Category: Weekly Newsletters

Organizing Theory

“Direct action is as ancient as human conflict.” Mobilisation Lab takes a look at how direct action strategies can translate for digital organizers. 

Consumer Reports (no, really), on how to safely take video and photographs to document police behavior, during protests and in other situations. 

From Partners

We’re mostly concerned with how delivery apps like Uber Eats, GrubHub, Door Dash & others hurt their delivery drivers. Here, ILSR looks at why they’re also bad for restaurants—and at what some cities are doing about it. 

What’s Going on in the Workforce

“If you’ve had Black employees, but they don’t tend to stay, did you treat it like any other churn problem and learn why?” Tiffany Ashley Bell, with questions for tech folks, some of which are relevant for all organizations. 

Migrant caregivers are stuck with their bosses 24/7 because of coronavirus. 

“The nation’s meatpackers along with federal and state officials have for years planned for pandemic flu outbreaks that could wipe out herds and flocks and threaten America’s food supply. But those efforts focused on animals rather than the army of humans—mostly immigrants, refugees and African Americans—hired to slaughter them and cut them up for restaurants and groceries.” Mother Jones looks at the response of meatpacking processors, to the coronavirus epidemic, and how they have worked to avoid local and state regulation of their plants. 

Uber continues to lay off office staff—last week, 200 Dutch workers found out they were being let go. 

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

“As millions of people experience a sudden collapse of their income at the very moment their landlords are allowed to start kicking them out, other bills will also come due. Payments on millions of paused student loans will begin again at the beginning of October; the more than 4 million homeowners who received a six-month pause on their mortgage after April’s mass layoffs will need to start making payments again at the end of October.” The economy is likely to get a lot worse this fall.  

The ILWU is getting ready to shut down West Coast ports on Juneteenth, in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives.

The New York attorney general is interviewing workers in Amazon warehouses about company retaliation against whistleblowers. 

You might find it hard to believe, but it’s been less than three months since we suspended the weekly newsletter. I’m bringing it back for now. Hope you have all been well, and I know you have all been busy, as the twin impacts of the pandemic and police violence have been felt so hard by the working people of our country–particularly the Black and indigenous people of color in all of our communities. Thank you for everything you are doing to fight for a more just society & economy.

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

“…there’s a reason why so many elected officials relent when police contracts come up for renewal. The unions have political clout — offering politicians a big voting block of their members and those who support them. They also raise campaign contributions for elected officials who support their agenda.” Buzzfeed takes a look at how police unions influence efforts to reform the behavior of police.  Meanwhile, IBM is getting out of the facial recognition business, citing concerns about how the technology is being used for mass surveillance and racial profiling. 

Today in headlines that would have been hard to explain six months ago: “Uber will bail out food-delivery drivers arrested past curfew.” 

Reputation, reputation, reputation

Workers have filed a lawsuit against Amazon, alleging that the company’s efforts at contact tracing to stop the spread of coronavirus in warehouses. One specific point of contention is that the company is only using surveillance from video cameras (which don’t cover all the areas where people might interact, just the places the company is worried about theft) to inform other workers that they may have been exposed. 

If you know that facial recognition software is effective worse at identifying people of color, maybe don’t use it to find photos to go along with robot-generated articles? 

“Despite its public statements, black users on Nextdoor are being silenced by community moderators after participating in discussions about race. Some are opting to leave the app altogether while others are considering moving out of their neighborhoods based on what they’ve seen on the platform. ‘As a black person, I don’t feel safe at all using it for anything,’ Kalkidan told The Verge. ‘I’m always terrified, thinking “Oh my god. I already know what so-and-so thinks of us.” This is a very horrible situation to be in.’” NextDoor communities expose racism & white supremacy in mixed-race communities. 

From Partners

New report from NELP: How Black workers are silenced when they try to speak out about COVID concerns in the workplace. 

Webinar, next week, by the Century Foundation: “Tackling child poverty in the wake of COVID-19” Register here. 

What’s Going on in the Workforce

CA farmworkers fear the spread of COVID in the crowded housing they are offered by farmers. 

CNN wonders—will the gig economy be the new normal for many people, after COVID?

Organizing Theory

It’s inevitable that corporate America will seek some form of disaster capitalism (bailouts, tax cuts, etc.) through the shock of coronavirus. Take our one-question poll, “What should the left be focused on winning, in this moment of strategic leverage?” (important to note that friend-‘o-the-blog Jeff Ordower inspired this poll) 

What’s Going on in the Workforce

There is a lot of speculation about how the coronavirus will impact remote work, as more and more companies urge their workers to work from home. But I’ve seen less about automation speeding up. However, a hospital in Wuhan has now adopted robots to help clean rooms and deliver food.  And a printing equipment factory in China converted some of its automated machines to produce surgical masks. And in a stab in the heart of cashiers everywhere, Amazon announced that it will be opening access to Just Walk Out, the tech that allows it to run cashierless stores, to other retailers. 

Gig economy companies are under a lot of pressure to figure out how to protect workers during the coronavirus outbreak. Here, Sen. Mark Warner (VA) tells them they should pay people who are quarantined.  So far, Uber, Instacart, DoorDash & Lyft have all said they’ll pay drivers who have to self-quarantine if they are exposed, but Amazon Flex, Grubhub, Postmates said “nah.” Amazon will pay hourly workers at their various offices in Washington, who have to stay home.  Amazon warehouse workers in Illinois, on the other hand, just filed a complaint about the company failing to pay sick leave for any of them, despite a local law that’s been in effect for nearly 3 years.  

From Partners

Don’t miss this new film, focusing on the wonders of life in the gig economy. Playing in very short stints (and hopefully theaters that are un-impacted by coronavirus). h/t to friend-‘o-the-blog Wyatt Closs for sending this in. 

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

Most of us on this list know why unrestricted funding is better for organizations—here’s a perspective on why it’s better for funders, too. 

You know who’s really misunderstood in our society? Billionaires. 

“Societies of the value of unpaid care work unless there is a disruption in the supply.” Women’s unpaid work is worth $10.9 trillion, worldwide. 

What’s Going on in the Workforce

“The new warehouses will be built around A.I. robots and not humans.” A look at the next generation of warehouse robots, which are learning how to sort in ways previously only available to humans. 
Job platform startup Boulo is expanding from Birmingham, AL to Jacksonville, FL. Organize the South, people! 

Need an odd job done? In at least one market, Amazon is rolling out a platform to connect customers with things like house cleaning or mounting wall TVs. 
Some lessons about remote work, from a survey of remote workers. (As a mostly-remote worker, I too would recommend working remotely) 

Thanks to California’s AB 5, San Diego just took a step towards forcing Instacart to pay their shoppers as employees, instead of independent contractors. 

Events

Cornell’s Institute of Labor Relations is holding a one-day forum on organizing app-based workers around the world. 

One of my favorite annual conferences is Organizing 2.0—this year, it’s April 17-18 in NYC. 

Organizing Theory

“…most established tracking and measurement systems don’t properly capture the dynamics and value of people-powered campaigning. While most organisations have developed sophisticated systems for tracking financial donations from supporters, there remains a marked lack of metrics that quantify and value other important contributions.” Fascinating new report from Mobilisation Lab, that has been studying how organizations measure the building of people power. 

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

This article about a plan to pass AB-5-lite in New York, led by Gov. Cuomo (?) is…a whole thing, while in CA, Assemblywoman Gonzalez (author of AB 5) has introduced a bill to protect small restaurants from the likes of DoorDash, GrubHub & Uber Eats. 

Reputation, reputation, reputation

“Even full-time workers may find themselves dependent on their score in one category or another.” The Economist has discovered that ratings systems can be oppressive… 

From Partners

Our friends at the New Economy Coalition rolled out a new comprehensive package of policies to help build a solidarity economy. 

From Partners

“At the same time that antitrust enforcers meekly accept abuses of labor, they also are eager to affirmatively crush collective worker action using antitrust.” The Open Markets Institute takes a look at monopsony power in four recent court cases. 

What’s Going on in the Workforce

Grad students in Georgia are organizing to raise university workers’ raises. 

UNITE HERE and their allies have been fighting to make sure that hotel housekeepers are safe, through requiring employers to provide panic buttons. Now, the fight is on to make sure that panic button tech isn’t used to surveil workers. 

Uber has gotten a new permit to test self-driving cars in California, while more than 100 drivers in the state have filed wage theft complaints with the CA Labor Commissioner. 

Reputation, reputation, reputation

It’s well-documented that Uber & Lyft could be doing more to keep racism off their platforms. Here’s a look at how racist fears of coronoavirus are affecting Asian-appearing drivers and passengers. 

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

“…by 1950, via the GI Bill, the American government spent more on education than the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe. But most American colleges and universities were closed to blacks, or open to only but a few in token numbers.” Please, tell me again how we can’t afford free college now that the US population has gotten both less white and more attuned to institutional racism.  Relatedly: what if we just collectively stopped paying our student loan debt? 

Dean Baker looks at historical trends in the US minimum wage, and finds that if it had kept place with productivity, it would be $24/hour today. 

Geeking Out

I don’t know what possessed anyone to figure out what the oldest, still-operating company in every country was—but it’s fascinating to look at. 

Robots at work and play. 

What’s Going on in the Workforce

Let your gig workers pee in restaurant restrooms, people. 

“Hundreds of (Mechanical Turk) respondents reported at least one instance of not getting paid for their labor.” Amazon fails to protect workers, in their warehouses and online.  Activists inside the company are also organizing about its impact on the climate. 

“It’s not that workers aren’t getting trained on how to work with robots safely. ‘The problem is it becomes very difficult to do so when the productivity standards are set so high…’” Kudos to friend-o’-the-blog Beth Gutelius for pointing out that safety trainings aren’t enough to keep workers safe, if they’re working side by side with robots and high productivity standards. 

In response to California’s AB5, Uber announced it will experiment with drivers’ setting their own rates, including allowing drivers to opt out of surge pricing. 

Shout out to these Instacart workers, who won the first-ever union election in the company, to form in union with UFCW. 

From Partners

Social Movement Tech has a new virtual 8-week training starting next month: “Union Organizing & Strikes! in the Digital Age.” 

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

“Higher-income people have less contact with these kinds of government programs. But they can also buy their way out of many of life’s pesky tasks, handing them off to lawyers, accountants, apps or automated systems.” Could you survive as a poor person in America? The answer to this NYT quiz may surprise you. 

Why we don’t need a cooperative version of Uber and Lyft. 

h/t to friend Thomas Becket for sending me these two stories: “…What do you need to be a community? Losing food is like that dagger to the heart,” about a town that saved its only grocery store by turning into first a coop, then a non profit. And the second, about how grocery chain Meijer is shifting to a gig-economy-like model of staffing its stores. 

Organizing Theory

“How can we create a bill that will strike the right balance between making sure that workers who have been misclassified get the justice they need but not having a negative impact on freelancers who do independent work and are happy with the freedom they currently have?” Interesting profile of the new head of the Freelancers’ Union, on how he plans to thread the needle between protecting gig workers and true freelancers. 

Geeking Out

I cannot tell a lie. I am low-key obsessed by the progress that BostonDynamics is making in developing the machines that will herd our children and grandchildren into extractive camps. Also, winning the Olympics gymnastics floor exercise in 2032. 

Events

Looking forward to seeing a bunch of friends, old and new, at this conference, jointly organized by WPUSA & UC Berkeley Labor Center, in Sacramento next week: California Future of Workers Summit. 

Organizing Theory

“The U.S. wants to fight war without paying the bill. The human cost is so much greater than what is ever acknowledged by the military. And I think if we actually did have to pay that cost, people would really start to think about whether we should be doing this.” How Southern religious activists are helping soldiers who want to conscientiously object. 

Bloomberg’s Ben Penn takes a look at how worker centers are reacting to the DOL decision that CTUL is acting like a union, not a worker center. 

What’s Going on in the Workforce

Want to organize Amazon warehouses? Get yourself to Texas, which apparently has more of them than any other state except CA (where the Warehouse Worker Resource Center is already on the job).  That seems pretty necessary, given their recent bad safety reports in various places. In the words of one CA worker: “I can’t tell you how many times I saw somebody throwing up in a garbage can there because they don’t want to get fired for missing work.” Maybe it’s all the robots? 

Instacart workers are asking customers to boycott the company, over slashing of tips and performance bonuses. 

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

A look at how the introduction of Uber, Lyft & other TNCs caused the death of a nascent worker-owned taxi company in Philadelphia. 

Here’s an interesting possible UBI pilot—Santa Clara County in CA is considering giving $1K/mo to teens who age out of foster care, for 1-2 years. 

New York City may bail out taxi drivers trapped in usurious loans, now that medallion value has plummeted. 

Fascinating new paper from Columbia about how poverty in the US is undercounted. 

New Jersey just passed a suite of legislation designed to fight employee misclassification (but freelancer lobbying helped derail the AB5 companion bill that would have redefined independent contracting). 

Geeking Out

Check out this visual depiction of the distribution, by country, of the world’s wealth. Then ask yourself again, how can other countries provide health care and higher ed to their citizens, while in the US we’re always asked how to pay for it? 

Reputation, reputation, reputation

“We don’t trust our campus administration with the safe handling of this data, and even if we did, hackers or governments might force them to share this information, making students more unsafe.” Student groups are partnering with Fight for the Future to fight against the use of facial recognition technology by higher ed institutions. 

Is Airbnb using social monitoring software to decide whether or not you’re a psychopath? 

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

Today in “everything old is new again”—have you thought about renting a couch, instead of buying it outright? 

Indian trade unions just conducted one of the biggest strikes of all time, in response to Modi’s efforts to defang them.  And today, Indians are protesting Jeff Bezos in a speech there, while the Indian government investigates Amazon & Walmart for anti-competitive practices. 

From Partners

h/t to our friends at coworker. org, who put out this guide to supporting retail workers over the holidays. 

Raising the minimum wage by $1/hour results in fewer Americans committing suicide. It’s science. 

CWA has launched an effort to organize video game developers. 

What’s Going on in the Workforce

Cigna just became the first big US health insurance company to roll out access to primary care through telemedicine. Paging all health care regulators—the laws are not up to the technology, at the moment. 

In its continued fight against AB 5 compliance, Uber rolled out changes to the app on both the driver side and customer side, which are designed to give both sides more information about transactions (and ultimately to protect the company from claims of misclassification). 

The NY Times took a really excellent look at the impact of automation & app-based work on hospitality workers. 

Geeking Out

They may have taken our jobs, but now they’re losing theirs! Bay Area firms “lay off” robots. 

Organizing Theory

It’s always good to have something that you know from experience verified by academics. Protest waves do influence elections. 

Reputation, reputation, reputation

“In a recent experiment, the Harvard senior Max Weiss used a text-generation program to create 1,000 comments in response to a government call on a Medicaid issue. These comments were all unique, and sounded like real people advocating for a specific policy position. They fooled the Medicaid.gov administrators, who accepted them as genuine concerns from actual human beings. This being research, Weiss subsequently identified the comments and asked for them to be removed, so that no actual policy debate would be unfairly biased. The next group to try this won’t be so honorable.” Chatbots and AI could ruin our political discourse in new ways, soon. 

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

An alt-weekly in Akron, OH is becoming a community-owned paper, in order to survive. 

From Partners

Shout out to Micah Sifry from New York’s Civic Hall, for creating this civic health tracker for activists to use, to make sure that they’re not just armchairing it in 2020. 

What’s Going on in the Workforce

Amazon has threatened to fire employees for speaking out about the company’s impact on climate. 

Uber & Postmates have sued to overturn California’s new AB 5, which protects gig workers from misclassification. 

Geeking Out

Already stressed out by 2020? Watch some automatic harvesting of unidentified crops to unwind. 

Hack the Union will be on a holiday break until the New Year. Hope you all get plenty of rest, and time to do the things you enjoy with the people you love over the next two weeks.

Kati

From Partners

“First aid is not a substitute for professional diagnosis and treatment of repetitive trauma disorders…” As the last (?) of your holiday deliveries wing their way to you, take a minute to read this new report: Packaging Pain. 

What’s Going on in the Workforce

“Many sellers now have about as much relationship to the goods as commodity traders to do pork bellies, just directing goods from one company’s warehouse to another.” If you thought retail arbitrage on Amazon was weird, wait till you read about the “preppers” who get their goods ready for warehousing. 

Today in stuff economists tell us that we already know:  “the US labor market is nowhere near fully recovered from the Great Recession,” as told by the Job Quality Index. 

Uber Eats drivers in India are on an indefinite strike, while Uber is poised to sell their Eats business in India off to Zomato. 

I mean, OF COURSE the natural pivot for a business is to switch from building exoskeletons to providing data collection on workers’ bodies. 

Geeking Out

You know what I really don’t need? A shopping cart that checks out my groceries for me. 

Reputation, reputation, reputation

I cannot fathom what inspired someone at the NHS to think it was a good idea to give Amazon access to people’s health data. 

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

We spend a lot of time focusing on the dark side of tech (and humanity?) lately on this blog. For a cheery end to 2019, read this story, about a 19-year-old who coded an app to help his grandmother’s caregiving team—and is giving it away for free to others who need it.