Original Content
Service sector employers are forcing workers to surrender biometric data. What are we doing to protect them?
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Reputation, reputation, reputation
“Facial recognition technology has a higher error rate when it is trying to scan black or brown people. The software is biased, and I don’t see it working in our community at all. I also don’t want to be a lab rat for [Nelson Management]—I don’t want to be in one of the first buildings where they are testing their systems so that they can deploy it into more buildings.” These poor & working-class New York tenants organized against the use of facial recognition software in their apartment building.
From Partners
Congrats to all my friends who have been working to build a table of organizations taking on the biggest company in the biggest way. Meet ATHENA.
A new documentary, featuring 4 activists with OUR Walmart/United for Respect, came out on November 19.
What’s Going on in the Workforce
Juno, which once billed itself as the driver-friendly ride-sharing app, is shuttering its operations in NYC.
Vice takes a look at several platform coops that are succeeding around the world, in competition with VC-backed gig economy apps.
Former Instacart & DoorDash delivery people are building their own shopping businesses, using an app called Dumpling. “I make about twice as much as compared with when I was with Instacart.”
New Jersey freelance writers are fighting the state’s version of AB 5, saying it takes flexibility away from those who legitimately freelance, and will dampen their employment prospects.
Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability
I’m not going to lie, I did not guess that Massachusetts would be the first state police force to hire robot dogs. Creepy.
When ISPs can’t figure out how to profit off of small, isolated communities, they just don’t connect them to the internet. Activists with an indigenous group of Hawaiians are choosing to build their own internet access. (Have they been watching the final season of Silicon Valley?)
Chicago just changed their ride-sharing tax structure to incentivize people using shared, instead of single, rides.
Organizing Theory
The Fight for $15 held an organizing exchange with veteran labor organizers in the South last month, including survivors of the Greensboro Massacre.