Algorithms can be employed to sniff out desperation for income based on the extremes people are willing to take on the job, such as high trip acceptance rates among Uber drivers. With this hoard of granular information, A.I. can calculate the lowest possible pay that workers across sectors will tolerate and suggest incentives like bonuses to control their behavior. While bosses have always offered so-called variable pay—for instance, paying more for night shifts or offering performance-based salary boosts—high-tech surveillance coupled with A.I. is taking real-time tailored wages to new extremes.

“Now you have machine learning trained on identifying the desperation index of workers,” Zephyr Teachout, a professor of law at Fordham University, told me. “When you move to the formal employment context, there is every reason to think that employers who can would be interested in tailoring their wages and using behavioral data.”

The clearest parallels can be drawn in other independent contractor roles, which make up around 15 percent of U.S. workers. Dubal has found that independent contractors working with Instacart and Amazon are similarly surveilled and receive personalized pay based on information including the times of day and length of time they work, along with the types of tasks they’re willing to accept.

feel like I'm encounterimg tip requests with increasing frequency, but not jazzed about the prospect of adding a 20% charge at every point of sale.

On this day in 1898, the Battle of Virden began when armed members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) surrounded a train full of strikebreakers and exchanged fire with company guards. 13 people were killed, dozens more wounded.

After a local chapter of the UMW began striking at a mine in Virden, Illinois, the Chicago-Virden Coal Company hired black strikebreakers from Birmingham, Alabama and shipped them to Virden by train.

The company hired armed detectives or security guards to accompany the strikebreakers, and an armed conflict broke out when armed miners surrounded the train as it arrived in town. A total of four detectives and seven striking mine workers were killed, with five guards, thirty miners, and an unrecorded number of strikebreakers wounded.

After this incident, Illinois Governor John Tanner ordered the National Guard to prevent any more strikebreakers from coming into the state by force. The next month, the Chicago-Virden Coal Company relented and allowed the unionization of its workers.

"When the last call comes for me to take my final rest, will the miners see that I get a resting place in the same clay that shelters the miners who gave up their lives on the hills of Virden, Illinois...They are responsible for Illinois being the best organized labor state in America."

Mother Jones

• Oct. 12, 1898: Battle of Virden

• Battle of virden motherjonesmuseum

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The planemaker said the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers unit representing the workers had failed to bargain in good faith during the four-week work stoppage.

I'm not sure how much detail to give, I don't think anyone involved or in my town browses this website, but I don't want to give any specifics in case someone does a search and this shows up. Using an alt so I this won't be tied to my normal account. I'm probably posting more details than I should, so If you think I should delete something specific let me know.

First off: To anyone thinking of unionizing in the US, and are unsure of where to start, I recommend contacting EWOC. We had followed the typical guidelines of union formation: Stay secret and form an organizing committee from people representing as many areas of the store as you can (we got a signal chat and got consent from everyone before adding new people), map the store and figure out who we should absolutely not talk to, and then gauge support of the unionizing idea by having discreet convos with your coworkers as you feel comfortable, etc.

In our case we had trouble contacting unions, and got no repsonse from a lot of them. EWOC responded immediately and we got assigned a contact who helped us along with good advice and encouragement, and helped us settle on who to go with. They had just unionized an amazon warehouse they worked at, and they helped a lot when we had spent weeks getting frustrated with the lack of any response from unions.

When the time came to choose a union, it came down to a couple choices: UFCW and CWA. CWA doesn't typically unionize our type of workplace but they are branching out, and we've heard mixed things about UFCW so we were hesitant about them. Our contact at EWOC is a socialist and informed us that CWA has been spamming pro-biden/harris ads, while their UFCW local has refused to endorse because of the ongoing genocide. So that made things simple. UFCW it is.

I've worked at a local co-op for almost a decade. I started there thinking "aha! A co-op! This place will be much better than corporate!" and there are a lot of good things about it, but it was one of those co-ops formed by hippies way back when and who basically wanted natural foods and other hokum that tends to go along with that stuff. Basically a community owned whole foods type store. One of the cool things about it was that they were officially strongly pro LGBTQ and it was one of the founding values.

But it's a community co-op, not a workers co-op. Officially democratically run by the member-owners, but absolutely no democratic principles at play when it comes to managing the workforce, and over the years it's become obvious to me and a lot of other employees about how poorly managed it is. Lots of safety issues get ignored until someone gets hurt and the co-op is financially liable, lots of homophobic incidents get swept under the rug, managers are basically unaccountable to anyone underneath them unless they flagrantly violate labor law, etc. Your experience can be a good one if your manager likes you, if you are one of the favorites, but if not they can get away with almost anything and treat you like absolute shit.

Lately our general manager has been acting like a corrupt tyrant and their policies have caused numerous injuries and wide swaths of people to be put on disciplinary action for speaking up about working conditions, shockingly incompetent mismanagement, and transphobia in the workplace.

Upper management is tired of our complaints and has decided to crack down hard over the past few months for reasons detailed in the spoiler, and that has involved under-staffing the store to a dangerous degree and numerous injuries.

A lot us are fed up with it to the point that we are ready to burn the place to the ground, but since so many of the staff are fed up we have taken the more constructive path and started a union drive. We've been trying to keep it as secret as possible, but it becomes harder to maintain a lot of secrecy as you talk to more people. So management knows something is up, but not the extent of support.

There was one person from the organizing committee who was talking up the union and was getting people on board, and they just got fired for taking a long planned vacation. It’s all shady and most likely an unfair labor practice, but they aren’t pursuing action at this time. I wish they would, but they understandably want to just enjoy they time off at the moment. But they were friends with a small local online news reporter, and I guess the reporter decided it was time to publish news about the union because it relates to other drama involving the board of directors that has been making news here.

We really didn't want news of the union reported, and told them so, because with the way they've treated us this past year we were expecting them to go overboard with punishment and threats and didn't want to risk that bullshit yet, but management has taken the opposite approach and are now love-bombing us, LMAO.

Who knows how long it will last until they hire a union buster or something, and revert back to to making shit up to get us in trouble for, but since the news of a union drive is public they can't do anything flagrantly illegal without risk of the union we are working with hitting them with unfair labor practice charges, and since many of us have ongoing L&I claims, they can't retaliate without making it look like they are punishing us for being injured.

They are still in the dark about most of it, so we are sticking to our plan, but now we have the article to allow us to have conversations about the idea of a union with more people. It wasn't what we wanted, but it's going to work out. In the meantime we get the free pizza treatment.

This is a heavily unionized town with a strong majority of democrat to far left demographic. If they add union busting to the list of egregious behavior along with racism and transphobia, they are cooked. There is now also pressure for them to drop Israeli products because of the genocide, so that's something else they have to deal with.

We are absolutely going to win this thing and inshallah we’ll take down the people responsible for all this shit. I am doing everything in my power to make them suffer for it.

Not that its relevant anymore, but its a banger headline from fair and interesting article

linky

Hundreds of workers at the Samsung electronics factory in India’s Tamil Nadu state staged roadblocks and a sit-in on Monday, September 30 as their strike entered its fourth week. Thousands of cadres of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from across Tamil Nadu also joined the call of the Samsung workers and risked arrest and police repression.

According to the news reports, over 900 striking workers were detained by the police in the Kanchipuram district. The police also detained the state president of the Centre of Indian Trade Union (CITU), A Soundararajan. They were released later that evening.

Over 1,300 workers of Samsung electronics factory in Sriperumbudur, part of the Kanchipuram district near Chennai have been on strike since September 9 under the leadership of newly formed Samsung India Workers’ Union (SIWU) demanding recognition of their union, a salary increase, an end of discrimination, and better working conditions at the factory.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/30176676

Amazon‎ .com has been accused by a U.S. labor board of illegally refusing to bargain with a union representing drivers employed by a contractor, the agency announced on Wednesday.

The complaint from the National Labor Relations Board claims that Amazon is a so-called "joint employer" of drivers employed by the contractor, Battle Tested Strategies (BTS), and used a series of illegal tactics to discourage union activities at a facility in Palmdale, California.

BTS drivers voted to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union last year, becoming the first Amazon delivery contractors to unionize.

The NLRB in the complaint, which was issued on Monday, said Amazon broke the law by terminating its contract with BTS after the drivers unionized without first bargaining with the Teamsters.

linky

“Dating back to World War 1, the ILA was always proud to note that ‘ILA Also Means Love America’ when it came to its “No Strike Pledge” in handling U.S. military cargo at all its ports,” said ILA President Harold Daggett, who served in the U.S. Navy and saw combat duty during the Vietnam War. “We continue our pledge to never let our brave American troops down for their valour and service and we will proudly continue to work all military shipments beyond October 1st, even if we are engaged in a strike.”

The ILA’s Military Consultant, Gen. (Ret.) Tim McHale, weighed in on the ILA’s “No Strike Pledge” for U.S. Military cargo: “The U.S. Government representatives I have been engaging with are very happy and satisfied with the ILA who have always been there in tough situations, and always successfully accomplished the mission. Our U.S. Military knows that the ILA will conduct military load out operations even if there is a strike by ILA.”

critical support to their strike and all, but example of international solidarity this aint

I've seen a few posts recently expressing frustration with neurotypical people and the secret implications an interaction can have. This might be obvious to a lot of people but I've been trying to figure out how I can be useful to others.

Just got out of an "attendance discussion" (quotes because it was scheduled electronically with that title) because i had a week off from covid (tested and documented) after being injured and having my compo claim accepted.

I brought a notebook with a folder in it and a pen. I wrote down the date and time of the meeting and the people present.

Just presenting that you're keeping a record of things is enough to change the entire dynamic between you and a supervisor. Unless you're being managed by the owner of a small company your supervisor has a supervisor and so on. When you show them that you are taking notes you are also showing them that you would have more credibility in a dispute that goes above their head.

Even if you're the dishwasher's assistant and you bring out a ratty looking notepad and scrawl something in it when your boss calls you into the office for being late. "Arrived 2:07pm for afternoon dish shift, dishpit empty, meeting with dylan"

I don't want to ramble too much but beyond this specific scenario of being in trouble you can use it to empower yourself at work. Writing down every day that you work and the times you show up and leave can help you defend a shorted paycheque or let you fudge the numbers a bit and go home early without approval because you keep a record "it says i left at 10pm bro I don't remember leaving early"

Use your phone if you want but older people will not respect your notes as much because they perceive electronic records to be more susceptible to manipulation than pencil on paper because idk. Better than no record, though. Plus when someone asks what you're doing in your phone you can say oh I'm just writing something down.

That's the post thanks

In a state without a wage floor of its own, allowing employers to default to the federal wage floor of $7.25 per hour, ADOC collects 40 percent of the inmates’ gross paycheck. ADOC also deducts fees from the inmates’ paychecks to pay for transporting inmates between the prisons where they live and the “free world” jobs where they work, as well as washing their uniforms.

ADOC calls the whole scheme “convict leasing.” But given inmates’ inability to quit when they want to without repercussions behind bars, the system is closer to involuntary servitude — i.e., slavery.

Workers had sought a 40 percent wage rise, the restoration of a defined-benefit pension plan axed in 2014, and a stronger guarantee that future production would not be moved out of the Seattle region.

linky to cwa

Tens of thousands of disabled people in the United States are paid less than the federal minimum wage — with some workers making as little as 25 cents per hour.

These workers, most of whom have intellectual and developmental disabilities, are part of an arcane government program that is supposed to prepare them for higher-paying jobs in the community. But a Washington Post investigation has found that many disabled workers are paid low wages for years under a tangled bureaucracy that lacks accountability and oversight.

Jaime Muniz, 33, who has autism, was recently paid about $1.22 for every hour he spent at Pathways to Independence in Kearny, N.J., the facility where he has been working for 11 years. His tasks include sorting wire clothing hangers and unloading heavy boxes.

“I try to do better, and I’m not moving on,” Muniz said. “I don’t really know why.”

About 40,000 disabled people like Muniz work under the program, which was enacted in 1938 to provide jobs for injured veterans. Today, nearly 800 facilities in 37 states participate in what has become known as “14(c)” — a reference to Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows employers to apply for a certificate and legally pay disabled workers less than the $7.25 federal minimum wage.

At Pathways, where Muniz works, no workers have transitioned out of the program since 2020, said Alvin Cox, the executive director of the facility.

“Community integrated employment is not for everyone, but everyone should have the opportunity to try and experience the dignity of work,” Cox said. “These individuals need support and guidance to do the work that they’re doing.”

A 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office surveyed wage data from 2019 to 2021 and found that workers were typically making about $3.50 per hour, compared with a federal minimum wage of $7.25. About 12 percent made hourly wages of less than a dollar.

deeply cursed

The US government didn’t like that Jagan was a Marxist — it thought he would be another Fidel Castro, and it wanted to stop him at any cost. Usually folks in the left-labor movement think of general strikes as a positive thing, but in this case, a general strike secretly funded by the CIA, with US unions distributing the funds, undermined a left-wing government.

Similarly, in early-’70s Chile, Salvador Allende was in power. He was a Marxist, democratically elected, and believed in creating socialism through democracy — so he was seen as especially dangerous to anti-communists in the United States and in Latin America, because they relied on the trope that all communists were authoritarian dictators. The [Richard] Nixon administration wanted to create economic chaos in Chile, and part of that was achieved through a series of big strikes in industries including copper mining and trucking. These strikes also received funding, support, and training from the AFL-CIO, with many of the resources originating with the CIA. Those strikes were used as a pretext for the Chilean military under Augusto Pinochet to stage a coup in 1973 and overthrow Allende.

would be nice to read citations on this (of links between afl and striking chileans)

anyway la jacobina duality strikes again

John Maclean, born on this day in 1879, was a Scottish schoolteacher and revolutionary Marxist, sometimes referred to as "Scotland's Lenin". His Marxist evening-classes produced many of the activists who became instrumental in the Clyde revolts during and after WWI. MacLean was appointed both an Honorary President of the first Congress of Soviets and Soviet Consul to Scotland in recognition of his consistent socialist position on the imperialist war and his tireless work in support of the Bolshevik revolution.

Maclean's revolutionary politics were well-known, and in 1915, he was arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act and fired from his job as a primary school teacher. As a consequence, he became a full-time Marxist lecturer and organizer, educating other Glaswegian workers in Marxist theory.

Maclean supported Irish independence on an anti-imperialist basis, describing the Irish War of Independence as "The Irish fight for freedom" and even condoning the assassination of a magistrate, Alan Bell. He saw the war in Ireland as strengthening the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, arguing that "Irish Sinn Féiners, who make no profession of socialism or communism...are doing more to help Russia and the revolution than all we professed Marxian Bolsheviks in Britain".

MacLean was at odds with much of the British left and dismissive of the newly-formed Communist Party of Great Britain. He had already turned his back on economism and the syndicalism favoured by the Clyde Workers’ Committee, had recognised the nature of British imperialism and come to the conclusion that revolution could only come about through the destruction of the British Empire.

Maclean was also noted for his outspoken opposition to World War I, and, in 1918, he was arrested for sedition. During the trial, Maclean gave the now legendary "speech from the dock", expounding on his position. He was sentenced to five years' penal servitude, but was released after the November armistice.

In captivity, Maclean had been on hunger strike, and prolonged force-feeding had permanently affected his health. He collapsed during a speech and died of pneumonia, aged forty-four.

"I have taken up unconstitutional action at this time because of the abnormal circumstances and because precedent has been given by the British government. I am a socialist, and have been fighting and will fight for an absolute reconstruction of society for the benefit of all. I am proud of my conduct. I have squared my conduct with my intellect, and if everyone had done so this war would not have taken place...

...I appeal exclusively to [the working class] because they and they only can bring about the time when the whole world will be in one brotherhood, on a sound economic foundation. That, and that alone, can be the means of bringing about a re-organisation of society. That can only be obtained when the people of the world get the world, and retain the world." -

--John MacLean, from the "Dock Speech"

• John Maclean - revolutionary fighter of the working class

• John Maclean Archive

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The core organizing group is deciding who to organize with, and the main consideration is UFCW.

Good or no? Any other unions we should consider?

We're an independent retail store

All managers are bastards. Fuckers are causing injuries with malicious management tactics.