Reskilling is not always the answer: Why I-O Psychologists Must Align with Labor Before Leverage Vanishes

The focal article “I-O Psychology and Labor: Benign Neglect, Antipathy and Missed Opportunities” by Lefkowitz and colleagues (2026) argues that I-O psychologists should consider working more closely with organized labor. The authors offer many reasons to support this consideration. In this article, we highlight an additional reason, which is that organized labor can play an important role in preventing the collapse of human employment to automation, in highly vulnerable industries. We explicitly model the influence of organized labor on variables of AI integration, human employment, and collective bargaining strength using a system dynamics approach. From this analysis and the assumptions we make, we agree with Lefkowitz et al.’s proposed greater collaboration with labor. We find that labor unions can prevent labor displacement in the face of AI advances, but only before a tipping point occurs (highlighting the need for I-O facilitation). In contrast to Lefkowitz et al.’s suggestions, that I-O psychologists should support reskilling, we find that reskilling merely delays the onset of labor displacement. Unless AI or other external forces create more jobs than AI displaces, eventually those reskilled jobs will eventually be fully displaced as well. Therefore, we argue that there is a time pressure for I-O psychologists to collaborate with labor unions to create contractual anti-automation clauses, and the pushing for automation hastens reaching the point of no return before alternative accommodations (e.g., Universal Basic Income, Revenue sharing) can be secured.