Rodrigo Camarena Believes AI can Help Workers Access Justice

Every year in New York State alone, around 21M workers are cheated out of a cumulative $3.2B in wages and benefits. This injustice shouldn’t be the norm.

Rodrigo Camarena believes AI can help workers access justice. A long-time advocate for immigrant rights and an expert in tech for good, Rodrigo saw an accessible solution. Most immigrants and low-wage workers cannot afford a lawyer. This means that in order to pursue wage claims, workers must overcome language barriers, complicated paperwork, and fear of retaliation.

Enter Reclamo AI: a multilingual, mobile-first digital assistant that helps low-wage and immigrant workers prevent, assess, and document workplace violations in New York State. The product was built by Justicia Lab, a program of Pro Bono Net, in collaboration with worker organizers and employment attorneys at the New York Legal Assistance Group. Reclamo’s mission is to make wage theft recovery free, safe, and simple.

In this interview, Rodrigo shares the role AI can play in closing the access to justice gap and restoring power and dignity to workers.

How did your journey inspire you to explore AI for humanity?

I’ve been working at the intersection of civic tech and access to justice for nearly two decades. My journey started in South Brooklyn, where I ran an immigrant services organization for many years. Time and time again, immigrant domestic workers, cooks, and day laborers would come into my office to report being underpaid or not paid at all for their work. It was devastating to hear how easy it was for employers to simply threaten someone with deportation if they complained about their pay. Sadly, we could do little more than refer them to a legal aid organization for help.

Accessing expert-level legal information or support has always been incredibly costly or time-consuming for most people — especially for low-wage and immigrant workers. Technology, and AI in particular, offers a way to close the access to justice gap. With Reclamo AI, justice for workers is not limited to New York’s lawyers and courtrooms; it is something workers can hold in their hands, read about in their own language, and use at the moment they need it. This, to me, is AI working in the interest of humanity.

Where does AI show up in Reclamo's product?

Reclamo AI reimagines what otherwise would have been a static FAQ into a living, multilingual companion for workplace justice. AI powers a digital assistant that understands workers’ written or spoken questions in Spanish, English, and the 50+ other languages supported by the LLM, and responds with plain-language guidance on their rights under New York’s labor laws. It also helps workers begin the process of reclaiming stolen wages by generating tailored forms, connecting them with qualified advocates, and guiding them step-by-step through what is often an opaque and intimidating process.

What job does AI do for a worker or advocate that was hard before?

Workers have historically had to rely on word-of-mouth, crowded legal clinics, or complicated government websites to get answers about wage theft. Advocates, meanwhile, spend hours answering the same basic questions, leaving less time for more complicated casework. AI takes on that initial assessment role, giving workers reliable, rights-based information instantly. Then, it prepares them to take action or meet with an advocate. It makes the legal process more accessible and gives community organizations the ability to serve many more people with the same resources.

How do you ensure that AI tools are developed responsibly, especially when working with vulnerable communities?

Responsible design has been a guiding principle from day one. Our solution was collaboratively designed with workers and legal aid partners who continue to provide feedback at every stage of the project. While the Reclamo AI chatbot can be of use for any worker who has questions about their rights as a worker in New York State, it was designed with the most vulnerable users in mind (i.e. low-wage workers, women, and immigrants). Given this audience, we built privacy and security into the core of the tool. These include protections around the collection and storage of personally identifiable information, as well as mechanisms to give users decision-making power over their data.

In what ways do you think AI will transform the landscape of worker rights over the next few years?

AI could be a game-changer for worker rights. I see three major shifts coming:

1. Scaling access to legal information, so workers don’t have to wait weeks for answers to urgent questions;
2. Strengthening organizing and advocacy by surfacing patterns of violations across industries and geographies; and
3. Freeing up advocates to focus on strategy and systemic change, while AI handles repetitive, time-consuming tasks.

It also goes without saying that as AI transforms the labor market, we must ensure that the rights of workers are upheld – their changing needs must be communicated and safeguarded through policy and programs. If developed and deployed responsibly, I believe AI can help level the playing field between workers and employers, making labor rights real and enforceable at scale.

The original version of Reclamo (https://reclamoapp.org/) helped file over $1.5M in wage claims over an 18-month period. With Reclamo AI (https://reclamo.ai/), we see the potential to 100X this amount over the next three years.

What core values drive your unique vision for impact in an AI-driven future?

My values have guided my entire career: dignity, equity, and justice. AI must amplify people’s power, not diminish it. AI tools must be widely accessible, transparent, and designed for those at the margins. And above all, this technology must serve our collective well-being. In the future, AI should inform how society can eliminate systemic barriers to justice so that we don’t need to rely on breakthrough technologies to help people access their basic rights.

Which visionary leaders, philosophies, or movements give you hope for a more human-centered AI future?

I’m inspired by the farmworkers' movement, the immigrant justice movement, and the movement for Black lives. These are some of the people, moments, and struggles that have redefined our sense of justice and fought for our collective progress. I’m also encouraged by the digital organizing capabilities that social media brought about for these movements. I believe that AI can similarly be leveraged to bring us all closer together and to accelerate good.

What is your 7-word autobiography?

Immigrant son, technologist, building bridges through justice.