New York City interpreters who handle phone and video translation for hospitals, courts and city agencies say a new wave of AI-driven scheduling turned their workweeks into Swiss cheese. Hours that once added up to steady full-time jobs are now broken into unpaid gaps, and workers report double-digit hits to their paychecks. Some say they have been pushed into scrambling for extra shifts or food assistance, and the disruption has helped fuel a push to organize that has landed the issue at City Hall.
According to NPR, tax records and interviews show Brooklyn interpreter Yves Valerus saw her income drop about 18% from 2024 to 2025 after schedules changed. One part-time interpreter saw pay fall by more than 70% over the same period. Workers say a key culprit is a scheduling code labeled "AEX," which they describe as mandatory involuntary time off that comes with no pay. Those last-minute cancellations and hour-by-hour reassignments, they add, make it nearly impossible to line up childcare, pick up other work or reliably cover basic expenses.
NiCE Scheduling And Intraday Optimization
LanguageLine adopted a workforce management system whose vendor touts "smarter scheduling, accurate forecasting and real-time intraday optimization," according to NICE. The platform relies on historical and live data to predict call volume and adjust staffing on the fly. Interpreters say that when the software fine-tunes for efficiency, they are the ones left holding the bag, stuck with short, unpaid blocks of downtime scattered through the day.
City Hall Pressure And A Union Push
Interpreters joined the Communications Workers of America at a City Hall press conference, standing alongside council members and Comptroller Mark Levine as they called for stable schedules and respect for organizing rights, according to CWA. The union says more than 200 interpreters have signed a petition protesting cuts to hours and what they describe as deteriorating working conditions. City officials say they are reviewing LanguageLine's contracts with New York City to ensure interpretation services for residents are not disrupted.
Parent Company, Global Rules And Local Lapses
LanguageLine is owned by Teleperformance, which in December 2022 signed a global framework agreement with UNI Global Union that covers surveillance, health and safety and freedom of association. The agreement gives unions and clients a channel to raise concerns about how the rules are applied. Advocates say those safeguards have not yet translated into predictable schedules for interpreters in the United States. Teleperformance and LanguageLine say they are working to fine-tune scheduling and plan to pilot AI tools on routine tasks rather than use them to cut jobs.
Part Of A Broader Pattern
Labor researchers say what is happening at LanguageLine fits a larger pattern in which tech-assisted scheduling shifts business risk onto hourly workers. Daniel Schneider, a lead researcher on the Shift Project at UC Berkeley, has written about how unstable schedules push uncertainty onto employees. The Shift Project has documented how that instability can chip away at pay and benefits and make it harder for workers to plan their lives.
What Workers Are Asking For
Interpreters say they want predictable schedules, clear information about how algorithms assign shifts, caps on unpaid AEX time and a say in how any AI tools are rolled out. With backing from CWA, they are petitioning major clients, pressing company management and drafting bargaining proposals that would lock scheduling rules into a union contract. Local lawmakers say they are prepared to use the city's purchasing power where they can to safeguard interpretation services for New Yorkers who rely on them.
LanguageLine has told reporters that it is piloting AI for repetitive, routine tasks and is not aiming to reduce headcount, and the company says it is recalibrating its scheduling system to provide more stability, according to NPR. Interpreters in Brooklyn and across the city say that is not enough, at least not yet, and many argue that only a binding union contract will give them the concrete scheduling protections they need.
