Translated by Claude, edited by Sinocism.com

Workers' Daily Editorial: As the AI Wave Rolls In, How Do We Build a Sturdy 'Dike' to Protect Workers' Rights?

【社评】AI浪潮涌来，如何为劳动者筑牢权益"堤坝"？

Source: Workers' Daily (工人日报), republished by Securities Times | Author: Zhang Weijie 张伟杰 | June 11, 2026

Renew the labor law system, accelerate the improvement of labor standards and algorithm regulation rules, and build a system of labor rights protection suited to the digital-intelligence era — in the face of the new challenges that AI poses to the protection of workers' rights, consensus is taking shape.

革新劳动法律制度，加快完善劳动基准与算法监管规则，构建适配数智时代的劳动权益保障体系——面对AI给劳动者权益保护带来的新挑战，相关共识正在形成。

As artificial intelligence technology becomes deeply integrated into labor and production, the protection of workers' rights is facing new challenges. Workers' Daily recently launched a series of reports under the title "Observations on Worker Rights Protection Under the AI Wave," focusing on phenomena such as some workers being required to "refine" digital avatars of themselves, being subjected to algorithmic "digital overseers," and being dismissed because their positions had been replaced by AI. These phenomena highlight the collision between traditional employment rules and the iteration of AI technology. Although the worker populations affected so far are limited, the task of updating and improving rules for the protection of workers' rights in the AI era deserves sufficient attention.

随着人工智能技术深度融入劳动生产，劳动者权益保护正面临新的挑战——近期，《工人日报》推出系列报道《AI浪潮下的劳动者权益保护观察》，聚焦部分劳动者被要求"炼化"数字分身、遭遇算法"数字监工"、因岗位被 AI 替代而遭遇解雇等现象。这些现象凸显出传统用工规则与 AI 技术迭代之间的碰撞，尽管时下涉及的劳动人群有限，但更新和完善 AI 时代劳动者权益保护规则之事应引起足够重视。

According to the reports, under the AI wave, the rights-protection issues of greatest concern to workers cluster around three areas.

从报道看，AI浪潮之下，劳动者较为关注的权益保护问题集中在三个方面。

First is the concern that the development of digital avatars carries hidden risks of rights infringement. Some enterprises have institutionalized the development of AI "skill packs" and the training of digital avatars of employees, even folding such tasks into performance evaluations. Such practices require collecting large volumes of employees' work data and behavioral traces; without full authorization, they can easily infringe on workers' personal information rights. The experience, methods, and tacit knowledge that employees accumulate on the job are being "cloned" to train AI, and the legal ownership of the intellectual property involved remains in a gray zone, easily giving rise to disputes.

其一，是担忧数字分身开发暗藏侵权风险。部分企业将开发 AI 技能包、训练员工数字分身制度化，甚至纳入绩效考核。此类操作需收集员工大量工作数据与行为痕迹，若未经充分授权，极易侵犯劳动者个人信息权益。员工在职场中积累的经验、方法与隐性知识被"克隆"用于训练 AI，其知识产权归属尚存法律模糊地带，也容易引发纠纷。

Second is the concern that AI replacement of jobs is becoming a shield used by some employers to unlawfully dismiss workers. In practice, there are already enterprises that have unilaterally transferred workers to lower-paid positions or terminated their labor contracts on grounds of "technological renewal" or "the project being hit by AI." Regarding the dismissal rationale that employers frequently invoke in such cases — "a major change in objective circumstances" — court rulings have made clear that the introduction of AI is a business-strategy adjustment that the enterprise actively chose, and does not fall within the "unforeseeable and irresistible" category of objective change as stipulated by the Labor Contract Law; terminating labor relations on this basis constitutes unlawful termination.

其二，是担忧AI 替岗成为一些用人单位违法解雇员工的挡箭牌。实践中，已经有企业以"技术革新""项目受 AI 冲击"为由，单方面对劳动者调岗降薪或解除劳动合同。针对用人单位在此类案件中常用的解雇理由"客观情况发生重大变化"，有法院判决明确：引入AI是企业主动选择的经营战略调整，不属于劳动合同法规定的"不可抗、不可预知"的客观变化范畴，以此解除劳动关系系违法解除。

Third is the concern that opaque algorithms are being twisted into "digital overseers." While platform algorithms optimize efficiency, they may also blur the boundaries of working hours and render income distribution opaque. For example, opaque algorithmic order-dispatching, arbitrary adjustments to per-piece pay rates, and the failure to count "on-call online" time as effective working hours all squeeze workers' rights to rest and to fair compensation. When workers attempt to defend their rights, they often fall into evidentiary difficulties because they cannot obtain the core evidence — such as the rules of the algorithms themselves.

其三，是担忧不透明算法异化为"数字监工"。平台算法在优化效率的同时，也可能模糊工时界限、导致收入分配不透明。例如，算法派单机制不透明、计件单价随意调整、将"在线待命"时间不计入有效工时等，挤压了劳动者的休息权与公平收益权。劳动者在维权时，还常因无法获取算法规则等核心证据而陷入举证困境。

Renewing the labor law system in step with the times, accelerating improvements to labor standards and algorithm regulation rules, and building a system of labor rights protection suited to the digital-intelligence era — in the face of the new challenges that AI poses to workers' rights, consensus on these points is taking shape.

顺势革新劳动法律制度，加快完善劳动基准与算法监管规则，构建适配数智时代的劳动权益保障体系——面对AI给劳动者权益保护带来的新挑战，相关共识正在形成。

On the problem of extracting employee data to train AI, the "informed consent" and "minimum necessary" principles of the Personal Information Protection Law should be strictly implemented. Enterprises should be required to clearly disclose the purposes for which the data will be used; the extraction of personal work experience must obtain separate consent; this must not be bundled into performance evaluations and pushed through coercively; and the unauthorized use of departed employees' experience to train AI should be prohibited.