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Posts Tagged ‘labor’

Federal judge rules Uber calling its drivers independent contractors may violate antitrust and harm competition

A federal judge has ruled that alleged misclassification of drivers as independent contractors by the ride-hailing service app Uber could harm competition and violate the spirit of America's antitrust laws.

• Lawsuit says misclassifying workers creates competitive harm • 30 days to amend complaint with new information

The ruling by Judge Edward Chen of the U.S. District Court ...

Stop saying “robots are coming for your job”; start saying “Your boss wants to replace you with a robot”

Tech reporter and sf writer Brian Merchant (previously) calls our attention to the peculiar construction of the problem statement in articles about automation and obsolescence, in which "robots are coming to steal your job."

The thing is robots don't (yet) autonomously arrange to show up at your workplace, uninvited, and take your job. Instead, your ...

Supreme Court of Canada to rule on the enforceability of arbitration clauses

Back in January, an Ontario court ruled that Uber's arbitration clause couldn't keep its drivers from suing it; Uber has appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, which has taken up the case and will hear arguments about whether arbitration clauses (through which the parties surrender the right to sue in court) are enforceable ...

Exploitation of workers becomes more socially acceptable if the workers are perceived as “passionate” about their jobs

In a new paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a team from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business found that people look more favorably on exploiting workers (making do "extra, unpaid, demeaning work") if the workers are "passionate" about their jobs.

Likewise, people exploited in their jobs are more likely to ...

Googlers around the world down tools for “Knit and Sit” protest over retaliation against organizers of last year’s googler uprisings

Senior Google employees Meredith Whittaker and Claire Stapleton were key organizers of last year's string of googler protests, including the 20,000-employee walkout over the company tolerance and rewarding of execs who engaged in ****** harassment; last month, Whittaker and Stapleton revealed that they had been targeted for retaliation by the company; now, a group ...

Big Tech’s addiction to illegal, overreaching NDAs protects wage discrimination, ****** harassment, and other evils by “terrorizing” employees

NDAs were once used exclusively to protect bona fide trade secrets, but today's Big Tech companies force new hires to sign far-ranging NDAs that exceed the law in many ways (for example, by banning employees from discussing illegal workplace conditions), as a means of "terrorizing" employees into keeping their mouths shut, lest they face threats ...

Uber drivers across America are going on strike

On May 8, Gig Workers Rising is organizing a nationwide shutdown of Uber, with drivers turning off their apps in protest over low pay: so far, seven cities' drivers are signed up: Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Minneapolis, LA and DC. Uber and Lyft have both slashed pay for drivers and raised ...

Short videos of skilled and playful workers performing their jobs with acrobatic flair

Kaitlyn Reed created a Twitter thread of videos of (mostly Chinese) workers performing manual tasks with incredible acrobaticism, dexterity and flair; the videos were ganked from Tiktok, the massively popular China-based video platform that is mostly know in the west as a place where tweens make and share elaborately choreographic lipsync videos augmented ...

Silicon Valley’s techie uprisings reveal growing support for socialism in tech

As workers at companies from Kickstarter to Gimlet to Vox vote to unionize, and as traditional labor organizers call on game devs and others to organize, Silicon Valley is a lot more friendly to pro-labor policies than ever before.

That's partly because tech companies can be terrible places to work, and party ...