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Tech NewsNews
Kickstarter Has Successfully Unionized
In a historic vote, crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has become the first major tech company to successfully form a union, with a narrow vote of 46 workers in favor and 37 against. “This is the future of tech. Workers are organizing around our values to build a stronger future,” Clarissa Redwine, a Kickstarter organizer who was … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsApple
Apple Probably Owes Some of Its Retail Employees a Ton of Money
The California Supreme Court sided with Apple Store employees in a ruling yesterday, stating that unpaid mandatory bag or iPhone searches at the end of retail workers’ shifts are a violation of state law. The class-action suit in question represents over 12,000 workers employed at the company’s retail locations from mid-2009 onward. Because Apple workers … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsPolitics
Oracle Employees Demand Larry Ellison Cancel Pro-Trump Fundraiser
News that billionaire and Oracle co-founder and executive chairman Larry Ellison plans to hold “Golf Outing and Reception” fundraiser at his home in support of Donald Trump’s reelection campaign roiled employees of the tech giant. Though it has well earned a reputation as among the least outspoken tech giants, Oracle’s employees today began circulating a … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsNews
‘Every Single Person Is Losing Money’: Shipt Is the Latest Gig Platform to Screw Its Workers
Shipt doesn’t command the name recognition of its main competitor, Instacart, nor the market share of Amazon Fresh or Walmart Grocery, for that matter. But unlike many gig work platforms, Shipt was transparent about pay and afforded its personal shoppers the chance to earn respectable wages. That came to a crashing halt late last month, … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech News
FTC Digging Into Big Tech’s Past for Possible Anticompetitive Mergers and Acquisitions
Adding to the already-considerable interest in antitrust enforcement against major US tech companies, the Federal Trade Commission today announced a Special Order demanding information from Apple, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook about their mergers and acquisitions over a ten year period. Although at this time the primary intention of the FTC is to perform research … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsNews
Things Aren’t Looking Good for Uber in California
California has been the legal beachhead of labor’s fight against gig work platforms, and unsurprisingly, Uber, Postmates, and other similar companies have done everything in their power to challenge having to reclassify their contract workforces as employees. But a ruling today in the state’s Central District Court suggests they may be headed for failure. What … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsAmazon
Amazon, Still Sore Over Lost $10 Billion JEDI Contract, Calls on Trump to Testify
The intentionally public feud between two powerful and deeply unlikeable men continues—this time over a lucrative government contract which was awarded to Amazon rival Microsoft in October. Who will win, and can it please be neither of them? The contract in question, Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), is more or less a Defense Department purchase … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsAmazon
Amazon Warehouse in Texas Was More Dangerous Than Working in a Prison—and It’s Gotten Worse, Leaked Documents Show
Mandatory injury reports Amazon submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have thus far painted a broad picture of its operations as unusually dangerous, well above the warehousing industry average. New logs obtained by Gizmodo for one of the company’s oldest warehouses in Texas show a meaningful increase in the rate at which its … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsTransportation
The MTA Is Dangling a Big Bag of Money in Front of Uber and Lyft
It’s been said that, despite a robust transit system, all New Yorkers do is complain about the subway. This is true! We like complaining. But every bit of bile stored for the next unplanned service outage is nothing compared to the gallons of piss and vinegar that should deservedly be poured onto the MTA’s pilot … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsAmazon
Amazon’s Tax Claims Are Riddled With Bullshit
Despite deserved outrage for paying effectively $0 in federal income taxes two years running, Amazon would like us to believe it has become a model corporate citizen. They even blogged about it! Unsurprisingly, the story Amazon weaves about itself is held together largely by half-truths and misrepresentation. “Amazon has a $15 minimum wage,” the post … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsNews
Rideshare Drivers From Around the World Are Coming Together, With Help From a Familiar Benefactor
As Uber, Lyft, and lesser-known transportation companies masquerading as tech firms have gradually squeezed savings out of their contingent workforces, those same contract drivers have gotten angry and organized. The first big mass action was a global strike in May of last year, kicked off by LA’s Rideshare Drivers United (RDU). On Thursday, many of … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsAmazon
Why Is OSHA Stonewalling Bernie Sanders on Amazon?
Lending political muscle to the concerning data acquired by Reveal and Gizmodo about abnormally high rates of workplace injuries at Amazon facilities, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ilhan Omar last month made a small request of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration: injury data for all of the company’s U.S.-based warehouses. That request was sent … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsNews
Okay, But Have You Tried Just Making Them Employees?
Uber is still doing everything in its power to fight the implication of California’s new independent contractor law, likely working its developers into the ground to roll out product features designed not to improve driver or rider experience, but to create flimsy legal defenses against an increasingly indefensible business model. You’d think there’d be an … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech News
DoorDash Contractors Earn Less Than Dogshit, Study Finds
Delivery platform DoorDash has been at the top of the public’s most hated gig economy value extraction firms for some time, owing largely to its prior policy of subsidizing its wages with customers’ tips. According to a study released today, even with that policy repealed, the efficiency of DoorDash’s race-to-the-bottom pay structure nets workers an … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsNews
Travelers to This Sleepy Airport Have Voluntarily Thrown Away Nearly 40 Pounds of Weed
Who, the world collectively asked, would willingly throw out perfectly good weed? As it turns out—kind of a lot of people. Cannabis legislation in the United States is, tactfully, a patchwork. A growing number of states—including Illinois—have legalized weed for recreational or medical use, though federally, the kind bud remains a Schedule 1 narcotic, making … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsFacebook
Facebook Guy Confused About Lord of the Rings, Many Other Subjects
Getting answers is, in part, what journalism is about, so it gives me no pleasure to state upfront that I have none where Facebook hardware czar and resident loudmouth Andrew “Boz” Bosworth’s recent staff memo is concerned. The needlessly long, meandering note—first obtained by the New York Times and later posted by Boz himself to … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsPrivacy and Security
Which Lucky Surveillance Device Owner Has Footage of Ring’s CEO Crying?
We don’t have time to get into the myriad reasons the Amazon-owned surveillance camera company Ring is a wildly insecure harbinger of an increasingly unpreventable techno-dystopian police state. What we need in this moment is just and swift teamwork: to determine who (if anyone) has footage of Ring’s CEO allegedly having a big long cry. … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech News
Open Channel: The Best Tweets of the Decade That Still Haven’t Been Deleted
Over a decade in, the value proposition of Twitter as a medium is murky, not easily defined—though one area it undoubtedly excels is allowing important people to show every embarrassing contour of their entire ass to the rest of the world. Albeit buried under months or years of less interesting posts, miraculously, many of these … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
Oh Good, the New Police Surveillance Vector Is Self-Driving Cars
Technologists have long speculated on the privacy implications of largely ungoverned, camera-enabled vehicle fleets roaming the roads of America. Now we’ve finally bumped up against the tip of that particularly worrying iceberg. With the help of a judge-signed search warrant, police in Chandler, Arizona, obtained footage from one of Google’s Waymo-branded autonomous vehicles in the … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsAmazon
That’s How It’s Done
“If we don’t get it, shut it down” is a staple call-and-response of worker protests for good reason. Even without a clear antecedent, the meaning is obvious to bosses: these are out demands. Meet them, or you may find the usual means of extracting profit difficult. This week, Amazon saw the outcomes it set itself … Continued
By Avery Ellis