United Auto Workers Local 4811, a union representing 48,000 student employees, postdocs and academic researchers across the UC system, filed an unfair practice charge against the university in January targeting BearGPT, an AI tool available for staff on UC Berkeley’s human resources website.
According to the charge, BearGPT falsely told union members that they didn’t have a vote on the amount of dues they pay as a union member, and that some workplace benefits were available only for union members.
The charge also claims that BearGPT’s responses to user prompts were widely circulated to union members without consulting the union, which the union claims violates the California labor code.
Eugene Whitlock, associate vice chancellor and chief people officer, said these statements were made by a previous version of BearGPT and that the model can make mistakes.
“Like all large language models, it can sometimes generate inaccurate information, and reported issues are reviewed,” Whitlock said in an email. “The tool provides responses only when prompted, does not broadcast communications, and is intended strictly as a productivity aid rather than a substitute for official communications, including labor-related communications.”
Whitlock added that the updated model, which has been in use since early 2026, includes restrictions on responses involving unions.
According to BearGPT’s website, the service is made up of many individual AI assistants backed by a large language model. According to a form that organizations can use to make their own AI assistants, BearGPT can be fed specific websites and a Google Drive folder to build its knowledge base for user inquiries.
According to the UC Berkeley Human Resources website, BearGPT’s assistant uses “training on extensive public-facing university information” to answer campus-specific questions.
Iris Rosenblum-Sellers, the academic student employee unit chair for UAW 4811, says that campus should notify students that they received incorrect information.
“I think number one would be to cease and desist from all attempts to deter or discourage union membership,” Rosenblum-Sellers said. “You don’t want people going around believing this stuff because management told them that they wouldn’t have a vote on how much dues were (if they changed).”
Like other alleged unfair labor practices, the university is currently in mediation with the union over the future of BearGPT.The members of UAW 4811 authorized union management to call a strike last month.
“Maybe there’s a world where there’s a version of this that doesn’t provide bad information to employees that discourages them from union membership and tells them how to decertify their union and all sorts of bad things,” Rosenblum-Sellers said. “These kinds of tactics just have to go. They just have to stop, you know, breaking the law.”