#Labor and Workplace Reporting

[marinamitu-blog]

Covid-19: Cause of Critical Concern to Workers

In this corona crisis, the whole country is under lockdown and a general holiday has been declared. Most people are staying at home to prevent the infection from spreading. While a lot are fine staying at home and some are enjoying their time spent with their family, for some this is not the case of just staying home to relax with their family. For some it is a life and death struggle to stay at home without proper work and an empty stomach.

Kuddus is working as a security guard in Dhaka and has to stay at the workplace for the convenience of the people living in the building he is guarding. Thus he is staying alone here without his family. As he is living here alone, he has to go out for buying groceries for himself. He is worried about his health, but more than that he is worried about his family in the village as they are solely dependent on him. “It is harder to send money at home as there are less Bikas agents around. It takes few days to find an agent, I am very worried about my family”, says Kuddus.

Kuddus isn’t the only one. Many workers are facing such problems during this covid-19 pandemic. Due to the Corona crisis, many factories and businesses are closed. Some of them are unsure if they will be able to continue further even if the lockdown has withdrawn. Some workers are having financial crisis because of not getting payment properly as their employers are unable to pay properly. Abdul Baten who is working in a garments factory as a cutting master, is having trouble with his finances as he didn’t get his full wage. He received only half of his payment. This is causing trouble for him to provide for his family properly. He is worried about daily needs, especially when Eid is nearing. He is not even sure when he will get the rest of the salary let alone the Eid bonus. He is still required to pay the house rent. As the factories are open and operating, he and the other RMG workers are needed to go to work. He claims, “In the factory there isn’t any special precautions for corona and it is not possible to maintain social distance at the time of work”. In a research on Bangladesh apparel workers it is claimed that, “The factories can’t pay the workers’ salaries in this critical situation. Therefore, millions of workers have been sent home without their wages.”

This is not the case of only garments workers. Another joint survey of the Power and Participation Research Centre and BRAC Institute of Governance and Development reveals that, per capita daily income of urban slum and rural poor drops by 80% due to present countrywide shutdown enforced by the government to halt the spread of Covid-19. It also shows that 40%-50% of these people took loans to meet the daily expenses.

Sumon is working in a gold workshop as a gold smith. In normal times he makes a decent income and during the Eid season they have a lot of work. But due to the Covid-19 crisis and the lockdown all the gold shops are closed and there is no sell. Sumon says that in the time when they were supposed to get more money and bonus incomes, they are facing the threats of keeping their jobs. After all if there is no work there is no income for them as they earn on the base of their work. Al-Amin who is working as a driver and like Kuddus he is staying at home alone as his family is at the village. But unlike Kuddus he is not staying in Dhaka for the sake of work rather he couldn’t go home to his family because of the lockdown as moving from one place to another is not possible. Even though he is still in the city, his employers are not giving him any duty and are telling him to stay at home. When asked about what he was doing to stay safe from corona virus, he said that he is staying home unless it is necessary like shopping from groceries. He added that he is even praying at home instead of going to the mosque except for ‘Jumma’. He also said that he is maintaining cleanliness as well. When asked if his employers helped him to stay safe in this crisis time, he said that they gave him mask, gloves and sanitizers. They are also calling him regularly to check on him.

Like the employees the employers are also very concerned regarding the covid-19 virus and the lockdown. A lot of them are unable to run their businesses and only a few are able to run it in a limited range. A lot of them are unable to pay their employees salary; in fact some of them are unable to keep the workers and have to cut off some employees. Sahidullah, owner of Kazi Builders, a construction business, has sent his entire workers home as all the construction sites are closed due to the pandemic. He said, “All the construction sites are closed and the workers are off duty. I have paid their wage but I am unable to pay any bonus for the Eid. I can barely manage myself, but the payments will not come unless the constructions are finished. The more delayed the constructions are the costlier it will get. So in the future I might not be able to higher same amount of workers as before”. Babul, a construction worker under Sahidullah said that they are very worried, as this lockdown has taken away their income source as all the construction projects have closed down for the time being. “If we cannot work, we will not have the money to support our families. Our employer is helping us now but if the construction is closed for longer than he won’t be able to help either. This is scarier than the virus. The virus can kill us but starving to death is worse than corona for us”, said Babul.

Not just factories and businesses but those who entirely depend on house rent for their income are also facing problems. Nasrin Ara has few houses of her own and is solely dependent on the rent for her income. But due to this Corona crisis, many of her tenants are unable to pay the rent properly. Among the 48 of her tenants, only eight of them paid the rent fully. Some of them paid the half. Even some of the tenants have left because of losing her job. She said, “This is a criticaltime where we cannot pressure the people to give the rents. But we have to go on too. This is our only income source. I have already reduced the rent of this month. I am even not sure how I will pay the security guard, cleaner and the other employees next month. I have already cut off their bonus for Eid but if this continues I might not be able to keep them in their post.” A lot of her tenants are RMG workers and most of them have their factories open. They have to go for work every day. As a result, she is also concerned about the spreading of the infection.

Not only just Kuddus or Baten, there are people many workers like them who are suffering mentally and financially in this pandemic of Covid-19. There are also many people like Nasrin and Sahidullah who are also helpless and are unable to keep the workers working under them to their jobs. If a solution to this situation is not found soon many more are going to end up worse than them.

[theautumnriverleaves]

working for family is funny because my mother will often say "i can't wait for you to get another job and see how good you have it here" as if 1) i don't currently work two jobs and therefore know what other workplaces are like in 2024 and 2) she straight up doesnt give me breaks when we get in fights

[gynoidgearhead]

What the actual fuck, isn't it de facto job discrimination to ask job applicants if they have a disability? That should absolutely be illegal, regardless of whether or not it presently is - and a cursory search suggests that it is, and that most employers are violating the law.

Our labor protections continue to be enormously inadequate.

[theonion]

Calling the findings of its comprehensive survey of American workplace practices “total bullshit,” the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment issued a report Monday concluding that you should be able to retire after, like, six years of working full time. “We evaluated the data around current U.S. employment rates, and our research shows that it’s basically crazy that we have to waste our whole damn lives working before we can retire,” said report co-author Sarah Middleton, who explained that six years is actually a really long time and that it sounds like more than enough labor for one person. “Our research found that people have to work and stuff or else nothing would get done, but anything more than half a decade or so seems cruel and excessive. That has to be hundreds of hours of work, right? And after consulting with experts across the field, we determined that six years was a totally reasonable amount of time to pay your dues before you get to kick back and chill.

Full Story

[ohnoitstbskyen]

I deleted the ask, but someone wrote one basically saying "why do you post reaction videos to Helluva Boss? Don't you know the show exploits its workers and they're overworked and get burned out?"

And, I mean, I love your energy, person who asked, definitely hold on to those values and speak up about this. But also, I am afraid I might have some bad news for you about literally the whole entire animation industry.

As near as I can make out from the sparse journalistic reporting that's been done on SpindleHorse -- and as a sidebar, please for the love of god read actual reporting about these things and not just callout posts and fandom discourse -- as near as I can make out, SpindleHorse as a studio is neither all that much better nor all that much worse than basically anywhere else in the industry on their level. It seems like it is (or was? Hazbin Hotel seems to be run differently) a studio mostly run by contracting people on a project-by-project basis, which leads to a crapton of turnover, and a huge need for organizing and onboarding, which according to the reporting I have read, the producers and freelancers have struggled to balance and manage properly, which has negatively impacted a number of the workers.

Top that with the usual catty, clique-based backbiting, sniping and poorly managed conflict resolution that's just kinda endemic in creative environments mostly staffed by twentysomethings and stressed out freelancers, and you have the recipe for a workplace where a lot of people are going to have a great time and feel creatively fulfilled, and a lot of people are going to come away feeling justifiably burnt the fuck out and exploited.

All of this is... not especially unusual for the animation industry, or indeed for any creative industry. Which is not to say that it is good, or that it should be allowed to be normal, or that it shouldn't be reported on and criticized (and please for the love of god support unionization efforts because that's the only thing that will actually address these kinds of systemic problems). It's just to say that if those kinds of issues are the line in the sand you draw where you refuse to engage with a studio's output...

Then, for starters, say goodbye to basically all of anime, because the Japanese animation industry is actively in a state of crisis trying to recruit new talent because its working conditions and pay are so astonishingly abysmal. And the horror stories that escape from that industry make the issues at SpindleHorse look like summer camp at times.

But you also have to say goodbye to a lot of American and European animation. Please do not imagine that Disney and its subcontractors, or that Nickelodeon or Warner Bros, are benevolent employers. They exploit their staff brutally and are currently trying to crush the labor value of animation with threats of generative AI being used to replace jobs. But those corporations also have extremely well-funded PR departments and the ability to silence employees with NDAs and threats of blackballing, so you don't get to hear as many of the horror stories as you might from a smaller independent studio that's less able to silence criticism by holding people's careers hostage.

All of this is to say that 1) it's valid and important to have criticism of both large and small-scale animation studios, and to keep the well-being and happiness of the workers higher in your priorities than the output of Products™.

And 2) if you're going to have a principle for what kinds of problems make a studio's output morally untouchable for you, and what kinds of problems you think should make a studio's output untouchable to other people, you do need to apply that principle consistently to the entire industry, and not just to the independent animation studio that happens to be surrounded by the internet's most inflammatory fandom discourse.

If you don't apply that principle consistently, maybe don't send reproachful messages to strangers scolding them for not living up to your standards, and even if you do apply that principle consistently, maybe still don't do that, because it's mostly quite annoying, and doesn't really do anything to support animation workers struggling for better working conditions.

The Animation Guild in the US is currently in the middle of a bargaining process with their industry, and they have a social media press kit as well as relevant talking points on their website which you can use to post in solidarity with the workers. If it comes to a full industry strike, consider donating to their strike funds to help them maintain pressure. Outside of the US, try and find out what (if any) local unions exist for animation workers, and maybe sign up to their mailing lists. They will let you know what kind of support they need from you.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Reverse engineers bust sleazy gig work platform

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/23/hack-the-class-war/#robo-boss

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION

Supposedly, these lines were included in a 1979 internal presentation at IBM; screenshots of them routinely go viral:

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1385565737167724545?lang=en

The reason for their newfound popularity is obvious: the rise and rise of algorithmic management tools, in which your boss is an app. That IBM slide is right: turning an app into your boss allows your actual boss to create an "accountability sink" in which there is no obvious way to blame a human or even a company for your maltreatment:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

App-based management-by-bossware treats the bug identified by the unknown author of that IBM slide into a feature. When an app is your boss, it can force you to scab:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

Or it can steal your wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But tech giveth and tech taketh away. Digital technology is infinitely flexible: the program that spies on you can be defeated by another program that defeats spying. Every time your algorithmic boss hacks you, you can hack your boss back:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to

Technologists and labor organizers need one another. Even the most precarious and abused workers can team up with hackers to disenshittify their robo-bosses:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

For every abuse technology brings to the workplace, there is a liberating use of technology that workers unleash by seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

One tech-savvy group on the cutting edge of dismantling the Torment Nexus is Algorithms Exposed, a tiny, scrappy group of EU hacker/academics who recruit volunteers to reverse engineer and modify the algorithms that rule our lives as workers and as customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Algorithms Exposed have an admirable supply of seemingly boundless energy. Every time I check in with them, I learn that they've spun out yet another special-purpose subgroup. Today, I learned about Reversing Works, a hacking team that reverse engineers gig work apps, revealing corporate wrongdoing that leads to multimillion euro fines for especially sleazy companies.

One such company is Foodinho, an Italian subsidiary of the Spanish food delivery company Glovo. Foodinho/Glovo has been in the crosshairs of Italian labor enforcers since before the pandemic, racking up millions in fines – first for failing to file the proper privacy paperwork disclosing the nature of the data processing in the app that Foodinho riders use to book jobs. Then, after the Italian data commission investigated Foodinho, the company attracted new, much larger fines for its out-of-control surveillance conduct.

As all of this was underway, Reversing Works was conducting its own research into Glovo/Foodinho's app, running it on a simulated Android handset inside a PC so they could peer into app's data collection and processing. They discovered a nightmarish world of pervasive, illegal worker surveillance, and published their findings a year ago in November, 2023:

https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/Exercising%20workers%20rights%20in%20algorithmic%20management%20systems_Lessons%20learned%20from%20the%20Glovo-Foodinho%20digital%20labour%20platform%20case_2023.pdf

That report reveals all kinds of extremely illegal behavior. Glovo/Foodinho makes its riders' data accessible across national borders, so Glovo managers outside of Italy can access fine-grained surveillance information and sensitive personal information – a major data protection no-no.

Worse, Glovo's app embeds trackers from a huge number of other tech platforms (for chat, analytics, and more), making it impossible for the company to account for all the ways that its riders' data is collected – again, a requirement under Italian and EU data protection law.

All this data collection continues even when riders have clocked out for the day – its as though your boss followed you home after quitting time and spied on you.

The research also revealed evidence of a secretive worker scoring system that ranked workers based on undisclosed criteria and reserved the best jobs for workers with high scores. This kind of thing is pervasive in algorithmic management, from gig work to Youtube and Tiktok, where performers' videos are routinely suppressed because they crossed some undisclosed line. When an app is your boss, your every paycheck is docked because you violated a policy you're not allowed to know about, because if you knew why your boss was giving you shitty jobs, or refusing to show the video you spent thousands of dollars making to the subscribers who asked to see it, then maybe you could figure out how to keep your boss from detecting your rulebreaking next time.

All this data-collection and processing is bad enough, but what makes it all a thousand times worse is Glovo's data retention policy – they're storing this data on their workers for four years after the worker leaves their employ. That means that mountains of sensitive, potentially ruinous data on gig workers is just lying around, waiting to be stolen by the next hacker that breaks into the company's servers.

Reversing Works's report made quite a splash. A year after its publication, the Italian data protection agency fined Glovo another 5 million euros and ordered them to cut this shit out:

https://reversing.works/posts/2024/11/press-release-reversing.works-investigation-exposes-glovos-data-privacy-violations-marking-a-milestone-for-worker-rights-and-technology-accountability/

As the report points out, Italy is extremely well set up to defend workers' rights from this kind of bossware abuse. Not only do Italian enforcers have all the privacy tools created by the GDPR, the EU's flagship privacy regulation – they also have the benefit of Italy's 1970 Workers' Statute. The Workers Statute is a visionary piece of legislation that protects workers from automated management practices. Combined with later privacy regulation, it gave Italy's data regulators sweeping powers to defend Italian workers, like Glovo's riders.

Italy is also a leader in recognizing gig workers as de facto employees, despite the tissue-thin pretense that adding an app to your employment means that you aren't entitled to any labor protections. In the case of Glovo, the fine-grained surveillance and reputation scoring were deemed proof that Glovo was employer to its riders.

Reversing Works' report is a fascinating read, especially the sections detailing how the researchers recruited a Glovo rider who allowed them to log in to Glovo's platform on their account.

As Reversing Works points out, this bottom-up approach – where apps are subjected to technical analysis – has real potential for labor organizations seeking to protect workers. Their report established multiple grounds on which a union could seek to hold an abusive employer to account.

But this bottom-up approach also holds out the potential for developing direct-action tools that let workers flex their power, by modifying apps, or coordinating their actions to wring concessions out of their bosses.

After all, the whole reason for the gig economy is to slash wage-bills, by transforming workers into contractors, and by eliminating managers in favor of algorithms. This leaves companies extremely vulnerable, because when workers come together to exercise power, their employer can't rely on middle managers to pressure workers, deal with irate customers, or step in to fill the gap themselves:

https://projects.itforchange.net/state-of-big-tech/changing-dynamics-of-labor-and-capital/

Only by seizing the means of computation, workers and organized labor can turn the tables on bossware – both by directly altering the conditions of their employment, and by producing the evidence and tools that regulators can use to force employers to make those alterations permanent.

Image: EFF (modified) https://www.eff.org/files/issues/eu-flag-11_1.png

CC BY 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[reasonsforhope]

"Millions of Australians just got official permission to ignore their bosses outside of working hours, thanks to a new law enshrining their "right to disconnect."

The law doesn't strictly prohibit employers from calling or messaging their workers after hours. But it does protect employees who "refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact or attempted contact outside their working hours, unless their refusal is unreasonable," according to the Fair Work Commission, Australia's workplace relations tribunal.

That includes outreach from their employer, as well as other people "if the contact or attempted contact is work-related."

The law, which passed in February, took effect on Monday [August 26, 2024] for most workers and will apply to small businesses of fewer than 15 people starting in August 2025. It adds Australia to a growing list of countries aiming to protect workers' free time.

"It's really about trying to bring back some work-life balance and make sure that people aren't racking up hours of unpaid overtime for checking emails and responding to things at a time when they're not being paid," said Sen. Murray Watt, Australia's minister for employment and workplace relations.

The law doesn't give employees a complete pass, however...

"If it was an emergency situation, of course people would expect an employee to respond to something like that," Watt said. "But if it's a run-of-the-mill thing … then they should wait till the next work day, so that people can actually enjoy their private lives, enjoy time with their family and their friends, play sport or whatever they want to do after hours, without feeling like they're chained to the desk at a time when they're not actually being paid, because that's just not fair."

Protections aim to address erosion of work-life balance

The law's supporters hope it will help solidify the boundary between the personal and the professional, which has become increasingly blurry with the rise of remote work since the COVID-19 pandemic.

A 2022 survey by the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute, a public policy think tank, found that seven out of 10 Australians performed work outside of scheduled working hours, with many reporting experiencing physical tiredness, stress and anxiety as a result.

The following year, the institute reported that Australians clocked an average of 281 hours of unpaid overtime in 2023. Valuing that labor at average wage rates, it estimated the average worker is losing the equivalent of nearly $7,500 U.S. dollars each year.

"This is particularly concerning when worker's share of national income remains at a historically low level, wage growth is not keeping up with inflation, and the cost of living is rising," it added.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions hailed the new law as a "cost-of-living win for working people," especially those in industries like teaching, community services and administrative work.

The right to disconnect, it said, will not only cut down on Australians' unpaid work hours but also address the "growing crisis of increasing mental health illness and injuries in modern workplaces."

"More money in your pocket, more time with your loved ones and more freedom to live your life — that's what the right to disconnect is all about," ACTU President Michele O’Neil said in a statement.

The 2022 Australia Institute survey... found broad support for a right to disconnect.

Only 9% of respondents said such a policy would not positively affect their lives. And the rest cited a slew of positive effects, from having more social and family time to improved mental health and job satisfaction. Thirty percent of respondents said it would enable them to be more productive during work hours.

Eurofound, the European Union agency for the improvement of living and working conditions, said in a 2023 study that workers at companies with a right to disconnect policy reported better work-life balance than those without — 92% versus 80%."

-via GoodGoodGood, August 26, 2024

[follow-up-news]

A Senate committee investigation accused the nation's largest online retailer Amazon of putting workers at risk of injury in the name of speed — while manipulating workplace injury data to portray its warehouses as safer than they truly are. The findings were released late Sunday by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. The report stems from an 18-month investigation that reviewed seven years of Amazon workplace injury data and interviewed over 130 Amazon workers. It found that despite Amazon's claims of safe working conditions, company data showed that its warehouses have "significantly higher" injury rates than both the industry average and non-Amazon warehouses. More specifically, over the past seven years, Amazon workers were nearly twice as likely to be injured compared to workers at other warehouses in the sector. The report also found in 2023, Amazon warehouses recorded more than 30% more injuries than the industry average.

[iww-gnv]

American workers are dying, local businesses are reporting a drop in productivity, and the country's economy is losing billions all because of one problem: the heat. July was the hottest month on record on our planet, according to scientists. This entire summer, so far, has been marked by scorching temperatures for much of the U.S. South, with the thermometer reaching triple digits in several places in Texas between June and July. In that same period, at least two people died in the state while working under the stifling heat enveloping Texas, a 35-year-old utility lineman, and a 66-year-old USPS carrier. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 36 work-related deaths due to environmental heat exposure in 2021, the latest data available. This was a drop from 56 deaths in 2020, and the lowest number since 2017. "Workers who are exposed to extreme heat or work in hot environments may be at risk of heat stress," Kathleen Conley, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told Newsweek. "Heat stress can result in heat stroke, heat exhaustion, heat cramps, or heat rashes. Heat can also increase the risk of injuries in workers as it may result in sweaty palms, fogged-up safety glasses, and dizziness. Burns may also occur as a result of accidental contact with hot surfaces or steam." While there is a minimum working temperature in the U.S., there's no maximum working temperature set by law at a federal level. The CDC makes recommendations for employers to avoid heat stress in the workplace, but these are not legally binding requirements. The Biden administration has tasked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) with updating its worker safety policies in light of the extreme heat. But the federal standards could take years to develop—leaving the issue in the hands of individual states. Things aren't moving nearly as fast as the emergency would require—and it's the politics around the way we look at work, the labor market, and the rights of workers in the U.S. that is slowing things down.

[metamatar]

The women in science discourse has been haunted by a path of “relentless linear progressivism” as the result of particular discursive formations (Garforth and Kerr 2009). [...] The shift from exclusion to inclusion is marked by a shift from exclusion based on claims of the innate biological inferiority of women’s scientific abilities to a politics of inclusion dominated by policies that address women’s biological bodies and gendered roles as wives, daughters, and mothers. Consistent with other segments of the labor market, in considering the various barriers facing women, women scientists most often cite the need to balance career and family (Rosser 2004b). Interviews, case studies, and statistical research consistently find that individuals report that family/work balance discriminates against women scientists at structural, institutional, and individual levels (Rosser 2004b, Rosser and Taylor 2009). The personal choices, relationships, and responsibilities of women outside the halls of science (especially as wives, mothers, and daughters) have nurtured and supported women’s scientific work but also stymied and curtailed careers (Kohlstedt 2004, Zuckerman and Cole 1991, Laslett and Thorne 1997). Pregnancies, childcare, and housework have always largely fallen within the domain of women’s work and women’s roles as wives and mothers, and so have been consistently highlighted as a reason for women’s lack of equal participation (Long 2001, Mason and Goulden 2004, Xie and Shauman 2003).

These concerns have led to a push in “female-friendly” policies. Despite their progressive ambitions, emphasizing issues of reproduction and family, advocates of “family-friendly” policies reassert women’s reproductive potential as a central concern, marking “female difference” as hypervisible while leaving the worlds of masculine epistemic cultures untouched. To be sure, it is neither desirable nor persuasive to articulate an “anti-family-friendly” perspective at this moment in time, but as a strategy for inclusion, the consistent emphasis on family and women reinforces essentialist ideas about women. What has remained unchallenged is the normative model of the male as the ideal scientist, which insists on a productivity that can only be achieved by very long hours, a singular dedication to work, and an exclusive focus on one’s profession. Solutions have included mentoring women to negotiate the normative model, promoting those who accept the normative model, retaining women through “special accommodations” that increase their workplace flexibility (part-time appointments with administrative or teaching responsibilities), automatic pregnancy leave, and family leave. The original standards for excellence are never challenged; the solution is about helping women conform to them.

Banu Subramaniam, Women In Science

[feminist-space]

"Now, already experiencing the clawing pangs of contractions, she pulled out a frozen pizza and a salad with creamy everything dressing, savoring the hush that fell over the house, the satisfying crunch of the poppy seeds as she ate.

Horton didn’t realize that she would be drug tested before her child’s birth. Or that the poppy seeds in her salad could trigger a positive result on a urine drug screen, the quick test that hospitals often use to check pregnant patients for illicit drugs.

Many common foods and medications — from antacids to blood pressure and cold medicines — can prompt erroneous results.

The morning after Horton delivered her daughter, a nurse told her she had tested positive for opiates. Horton was shocked. She hadn’t requested an epidural or any narcotic pain medication during labor — she didn’t even like taking Advil. “You’re sure it was mine?” she asked the nurse.

If Horton had been tested under different circumstances — for example, if she was a government employee and required to be tested as part of her job — she would have been entitled to a more advanced test and to a review from a specially trained doctor to confirm the initial result.

But as a mother giving birth, Horton had no such protections. The hospital quickly reported her to child welfare, and the next day, a social worker arrived to take baby Halle into protective custody.

...

To report this story, The Marshall Project interviewed dozens of patients, medical providers, toxicologists and other experts, and collected information on more than 50 mothers in 22 states who faced reports and investigations over positive drug tests that were likely wrong. We also pored over thousands of pages of policy documents from every state child welfare agency in the country.

Problems with drug screens are well known, especially in workplace testing. But there’s been little investigation of how easily false positives can occur inside labor and delivery units, and how quickly families can get trapped inside a system of surveillance and punishment.

Hospitals reported women for positive drug tests after they ate everything bagels and lemon poppy seed muffins, or used medications including the acid reducer Zantac, the antidepressant Zoloft and labetalol, one of the most commonly prescribed blood pressure treatments for pregnant women.

After a California mother had a false positive for meth and PCP, authorities took her newborn, then dispatched two sheriff’s deputies to also remove her toddler from her custody, court records show. In New York, hospital administrators refused to retract a child welfare report based on a false positive result, and instead offered the mother counseling for her trauma, according to a recording of the conversation. And when a Pennsylvania woman tested positive for opioids after eating pasta salad, the hearing officer in her case yelled at her to “buck up, get a backbone, and stop crying,” court records show. It took three months to get her newborn back from foster care.

Federal officials have known for decades that urine screens are not reliable. Poppy seeds — which come from the same plant used to make heroin — are so notorious for causing positives for opiates that last year the Department of Defense directed service members to stop eating them. At hospitals, test results often come with warnings about false positives and direct clinicians to confirm the findings with more definitive tests.

Yet state policies and many hospitals tend to treat drug screens as unassailable evidence of illicit use, The Marshall Project found. Hospitals across the country routinely report cases to authorities without ordering confirmation tests or waiting to receive the results."

Read the full piece here: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/09/09/drug-test-pregnancy-pennsylvania-california

[autisticadvocacy]

"However, for disabled people, the labor market has never really worked and continues to showcase the persistence of systemic ableism."

[vague-humanoid]

Elon Musk had no business sending Twitter employees an email giving them 24 hours to click "yes" to keep their jobs or else voluntarily resign during his takeover in 2022, an Irish workplace watchdog ruled Monday.

Not only did the email not provide staff with enough notice, the labor court ruled, but also any employee's failure to click "yes" could in no way constitute a legal act of resignation. Instead, the court reviewed evidence alleging that the email appeared designed to either get employees to agree to new employment terms, sight unseen, or else push employees to volunteer for dismissal during a time of mass layoffs across Twitter.

"Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore," Musk wrote in the all-staff email. "This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade."

With the subject line, "A Fork in the Road," the email urged staff, "if you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below. Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance. Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful."

In a 73-page ruling, an adjudication officer for the Irish Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), Michael MacNamee, ruled that Twitter's abrupt dismissal of an Ireland-based senior executive, Gary Rooney, was unfair, the Irish public service broadcaster RTÉ reported. Rooney had argued that his contract clearly stated that his resignation must be provided in writing, not by refraining to fill out a form.

[warabidakihime]

One More Day

★ characters: dazai x reader | fluff x smut x comfort

★ plot summary: Another day, another opportunity for you and your boyfriend, who is equally broken, to conquer the world.

★ content warnings : mentions of su!cide, can be psychologically triggering, smut.

-

It's three o'clock in the afternoon, and a serene silence has engulfed the whole workplace of the armed detective agency. All you can hear is the sound of fingers tapping away on the keyboard, fresh breezes passing by through the half-open window across the room, and, last but not least, Kunikida and Dazai's never-ending banter.

You're at your desk, as usual, finishing a report that Kunikida had asked you to do on his behalf as his plate is already full. He and Dazai just completed handling a very complicated case, and now you're just summarizing everything for documentation purposes, as required by the client. 

They didn't exactly impose a timeframe, but knowing Kunikida, he wants to accomplish the work as quickly as possible so you can proceed on to the next one.

As you continued to type on your computer, you felt a shadow fall over you and two hands on your shoulder.

You didn't have to turn around to see who it was, so you continued on with your work without pausing.

As your lovely boyfriend proceeded to indulge you with a shoulder massage while watching you work diligently, a smile slowly dawned on your face.

“Aren't you working way too hard, Y/N-chan? If you keep up this pace, you'll become a second kunikida."

Kunikida glared at Dazai from his desk. "Shouldn't you be working? Have you finished your report?"

"Nope!" said the flamboyant investigator, to which his colleague scowled at him as a reply.

"You really should stop procrastinating, you know?" you joked, and then your boyfriend dramatically recovered his hand and placed it over his face as if he were in a theatrical play. 

"Oh, Belladonna, why must you subject me to tedious labor?"

"Because it's part of your job, dumbass; did you even start?"

"Nope," Dazai said with a huge smile, to which you deadpanned.

From the corner of your eye, you noticed Atsushi doing the same thing, which caused you to giggle.

"You're hopeless; I have my own pile to attend to, so I won't be able to assist you this time."

"Can you resist me, though?"

"Occasionally," you said, with a knowing smile on your face.

Dazai mimicked your smile, caressed your face, and squeezed your cheeks, one of the few mannerisms he picked up after you two started dating.

"Only occasionally, because oftentimes you can't resist me and my charms."

He's not wrong, but you're not going to admit it, or it would feed his already huge ego. 

The man knows he's hot, and he knows the effect he has on people, particularly you.

"Go back to work, Osamu; if I finish my report early, I'll try to help you with yours; in the meantime, be on your best behavior at your workstation," you say, not glancing away from your laptop.

That seemed to have satiated your very needy boyfriend as he practically skipped back to his desk, but instead of behaving like you asked him to, he moved on to the next unfortunate person to bother, which is Atsushi, the newcomer.

He was the weretiger that you looked for everywhere for weeks. It was Dazai who found him. According to your boyfriend, the poor boy was kicked out by the caretakers of the orphanage he was staying at. 

As someone with a similar background, you instantly felt attached to the boy and immediately took him under your care.

Dazai was initially perplexed as to why you showered so much attention on him. He is aware of your past, but it surprised him that you would be so proactive in caring for Atsushi. A little part of him is even jealous of the fact that another person has your undivided attention.

"I guess I'll let it slide," Dazai joked after seeing you hold a weeping Atsushi after the Port Mafia attacked your headquarters for the umpteenth time. He was somewhere else when it happened, so when he returned and spotted you being intimate with someone else, he was stunned to say the least.

Curiosity got the best of you when you heard Atsushi whining as your partner annoys him to no end. You then made the decision to take a glimpse at them. You couldn't help but laugh as you watched the two, since they're so entertaining to look at right now. Dazai was obviously playing the "annoying older brother," character while Atsushi was his victim of the day.

 *

Night came, and everyone else had gone home to their respective dorms except you and Dazai. Fortunately for him, you managed to finish your report, and so here you are, instead of relaxing at home, you’re helping him with his report.

Despite being exhausted from all of your mental gymnastics today, you still have a lot of energy. 

The biggest reason could be that you get to spend some alone time with your boyfriend. Though you'd go on dates regularly and you'd interact with one another at work, you cherish every moment you get to spend with him. 

Even more so when it's just the two of you.

"Are you finished yet?"

"Almost."

"You can write whatever you want; Kunikida-kun won't notice."

"I mean, if you want to have your ass whooped, be my guest," you chuckled.

Dazai chuckled, and since his chin was resting nicely on your shoulder, his breath tickled you a little bit. You instinctively reached out to him and caressed his cheeks before going up to his hair, to which your golden retriever of a boyfriend leaned towards your touch.

"What do you want for dinner?" You asked him softly

"Hmm... let's just buy something from the convenience store. My treat, take it as a thank you for finishing my report."

You rolled your eyes playfully, turned to look at him momentarily, and muttered, "Gee, thanks."

"You're welcome." He replied merrily.

Time passed quickly, and before you knew it, you were through with the report. After being nearly stuck to your chair all day, you let out a whimper as you stretched from your seat. The only times you stood up were when Yosano invited everyone to Uzumaki Café for a much-needed coffee break and for your bathroom breaks. 

While you were tending to your sore joints, you heard sounds of clapping. Slightly out of your mind due to fatigue, you thought an intruder had entered the ADA headquarters, but when you whipped your head to see who it was while getting into a fighting stance, you saw your idiotic boyfriend clapping as he emerged from the restroom.

You deadpanned, "What are you doing?"

"I'm giving you applause for a job well done!"

Tired of his childish jokes, you scowled at Dazai and said, "Gee, thanks. Hurry up, I want to go home and sleep."

Dazai approached you with eager, long strides and wrapped his long arms around you, his hands resting comfortably on each side of your hips. 

His voice brimmed with mirth as he murmured, "If looks could kill."

As soon as he began stroking your sides with his mischievous hands, you felt yourself loosening up in his grip.

The bandage-wasting detective effortlessly unraveled your neatly tucked-in dress shirt. You closed your eyes unconsciously and smiled softly. "I thought an intruder had broken in."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, so don't scare me like that; I could have roundhouse kicked you."

Dazai dipped his head and nestled in between the juncture of your neck, making you gasp slightly. Even more so after feeling his gentle lips touch your skin in a kiss: "That could have been bad, no?"

"Yeah?" you said, mimicking his voice, to which your boyfriend replied delightfully by nibbling on your neck, knowing fully well that it's one of your sensitive spots. 

And as soon as a moan erupted from your lips, a smirk dawned on Dazai's face; he was obviously satisfied with his handiwork as per usual.

"Yeah."

At this point, the detective has you caged between your desk and him, and one of his hands has shamelessly found its way under your pencil skirt, squeezing your thighs.

"Stop being a tease." You whined at your boyfriend, whose fingers continued to ghost over your underwear, to which he replied with a dark chuckle, "I thought you wanted to go home?" 

"No," you replied in haste. You then grabbed his face and reeled him in for a searing kiss. "Overtime's not over yet."

-

"So?" 

"So, what?" 

"How was today?"

 Despite how much time has passed, you and Dazai have not gone home yet. Instead, the two of you are sitting on top of a bridge, your legs dangling over the city river.

This is one of your routines as a couple. From time to time, you would go to this particular bridge to either kill some time or wallow in each other's deepest, darkest thoughts.

It came as such a surprise to Dazai when he heard your response to him when he first invited you to his infamous "double suicides". 

He genuinely didn't expect you to ride along and actually accept his offer. And ever since then, you have caught his interest, and at first he thought it would soon pass, but as he spent more time with you, he became more enamored with you.

You were like the flame, and he was the stupid moth.

And then he learned about your story; he found himself falling deeper, and when you almost died in action, something in him snapped.

Images of Odasaku and his final moments flashed in his mind.

The thought of cradling you in his arms while you were drenched in your own blood as he failed to save you scared the living shit out of him. 

Never again. 

He thought to himself.

But despite being smooth with other women, he found himself stumbling stupidly in front of you. He didn't know how to act, because in  a way, it was his first time pursuing someone not out of any self-serving motives but rather out of a genuine desire to win your heart and become your significant other.

And because everything was pretty much new to him, he liked the challenge, and by extension, it made him feel alive. 

You basically gave him a reason to live and look forward to tomorrow.

Your boyfriend looked over the big night sky and took a heavy sigh, as if it were one of his ways of relishing the day he'd had today.

"I guess you could say the look on your face while I was fucking your mouth will stay etched in my brain for a really long time." 

You snorted, "Same goes when I rode you on Kunikida-san's chair." 

"That was your best performance yet." 

You could only roll your eyes at your boyfriend and his silliness.

“Glad I could amuse you.”

The chilly breeze continued to howl in the distance, stroking both of your hairs. 

After a moment of silence, you got to your feet on the edge of the bridge and peered down at Dazai, who was still gazing thoughtfully into the horizon. 

"Is this the day, or do you wish to live one more day with me?" 

The former Port Mafia executive didn't say anything; instead, he stood up and held your hand. 

"Well, committing double suicide could very well be a fantastic way to end this wonderful day, but the sex was too good, so I'll have to decline your offer today."

You broke off into a melodious laugh at your boyfriend's reply.

"Who knows? Maybe we can have amazing sex in hell too?" 

Dazai shook his head and pulled you off the bridge with him, and right after that, he enveloped you in another embrace. 

"Maybe next time, Y/N." 

You gladly returned the hug, and this time, it was your turn to dip your head into his neck and inhale his scent.

 "So, one more day?" you asked him

 "Yes, one more day.”

And maybe, just maybe, for all of eternity.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chris D'Angelo at HuffPost:

The Biden administration unveiled a sweeping rule on Tuesday to protect American workers from extreme heat — an already deadly threat that is becoming worse as climate change drives up temperatures around the globe. The long-anticipated regulation from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would, if finalized, establish the nation’s first-ever federal safety standard for excessive heat in both indoor and outdoor workplaces. It is expected to cover some 36 million workers — agricultural laborers, roofers and warehouse workers, to name a few — and dramatically curb heat-related injuries and deaths, the administration said.

During a speech about extreme weather and climate change at the District of Columbia’s emergency operations center on Tuesday, President Joe Biden detailed the proposal and paused when he noted it will ensure workers who toil in sweltering conditions have access to shade and water. “To think we’d have to tell people [to provide] access to shade and water,” he said. The move comes amid dangerous heat warnings across much of the U.S. South, Midwest and West and on the heels of the hottest year in recorded history. An estimated 2,302 heat-related deaths were recorded in the U.S. last year, up from 1,722 in 2022 and 1,602 in 2021. An average of 33 heat-related workplace deaths and 3,389 injuries and illnesses occurred each year from 1992 to 2020, although the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said those numbers are “likely vast underestimates.”

The new rule requires employers to implement a variety of safety measures once the heat index reaches certain thresholds. At 80 degrees, workers must be provided with access to water and shaded or indoor rest areas, as well as paid rest breaks as required to prevent overheating. At 90 degrees, the proposed rule mandates a paid 15-minute rest break every two hours and requires employers to monitor workers for signs of heat-related illness. Additionally, new or returning employees must be given multiple days to acclimate to jobs that expose them to high temperatures.

[...] Whether the workplace heat protections ever see the light of day could hinge on the upcoming presidential election. The rule is not expected to be finalized until 2026, Politico reported. And while former President Donald Trump often touts himself as pro-worker, he has a long record of siding with corporate employers and has promised to dismantle many of President Joe Biden’s climate and environmental policies if elected to a second term in office. [...] The rule, if finalized, is all but certain to draw legal challenges, and the Supreme Court just made it harder for federal agencies to enact and defend new rules and regulations. In a 6-3 decision, conservatives on the court overturned a 40-year precedent that afforded agencies broad discretion to craft regulation, effectively shifting federal regulatory power to judges.

The Biden Administration announces a new OSHA rule to protect workers from the extreme heat in both indoor and outdoor workspaces.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The reverse-centaur apocalypse is upon us

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

In thinking about the relationship between tech and labor, one of the most useful conceptual frameworks is "centaurs" vs "reverse-centaurs":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

A centaur is someone whose work is supercharged by automation: you are a human head atop the tireless body of a machine that lets you get more done than you could ever do on your own.

A reverse-centaur is someone who is harnessed to the machine, reduced to a mere peripheral for a cruelly tireless robotic overlord that directs you to do the work that it can't, at a robotic pace, until your body and mind are smashed.

Bosses love being centaurs. While workplace monitoring is as old as Taylorism – the "scientific management" of the previous century that saw labcoated frauds dictating the fine movements of working people in a kabuki of "efficiency" – the lockdowns saw an explosion of bossware, the digital tools that let bosses monitor employees to a degree and at a scale that far outstrips the capacity of any unassisted human being.

Armed with bossware, your boss becomes a centaur, able to monitor you down to your keystrokes, the movements of your eyes, even the ambient sound around you. It was this technology that transformed "work from home" into "live at work." But bossware doesn't just let your boss spy on you – it lets your boss control you. \

It turns you into a reverse-centaur.

"Data At Work" is a research project from Cracked Labs that dives deep into the use of surveillance and control technology in a variety of workplaces – including workers' own cars and homes:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work

It consists of a series of papers that take deep dives into different vendors' bossware products, exploring how they are advertised, how they are used, and (crucially) how they make workers feel. There are also sections on how these interact with EU labor laws (the project is underwritten by the Austrian Arbeiterkammer), with the occasional aside about how weak US labor laws are.

The latest report in the series comes from Wolfie Christl, digging into Microsoft's "Dynamics 365," a suite of mobile apps designed to exert control over "field workers" – repair technicians, security guards, cleaners, and home help for ill, elderly and disabled people:

https://crackedlabs.org/dl/CrackedLabs_Christl_MobileWork.pdf

It's…not good. Microsoft advises its customers to use its products to track workers' location every "60 to 300 seconds." Workers are given tasks broken down into subtasks, each with its own expected time to completion. Workers are expected to use the app every time they arrive at a site, begin or complete a task or subtask, or start or end a break.

For bosses, all of this turns into a dashboard that shows how each worker is performing from instant to instant, whether they are meeting time targets, and whether they are spending more time on a task than the client's billing rate will pay for. Each work order has a clock showing elapsed seconds since it was issued.

For workers, the system generates new schedules with new work orders all day long, refreshing your work schedule as frequently as twice per hour. Bosses can flag workers as available for jobs that fall outside their territories and/or working hours, and the system will assign workers to jobs that require them to work in their off hours and travel long distances to do so.

Each task and subtask has a target time based on "AI" predictions. These are classic examples of Goodhart's Law: "any metric eventually becomes a target." The average time that workers take becomes the maximum time that a worker is allowed to take. Some jobs are easy, and can be completed in less time than assigned. When this happens, the average time to do a job shrinks, and the time allotted for normal (or difficult) jobs contracts.

Bosses get stack-ranks of workers showing which workers closed the most tickets, worked the fastest, spent the least time idle between jobs, and, of course, whether the client gave them five stars. Workers know it, creating an impossible bind: to do the job well, in a friendly fashion, the worker has to take time to talk with the client, understand their needs, and do the job. Anything less will generate unfavorable reports from clients. But doing this will blow through time quotas, which produces bad reports from the bossware. Heads you lose, tails the boss wins.

Predictably, Microsoft has shoveled "AI" into every corner of this product. Bosses don't just get charts showing them which workers are "underperforming" – they also get summaries of all the narrative aspects of the workers' reports (e.g. "My client was in severe pain so I took extra time to make her comfortable before leaving"), filled with the usual hallucinations and other botshit.

No boss could exert this kind of fine-grained, soul-destroying control over any workforce, much less a workforce that is out in the field all day, without Microsoft's automation tools. Armed with Dynamics 365, a boss becomes a true centaur, capable of superhuman feats of labor abuse.

And when workers are subjected to Dynamics 365, they become true reverse-centaurs, driven by "digital whips" to work at a pace that outstrips the long-term capacity of their minds and bodies to bear it. The enthnographic parts of the report veer between chilling and heartbreaking.

Microsoft strenuously objects to this characterization, insisting that their tool (which they advise bosses to use to check on workers' location every 60-300 seconds) is not a "surveillance" tool, it's a "coordination" tool. They say that all the AI in the tool is "Responsible AI," which is doubtless a great comfort to workers.

In Microsoft's (mild) defense, they are not unique. Other reports in the series show how retail workers and hotel housekeepers are subjected to "despot on demand" services provided by Oracle:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/publications/retail-hospitality

Call centers, are even worse. After all, most of this stuff started with call centers:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/publications/callcenter

I've written about Arise, a predatory "work from home" company that targets Black women to pay the company to work for it (they also have to pay if they quit!). Of course, they can be fired at will:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/29/impunity-corrodes/#arise-ye-prisoners

There's also a report about Celonis, a giant German company no one has ever heard of, which gathers a truly nightmarish quantity of information about white-collar workers' activities, subjecting them to AI phrenology to judge their "emotional quality" as well as other metrics:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/publications/processmining-algomanage

As Celonis shows, this stuff is coming for all of us. I've dubbed this process "the shitty technology adoption curve": the terrible things we do to prisoners, asylum seekers and people in mental institutions today gets repackaged tomorrow for students, parolees, Uber drivers and blue-collar workers. Then it works its way up the privilege gradient, until we're all being turned into reverse-centaurs under the "digital whip" of a centaur boss:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

In mediating between asshole bosses and the workers they destroy, these bossware technologies do more than automate: they also insulate. Thanks to bossware, your boss doesn't have to look you in the eye (or come within range of your fists) to check in on you every 60 seconds and tell you that you've taken 11 seconds too long on a task. I recently learned a useful term for this: an "accountability sink," as described by Dan Davies in his new book, The Unaccountability Machine, which is high on my (very long) list of books to read:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/02/despotism-on-demand/#virtual-whips

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en