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S2499ALabor Relations

Labor and Labor Relations - Artificial Intelligence Use and Fair Employment Practices

This bill restricts employers from using artificial intelligence or electronic monitoring as the main factor in making job decisions.

Introduced32 Yea5 Nay1 Not voting
Population
Affected
65
Email Legislator
Introduced Feb 6, 2026Committee Senate Labor & Gaming

Plain-English Summary

This bill limits how employers can use artificial intelligence and electronic monitoring tools to make important job decisions, like hiring, firing, promoting, or paying employees. Employers cannot rely mostly on automated data to make these decisions. Instead, a real person must review the data, check it for accuracy, and look at other factors like performance reviews. If an employer uses electronic monitoring data to make a job decision, they must tell the affected employee within 30 days and explain what tools were used and what data influenced the decision.

For younger readers

Sometimes bosses use computer programs or tracking tools to watch how fast or well people work. This bill says bosses cannot use only computers to make big choices, like whether to hire someone, give them a raise, or fire them. A real person has to look at the computer's information to make sure it is fair and correct. The boss also has to look at other things, like how hard the person tries. If a boss uses computer tracking to make a big choice, they have to tell the worker exactly how they did it.

Who & Where It Applies

Impacted groups
EmployeesEmployersLabor unionsHuman resources professionalsAI software vendors
Impacted communities
All

Constitutional & Fiscal Check

None Likely

Estimated cost
None
Estimated revenue
None

Bill Analysis

Both viewpoints
For Progressives
  • Protects workers' rights by preventing employers from relying solely on impersonal, potentially biased automated decision systems for critical employment actions like hiring and firing.
  • Mandates transparency by requiring employers to disclose when and how electronic monitoring data was used, empowering workers and unions to challenge unfair decisions.
  • Ensures human oversight in the workplace, safeguarding employees' dignity and reducing the risk of algorithmic discrimination against marginalized groups.
  • The bill still allows employers to use invasive electronic monitoring tools and artificial intelligence in the workplace, rather than banning these surveillance practices entirely.
  • The requirement to disclose automated decisions only applies after the decision has been made, limiting a worker's ability to prevent a wrongful termination or denied promotion beforehand.
  • The language stating employers cannot rely "primarily" on electronic monitoring leaves a loophole that could be difficult to prove or enforce if an employer claims human oversight was the primary factor.
For Conservatives
  • Allows businesses to continue utilizing modern artificial intelligence and electronic monitoring tools to track productivity and manage their workforce, provided there is human oversight.
  • Does not create sweeping new government agencies or bureaucratic oversight boards to monitor daily business operations, leaving compliance primarily within the company.
  • Protects an employer's right to make final employment decisions by simply requiring a human manager to be involved, maintaining traditional hierarchical business structures.
  • Imposes burdensome new regulations on private businesses, restricting their freedom to efficiently use automated systems to manage employees and reduce human resources costs.
  • Mandates strict disclosure requirements that force companies to reveal proprietary information about how their internal monitoring tools and algorithms work to employees and labor unions.
  • Exposes businesses to potential new liabilities and labor disputes by creating stringent rules around how employee data must be reviewed and verified by human managers.

Votes

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Full Bill Text

2 versions
Changes to existing Rhode Island law · 123 additions

SECTION 1. Title 28 of the General Laws entitled "LABOR AND LABOR RELATIONS" is hereby amended by adding thereto the following chapter: 28-5.2-1. Definitions.

(a) As used in this chapter, the following words shall have the following meanings unless the context clearly requires otherwise:

(1) "Authorized representative" means any person or organization appointed by the worker to serve as a representative of the worker including, but not limited to, a labor organization as defined in the Rhode Island labor relations act § 28-7-3, the National Labor Relations Act 29 U.S.C. § 152(5) and 5 U.S.C. § 7103(a)(4), and 45 U.S.C. § 151. "Authorized representative" shall not include a worker’s employer.

(2) "Automated decision system (ADS)" means any computational process, automated system, or algorithm utilizing machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, artificial intelligence, or similar methods, that issues an output, including a score, classification, ranking, or recommendation, that is used to assist or replace human decision making, on issues that impact natural persons. "ADS" does not include a tool that does not assist or replace employment decision processes and that does not materially impact natural persons including, but not limited to, a junk email filter, firewall, antivirus software, calculator, spreadsheet, database, data set, or other compilation of data.

(3) "Automated decision system (ADS) output" means any information, data, assumptions, predictions, scoring, recommendations, decisions, or conclusions generated by an ADS.

(4) "Candidate" means any natural person or their authorized representative seeking employment through an application, or who is screened or evaluated for recruitment, for a position of employment by a business operating in this state.

(5) "Continuous incremental time-tracking tool" means any system, application or instrument that continuously measures, records and/or tallies increments of time within a day during which an employee is or is not doing a particular activity or set of activities.

(6) "Department" means the department of labor and training.

(7) "De-identified employee data" means employee data that an employer has sought from their own electronic systems, from a vendor, or from a third-party source, aggregated, combined, or collected together, in a summary or other form so that the employee data cannot be identified as belonging to any specific employee.

(8) "Electronic monitoring tool" means any system, application, or instrument that facilitates the collection of data concerning worker activities or communications by any means other than direct observation by a natural person including, but not limited to, the use of a computer, telephone, wire, radio, camera, electromagnetic, photoelectronic, or photo-optical system, or obtaining employee data from a third-party.

(9) "Employee" shall have the same meaning as contained in § 28-7-3.

(10) "Employee information" (also referred to as "information" or "employee data") means any information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular employee, regardless of how the information is collected, inferred, or obtained. "Employee information" includes, but is not limited to, the following: personal identity information, including the individual's name, contact information, government-issued identification numbers, financial information, criminal background, or employment history; biometric information, health, medical, lifestyle, and wellness information, including the individual's medical history, physical or mental condition, diet or physical activity patterns, heart rate, medical treatment or diagnosis by a healthcare professional, health insurance policy number, subscriber identification number, or other unique identifier used to identify the individual; related to workplace activities, including the following:

(i) Human resources information means the contents of an individual's personnel file including performance evaluations;

(ii) Work process information, such as data relating to an individual employee's performance or productivity including, but not limited to, the quality and quantities of tasks performed, quality and quantities of items or materials handled or produced, rates or speeds of tasks performed, measurements or metrics of employee performance in relation to a quota, and time categorized as performing tasks or not performing tasks;

(iii) Device usage and data including, but not limited to, key stroke recording, website, software, and application utilization, calls placed or geolocation information;

(iv) Audio, photo, or video data or other information collected from sensors, including movement tracking, thermal sensors, voiceprints, or facial recognition, emotion, and gait recognition;

(v) Inputs to or outputs generated by an automated decision system (ADS) that are linked to the individual;

(vi) Data collected through electronic monitoring or continuous incremental time-tracking tools; and

(vii) Data collected or generated on workers to mitigate the spread of infectious diseases, including COVID-19, or to comply with public health measures.

(11) "Employer" means any person acting on behalf of or in the interest of an employer, directly or indirectly, with or without their knowledge, but a labor organization or any officer or its agent, shall only be considered an employer of individuals employed by the organization.

(12) "Employment-related decision" means a decision made by the employer that affects wages, benefits, other compensation, hours, schedule, performance evaluation, hiring, recruitment, discipline, promotion, termination, duties, assignment of work, access to work opportunities, productivity requirements, workplace health and safety, or other terms or conditions of employment. For persons classified as independent contractors or for candidates for employment, this means the equivalent of these decisions based on their contract with or relationship to the employer.

(13) "Essential job functions" means the fundamental duties of a position, based upon work duties actually performed over the duration of employment, as revealed by objective evidence, including the amount of time workers spend performing each function, the consequences of not requiring individuals to perform the function, the terms of any applicable collective bargaining agreement, workers’ past and present work experiences and performance in the position in question, and the employer’s reasonable, nondiscriminatory judgment as to which functions are essential. Past and current written job descriptions may be evidence as to which functions are essential for achieving the purposes of the job, but may not be the sole basis for this determination, absent the objective evidence described in this subsection.

(14) "Impact assessment" means an impartial evaluation by an independent auditor that complies with § 28-5.2-2.

(15) "Meaningful human oversight" means a process that includes, at a minimum:

(i) That sufficient authority and discretion be granted to the designated internal reviewer to dispute, rerun, or recommend the rejection of an output suspected to be invalid, inaccurate, or discriminatory; and

(ii) That the designated internal reviewer has the time and resources available to review and evaluate the tool output and to review employee requests to correct erroneous data in accordance with § 28-5.2-2.

(16) "Periodic assessment of worker performance" means assessing worker performance over the course of units of time equal to or greater than one calendar day.

(17) "Vendor" means any person or entity who sells, distributes, or develops for sale an automated decision system to be used in an employment decision made by an employer in the state. "Vendor" includes any of the vendor's agents, contractors, or subcontractors. 28-5.2-2. Electronic monitoring tools.

(a) An employer shall not rely primarily on employee data collected through electronic monitoring, when making hiring, promotion, disciplinary decisions up to and including termination, or compensation decisions. For an employer to satisfy the requirements of this subsection:

(1) An employer shall establish meaningful human oversight of such decisions that are based, in whole or in part, on data collected through electronic monitoring;

(2) A human decision-maker shall review any information collected through electronic monitoring, verify that such information is accurate and up to date, review any pending employee requests to correct erroneous data, and exercise independent judgment in making each such decision; and

(3) The human decision-maker shall consider information other than information collected through electronic monitoring, when making each such decision including, but not limited to, supervisory or managerial evaluations, personnel files, employee work products, or peer reviews.

(b) When an employer makes a hiring, promotion, termination, disciplinary or compensation decision, based, in whole or in part, on data gathered through the use of electronic monitoring, it shall disclose to affected employees and their authorized representative within thirty

(30) days of the decision being made or going into effect, whichever is sooner:

(1) That the decision was based, in whole or in part, on data gathered through electronic monitoring;

(2) The specific electronic monitoring tool or tools used to gather such data, how the tools work to gather and analyze the data, and the increments of time in which the data is gathered;

(3) The specific data, and judgments based upon such data, used in the decision-making process; and

(4) Any information used in the decision-making process gathered through sources other than electronic monitoring.

SECTION 2. This act shall take effect upon passage.