Times workers plan to ride the media union wave right onto a bigger wave of tech organizing. In April, more than 650 tech workers at the New York Times announced that they were unionizing with the NewsGuild, forming what would instantly become one of the biggest unions of tech workers in America. Times management refused to voluntarily recognize the union, a break …
Despite the challenges of organizing during a deadly pandemic, working people across the country (and beyond) continue organizing, bargaining and mobilizing for a better life. This edition begins with: CODE-CWA’s Tech Industry Organizing Efforts Lead to Union Recognition at Mobilize: Workers at Mobilize, a community-organizing app, announced the formation of a new union as part of …
The future of work is here, ushered in by a global pandemic. But is it turning employment into a Workers’ Paradise of working at home? Or more of a Big Brother panopticon? Disturbing increases in use of digital surveillance technologies by employers to monitor their remote workers is raising alarm bells. With the number of remote workers surging as …
Employers Are Spying on Remote Workers in Their Homes Read More »
The future of work is here, ushered in by a global pandemic. But is it turning employment into a Worker’s Paradise of working at home? Or more of a Big Brother panopticon? Disturbing increases in the use of digital surveillance technologies by employers to monitor their remote workers are raising alarm bells. With the number …
Corona-fied: Employers Spying on Remote Workers in Their Homes Read More »
The pandemic has made tech stronger, but unions haven’t caught up. Big tech is getting bigger. The five biggest public companies in America are all tech companies. Their stock prices have collectively risen by more than a third this year. The coronavirus has been a blessing for them. It has supercharged their growth, even as it’s devastated …
The Failure to Unionize the Tech Industry Will Eat the Labor Movement Alive Read More »
In July, the head of a leading tech lobbying group published a warning against overly broad antitrust investigations that “could jeopardize American companies’ leadership” — a message that came amid rising regulatory heat on the group’s members Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook. But it soon became clear that some in the Information Technology Industry Council didn’t want …
Internal divides cloud tech industry’s antitrust defense Read More »
You’ve been fired. According to your employer’s data, your facial expressions showed you were insubordinate and not trustworthy. You also move your hands at a rate that is considered substandard. Other companies you may want to work for could receive this data, making it difficult for you to find other work in this field. That may sound …
On November 13, Marcus Vaughn filed a class-action lawsuit against his former employer. Vaughn, who’d worked in the Fremont, California factory for electric automaker Tesla, alleged that the manufacturing plant had become a “hotbed for racist behavior.” Employees and supervisors, he asserted, had routinely lobbed racial epithets at him and his fellow Black colleagues. Vaughn …
The Blue-Collar Hellscape of the Startup Industry Read More »
A hurricane has been brewing at Facebook. After years of suspicion, a veteran female Facebook engineer decided to evaluate what if any gaps there were in how female and male engineers’ work was treated. She did it “so that we can have an insight into how the review process impacts people in various groups,” the …
Facebook’s gender bias goes so deep it’s in the code Read More »
In the late 1970s, my early years at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB), the Department of Economics had two secretaries. When I retired, in 2008, the number of faculty members and students in the department had increased, but there was only one secretary. All the faculty members had their own computers, with which they …
Will Artificial Intelligence Mean Massive Job Loss? Read More »
Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.
