Labor Day: A time when retailers hold large sales and keep workers laboring in spite of the holiday.
#labor
See tagged statuses in the local bookrastinating.com community
Artist/writer Molly Crabapple has a book coming out about the Jewish Bund, a secular Jewish labor organization (or organizations) in the early 20th century. If that sounds rather dry, I remember reading some of Molly's social media posts when she was starting to research the Bund, and they were fascinating. Not least because the Bundists seemed to be so far ahead of their time, socially and politically.
Available for pre-order now.
Artist/writer Molly Crabapple has a book coming out about the Jewish Bund, a secular Jewish labor organization (or organizations) in the early 20th century. If that sounds rather dry, I remember reading some of Molly's social media posts when she was starting to research the Bund, and they were fascinating. Not least because the Bundists seemed to be so far ahead of their time, socially and politically.
Available for pre-order now.
Congratulations to Raven Software!
Raven Software gets its union contract with Microsoft three years after voting to organize
Several of the LLMs have produced inaccuracies which have been uncritically communicated to our customers by CrowdStrikers who failed to exhibit due diligence. Those errors were caught by said customers, and they were embarrassing to us all.
...
Now we have an engineer, if you can call him that, working on a project that will introduce more than 30k lines of AI generated code into our codebase, without a single unit test. It will be impossible to do a proper code review on this much code and it will become a maintenance nightmare and possibly a security hazard. I don't need to tell you how much management is cheering on that.
From @brianmerchant@mastodon.social 's latest newsletter: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-ai-is-killing-jobs-in-the-tech
A ticking timebomb in the making. It's especially galling that CrowdStrike is doing this, given their epic fail just last year.
A while back I wrote in a post here:
Several of the LLMs have produced inaccuracies which have been uncritically communicated to our customers by CrowdStrikers who failed to exhibit due diligence. Those errors were caught by said customers, and they were embarrassing to us all.
...
Now we have an engineer, if you can call him that, working on a project that will introduce more than 30k lines of AI generated code into our codebase, without a single unit test. It will be impossible to do a proper code review on this much code and it will become a maintenance nightmare and possibly a security hazard. I don't need to tell you how much management is cheering on that.
From @brianmerchant@mastodon.social 's latest newsletter: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-ai-is-killing-jobs-in-the-tech
A ticking timebomb in the making. It's especially galling that CrowdStrike is doing this, given their epic fail just last year.
A while back I wrote in a post here:
under Taylorism the workers who actually do the work and know it best no longer have a say (opinion) in how that work gets done. Pseudo-scientific principles (scientific management, the astrology of MBAs) dictates all. Computers, from the very first, were intended and designed for this purpose.
riffing on what a lousy person Charles Babbage was and the lousy anti-worker plans he had for the proto-computers he designed. Among other things generative AI is another manifestation of the MBA pseudoscience known as scientific management and exists in a long line of digital technologies stretching all the way back to Babbage's.
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #AgenticAI #tech #dev #computation #ComputerScience #labor #organizing
I've been fed up with my current job for a while, so what the heck, I'll post a request for something approaching my dream job: I'd love to use #OpenSource #RustLang, perhaps in a terminal and/or with Postgresql, to make good, useful things in a remote environment (I'm in the U.S.) related to the realm of #gardening, #wildlife, #vegan, or #labor. If it were with a worker #cooperative, even better.
Ha, dreams.
I've been fed up with my current job for a while, so what the heck, I'll post a request for something approaching my dream job: I'd love to use #OpenSource #RustLang, perhaps in a terminal and/or with Postgresql, to make good, useful things in a remote environment (I'm in the U.S.) related to the realm of #gardening, #wildlife, #vegan, or #labor. If it were with a worker #cooperative, even better.
Ha, dreams.
"I've long maintained that the threat from AI to workers isn't that AI can do your job – it's that an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job" - @pluralistic
https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/07/rah-rah-rasputin/#credulous-dolts
"I've long maintained that the threat from AI to workers isn't that AI can do your job – it's that an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job" - @pluralistic
https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/07/rah-rah-rasputin/#credulous-dolts
Nike Says Its Factory Workers Earn Nearly Double the Minimum Wage. At This Cambodian Factory, 1% Made That Much.
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Nike has made an expansive effort to convince consumers, investors and others that it is improving the lives of factory workers who make its products, not exploiting them. A rare view of wages at one Cambodian factory tests this claim.
https://www.propublica.org/article/nike-wages-clothing-factory-cambodia?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post
#News #Nike #Cambodia #Labor #Work #Abuse #Exploitation #Business
A top official in the Department of Labor this week informed all staff members that they could face criminal charges if they speak to journalists, former employees or others about agency business.
“This message will serve as your only warning,” the memo stated.
#News #Labor #Government #Journalism #Law #Legal #Press #Media
#Trump admin overrode #SocialSecurity staff to list immigrants as dead
A senior executive who objected was marched out of his office & put on leave, while earlier warnings about the agency’s deaths database were ignored. Two days after the SSA purposely & falsely labeled 6,100 living immigrants as dead, security guards arrived at the office of a well-regarded senior executive in the agency’s Woodlawn, MD, headquarters.
#law #immigration #labor #Musk #DOGE
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/12/trump-immigrants-dead-social-security/
#Trump admin overrode #SocialSecurity staff to list immigrants as dead
A senior executive who objected was marched out of his office & put on leave, while earlier warnings about the agency’s deaths database were ignored.
Two days after the SSA purposely & falsely labeled 6,100 living immigrants as dead, security guards arrived at the office of a well-regarded senior executive in the agency’s Woodlawn, MD, headquarters.
#law #immigration #labor #Musk #DOGE
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/12/trump-immigrants-dead-social-security/
A longtime union organizer here in Boston is auctioning off their frankly massive connection of t-shirts and pins, with the proceeds going to benefit Labor Notes. Some lovely bits of leftist design scattered throughout in here: https://www.ebay.com/str/fiestafolk
Emails Reveal Top IRS Lawyer Warned Trump Firings Were a “Fraud” on The Courts
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The Trump administration cited “performance” failures to justify its mass firing of IRS workers. But this claim was “false,” a senior agency attorney warned officials, because the administration had not conducted any such performance assessment.
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-irs-firings-doge-fraud-law-job-performance?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post
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I am downright delighted to announce that my latest book, YOU DESERVE A TECH UNION, has a brand new look. I really love it, and I hope you do too.
Here’s a look at what’s changed and—maybe more importantly—what’s stayed the same:
https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/refresh-a-new-look-for-you-deserve-a-tech-union/
#YDATUbook #books #bookstodon #blogging #labor #TechLabor #unions #TechUnions #1u
In 2019, Iceland became one of the first countries to approve a four-day workweek. Here's how things have been going for them.
2021: "Trials of a four-day week in Iceland were an "overwhelming success""
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57724779
2024: "Iceland’s economy is outperforming most European peers after the nationwide introduction of a shorter working week with no loss in pay."
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/25/business/iceland-shorter-working-week-economy/index.html
2025: "The effects of the shorter workweek in Iceland have extended far beyond the office."
In 2019, Iceland became one of the first countries to approve a four-day workweek. Here's how things have been going for them.
2021: "Trials of a four-day week in Iceland were an "overwhelming success""
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57724779
2024: "Iceland’s economy is outperforming most European peers after the nationwide introduction of a shorter working week with no loss in pay."
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/25/business/iceland-shorter-working-week-economy/index.html
2025: "The effects of the shorter workweek in Iceland have extended far beyond the office."
"If you're inconvenienced by a strike, blame the boss, not the workers."
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"If you're inconvenienced by a strike, blame the boss, not the workers."
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