Interest Area
Workforce
Our Thinking
AI and emerging technologies are fundamentally reshaping work and employment, and that excluding workers and communities from their development will exacerbate longstanding inequalities and power imbalances. How can we empower workers and communities to shape and leverage emerging technologies to amplify their voices, meet their needs, and ensure workplace innovation fosters equity and prevents harm?
Our Inquiry Areas
We prioritize advancing actionable insights into how AI and emerging technologies transform work and the work environment. We aim to support organizations that address workers’ needs and perspectives around work-impacting technologies through pilot programs, case studies, and other research initiatives.
Inquiry Area
Research on workplace technology
We support pioneering research to understand how AI and emerging technologies are reshaping work, with particular focus on their impact on pay, job quality, privacy, bias, information asymmetries, and bargaining power. We aim to break down silos between stakeholders and build a comprehensive understanding that can inform more cross-sector collaboration and worker-centered technology development and policy.
Inquiry Area
Pilot Programs
We look for innovative pilot programs that integrate worker voice into the development and deployment of AI and emerging workplace technologies to ensure these tools enhance job quality and economic opportunity. By investing in research-informed pilots that center worker perspectives, we aim to generate proof points and insights that can guide more equitable technology implementation while reducing power imbalances between employers and workers.
Highlighted Grantees
Washington Center for Equitable Growth
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth is a nonprofit research and grantmaking organization dedicated to advancing evidence-backed ideas and policies that promote strong, stable, and broad-based economic growth. Their fundamental purpose is to determine the channels through which rising economic inequality affects economic growth and stability in the United States.
Economic Policy Institute
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank working for the last 30 years to counter rising inequality, low wages and weak benefits for working people, slower economic growth, unacceptable employment conditions, and a widening racial wage gap. They intentionally center low- and middle-income working families in economic policy discussions at the federal, state, and local levels as they fight for a world where every worker has access to a good job with fair pay, affordable health care, retirement security, and a union.
AFL-CIO Tech Institute
The AFL-CIO Tech Institute works at the intersection of technological innovation in the workplace, centering worker knowledge, expertise, and interests in our modern innovation-based economy with the goal of ensuring that technological change creates widespread prosperity for all American workers. They work with a broad set of stakeholders, including unions and their members, universities, public officials, funders and employers to develop educational tools, policy analysis, and strategies to advance the needs and interests of working people in our rapidly shifting tech economy.
Workforce Insights
News
Siegel Family Endowment Awards Over $16.3 Million to Strengthen Workforce Innovation, Infrastructure, and Philanthropy
Our latest grants reaffirm our commitment to building a more inclusive technological future by supporting comprehensive research, shaping human-centered policies,…
Big Ideas | Research
We Need Better Data on Workplace AI
Owen Davis is a labor economist and post-doctoral research fellow at Siegel Family Endowment, where he explores the workforce impacts…
Big Ideas
A strong digital infrastructure is crucial to creating jobs in rural America
Featured on Working Nation’s Work in Progress podcast, Josh Elder, vice president and head of grantmaking for Siegel Family Endowment,…