Tenth anniversary of the launch of TWA for Lionbridge

 On March 14, 2014 we started collecting cards to support the creation of a union for Tier1 employees. Story told in The other Microsoft. Or the  second edition. 10 years later, I wonder how tier1 employees are treated by Microsoft's suppliers.

A great story and victory : How two best friends beat Amazon

 Congrats people :) as told in the NYTimes

Next: how to extract a contract from Amazon. Best wishes.

Our pal Josh Eidelson's take. Yep. 'Bargaining in good faith'. Hopefully the media will keep watching/reporting and other Amazon warehouses will organize. Same as Starbucks but with much larger workforces involved. Wondering how the customers could show/express/ their support, how could shareholders do the same. Any 'progressives' holding shares of Amazon? That would be a cool move :)

A first look at the main shareholders. We'll have to look elsewhere: ICCR's collection of progressive proposals for Amazon. See copy of 6,7, 8, 10, 13,  proposals below 

Transfer of the Temporary Workers of America's archives to the Labor Archives of Washington

Today I gave away the archives of our union that filled a suitcase to Conor Casey who heads the Labor Archives of Washington hosted in the special collections at the University of Washington. "The Labor Archives of Washington collects, preserves, and makes accessible the records of working people in the Pacific Northwest and serves the labor movement by helping them preserve records of enduring value."

The New York Times takes on Facebook, Accenture and the way they exploit workers 'cleaning' horrible content

 Excellent article published on August 31, 2021. Confirms all that is showed in the two French films about the way Facebook and other mega firms operate.

Very interesting article about workers organizing 'independently' and apps that help them

 It's an article published in Vice by Lauren Kaori Gurley, titled "A new app is taking labor unions out of organizing". 

Mentioned in the article: Unit ... with a team of 3 people (for now or maybe there also 'contractors"?) Lauren writes  they "launched in December 2020 with $1.4 million in funding from various venture capital firm". It would be interesting to know a bit more about hose investors and where the money is going: it's a lot of money for such a small team (at this point).

Frank, based in Chicago, raised $2 million. 5 people (3 in technical jobs and no detail bio available)

Uniteonline  provides zero info on their website. 

Tentative bargaining agreement signed in Pittsburgh

 Kim Lyons reports on July 23 in The Verge. No details yet about the paid leaves negotiated. Let us hope their story does not end like our did after the bargaining agreement was signed. The ratification vote is scheduled for July 30. I wonder how the PTO negotiated compares with Microsoft's requirements for their suppliers.

I found out just now the agreement was ratified today, July 29. See the USW press release. Here is the text of the agreement (PDF), provided by USW (Thank you). It looks like they got 15 days PTO, 12 paid holidays and 12 weeks of paid parental leave. 

All our best wishes!

Microsoft's minimal requirements for PTO and paid parental leave:

April 2015, at least 15 days of PTO 

August 2018, minimum of 12 weeks of paid parental leave 

GHOST WORKERS: the web based proletariat exposed by this second French 2019 TV program and feature film

 Initially it is a September 2019 French TV program Cash Investigation that you can see on Youtube. It lasts 2 hours and contains several interviews in English. The producers have adapted a 52 minutes feature film format available on Vimeo (I have not seen it) with the title Ghost Workers. The program focuses on the bike riders for ubereats, the content reviewers working for Facebook via Accenture, labelers working for Google via Figure Eight. The segment about the Figure Eight CEO, Lucas Biewald is amazing, as is the quest to interview the CEO of Facebook France, running away (on camera) from the journalist trying to interview him. 

I have pointed where you can look for those segments in my notes below but I have not found the time to organize them better. Sorry. But this is worth seeing. It exposes the disgusting overexploitative side of AI and the millions made on the back of the ghost workers :(