Unions Are Leaving Money on the Table

Last month, at the NAACP Labor Luncheon in Chicago, I told a room full of labor leaders that there is an opportunity sitting in front of organized labor that I don’t think we have fully recognized yet. This month, we start training to go after the money being made from our data.

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Not only because workers deserve their share of the value they create, but because financial grievances over data could create new revenue for unions, new income for workers and an entirely new constituency for organized labor.

In Chicago, I made an example out of the new fight between the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) and Montefiore. Are you familiar with it!?

It may be the perfect example.

NYSNA Is Fighting Over the Jobs. I Want to Follow the Data. NYSNA says Montefiore eliminated 12 utilization-review nursing positions after introducing AI-powered technology associated with Datavant.

The union is fighting back.

It should.

But if I were advising NYSNA’s lawyers, I would want the grievance to open another door:

Discovery.

I want to know exactly what information makes that technology work.

What data trained it?

What data validates it?

What data improves it?

What information does Montefiore send to Datavant?

What information does Datavant send back?

What happens when a nurse corrects the system?

Are those corrections retained?

Are they used to improve the product?

What human decisions became labels?

What outcomes became validation?

What workflows were captured?

What derivative data was created?

And who contributed all of it?