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Posts Tagged ‘labor’

“London Cries”: the merchants’ patter of 19th Century London

One genre of 19th Cen illustrated pamphlet was the "Cries of London" (previously), which celebrated the market traders' characteristic sales patter, which were catalogued as a kind of urban birdsong.

Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries (1852) is a lovely example of the genre, both for its lively illustrations and the wonderful pitches it ...

AFL-CIO open letter to gave devs: things won’t get better until you unionize

In the wake of Blizzard/Activision's announcement of mass layoffs following record profits, Liz Shuler of the AFL-CIO has published an open letter on Kotaku addressed to workers in the notoriously abusive video game industry, calling on them to unionize as the only path to a fair deal.

My question is this: what have you ...

India’s e-waste recycling “markets” are toxic nightmares filled with child laborers

Millions of tons of e-waste -- much of it from rich countries like Australia -- are recycled in India, in "markets" with terrible, dangerous working conditions and equally awful environmental controls.

India passed comprehensive e-waste recycling regulations in 2016, but they are not well enforced. Researchers from the UNSW report from Seelampur and Mandoli, two slums ...

Trump’s properties routinely employed (and abused) undocumented Latinx workers, including dozens from a single Costa Rican town

The Washington Post tracked down workers from Santa Teresa de Cajon in Costa Rica, who say that they and their neighbors were part of a "pipeline" from Central America to Trump properties in New Jersey and elsewhere, where they worked doing construction, groundskeeping, and cleaning, with the full knowledge of their supervisors and Trump Organization ...

Amazon at times used Flex drivers’ tips to cover promised base pay, investigation finds

Amazon sometimes dipped into tips earned by contracted delivery drivers for its 'Flex' service to cover the base pay they'd been promised, a Los Angeles Times review of emails and receipts shows.

They're not the only contractor-supported delivery giant playing hinky with tips. Instacart and DoorDash have caught criticism for doing the same.

As Amazon continues ...

Swedes are entitled to six months’ leave to start a business, look after a sick relative, or study

Sweden consistently ranks as one of Europe's most innovative and entrepreneurial nations, and one of the most obvious explanations for this is the country's generous leave policy, which entitles salaried, full-time workers to six months' unpaid leave to start a (noncompeting) business, look after a sick relative, or go back to school.

It's hard to overstate ...

Even as Google was making nice during employee walkout, it was secretly asking the Trump administration to ban email labor organizing

Last year, Google was rocked by a string of employee uprisings: first over selling AI tools to the Pentagon for use in drone development; then over the clandestine development of a censored Chinese search-product, the over the revelation that Android founder Andy Rubin was given a $90 million payoff to get rid ...