benefits: State-mandated portable benefits (healthcare, retirement, training) funded by employer contributions.
- Federal Portable Benefits for Independent Workers Pilot Programs Act (S.1696, May 2024; Senators Cramer, Warner, Young) — $20M for pilots; died in committee Jan 3, 2025 without a vote.
- Critiques: seen as legitimizing misclassification and underfunding benefits for app-based workers; backed by Uber/Lyft/DoorDash/GrubHub (Akin Gump lobbying, $20k to Sen. Cassidy).
- Labor advocates push for employee classification with full protections and employer contributions at true costs (15–30% of wages; minimum wage, overtime, UI, workers’ comp, OSHA).
- NDWA’s Alia Benefits shows a worker-designed model for domestic workers excluded from NLRA/FLSA; debate continues on whether portable benefits should complement or replace traditional employee protections.
Long-Term Vision: AI New Deal (5-10 years)
- Universal Transition Support: Sector-wide unemployment benefits (18-24 months at 80% prior wage), portable benefits pool
- Public Retraining Infrastructure: Free community college, paid apprenticeships, lifelong learning accounts
- 4-day Work Week: 32-hour standard
- Care Work Compensation: Public funding for care work, including childcare, eldercare, and home care
- Public Jobs Guarantee: Improvement to public infrastructure and environment, universal healthcare, universal childcare, universal eldercare
- Shared Prosperity Mechanisms: Profit-sharing requirements, support for cooperatives
- Worker Power in Tech Governance: Mandatory worker representation on boards (1/3 seats), worker voice in technology deployment
- Universal Basic Income / Sovereign Wealth Fund: Redistribution of wealth earned from public infrastructure and technology
High Fidelity Mockups
Brainstorming and ideation stage only. To be co-designed with diverse stakeholders in a feature-by-feature prioritized roadmap.
18-Month Implementation Roadmap
Months 1-6: Foundation Building
- Reach out to 300+ workers, across TWC, in bootcamp alumni channels, on LinkedIn, Blind, Reddit, and other internet communities
- Recruit first 25 members
- Build core team of 5-10 technologists, user researchers, and organizers to help build platform as worker-owned cooperative
- Create structure for peer support groups, video and communications channels, learning management system, and online meeting cadency
- Create structure for two civic tech projects to be built through virtual co-working model with unemployed workers
- Create trainings for peer support, in the EmpowerWork model, with specific focus on layoff crisis and unemployment benefits.
- Incorporate worker cooperative. Begin process of getting 501(c)3 status with financial infrastructure and clear bylaws for operations.
- Build coalition with 3 organizations engaged in advocacy for NY State bills. Decide on first campaign to focus on, and join in advocacy support with consponsoring orgs. Cultivate relationships with sponsoring legislators' offices and staff.
- Cultivate funder relationships, including labor and tech-focused philanthropies. Build relationship with GKFF in Tulsa. Embed in WCBDI funding ecosystem, attend convenings, build relationships with ICA Group, Democracy at Work Insitute, Green Workers Cooperatives. Get meetings with Zohran's worker-cooperative-friendly mayoral administration, including SBS and workforce development.
- Launch newsletter and develop production schedule for podcast.
Months 7-12: Pilot Launch
- Hire a full-time organizer for outreach. Hire two part-time workers for engineering management and fundraising/grantwriting.
- With help from core team of technologists, launch first pilot crisis support for laid off workers (Amazon as potential first company)
- Launch mutual aid fund ($10K seed)
- Help 15+ workers attain unemployment benefits.
- Experiment with severance data platform to create model for discrimination determination. Iterate with feedback, and improve.
- Begin process for indirect procurement with city through PASSPort and M/WBE for worker cooperative civic tech contract.
- Train membership in advocacy 101. Organize first Lobby Day in coalition with other orgs for chosen campaign in NY state. Plan visits to sponsoring legsislators.
- Launch podcast (with video), and acquire 500+ newsletter subscribers, with free layoff & unemployment benefits PDF toolkit.
- Participate in Circuit Breakers (TWC Annual Conference), and recruit organizers to help launch our conference the following year.
Months 13-18: Scaling Impact
- Support the launch of local chapters and company-specific groups at 5+ employers, with in-person gatherings
- Support 50+ laid off workers in getting unemployment benefits and negotiating severance agreements
- Support 10+ laid off workers in landing their next job
- Demo member-led civic tech projects, ideally with procurement in process
- Ideally be part of the coalition for a first legislative win in New York state. Gain credibility by showing real member organizing capacity. By actively supporting allied organizations, we learn lessons and win trust to lead other mid and long-term lobbying efforts.
- Build curriculum and partnerships for HyperLocal Labs, to train forward-deployed product engineers to build AI applications supporting local worker-owners in collaborative design, with a focus on algorithmic fairness, privacy & data sovereignty
- Build cooperative freelancing platform focused on AI product engineering, in collaboration with diverse cross-sectoral workers
- Find renewing source of funding through mix of grants, cooperative contracts, and membership fees. Explore pathways to receiving workforce development funding in multiple states. Begin building private sector partnerships for job placement, apprenticeship, or mentorship with our members
- Create zine with members, focusing on lessons learned, and imaginations for the future of work
- Launch first visionary art campaign for imagining an AI New Deal (gain 1000+ subscribers)
- Plan for first annual conference: 200+ attendees, panelists & tracks
Financial Model & Path to Sustainability
Year 1 Budget: $250,000 / Ideal Fundraising Target: $360,000
Revenue Sources
Expenses
Driver's Coop model
By pivoting to government paratransit contracts, the Driver's Coop gained sustainability through public-private partnerships with the MTA. As we advocate for increased public funding towards job retraining, we aim to explore similar partnerships to sustain our workforce development platform.
Projected Year 5 Budget: $1,250,000
Revenue Sources
Expenses
About Us
Labor organizers with technical experience.
Kaitlin Cort
Kaitlin (Kai Lin) is a software engineer with a background in immigrant labor organizing. She builds AI applications for basic income pilots and government benefits programs (AidKit) and worked on data infrastructure for labor research (Revelio Labs). She taught and developed curriculum for bootcamps including Per Scholas and Hack Reactor, coaching nontraditional students struggling to break into an increasingly unwelcoming tech sector.
Before tech, Kaitlin trained as an organizer with the Street Vendor Project, National Domestic Workers Alliance, and the Delfino Leadership Institute (New York Worker Center Federation). She cofounded Red Canary Song, the first immigrant worker center in the U.S. for 500+ Chinese and Korean massage parlor workers, which has succeeded in helping to pass two laws in New York State to protect migrant workers and survivors of human trafficking. She studied public policy at NYU, and served as the Executive Director of the Asian Pacific American Task Force at the New York State Assembly under Co-Chairs Yuh-Line Niou, Ron Kim, and Zohran Mamdani.
Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Kaitlin cofounded a cooperative of former Code for America Brigade technologists building human-centered AI tools for local government and rural communities. As a Tulsa Remote ambassador, she dreams of helping make Tulsa into Heartland America's center for civic tech.
Daniel Buk
Daniel Buk is an organizer with the Tech Workers Coalition where he focuses on organizing data center workers, and planning the annual Circuit Breakers Conference. He is also a strategic researcher with the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees at the Communication Workers of America. He has a M.A. in Labor Studies at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, where he researched German worker council models for co-determination. He worked in oppositional research in Washington D.C. for Media Matters.
Daniel was mute until age five. While other kids found friends and built worlds together, he watched -- voiceless, defined by experts who studied him like a specimen. Medical consensus predicted a lifetime of being in a wheelchair, with breathing assistance, and a limited future. His parents said: let him try. Their patience, and the patient community they built around him, let him defy every expectation.
Growing up voiceless made Daniel obsessed with how infrastructure shapes who gets heard. At his school for kids with learning disabilities, he spent hours tutoring friends his teachers had given up on -- and watched them succeed when someone finally believed in them. That feeling is what he's chasing.
Workers facing displacement by AI aren't just losing our jobs -- we are losing our voice. What workers need in the coming years is more than technological innovation, but the redistribution of power.
Jennifer Tovar
Jennifer Tovar is a full stack web developer and an active member of Latinas in Tech Dallas Fort-Worth. Before transitioning to tech through Hack Reactor in a class taught by Kaitlin, she worked as an elementary school teacher in the Texas school system. After being laid off from Vanguard last year, Jennifer has been upskilling by building civic tech projects in a mentorship model alongside Kaitlin, and helping to formalize this project-based learning into a training program for forward-deployed AI product engineering, with a focus on algorithmic fairness, data privacy, and user-centered accessibility.
Jennifer is the first unemployed worker-leader of this pre-pilot program, outreaching to others to offer support based on her own experience navigating layoffs and the unemployment benefits system. She believes that unemployed workers impacted by AI displacement are a growing class of workers, deserving of labor protections and basic income support during retraining.
Kyle Albasi
Kyle Albasi is a graphic designer, video producer, and fiction writer. He has a B.A. in Film & Video Production from Temple University, and worked on campaigns for education and healthcare. Kyle is an aspiring creative director for nonprofit and movement-building media. He is supporting this project by helping to create video, podcasts, and multimedia, while strategizing on how to leverage community art and viral media for grassroots activism.
Jerome Greco is the Director of the Digital Forensics Unit at the Legal Aid Society in NYC, and a lecturer at Columbia Law School, advocating for government transparency. He fights against asymmetric technological power between law enforcement and defendants.
David A. Lee is a policy researcher and macroeconomist at the Center for New York City Affairs, and a staff researcher at Columbia University Lamont Laboratory. He served as the Legislative Director for Assemblyman Ron Kim, and as an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the New School and Adelphi University.
Carlos Moreno is a community engagement strategist and civic hacker, who led Code for Tulsa for 12 years. He also works as a local historian and journalist in Tulsa. He is the author of The Victory of Greenwood, a history of the Tulsa Race Massacre. He serves on the board of Tri City Collective, Urban Coders Guild, and the World Stage Theater Company.
Diana Varnes is a civic technologist on the Board of Techlahoma and Oklahoma Women in Technology. She is an active member of Technologists for the Public Good and volunteer for Neighbors Along the Line.
Misha Hadar is an Assistant Professor in Theater History at the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa, where he studies borders and migration, and has engaged in participatory action research through theater and movement-building art. He is on the board of the academic labor union of UCAW/CWA. In an economy where white collar and middle management jobs are being disrupted, coupled with a decrease in funding for humanities and social sciences, academic labor in universities is increasingly precarious and already suffering the effects.
Catherine Xu is the co-founder of Starlight, a benefits navigation platform that partners with credit unions to reach marginalized communities. She is a former fellow at the Workers Lab in 2023.
Workers Lab Innovation Fund Application | January 2026