Worker Rights

How Artificial Intelligence Depends on Low-Paid Workers

May 19, 2021 Anita Slater, Tribune Magazine Educate! Artificial Intelligence, Low Wage Workers, Technology, Worker Rights

When thinking of AI futures, the classic sci-fi tropes tell us that machines will one day take over and replace humans, with robots rendering work as we know it obsolete: the outcome will either be a post-work utopia or robot-human war. But that future is here, and the reality is far more mundane. Instead of eliminating human work, the AI industry is creating new ways of exploiting and obscuring workers. Lurking behind the amorphous and often abstract notion of ‘AI’ are material realities. 80 percent of machine learning development consists of repetitive data preparation tasks and ‘janitorial’ work such as collecting data, labelling data to feed algorithms, and data cleaning – tasks that are a far cry from the high glamour of the tech CEOs who parade their products on stage.

Leaving No One Behind In The City

May 16, 2021 Alana Brave and Bruno Dobrusin, Equal Times. Create! climate crisis, Just transition, Public transportation, Worker Rights

There is a general consensus that cities and public transport will play a central role in the recovery from Covid-19. Some have called this the “urban opportunity”. From investments in sustainable mobility, to enhancing the role of public transport and the electrification of transport, these discussions have often centered on the potential for the transport sector to provide green jobs, lower emissions, to create access and reshape society along more equitable lines in the post-Covid world. The International Labour Organization (ILO) recently published a report highlighting the massive potential for jobs and for lowering emissions if we focus on investments which double down on public transport and electrification.

Unemployment Benefits Are Not Creating A Worker Shortage

May 16, 2021 Arthur Delaney and Dave Jamieson, Huff Post. Educate! Pandemic, Recession, Unemployment benefits, Worker Rights

As the U.S. economy bounces back from the COVID-induced downturn, some employers say they’re having a hard time finding workers. GOP lawmakers like Rep. David Rouzer (N.C.) blame the safety net. “This is what happens when you extend unemployment benefits too long and add a $1400 stimulus payment,” Rouzer said on Twitter last week, posting a photo from a Hardee’s that said it was closed for lack of staff. “Right when employers need workers to fully open back up, few can be found.” It’s a dubious argument. Republicans said this same thing last year when Congress passed a big relief bill that added $600 per week to state unemployment benefits for four months. Democrats “are going to make the next four months impossible for small businesses to hire,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said.

Desperate For Workers, US Restaurants And Stores Raise Pay

May 14, 2021 Christiopher Rugaber, AP News. Educate! Restaurants, Wages, Worker Rights

Washington - U.S. restaurants and stores are rapidly raising pay in an urgent effort to attract more applicants and keep up with a flood of customers as the pandemic eases. McDonald’s, Sheetz and Chipotle are just some of the latest companies to follow Amazon, Walmart and Costco in boosting wages, in some cases to $15 an hour or higher. The pay gains are, of course, a boon to these employees. Restaurants, bars, hotels and stores remain the lowest-paying industries, and many of their workers ran the risk of contracting COVID-19 on the job over the past year while white-collar employees were able to work from home. Still, the pay increases could contribute to higher inflation if companies raise prices to cover the additional labor costs. Some businesses, however, could absorb the costs or invest over time in automation to offset higher wages.

Restaurant Workers Protest Poor Working Conditions And Low Wages

May 13, 2021 Kiara Alfonseca, ABC News. Resist! COVID-19, Low wages, Restaurants, Worker Rights

Food service workers are putting renewed pressure on their employers for better working conditions and wages. Businesses across the country are blaming a “workforce shortage” for being understaffed or closed. But workers in the industry say poor labor practices are pushing potential employees away. “It’s stressful working for a billion-dollar company when they’re not caring for the workers,” said Ieshia Townsend, a McDonald’s employee in Chicago, Illinois. She has worked at the McDonald’s location since 2015. “Even during COVID-19, we had to literally go on strike just for masks, just for gloves, just for supplies and protection to protect the workers, which should have been set in place.” Signs have been taped to the doors, drive-thru speakers and facades of fast-food and fast-casual restaurants with descriptions of long workdays, no lunch breaks and poor pay to accommodate for the risk of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Activists In Mississippi Challenge Constitutionality Of Anti-Strike Law

May 9, 2021 By Adam Ganucheau and Kate Royals, Mississippi Today. Resist! Anti-Labor, Mississippi, Strike, Worker Rights

A political time bomb is ticking in Greenville, and the explosion could transform the state’s public education environment for decades to come. Last Monday and Tuesday, between 13-20 bus drivers for the Greenville Public School District — some of the lowest paid employees in one of the most under-resourced school districts in one of the most under-resourced regions of America — skipped work to protest reduced pay and what they called poor work conditions. As far as anyone knows, this was the first organized work stoppage in Mississippi public schools since 9,429 teachers walked out in a 1985 strike, after which lawmakers passed the demanded pay increases but also enacted one of the nation’s most stringent strike laws. Lawmakers that year made it explicitly illegal for school employees to strike in Mississippi.

Report Finds Low Wages Make Food Workers Want To Quit

May 6, 2021 Sharon Zhang, Truthout. Educate! Employment, Essential workers, Low wages, Worker Rights

Following the passage of stimulus packages with aid for workers like expanded unemployment benefits, politicians and business owners have wrung their hands over a supposed worker shortage as people refuse to return to work, as they say. A new report pushes back on that narrative and shows that actually, it’s more likely low wages offered by businesses that are causing workers to want to quit. The report by One Fair Wage finds that 53 percent of restaurant workers have considered leaving their jobs during the pandemic, and 76 percent of restaurant workers cite low wages and tips as the reason for leaving the industry. Being paid a low wage was the most common reason for leaving by far; COVID-19 concerns were the next highest reason, with 55 percent of workers saying they were concerned about pandemic safety.

Ripping Off Workers Without Consequences

May 4, 2021 Alexia Fernández Campbell and Joe Yerardi, Public Integrity. Educate! Accountability, Department of Labor, Wage Theft, Worker Rights

Already battered by long shifts and high infection rates, essential workers struggling through the pandemic face another hazard of hard times: employers who steal their wages. When a recession hits, U.S. companies are more likely to stiff their lowest-wage workers. These businesses often pay less than the minimum wage, make employees work off the clock, or refuse to pay overtime rates. In the most egregious cases, bosses don’t pay their employees at all. Companies that hire child care workers, gas station clerks, restaurant servers and security guards are among the businesses most likely to get caught cheating their employees, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of minimum wage and overtime violations from the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2019 alone, the agency cited about 8,500 employers for taking about $287 million from workers.

The Radioactive Underbelly Of The Oilfield

May 1, 2021 Justin Nobel, Drilled News. Educate! Drilling, Oil and Gas, Radiation, Worker Rights

In towns and cities across northern Appalachia industrial and manufacturing jobs have emptied out and men and women hungry for work have been drawn by the beckoning call of the oil and gas industry. Over the past decade that industry has tapped vigorously into the Marcellus and Utica, two massively rich gas layers that underlie the region. But these workers don’t always end up drilling for oil and pulling pipe, wellhead jobs stamped with a certain gritty glamour upon the American imagination. They often end up at a far seedier and even less regulated end of the oilfield, working in the largely unknown underworld of radioactive oilfield waste. Scooping it up and hauling it hither and thither in trucks.

Why Delivery Workers Across The Planet Are Rising Up

April 30, 2021 Taroa Zuniga Silva, Peoples Dispatch. Resist! Delivery workers, Gig Workers, Pandemic, Worker Rights

On February 22, 2019, at 6 pm, a car crashed into Servio Hernández’s motorcycle. Hernández, a Venezuelan migrant in Chile, was hit while he was in the middle of making a delivery for PedidosYa, a branch of the German multinational company Delivery Hero. When Hernández arrived at the hospital, the first thing he did was ask the medical staff to let his supervisor know about the accident. “There is nothing we can do for him,” the supervisor told the doctor. The supervisor turned off his phone and blocked Hernández from being able to access the PedidosYa app. Servio Hernández is one of the millions of workers around the world, from Chile to South Korea, who hustle to deliver food and other products to people’s homes.

The Variable Relationships Between Worker Centers And Unions

April 29, 2021 Steven Greenhouse, The American Prospect. Organize! Immigrants, Labor Unions, Worker Centers, Worker Rights

Like many immigrant workers, Pascual Tapia, a late-night janitor at a Target store in Minneapolis, was a victim of wage theft. He often worked 56 hours a week, but he was hardly ever paid time and a half for overtime. And like many immigrant workers in the Twin Cities, he turned to a highly regarded worker center for help: CTUL, the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (the Center of United Workers in Struggle). Tapia was delighted when CTUL won over $1,000 in back pay for him as part of the more than $1 million in settlements it won from cleaning contractors for Target and other big-box stores. But Tapia, CTUL, and many other Twin Cities janitors agreed that winning back pay wasn’t enough: The janitors wanted to end systemic wage theft, and beyond that, they wanted to somehow become union members.

Montreal Dockers Strike: Defy Back-To-Work Legislation

April 28, 2021 La Riposte Syndicale, Fightback. Resist! Anti-Labor, Canada, Strike, Worker Rights

Since the end of the seven-month truce on March 21, the bosses have been in attack mode. On April 12, the Maritime Employers Association (MEA) decided to suspend the job security plan. The dockers organized in CUPE 375 retaliated with an overtime and weekend strike. Then, on April 23, another slap in the face: the MEA changed work schedules to increase hours worked and implement “shift schedules” that make it harder to balance work and family—which is one of the main issues in the negotiations! This tactic of changing schedules is a contemptuous frontal attack. This was also implemented in the fall of 2018, before the dockers had a strike mandate. Michel Murray, spokesperson for the union, said in his press conference on Friday that the anger of the membership had to be contained to avoid an illegal strike at that time.

Unresolved Questions About NY’s Excluded Workers Fund

April 26, 2021 Daniel Parra, City Limits. Educate! Excluded Workers, New York (NY), Pandemic, Worker Rights

It has been just over two weeks since the $2.1 billion Excluded Workers Fund was approved as part of New York’s State budget deal and the state Department of Labor, charged with running the program and coming up with the application form, has yet to provide answers to basic questions about the initiative—such as when can the process will begin or what will happen if the number of applicants exceeds the estimated 290,000 people the state expects will be eligible. The Excluded Workers Fund would divide the target population into two groups: the first, known as tier 1, would include those who can demonstrate both New York residency (before March 27, 2020) and lost income due to the pandemic (by showing taxes from previous years; W-2s or 1099s; letters from former employers with dates of employment; or pay stubs).

Staten Island Amazon Workers Begin Union Drive

April 26, 2021 Candice Bernd, Truthout. Organize! Amazon, Labor Unions, New York City (NYC), Worker Rights

In some ways, Amazon workers’ more than yearlong struggle for adequate COVID-19 protections and against corporate retaliation at the company’s Staten Island facility in New York City helped pave the way for this month’s unionization attempt at the Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse. Now, as the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) seeks a second election through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), filing official objections Friday charging Amazon with engaging in illegal interference to defeat the union, Staten Island “JFK8” warehouse workers with The Congress of Essential Workers (TCOEW) tell Truthout they aren’t deterred by the outcome. Rather, their on-the-ground experiences in Alabama, where the unionization effort gained national attention but ultimately failed...

Food Delivery Workers Protest For Better Work Conditions

April 24, 2021 Luke Fortney, New York Eater. Resist! Food Delivery, Labor Union, New York City (NYC), Worker Rights

New York City - Deliveristas Unidos, a growing group of food delivery workers in New York City, is now working with the city’s largest union of service workers, representatives with SEIU Local 32BJ announced at a rally on Wednesday. The City first reported news of the partnership. On Wednesday, a group of more than 2,000 food delivery workers biked from Times Square to Foley Square as part of a protest calling for improved work conditions. Their ongoing list of demands includes higher pay, increased bathroom access, and expansions to protected bike lanes. The workers also seek to be recognized as employees of the apps they work for since food delivery workers are technically classified as independent contractors, making them ineligible to join a traditional union. Local 32BJ is now backing those demands.

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