Collective Action in Tech Save
Documentation of all collective action from tech workers.
Project README
This repo has been deprecated and migrated off to a different system - for more information on the database, visit https://collectiveaction.tech
Collective Action in Tech
This repository documents all collective actions from workers in the tech industry.
For the purposes of this project, the tech industry is defined to include any companies whose core business is information technology. We are excluding adjacent industries such as gaming and digital media.
The goal of this archive is to provide data and insights on organizing in the tech industry, to find the connections between different efforts, and to build worker power in tech.
This repository is meant to be a live document. We need your help to ensure its accuracy and completeness! Add new actions by filling out this form.
How to credit this repository
Journalists. Please include a link to the repository (collectiveaction.tech) in your article if this data has informed your work.
Academics. Please include a citation to the repository if you have used this data in your project. Tan, JS and Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya. (2020). Collective Action In Tech. https://github.com/collective-action/tech
Summary
| Last Updated | 18/03/2023 11:00PM |
| Number of documented actions | 506 |
Actions
| YYYYMMDD | description | link |
| 2022-04-29 | About 100 Amazon warehouse workers at Shakopee, Minnesota staged a walkout. They protested the low wages and lack of time off for Eid. Their demands include to bring back a $3/hour pay raise and unlimited volunteer time off for religious events. Members of The Awood Center joined them in solidarity. |
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| 2022-04-20 | Separate from the unionizing employees in New York, retail workers at an Atlanta Apple Store have filed with the NLRB for a union election, with wages being the main reason for unionization. The organizers say that they don’t make a living wage. Over 70% of the 100 eligible workers have signed union authorization cards, and they would be represented by the CWA. |
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| 2022-04-18 | Amazon workers at a New Jersey facility have submitted enough cards to hold a vote on unionizing. They seek to be affiliated with Local 713 International Brotherhood of the Trade Union. |
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| 2022-04-01 |
Despite heavy anti-union tactics, including texts and mandated anti-union meetings, Amazon workers at Staten Island voted to unionize 2,654 to 2,131 under the Amazon Labor Union. This marks the first union ever at the company.
High attrition and firings, poor workplace safety considering the pandemic, and a "culture of fear" from constant monitoring have increased interest in unionization. ALU being a union composed of current employees instead of being an outside group was also effective in foiling Amazon’s anti-union messages. Amazon plans to file an objection to the NLRB. |
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| 2022-04-01 |
In response to Activision Blizzard lifting its vaccine mandate, A Better ABK announced that employees will walk out in protest. Their demands are to reverse the lifting of the vaccine requirement, to allow remote work permanently, and to allow each individual employee to decide whether to work remotely or in person.
As of 4/1/22, Activision Blizzard is operating under a voluntary return to office policy, and each studio will have its own policies regarding the vaccine mandate. |
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| 2022-03-30 |
In response to Etsy CEO Josh Silverman announcing that transaction fees for sellers was increasing from 5% to 6.5%, along with prior stresses like rising fees, mandatory marketing programs, and mass-production sellers, thousands of Etsy sellers are planning to strike by going into vacation mode for a week. They also asked shoppers to boycott Etsy, with 36,000+ signatures on their coworker.org petition.
Their demands include canceling the fee increase, cracking down on resellers, and creating expedited support tickets. |
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| 2022-03-30 | Microsoft, SAP SE, and IBM have continued to maintain operations in Russia. In response, groups of workers at these companies have called for them to do more than just end new sales and to instead withdraw completely. Workers also discussed and criticized the companies’ stances in internal discussion forums, with some Microsoft workers even threatening to quit if the company doesn’t exit. Other workers worry about the withdrawal’s potential effect on civilians. |
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| 2022-03-25 | Workers at Nava PBC have received voluntary recognition for their union Nava United with OPEIU Tech Workers Union Local 1010. They are now the largest union of civic tech workers in the US. Some of their goals are to improve the workplace to be more equitable and inclusive, as well as improve pay and PTO. |
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| 2022-03-23 | Despite anti-union busting efforts, 10 Google Fiber workers who are contractors for BDS Connected Solutions have unionized with the AWU through a majority vote. They are notably the first unionized Google Fiber workers and Alphabet Workers Union’s first official bargaining unit. |
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| 2022-02-28 | Thousands of volunteer hackers in Ukraine, many of them employed in the country's tech industry, have strategically targeted Russian government websites in an effort to disrupt war mobilization efforts. They have been joined by sympathetic hackers from other countries. Using DDoS attacks, informally organized groups such as StandForUkraine have succeeded in taking many of these websites offline. Hacktivists in Belarus, organized by CyberPartisans, have also disrupted Russian rail service used to transport Russian troops into Ukraine. Mykhailo Federov, Ukraine's Minister of Digital Transformation, also announced a volunteer cyber army known as The IT Army of Ukraine. |
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| 2022-02-21 | Fruit Stand Workers United organizers at Apple’s flagship Grand Central Store are collecting signatures to form a union that would be affiliated with Workers United. For the past couple of months, they’ve experienced union-busting tactics from Apple. They’ve also said that they have some allies among the Apple corporate workers. This unionization movement was motivated by the pandemic and consumer price inflation. Their goals are better job security, better pay and benefits, and safer working conditions. |
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| 2022-02-18 |
Google is expanding its North Carolina offices located in the “Triangle Area” for increased diversity in the workforce. However, workers expressed concern over the workers’ lower salaries and stock equity grants. In a letter, employees asked for increased transparency about regional salary calculations and the removal of the salary cut. Moreover, many workers had relocated to the Triangle Area during the pandemic due to remote work for more affordable living expenses.
The Alphabet Workers Union has also created an open letter that expressed their grievances with the salary in the Triangle Area. In response, a spokesperson has said that their compensation guidelines in the area exceed the market pay benchmarks and that employees haven’t had a reduction in salary or existing equity grants. |
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| 2022-02-18 |
Hourly retail workers who work for Apple stores are unionizing, with at least two preparing to file paperwork with the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) and at least six others also involved in unionizing. Workers are unionizing because their hourly raises weren’t enough, considering inflation. Moreover, the Apple workers were inspired by the recent unions at Starbucks. In response, some Apple Store managers have given anti-union speeches, saying that this will lower their wages and force Apple to remove benefits and “career experience” opportunities.
In the past, organizers, including Janneke Parrish and Cher Scarlett, have been fired. As a result, some Apple corporate employees have expressed support in secret for the retail workers. |
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| 2022-02-16 | The NLRB determined that the Amazon Labor Union has enough signatures to hold an election. The election will occur in late March. An Amazon spokesperson expressed doubt that there were enough legitimate signatures. |
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| 2022-02-09 | In response to new leadership and business restructuring that led to 2,800 employees being fired, terminated employees (who were allowed to attend the meeting) flooded the chat box of the virtual Q2 earnings call with complaints about the job cuts and mismanagement. Former employees also began helping each other find new jobs on LinkedIn and a publicly accessible spreadsheet. |
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| 2022-02-07 |
In response to the economic crisis in Turkey, food delivery company, Yemeksepeti Banabi, announced a 10% raise in salary, which sparked outrage, and its delivery workers of Yemeksepeti Banabi are striking for higher wages. They are also demanding to change the business model, in which they are considered self-employed and don’t have social security. A majority union, The All Shipping Workers Union, has been formed, but the company is preventing unionization rights from being implemented through legal loopholes.
In similar Turkish companies like Trendyol Express, Yurtiçi Cargo, Scotty, Aras Cargo, Sürat Cargo, and Migros Warehouse, delivery workers also protested the miniscule wage increase. Trendyol Express workers succeeded in a wage increase from 11% to 39%. The head of the Transportation Workers Union expressed solidarity and support. |
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| 2022-02-03 | Workers at Nava PBC have joined together with a supermajority of their colleagues to form Nava United. Workers at Nava help to build accessible platforms for vital government services (like the DOJ's civil rights portal, medicare and medicaid services, and more), and more. They are forming a union to improve their working conditions and strengthen the work they do at Nava. |
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| 2022-02-03 | After two years of organizing, Nava PBC workers formed Nava United in partnership with OPEIU. Besides adding stability and benefits, union organizers hope that this effort will “increase pay transparency, equity, employee retention and attract new talent.” They are currently seeking voluntary recognition. |
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| 2022-02-02 | Workers at Amazon’s Staten Island facility LDJ5 are seeking to be represented by the Amazon Labor union, and so they have filed a petition to the NLRB for a union election. |
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| 2022-02-01 | The International Alliance of Delivery Workers is launching a new coalition called Justice for App Workers. They represent over 10,000 rideshare and delivery gig workers. To kick off their formation, they held a rally in Manhattan. Their demands include; better work conditions, more job security, more benefits, a living wage, and the right to form a union for rideshare and delivery app workers. |
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| 2022-01-21 | Thirty-four members of Activision Blizzard Studios have formed a union supported by the CWA. The members have requested for Activision Blizzard to voluntarily recognize it. Activision Blizzard responded that they are “carefully considering” it. Unionization efforts have started in response to poor workplace conditions and issues of sexual harassment. |
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| 2022-01-11 | A former Amazon engineer created an online petition to urge Washington lawmakers to pass the SB 5130 bill. This bill would mandate employers to provide workers with access to their personnel files and internal rankings for increased transparency. While the bill is stalled, several tech workers will testify on it in the next legislative session. |
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| 2022-01-07 |
BDS Connected Solutions workers contracted with Google Fiber petitioned the NLRB for formal union recognition. In partnership with the Alphabet Workers Union, the unionization effort was driven by concern over work conditions, pay structure changes, understaffing, and COVID safety issues. Before the vote to determine the eligibility of union votes, workers received a letter from BDS that discouraged them from unionizing by bringing up points like “everyone will be stuck with the union and forced to pay dues” and that “Missouri is not a right-to-work state.”
AWU has released a statement of solidarity towards the Kansas City workers. A Google spokesperson has responded that BDS will handle this, and Google works with both unionized and non-unionized suppliers. |
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| 2022-01-06 | Facebook and Whatsapp moderators didn’t receive paychecks after a change in payroll providers. In response, they posted an open letter and threatened a work stoppage until they receive their paychecks. There has been no indication of a work stoppage, according to Accenture. Some workers have received lump-sum payments that partially cover their pay. However, not everyone has received the payments. |
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| 2022-01-05 | Facebook moderators protested their subcontractor Accenture’s return-to-office mandate, while workers at Meta were allowed to work from home. Some also threatened to resign. The protests caused Accenture to reverse the decision. Workers also raised concerns over COVID-related working conditions, benefits, and support. |
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| 2022-01-04 | Subcontracted Google Fiber workers of AWU have filed a request to the NLRB for unionization, and it seeks to negotiate with both their vendor and Alphabet. They contend that Alphabet is a “joint employer.” They want to have a greater voice in shaping their working conditions. |
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| 2021-12-23 | Apple Together, a group of Apple employees in retail and corporate, staged a walkout and are encouraging customers to boycott Apple products on Christmas Eve. They are demanding better working conditions, including paid sick leave and COVID-related protection, and hazard pay. |
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| 2021-12-23 | Amazon has reached a settlement with the NLRB that would allow its workers to organize more freely without retaliation. Amazon will also email its employees to notify them of their organizing rights. |
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| 2021-12-22 | During the Christmas shipping season, workers organized by Amazonians United staged a walkout at two Chicago Amazon warehouses. Their demands were higher pay for their physically intensive work and better safety conditions considering their high risk for COVID infection. Workers staged a walkout after managers didn’t respond to their petition with similar demands a month ago. Moreover, some workers say that promised bonuses and pay rates were never received. |
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| 2021-12-22 | Staten Island Amazon workers staged a lunchtime walkout to urge Amazon to recognize their union. Their demands include better wages, safer working conditions, longer breaks, and better benefits. |
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| 2021-12-22 | Staten Island Amazon workers of the Amazon Labor Union refiled a union petition to the NLRB and are focusing on unionizing the JFK8 warehouse. |
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| 2021-12-20 | In response to Sumup laying off 150 employees, employees have called for a works council election, with one employee also sending a mass email. The CEO, Michael Schrezenmaier, has affirmed these plans, since it is legal by German law. Moreover, the Berlin Tech Workers Coalition and ver.di Tech Berlin/Brandenburg are supporting this group. |
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| 2021-12-18 | Temporary workers at Foxconn Technology Group (Hon Hai), a major electronics company that manufactures Apple products, protested over their working and living conditions. The workers were mostly women. In response, the company has agreed to their demands. chennai-tamil nadu-india |
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| 2021-12-17 | After a tornado disaster led to the death of 6 workers in an Amazon warehouse, Amazon employees are demanding changes in policy, including the ability to keep their phones with them during their shifts and changes in pay and excused absence policy in the case of severe weather. Other demands include an hourly pay raise, 20 minute breaks, and an appeals process for terminations. Signed petitions that were organized by Amazonians United were offered to warehouse managers, but some managers have refused to accept it. These actions were also motivated by reports of workers still having to show up in dangerous weather due to fear of losing their jobs. |
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| 2021-12-14 | A Citizen App workers’ bargaining unit voted 51-22 in favor of unionizing with the help of the Communications Workers of America. This effort was partially driven by fears of outsourcing after the company outsourced some job tasks to contract workers overseas. |
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| 2021-12-13 | The co-founders of Big Cartel voluntarily recognized the Big Cartel Workers Union, which are represented by the OPEIU. The workers unionized in order to have a larger voice in the decision-making process, and to ensure fair pay and benefits for everyone. This union is also the first tech union in a “right-to-work” state. |
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| 2021-12-02 | ActBlue has voluntarily recognized the Campaign Workers Guild as union representatives for ActBlue’s workers, and there are plans to create a collective bargaining agreement. |
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| 2021-11-29 | Three former Google workers are filing a lawsuit against Google for slander, breach of contract, and termination in violation of public policy. While at Google, the former employees had publicly protested Google’s intent to enter a contract with the CBP and ICE. Some Google workers believe the firing was to discourage organizing. Google responded that the firings are due to violations of their data security policies. |
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| 2021-11-28 | In response to a planned 25% pay cut, Stuart food delivery workers from IWGB held a demonstration outside of Sheffield Town Hall. They demand a pay rise, especially as the minimum living wage has increased. They also have no sick pay and have to pay for their own vehicle and insurance costs. |
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| 2021-11-26 | German AI and computer scientists created a public appeal that opposes the use of autonomous weapon systems for the Bundeswehr. They argue that weaponized, automated drones are dangerous for humanitarian and security reasons, such as how this technology can enable military confrontation. Thus, they wish to ban armed drones. |
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| 2021-11-23 | With the slogan “Gopuff yourself,” Gopuff drivers plan to strike for 24 hours on Tuesday to demand better pay and working conditions. Specifically, the drivers are demanding an increase in their guaranteed hourly rate and a guaranteed minimum number of hours. They also want increased transparency around termination. The strikes are in response to reduced minimum hourly pay rate and bonuses, to which Gopuff said they were working to improve conditions, and that drivers earn more on average compared to industry rates. The drivers are supported by Working Washington, a pro-labor group. |
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| 2021-11-23 | Around 600 Google employees signed a manifesto that opposes Google’s new COVID-19 vaccine mandate for its potential impact on corporate America and as a matter of principle and inclusion. An open letter was also sent to Google’s chief health officer, Karen DeSalvo. |
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| 2021-11-18 | The campaign Make Amazon Pay, composed of over 70 labor unions of 20 different countries, planned delivery drivers strike, work stoppages, demonstrations, and protests on Black Friday. Their demands include “workplace improvements, job security, respect for workers’ rights, sustainable operations and paying back society.” Additionally, on Black Friday, the environmental group Extinction Rebellion blocked the entrances to 13 UK distribution centers, a separate protest from Make Amazon Pay. |
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| 2021-11-13 | In response to foodpanda cutting the delivery fee and fee for delivering two orders at once, the delivery workers went on strike outside the Tsim Sha Tsui and Kwun Tong foodpanda offices from November 13 to 14. Their slogans criticized the pay cuts and called for a higher minimum service charge. |
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| 2021-11-11 | The union Unite Here Local 2850 has filed unfair labor practice charges against HelloFresh for retaliation, intimidation, and bullying. For example, some workers who were distributing union leaflets outside during lunch break were told this wasn’t permitted, and others were demoted. Moreover, Kulture Consulting consultants have hosted captive audience meetings. A HelloFresh spokesperson has responded, saying that they respect the workers' decision of choosing whether to be represented by a union, and that they will refute the charges. |
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| 2021-10-29 | Data center temps who work for Modis, a Google subcontractor, were promised $200 weekly incentive bonuses because of the pandemic. After Modis stopped this program and announced that workers would not receive back pay, the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA workers began organization efforts. Workers filed “tickets” to Modis' management, sent more than 100 messages, and arranged a videoconference. There were also discussions of a work stoppage. Before the scheduled videoconference, however, Modis backtracked their decision in an email. Modis agreed to continue paying the hazard pay until December 19. |
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| 2021-10-27 | To express solidarity with the Trans Netflix employee resource group, members of Google Walkout for Real Change affirmed their demands in an open letter, and they also called on all employees of big technology and media companies to hold their employers accountable. |
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| 2021-10-25 | More than 2,000 Amazon workers in Staten Island filed the petition to the NLRB to hold a union election. This effort, led by Chris Smalls and is called the Amazon labor Union. Smalls, a former employee, was fired after organizing a protest for lack of COVID protective gear and poor hazard pay. As an independent union, they hope to avoid Amazon’s anti-union messaging targeted towards established unions. The Amazon Labor Union has begun a union drive. Its goals are to bring back variable compensation pay and stock options that Amazon removed in 2018. In response, Amazon questioned if there was a sufficient number of legitimate signatures from Amazon employees. Amazon has also taken anti-union tactics, such as displaying anti-union messages in their facilities and bringing in anti-union consultants. |
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| 2021-10-20 | Employees walked out of a Netflix building in Los Angeles to protest Dave Chappelle’s special, joining supporters and activists who were already rallying. Other Netflix employees stopped working that day as a virtual walkout. #NetflixWalkOut also trended on Twitter. In response, Netflix issued a statement expressing support of the walkout while also remaining supportive of Chappelle. |
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| 2021-10-19 | With the backing of Foxglove Legal, Facebook contract moderators at Accenture are protesting low wages with a mobile billboard and internal letter. The billboard calls for Accenture CEO Julie Sweet to “stop exploiting your workers,” considering how much Accenture is paid compared to how much content moderators make per hour. Ukrainian and Spanish language moderators are also excluded from the $2 premium that bilingual moderators receive. Despite the demand for equal pay in June, there was no change. Moreover, the moderators’ work is emotionally and mentally taxing because of the unpleasant content they moderate. Accenture only offers access to behavioral coaches instead of professional psychological care, according to Foxglove Legal. |
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| 2021-10-18 | In response to Dave Chappelle's controversial Netflix special, Netflix trans employee resource group has released a list of demands and organized a walkout for October 20th. The demands are increased internal conversations about potentially harmful content, the hiring of trans and nonbinary executives, and removing transphobic content in the office; it notably does not include removing Chappelle’s special from Netflix. Also, a leader of the trans-ERG was fired from Netflix because the company concluded that she leaked confidential information. |
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| 2021-10-18 | Uber drivers, organized by the Croatian Digital Platform Workers’ Union, held a strike and press conference in Croatia. They claimed that their salaries were not paid in time with no explanation. Despite Uber portraying drivers as partners, the workers feel like “digital slaves” who cannot get in contact with Uber’s authorities. |
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| 2021-10-14 | Four anonymous creators started the “Worker Lives Matter” campaign, in which employees of Chinese tech companies log their working hours in a GitHub spreadsheet to protest the “996” working overtime culture. They hope to popularize the “955” instead and have GitHub serve as a reference tool for job seekers. Notably, there was a recent court ruling in China’s top court that made “996” culture illegal in August, but the practice is still used. As of October 28, the official account and website have been permanently banned, and so the project has been suspended. A backup of GitHub data is still available to view. |
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| 2021-10-12 |
Google and Amazon workers condemn Amazon and Google’s supplying to the Israeli military and government technology to harm Palestinians through Project Nimbus. They write that Project Nimbus would provide cloud services, including surveillance and data collection on Palestinians, that would support systematic discrimination and displacement. Workers released an internal letter, with 90+ Google workers and 300+ Amazon workers anonymously signing it.
EDIT: As of 3/10/2022, they have 2000 workers supporting the group. |
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| 2021-10-12 | In response to an internal email chain that brought up concerns over a gender wage gap, over 1200 Microsoft employees volunteered information about their salaries in a shared spreadsheet. Microsoft responded by acknowledging that there is more work to be done in the effort for equal pay for equal work. |
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| 2021-10-06 | Amazon had plans to build a new Amazon “mega-hub” at Newark Liberty International Airport, drawing resistance from Amazon warehouse workers, some of which were Teamster members. Environmental advocates, labor groups, and small business owners also participated. They held a press conference on October 6 to protest. Protestors wanted to be part of the decision-making process, and they were worried about pollution and negative impacts on the local economy. Others worry about the working conditions of the new jobs, considering Amazon’s history and how the mega-hub could depress local wages. Officials have said the deal would bring more revenue into the area while also providing opportunities for minority- and women-owned businesses. |
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| 2021-10-04 | In response to recent strikes that protested unfair working conditions, Gorillas fired “several dozen Berlin-based delivery workers.” In response, the Gorillas Workers Collective called for a protest in front of the company’s headquarters. Gorillas have said that these strikes were unannounced, non-unionized, spontaneous, and are illegal under German law. However, other workers have shown screenshots of schedules that violate German labor law. After the strikes took place, the company reportedly replaced those striking with Zenjob gig workers from Bermannkiez. |
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| 2021-09-30 | 21 current and former employees of Blue Origin published an essay that claimed that Blue Origin had multiple issues with sexism and safety. The CEO, Bob Smith was also accused of keeping track of “agitators” and discouraging dissent. Moreover, the letter brings up environmental issues; Blue Origin operates with no consideration of its environmental footprint or permits needed for waste. Smith has responded with a letter that says that the company would “reflect” on ways of improvement and that it has no tolerance for discrimination or harassment. He also emphasized that the vehicle was properly certified for First Human Flight. |
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| 2021-09-30 | Instacart shoppers under Gig Workers Collective have planned a nationwide work stoppage on October 16 until Instacart agrees to their demands for higher pay, occupational death benefits, and a more fair rating system. An Instacart spokesperson has responded that these experiences do not reflect the majority and are receptive to feedback. However, the workers claimed only receiving generic responses, and their open letter addressed to CEO Fidji Simo was ignored. |
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| 2021-09-29 | After the online food platform eFood announced that it will change its contract-based workers into freelancers, it sparked a strike and motor-march by its workers. Workers demanded the company to provide motorcycles or pay a 15% additional allowance, pay for the fuel, add protection measures, and allow collective bargaining. eFood also faced social media backlash, even before the strike. The campaign #cancel_efood went viral, and thousands of customers deleted the app and rated the app poorly on the Google Play store. Riders of Wolt, another big food delivery platform, and other workers’ unions expressed solidarity through a protest meeting. eFood has since then announced it would make all contract workers into direct hires. The day after the announcement, the delivery workers held a 24-hour strike as planned. |
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| 2021-09-28 | The ADCU National Executive Committee organized a national 24-hour strike against Uber on September 28th with the hashtag campaign #UberStrike. On the 28th, Uber drivers didn’t log on, and passengers were encouraged to stop using the service or book services. Employees protested about being unfairly dismissed as well as the company failing to pay for waiting time, despite a UK Supreme Court ruling. It is also a protest against the newly introduced fixed price fares. The strike occurred in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, and Nottingham. |
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| 2021-09-20 | Instacart has been accused of exploiting their gig workers, considering tip theft, unsafe working conditions, pay cuts, COVID practices, among others. Despite a CEO change, Instacart has not changed its practices, so Gig Workers Collective calls on Instacart’s customers to delete the app and support the Collective’s demands with the hashtag #DELETEINSTACART. The demands include: (1) “Instacart shoppers must be paid by order, and not by batch,” (2) “Instacart must re-introduce item commission,” (3) “Instacart’s rating system can no longer unfairly punish shoppers for issues outside their control,” (4) “occupational death benefits,” (5) and “default tip must be raised to at least 10% for every single order.” |
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| 2021-09-20 | Represented by CWA, workers at Blue State have formed a union in order to better advocate for changes and be a part of the decision-making process. This union was voluntarily recognized, and a collective bargaining contract was approved that improved job security, pay, and benefits. |
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| 2021-09-15 | After news from The Guardian that Google had been illegally underpaying their Temps, Vendors, and Contractors (TVCs) despite pay parity laws in European and Asian countries, over 900 Google employees and subcontractors have signed a petition calling for Google to amend their exploitation of TVCs. They are demanding for Google to repay the TVCs, create a path towards permanent employment, and end its two-tiered perma-temp system. This letter was organized by the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU). Google has acknowledged these issues but hasn’t commented directly on the petition. |
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| 2021-09-14 | 1,300 HelloFresh workers are unionizing with UNITE HERE in Colorado and California due to low wages, safety issues, and poor work conditions. HelloFresh management has also been unresponsive towards workers after a COVID-19 outbreak in a Richmond facility. UNITE HERE filed a petition to NLRB to authorize a vote to unionize. In response, anti-union consultants, such as Kulture Consulting, were reported to have held mandatory anti-union meetings. Update: as of 11/23/2021, Workers at the HelloFresh Aurora facility voted 166-to-91 against union organizing. |
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| 2021-09-13 | Teamsters Local Union 362 filed a request to hold a vote to form a union at an Amazon facility in Nisku, Alberta, Canada. Teamsters Local Union 362 is part of Teamsters Canada, a trade union that is affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamster. Unionization efforts have already begun, including a petition being signed by “hundreds” of warehouse workers, and the date to vote is yet to be decided. |
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| 2021-09-03 | The Apple workers in #AppleToo have released an open letter calling on Tim Cook and the Senior Leadership team to follow through in its diversity, equity, and inclusion promises. Workers have brought up invasive privacy policies, abuse, discrimination, and harassment. Their demands include: (1) “increased separation between Apple-owned and worker-owned digital and physical property in all Apple policies,” (2) “transparent livable, equitable, and fair compensation across all of Apple,” (3) “audit all third-party relationships,” among others. |
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| 2021-09-03 | After a supermajority of EveryAction workers signed cards to establish a union, EveryAction voluntarily recognized the EveryAction Workers Union, who will become part of the Communications Workers of America. As a result, the company will engage in negotiations over a collective bargaining agreement in the near future. EveryAction prides themselves on being a progressive workplace and has embraced this unionization. |
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| 2021-09-01 | In response to Texas’s new abortion law and the creation of the website prolifewhistleblower.com, TikTok activists, programmers, and Twitter and Reddit users engaged in “hacktivism” by submitting fake reports to the website. Programmers have also created and released scripts for others to automatically generate fake reports. The website responded by adding a new version of a Captcha to filter out bot reports. Furthermore, some Twitter users called for a boycott of GoDaddy, the company that hosts the website, as the website violates GoDaddy’s terms of service. In response, GoDaddy gave the website 24 hours to move to another provider before cutting off service. |
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| 2021-08-11 | Tech workers fighting for a union at the Times virtually walked out in protest over management’s continued anti-union tactics, the first work stoppage tied to unionization in the tech industry. On the day of the walk out, over 50% of the bargaining unit or 300 workers participated. They allege the company has been illegally trying to obstruct their unionization campaign. Tech workers from the company hope to join NewsGuild, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America Union. |
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| 2021-08-09 | Twitch streamer RekltRaven began a hashtag movement #twitchdobetter in response to the hate raids targeting marginalized creators, especially those who identify as Black, queer, or female. Twitch responded by fixing their chat filters and are planning to update their services to include improved safety features, including an improved account verification process and ban evasion detection tools. As there are still gaps, marginalized creators are calling for more proactive moderation and tools that the creators can use to moderate the stream. |
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| 2021-08-09 | Apple employees circulated voluntary surveys throughout the company to see if Apple has a problem with pay inequality toward women and minorities. Apple HR barred the employees from conducting the surveys, which according to The Verge, is illegally preventing employees' rights to discuss pay. |
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| 2021-08-08 |
Over the summer of 2021, a female employee at Alibaba was sexually assaulted by her supervisor after a business meeting where she was expected to drink. The incident became known as the Alibaba incident, or 807--August 7th--which was the date when the victim posted an essay that detailed the night she was sexually assaulted. In her post, she also talked about how, after the incident, she demanded that the perpetrator be fired from Alibaba, but her superiors at the company protected him.
After the essay was published, over 6000 employees joined a discussion group to support the victim. On August 8th, they posted a set of recommendations to the company. The post was titled "Aliren for Aliren" ("ren" means "people", so this can be read "Ali-people for Ali-people"). The post critiqued the lack of protection of women employee's rights and the incompetency of upper management for not being able to help the victim. The recommendations included giving the victim a paid vacation to emotionally and physically recover from the incident, compensating the victim for her injuries, providing the victim and her family with the necessary counseling/therapy, making the investigation process transparent, providing better training and support to combat sexual harassment and discrimination at the workplace, and reforming HR to better serve the needs of employees (and not just management). |
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| 2021-08-05 | Workers at Mapbox had formed a union with CWA; however, they failed to achieve recognition from the NLRB when workers voted against unionization 123 to 81. The Mapbox Union will continue to represent workers to management. Since then, union members have claimed they experienced retaliation from the company, with some being fired, intimidated, or threatened. As a result, the union plans to file an unfair labor practice charge. |
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| 2021-08-02 | After CfA Workers united requested for voluntary recognition of their union on August 2nd, Code for America voluntarily recognized CfA Workers United Union on October 22, 2021. CfA is one of the first unions in civic tech, and a unionized contract is under negotiation. |
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| 2021-07-31 | Only July 31st, DoorDash drivers across the nation went on strike protesting pay and the company's lack of transparency about tips in what might be the first coordinated strike in the company's history. Workers demand that DoorDash show the tip amount for an order and have a minimum of $4.50 base pay for every order. DoorDash had recently blocked access to an app called Para that allowed workers to see the tip amount before accepting an order. Organizing for the strike began with online posts to Reddit. On the day of the strike, many workers posted online via Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit voicing their struggles. |
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| 2021-07-26 | Content moderators who work for Facebook across the world wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Anne Heraty, and Julie Sweet. The moderators are demanding Facebook stop using non-disclosure agreements to prevent moderators from speaking out about their working conditions. The moderators also want proper mental health support and to make all moderators in-house instead of contract workers outsourced by Accenture. |
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| 2021-07-21 | An open letter was published demanding justice for Jessica (Ming) Tao, a former employee at Google. According to the open letter, "Google has chosen to put Jessica on unpaid leave while her rapist is still fully employed." The letter states that this is a common practice where Google protects the harasser instead of the victim. The letter demands that Jessica is compensated in full for her time on disability leave. The letter demands, "that survivors involved in future proceedings are always compensated for their time during this traumatizing process." Lastly, the letter demands Alphabet to stop having workers go to employee assistance program (EAP) therapy when they face harassment or other workplace abuses. |
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| 2021-07-21 | Organized by Rideshare Drivers United, Uber, Lyft, and other rideshare app-based drivers are striking in 11 different cities around the country. The drivers are protesting for better pay and legal protection under the PRO Act. |
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| 2021-07-15 | Foodpanda delivery workers protested in front of the company's headquarters while seven representatives of the strike tried to negotiate demands with the company. The delivery workers demanded to raise the base rate for deliveries, stop unreasonable termination of workers, end the cash-on-delivery system, and increase insurance coverage for personal accidents. Company management did not accept any of the demands or decide to hold another meeting. |
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| 2021-07-01 | Black TikTok content creators went on strike protesting the platform's cultural appropriation of their creative content. Users and content creators have pointed out that they don't receive credit for their creative work while other platform users can copy them and receive more views, fame, and recognition. Using the hashtag #BlackTikTokStrike, users and content creators raised awareness on the app and Twitter. |
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| 2021-06-30 | Seventy employees who work for Change.org unionized and joined the Workers of America's CODE-CWA Project. Organizing in the company began with Erni Poché, who noticed that the company used the racial identities of its employees to claim diversity and inclusion within the company. Black employees reported being disproportionately assigned to petitions around race, for instance. The workers who joined the union want to have a say in wages, benefits, and the implementation of diversity and equity programs. |
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| 2021-06-29 | Spanish language content moderators and customer service representatives at WhatsApp sent an internal letter demanding the $2 premium paid to other bi-lingual moderators and backpay, which Spanish language contractors don't receive. The letter addressed the CEOs of Facebook, Accenture, and WhatsApp and circulated on Facebook's communication platform. Eighty-nine employees signed the letter. |
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| 2021-06-28 | Delivery workers at Gorillas held a series of wildcat strikes in June protesting their working conditions and the firing of their colleagues. Gorillas are a delivery startup company in Berlin, Germany which delivers groceries. Workers protested the company's 6-month probationary period that allows them to fire any workers without cause, resulting in job insecurity for the delivery drivers. |
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| 2021-06-16 | Workers at Catalist, a political data services provider, have formed a union. 30 out of 38 employees have joined the union which is represented by the Communication Workers of America. The motivation for workers to unionize was not any specific mistreatment, rather they believe that in the broad benefits of organizing. The company voluntarily recognized the union. |
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| 2021-06-04 | Apple employees are fighting against a new policy requiring them to return to work three days a week in an open letter addressed to Tim Cook on Slack. Approximately 80 people were involved in writing the letter. Employees have argued that the company should adopt a flexible approach for those who still want to remotely work from home. |
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| 2021-06-03 | Delivery workers at Gorillas are organizing to form a work council known as Gorillas Workers Collective. At three warehouses, riders unanimously voted to go on strike and form the Gorillas Workers Collective. The employees held a meeting to establish a work council to obtain co-determination rights. Having access to these rights would allow them to have a say in break times and safety arrangements. The workers have organized due to unpaid hours, back pain and psychological distress incurred from the job, lack of safety, violation of labor laws, and chaotic management. |
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| 2021-06-01 | The Alphabet Workers Union circulated a petition asking the company and its contractors to allow employees to choose which name appears on their ID badges. These actions were taken because a transgender man, Phares Lee, requested to have his deadname replaced by his preferred name. His request was denied and he was forced to put his legal name. Lee works for G4S, a Google contractor, and was also banned from participating in employee resource groups (ERGs) as a result of his contractor status. The petition also called on the company to open ERGs to contractors. Update (6/14): G4S and Google allowed Phares to use his preferred name and join Google ERGs. The companies have not communicated larger changes in policy. |
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| 2021-06-01 | Facebook employees are circulating a petition for the company to conduct an investigation for censoring Palestinian content on their website. At Facebook, content moderation is executed by third party contractors and algorithms. Facebook employees have taken notice and are asking the company as a whole to do a third party audit of any Muslim or Arab content decisions made by moderators. |
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| 2021-05-25 | Approximately 600 Amazon employees have signed an open letter asking Jeff Bezos to break off all ties to the Israeli military. The letter points out that Amazon employs Palestinians around the world, including in Tel Aviv and Haifa and that "ignoring the suffering faced by Palestinians and their families at home erases our Palestinian coworkers." |
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| 2021-05-25 | 640 Amazon workers have signed a petition asking the company to commit to zero emissions by 2030 and to prioritize zero emission technology in communities of color hit hardest by the effects of their pollution. The petition began after Amazon rejected a shareholder resolution asking the company to report their emissions in communities of color. |
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| 2021-05-20 | Nearly a thousand Apple employees have signed an internal letter addressed to Tim Cook asking him to support the Palestinian community and people in light of Israel's bombing of Gaza which has led to the loss of 227 lives, including 63 children. The letter, written by the Apple Muslim Association, asks that Apple make it clear that Palestinian lives matter and that Palestinian people are under an illegal occupation. Moreover, the letter asks Apple to commit to understanding, engaging with, and learning about the Palestinian community and other diverse communities which make up the company. |
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| 2021-05-20 | The Algorithmic Justice League started an online campaign protesting a recent episode of the CBS news program, "60 Minutes", which featured a segment about the racial bias in law enforcement facial recognition technology but failed to cite any Black female scientists in the field. The group is demanding that 60 Minutes and Anderson Cooper apologize and cite Black female scientists, specifically Deborah Raji, Timnit Gebru, Joy Buolamwini, for their contribution to AI facial recognition research in their segment. |
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| 2021-05-18 | At Google, a group of Jewish employees (Jewish Diaspora in Tech) is asking the company to support Palestinians during the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza. An internal letter was circulated among employees asking Sundar Pichai to make a statement condemning recent Israeli attacks on Gaza. The letter mentions accepting the requests of Palestinian Googlers and funding relief for Palestinians affected by the violence, as well as protecting freedom of speech within the company. This new group was formed because some Jewish employees felt that the official Jewish ERG didn't allow a safe place to express anti-Zionist beliefs. |
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| 2021-05-12 | Workers at Apple have circulated a petition protesting the company's decision to hire Antonio Garcia Martinez. Employees expressed concerns about his views on women and people of color because of statements in his book, "Chaos Monkeys", which they find to be racist and sexist. UPDATE: As of May 12, 2021, Antonio Garcia Martinez is no longer working with Apple. |
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| 2021-05-10 | Black in AI, Queer in AI, and WiNLP have written an open letter condemning Google's actions for dismissing Dr. Timnit Gebru, Dr. Margaret Mitchell, and April Christina Curley. Black in AI, Queer in AI, and WiNLP have ended their sponsorship with Google and expressed concern that the company's actions have set a dangerous precedent for what is acceptable in the AI community. |
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| 2021-05-07 | Interns in Google's BOLD internship program, Tyrese Thomas and Jacob Ngai created a petition with the help of the Alphabet Workers Union. The petition asked Google to provide a $5,000 stipend for costs such as rent and other basic needs for their job. Typically, Google covers these costs with an $11,000 relocation stipend. However, due to COVID-19, the stipend wasn't instated because interns would work remotely from home. Interns argued, however, that those from lower income backgrounds might need additional funding to find office space during the day or to cover the costs of childcare. Overall, the petition gathered 1500 signatures from interns and Google employees. Google gave the interns a $5,000 stipend to spend on what they deem necessary. |
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| 2021-05-07 | Childcare and education workers at Google created an online petition to reinstate the transportation shuttles previously provided to workers before the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the petition, they are demanding a "$1,500 per-month transportation equity stipend for childcare workers who rely on Google transportation; until Google’s normal transportation operations resume". The petition has gained 622 signatures from Google employees in all departments. |
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| 2021-04-30 | Roughly 1/3rd of Basecamp's 57 employees have decided to accept Basecamp's severance package and resigned because of the company's recent policy changes– the most notable restricting political and societal discussions in the workplace. Several employees posted tweets stating that they left Basecamp due to these changes. |
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| 2021-04-28 | NPR has voluntarily recognized requests for unionization by its network digital operation employees. The union is known as Digital Media United and is in partnership with the CWA. The bargaining unit includes 63 workers. Unionization priorities include equal pay, increased staffing, restrictions on the use of temporary status, and hiring processes that ensure diverse applicants. |
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| 2021-04-26 | Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union ran a survey of its members, who are rideshare drivers and delivery workers in the state of Telangana in India. 495 drivers and delivery workers tested positive for COVID-19 and 4 have died, according to the survey. The Union is calling on the government to tell app-based companies to provide health insurance as well as prioritize covid vaccinations for workers and their families. The app-based companies, which include prominent names such as Uber and Ola, do not currently provide any health insurance for the drivers. India reported more than 350,000 cases in a single day on the same day. |
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| 2021-04-26 | In an open letter, the Telangana State Taxi and Drivers Joint Action Committee (JAC) in India demanded Uber and Ola pay for hospital expenses for drivers who test positive for covid and compensation to their families. The JAC, which comprises more than 20 unions and associations of app-based workers, also called on the companies to provide PPE, increase the rate of the fixed fare, and allow drivers to pick up their evening earnings within at least 3 km of their homes. India reported more than 350,000 cases in a single day on the same day. |
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| 2021-04-26 | More than 90% of NPR tech workers, a group that includes workers in content operations, design, digital support, product management and software engineering, signed cards to unionize with the Communications Workers of America. NPR voluntarily recognized the union the same week. |
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| 2021-04-21 | New York City delivery workers who ride e-bikes for food delivery apps protested against wage theft, lack of protections, and poor working conditions, including rampant theft of their e-bikes and violent assault while on the job. The protest was organized by Los Deliveristas Unidos, a grassroots campaign formed by immigrant Latinx delivery workers in New York City in 2020 during the pandemic. |
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| 2021-04-16 | Delivery drivers for Imperfect Foods have successfully voted to unionize, 28 for and 23 against. Interest in the union emerged last summer as a result of workers having to deliver more extensive workloads and cover healthcare costs from the pandemic. |
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| 2021-04-13 | Tech workers including, software engineers, designers, data analysts and product managers at the New York Times formed a union and are asking for voluntarily recognition from the company. The workers formed the union because of concerns regarding pay equity, job security, health care costs, and career advancement. The tech workers will be represented by the News Guild of New York which already has 1300 newsroom and staff members from the New York Times. |
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| 2021-04-09 | An open letter was sent to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, asking him to take a stronger stance on addressing sexual harassment within the company. The letter points out that workers who have been harassed still must work directly or report to those that have harassed them. Moreover, the letter points out to a trend where the company protects harassers and not the victim. |
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| 2021-04-07 | Deliveroo drivers went on a national strike in London, York, Redding, Sheffield, and Wolverhampton for better pay, working conditions, and basic workers rights. The strike was strategically timed to coincide with the company's IPO. According to protesters, the company has profited from the COVID-19 pandemic at the expense of workers. |
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| 2021-04-07 | Spotify and two unions, the Ringer Union and the Gimlet Union, agreed on a 3-year union contract, the first in the tech industry. The contract sets salary minimums, annual salary increases, terms for severance pay, and diversity hiring guarantees but does not clarify terms around intellectual property. |
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| 2021-04-07 | Amazon drivers have begun leaving the company's trademark packages upside-down which displays the company's logo as a frown. The trend began when an Amazon delivery driver, who goes by AugustaSummerz, posted photos online of displaying packages upside-down to protest working conditions. |
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| 2021-04-07 | Amazon workers in Gage Park, Chicago walked out during their shift and protested outside the facility. Workers demanded a $2 wage increase, scheduling accommodations, and better working conditions, including hiring more full-time workers. |
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| 2021-04-06 | DoorDash drivers are working together with a 40,000 person online community (#DeclineNow) to increase their pay by systematically declining orders through the platform. As part of the #DeclineNow movement, DoorDash drivers do not accept orders that pay less than $7, more than twice the current $3 floor. By collectively declining orders, it forces the algorithm to offer the next driver the same delivery but at a higher price. |
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| 2021-04-03 | Food delivery drivers for the platform Ele.me are going on strike for better pay, working conditions, and to protest Xiong Yan's detainment. Xiong Yan is the head of an unofficial union for the platform who was detained in Beijing last month. Delivery workers who are on strike and part of the sabotage campaign are refusing to accept work or, in cases when they do, purposefully taking a long time to complete orders to trigger "time outs". |
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| 2021-04-01 | In February, the Alphabet Worker's Union filed two lawsuits against Google for unfair labor practices on behalf of Shannon Wait, a contractor at Google and member of the union. The first lawsuit contested Wait's illegal suspension for supporting a union. The second lawsuit alleged that managers illegally asked Wait and other employees not to discuss their wages. Google, Modis (the contracting firm), and the AWU reached a settlement and had Wait's suspension overturned. Google signed a document that its employees had the right to discuss wage, bonuses, and working conditions. This is the first NLRB settlement with the AWU. |
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| 2021-04-01 | The Chicago chapter of Amazonians United, DCH1, created a petition demanding a $2 pay increase and full 20-minute breaks for workers on the company's megacycle shift, a new shift that runs from 1:20 am -11:50 am. In addition, the petition called for accommodations for workers who are unable to work the shift. In April DCH1 also organized a walkout in protest. On May 19th, Amazon warehouse workers across the country who work on the Megacycle shift began receiving a $1.50-$2.00 pay increase per hour for certain days of the week. |
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| 2021-03-29 | Italian Amazon workers went on a national strike for 24 hours to protest for fewer hours and job stability for temporary workers. Italian unions FILT-CGIL, FIT-CISL and Uiltrasporti called for the strike, which took place in Tuscany, Florence, and Pisa. |
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| 2021-03-29 | German Amazon workers went on strike in six centers across the country to put pressure on the company to sign a collective agreement with the union in Germany. Ver.di, the union, has also criticized the company for unsafe working conditions under covid. |
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| 2021-03-23 | Members of the open source community have written an open letter calling on the entire Board of the Free Software Foundation to be removed for supporting Richard M. Stallman over his many years involved with that organization. They are also demanding that Stallman be removed from all leadership positions including the GNU Project. The letter says that Stallman is misogynist, ableist, and transphobic and cites incidents thereof. It calls on members of the open source community to stop contributing and associating with the organization and their projects. |
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| 2021-03-22 | Several of YouTube's employees raised concerns that a music video on the website, "Meet the Flockers" by YG, promotes racism towards Asian Americans. The video details a burglary and calls for targeting Chinese communities according to press reports. The employees requested that the company's Trust and Safety team pull the video from the site, which the company declined to do in a statement. Update: In early April, several newspapers reported that the video had been removed from the website. |
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| 2021-03-15 | Workers for Mobilize have formed a union that is part of the CODE-CWA movement. Mobilize is owned by political tech company EveryAction. One hundred percent of eligible Mobilize workers voted to join the union after it was voluntarily recognized by EveryAction management. The union was created as a result of the EveryAction acquisition. Employees were negotiating new contracts and wanted to negotiate certain clauses collectively. |
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| 2021-03-10 | No Tech for Tyrants (NT4T) launched a campaign called #RecruitMeNot in response to Dr. Timnit Gebru being censored and fired at Google for refusing to do unethical practices. Dr. Gebru was Google's Lead AI ethics researcher. The #RecruitMeNot campaign asks students and researchers to refuse recruitment and job offers from Google until they meet the basic demands outlined by its employees. |
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| 2021-03-08 | #MakeAIEthical is a movement in response to Dr. Timnit Gebru and Dr. Margaret Mitchell, who were co-leaders of Google's AI ethics research being terminated and censored by Google for raising ethical concerns. #MakeAIEthical is asking the AI community to stand in solidarity such as asking universities to refuse funding from Google, for students to refuse recruitment from Google, and for federal and state whistleblower regulations be strengthened. |
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| 2021-03-01 | Contract tech workers of Goodlord have been striking for two weeks because they are being fired and rehired for permanent contracts that have less favorable terms than their current contracts. The contracts have resulted in 20% pay decrease and will have the workers making 6,000 pounds less than the livable wage in London. The workers refuse to work until Goodlord negotiates with them for better pay and benefits. Goodlord is an online platform for tenants, agents, and landlords to utilize in the real estate market. |
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| 2021-02-28 | Glitch workers signed a collective bargaining agreement with company management that will last for 11 months. According to a press release from the Communications Workers of America (CWA), this is the first agreement signed by white collar tech workers in the United States. The agreement did not include a call for higher wages because workers recognized that they are paid relatively high wages and that the company has faced economic pressures as a result of the pandemic. Instead, the contract improved job stability, ensuring "just cause" protections against firing and recall rights (priority for re-hiring for the same positions) for workers laid off due to the pandemic. |
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| 2021-02-26 | The ACM Conference for Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT) organizers have decided not to continue their sponsorship with Google this year. Several press publications have noted the decision to drop Google follows the company's recent decision to fire Ethical AI co-leaders, Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell. The conference's Executive Committee said they chose not to continue their relationship because they it does not align with their Strategic Plan, the goals outlined and agreed upon to guide the FAccT. Gebru was a cofounder of the organization and continues to advise the group. Mitchell is a program co-chair of the conference and a FAccT program committee member. |
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| 2021-02-23 | In South Africa, Uber drivers are taking part in a class-action lawsuit against the company. Drivers are seeking compensation for unpaid overtime and holiday pay based on South African law. One of the law firms representing South African drivers also represented UK drivers in front of the UK Supreme Court, which ruled on February 19th that drivers must be classified as employees rather than independent contractors in the country. |
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| 2021-02-19 | DoorDash drivers are leveraging an old Android version of the DoorDash app to strategically select deliveries and make more money on the platform. Drivers are also organizing online through a movement called #DeclineNow where they follow a strict set of rules to not accept any deliveries that would result in less pay for their time, resources, and gas. A gig worker, Amy Lee, ran an analysis and found that DoorDashers who accept every order are at a stark disadvantage make significantly less an hour than those who selective accept deliveries. Lee has written her own open letter addressing the inefficiencies regarding the pay structure of the app so that it can become a more sustainable job for drivers. |
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| 2021-02-11 | Medium workers have announced they are forming a union. Over 140 Medium workers (reportedly 70% of eligible workers) have signed union cards in support of forming a union with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 9410. They have called on management to voluntarily recognize the union. |
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| 2021-01-29 | Two Google engineers (engineering director David Baker plus a software developer Vinesh Kannan) have both quit in reaction to Timnit Gebru, an AI ethics researcher, being fired at Google. Gebru's firing has resulted in Google workers questioning the ethics and diversity of Google. |
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| 2021-01-25 | Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) joined a global union alliance called Alpha Global. Alpha Global is an international coalition formed by 13 unions across the world in 10 different countries including the US, UK, and Switzerland and affiliated with UNI Global Union. Alpha Global is now choosing a steering committee, which may include Google workers. They plan to launch campaigns targeting "national issues, like the treatment of content moderators in certain countries, as well as international concerns, like workers being forced to sign nondisclosure agreements". |
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| 2021-01-22 | Delivery drivers and restaurant owners in Dublin, Ireland organized to not work from 6pm - 8pm for the delivery platform, Deliveroo. Drivers have claimed their pay has been reduced and that they have been facing unsafe conditions while working. Some, restaurants that have their food delivered though the platform have decided to support the protest by not taking orders during the strike. |
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| 2021-01-12 | The SEIU, along with a number of individual rideshare drivers, filed a lawsuit with the California Supreme Court seeking to overturn Proposition 22, which ruled that gig workers are independent contractors in the state. They argue that the law is unconstitutional and violates the right of state legislators; they also argue that Proposition 22 violated a rule that limits ballot measures to a single subject to prevent voter confusion. |
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| 2021-01-09 | Amazon suspends hosting for Parler, a social network app cited for facilitating the pro-Trump storming of the Capitol, after Amazon employees send internal messages to AWS management and participate in various online actions, including a coworker.org petition. |
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| 2021-01-08 | Approximately 200 GitHub workers signed an open letter calling on management to explain their decision to fire a Jewish worker who called the January 6th rioters at the U.S. Capitol "Nazis" on an internal company message board. They also called on the company to take a stronger position on anti-Semitism and white supremacy. Management responded with a letter denouncing the events of Jan. 6th and promising an investigation of the firing. UPDATE: On January 17th, GitHub posted to their company blog that their investigation "revealed significant errors of judgment and procedure". Their head of HR resigned from the company and the company reinstated the employee. |
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| 2021-01-08 | Following the pro-Trump storming of the Capitol on January 6, roughly 350 Twitter employees signed an internal letter addressed to CEO Jack Dorsey and top executives questioning Twitter's policies and role in facilitating the attack. The employees requested an investigation into corporation actions over the last several years and asked for greater transparency to the company’s decision-making process regarding Donald Trumps' Twitter account on the day of the attack. |
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| 2021-01-07 | The Alphabet Workers Union published an open letter on Twitter calling on YouTube to remove Donald Trump from its website, stating that he repeatedly violated the platform's rules. Earlier in the week YouTube took down one video from Trump where he made unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. UPDATE: On January 12th, YouTube announced that it would suspend Donald Trump's account indefinitely. The account remains online but is not allowed to post new videos. |
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| 2021-01-04 | Over 200 Google employees in the U.S. and Canada revealed that they had formed a solidarity union. Updated to 530 members (1/6/21). Updated to 700 members (1/12/21). Updated to 800 members (2/17/21).The Alphabet Workers Union includes contractors, who make up over half of the company's workforce, and is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America. According to the union website, the goal of the AWU is "to create a democratic process for workers to wield decision-making power; promote social, economic, and environmental justice; and end the unfair disparities between TVCs (temporary, vendor, and contractor workers) and FTEs (full-time employees)". The union has been over a year in the making and organizers credit the foundation laid by the last decade of collective actions at the company. |
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| 2020-12-31 | A court in Bologna, Italy upheld a lawsuit filed by a group of Deliveroo workers, backed by Italy's CGIL union. The lawsuit alleged that Deliveroo's algorithms discriminated against gig workers. The company used machine learning algorithms to determine the "reliability" of a worker and give them preference for certain shifts. The court ruled that the company failed to take valid reasons for cancellation into account, such as medical illness. Legal experts say this could be an important precedent in holding companies responsible for algorithms that cause inadvertent harm. |
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| 2020-12-22 | CS Ed Supports Timnit is an online movement started in response to Dr. Timnit Gebru's firing at Google. Gebru, "a world renowned researcher on ethics and artificial intelligence", lost her position after raising concerns about using data being used against marginalized groups of people. CS Ed Supports Timnit wrote an open letter asking for academics, researchers, program providers, and advocates for computer science students to stand in solidarity in with Timnit. They advocate to not stay neutral and address the inequalities across the tech industries. |
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| 2020-12-21 | Shanghai factory workers at the Apple supplier Pegatron turned out to protest a pay dispute with management at the weekend. Thousands of temporary workers gathered outside the Taiwanese-invested Pegatron facility in Shanghai, as authorities dispatched large numbers of police to block their entrance to the facility, sparking clashes. The protest came after Pegatron tried to transfer thousands of workers from its Shanghai factory to another facility at Kunshan in the eastern province of Jiangsu. Those who refused the transfer would be fired, and workers fired for refusing the offer wouldn't be eligible for their share of finders' fee commission usually shared between recruitment agencies and workers. |
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| 2020-12-21 | In Germany, 800 Amazon employees at six different locations stopped work ahead of Christmas to protest precarious wages. Strikes were called by trade union Verdi and took place in Bad Herzfeld, Rheinberg, and Werne. The strike was called to push for recognition of the union's collective agreements and paying employees according to those agreements. Verdi is also pressuring Amazon for better health and safety conditions. |
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| 2020-12-17 | Activists from various initiatives, including initiatives against the Amazon Tower, Mietenwahnsinnbündnis, #200Häuser spontaneously demonstrated in front of the construction site of the “Amazon East Side Edge Tower” at Warschauer Brücke. The protests are directed at Amazon's handling of the pandemic in several German Amazon centers. The company is responsible for the increase in infections and illnesses among workers and is allowing the Christmas shopping season to continue. |
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| 2020-12-17 | Two weeks after Dr Timnit Gebru was fired from her role in Google, Google’s Ethical AI employees sent CEO Sundar Pichai a list of demands, including organizational changes and a request to reinstate dismissed researcher Timnit Gebru at a higher level. |
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| 2020-12-12 | Workers at an iPhone production facility in the city of Narsapura near Bangalore in India protested unpaid wages by destroying office property and factory equipment at Wistron Infocomm's manufacturing facility. Around 100 workers are arrested. |
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| 2020-12-11 | Three unions at Spotify kicked off a two hour work stoppage in solidarity with their collective struggles for fairer contracts and better workplace conditions. The union at Gimlet, a major podcast publisher that was bought by Spotify last year for $230 million, is joining unions at The Ringer and Parcast—all properties owned by Spotify—in the work stoppage. The union's demands have included a contract with guaranteed raises, clear guidelines surrounding promotions, the right to profit from intellectual property they help create, a greater emphasis on diversity, and pay equity across the board. The work stoppage was streamed on Twitch for a little over an hour, with organizing members from all three groups outlining in detail their demands. |
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| 2020-12-07 | The tech firm Civis Analysis, which came out of Obama's 2012 campaign and is backed by Eric Schmidt, has been hit with an unfair labor practice charge for illegally firing workers in retaliation for organizing. |
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| 2020-12-03 | After Dr. Timnit Gebru was fired from Google, Googlers wrote an open letter demanding accountability from Google. 2695 Googlers and 4302 academic, industry, and civil society supporters signed on to the letter. |
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| 2020-11-27 | Thousands of Amazon workers walk off the job to fight for fair pay and COVID protections. Unions representing tens of thousands of Amazon.com Inc. employees walked out during the year's busiest shopping season, in protest of Amazon's handling of everything from sick pay and COVID-19 precautions to user privacy. The giant Verdi trade union in Germany is holding a walkout across seven Amazon facilities. Garment workers in Bangladesh will call for higher pay outside an Amazon supplier facility in Dhaka. In Australia, unions will perform “health and safety” inspections of the company’s facilities using their “statutory right of entry,” the campaign said. Others will project the campaign’s logo on buildings in Brussels, London, Sao Paulo and other cities. In all, the organizations participating in the protests represent roughly 40,000 Amazon employees, according to a spokesman for the UNI Global Union. These actions are part of the Make Amazon Pay campaign. |
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| 2020-11-27 | Progressive International launched a protest campaign against Amazon called "Make Amazon Pay." They called on the tech giant to provide better working conditions for its employees and to reduce its expanding carbon footprint. Launched on Black Friday, the campaign provides a list of demands for Amazon, which include raising pay for workers in Amazon’s warehouses, extending paid sick leave, and allowing workers to organize in unions. The campaign also tasks Amazon with “committing to zero emissions by 2030” and paying back society by “ending partnerships with police forces and immigration authorities that are institutionally racist” and “paying taxes in full, in the countries where the real economic activity takes place.” The campaign was run by Progressive International, and had the support of the Amazon Workers International, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, the Tech Workers Coalition, Athena, and many more. |
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| 2020-11-24 | Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama filed a petition to hold a union election. If successful, this would be the first Amazon Union for warehouse workers in the U.S. Workers from the warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, outside Birmingham, filed the petition with the NLRB seeking to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, or RWDSU. Amazon employs more than 1,500 workers at the facility, which just opened earlier this year. UPDATE: The petition was successful, and workers are expected to receive their mail-in ballots on February 8th with ballot counting set to begin on March 30th. |
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| 2020-11-18 | More than 200 Facebook workers signed a letter demanding better treatment for content moderators after being required to return to the office in the midst of the pandemic. The contractors who wrote the letter condemned the company for deciding “to risk our lives to maintain Facebook’s profits during the pandemic”. It was sent to chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, and top executives at Accenture and CPL, two companies that contract the moderators. The open letter was published with UK-based non-profit Foxglove. |
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| 2020-11-17 | On Tuesday, dozens of those workers will protest outside the San Francisco home of the Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan, and drop off letters demanding an extension of their healthcare coverage and pay (Verizon Media owns Yahoo). Though these workers are technically not employed by Verizon Media, the decision to lay off the cafeteria workers was ultimately made by the company, which like most Silicon Valley tech companies contracts out its blue-collar labor. |
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| 2020-11-07 | The All India Gig Workers Union (AIGWU) which, was initiated by the Center of India Trade Union (CITU) is attempting to become a registered as an All-India Union. Their main focus of their goal is to help delivery drivers through organization and so that they can initiate platform and political change for better wages and working conditions. |
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| 2020-10-27 | A group of 30 Indian female engineers who were born into the Dalit caste shared a statement with the Washington Post describing their experience of casteism and sexism in Silicon Valley. The group called for American corporations to adopt caste as a protected category, treated on the same terms as gender, race, and sexuality. |
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| 2020-10-26 | British Uber drivers are launching a lawsuit in the Netherlands to protest the company's use of algorithms to fire workers. The App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU) claims there are over 1,000 cases of drivers being wrongfully fired and that this violates Article 22 of the GDPR. This Article grants technology users a right to an explanation for any automated decisions. |
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| 2020-10-22 | A group of California Uber drivers sued the company for asking drivers to support Prop. 22 (a state proposition that would overrule attempts to classify gig workers as employees) through in-app messaging. The suit seeks an injunction that would stop the messages. The plaintiffs were active in the movement against Prop. 22. They claimed that the company's message that 72% of its drivers support Prop. 22 was false because that percentage was the result of company pressures (including workers' concerns that the company was surveilling their survey answers on the app). |
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| 2020-10-22 | Amazon workers, organized by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, are calling for a 15-minute work stoppage at warehouses across the country on Halloween in a push for paid time-off for voting on Election Day. |
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| 2020-10-17 | Shipt shoppers are organizing a handful of actions in protest of Shipt’s new pay structure that began rolling out this month. The first action is happening from Saturday, Oct. 17 through Oct. 19, when workers are calling on their fellow Shipt shoppers to walk out and boycott the company. Organizers are asking for shoppers not to schedule any hours or accept any orders during that time. |
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| 2020-10-17 | Amazon Employees for Climate Justice organized a rally in Seattle to call for paid time off for workers to vote on Election Day. A few hundred people attended the rally according to CBS News. Amazon stated that managers have been instructed to approve time-off requests for voting. |
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| 2020-10-15 | A group of Amazon employees are circulating a petition, first created in October, demanding that Amazon stop monitoring employee activism and labor organization efforts. The group is called Amazonians for Employee Privacy and they are requesting more transparency from Amazon about their surveillance activities, including their union heat map. |
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| 2020-10-14 | Amazon workers staged a vigil at Jeff Bezos' Beverly Hills mansion for fellow workers that had died as a result of working through the coronavirus pandemic. The event was organized by the Warehouse Worker Resource Center. |
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| 2020-10-13 | More than 6,400 Amazon workers signed an internal petition calling for time off to vote for its entire workforce ahead of the 2020 U.S. Election. Other companies like Walmart, Apple, and Target have policies allowing for paid time off for voting. Amazon Employees for Climate Justice organized the petition. |
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| 2020-10-10 | At least 290 Facebook employees and contractors signed a petition demanding a 50% wage increase as hazard pay for site moderators who have been forced to return to the office by October 12th of this year. Additional demands include compensation for all costs related to COVID-19 testing and treatment, as well as additional time off and an expedited time off review process. Accenture, which hired the moderators as contractors, informed them on October 1st that they would have to return to their office in Austin, Texas. A Facebook spokesperson said the reason for the return was that "some of the most sensitive content can’t be reviewed from home". Full-time, directly hired Facebook employees don't have to return to the office until July 2021. |
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| 2020-10-08 | More than 60 Coinbase employees chose to leave the company, opting for a severance package, to protest CEO Brian Armstrong's assertion that employees should not participate in social activism in the workplace. This represents roughly 5% of the company's employees. This event follows several months of internal activism within the company after management failed to make a public statement on the Black Lives Matter movement. |
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| 2020-10-05 | Parcast, a Spotify-owned podcast company, announced a unionization effort back in September. Employees of the company chose to pursue unionization through the Writers Guild of America, East to call for greater diversity, equity, and inclusion at the company, as well as equitable pay, reasonable working hours, and overtime compensation. Parcast announced on October 6th that Spotify had chosen to voluntarily recognize the union. |
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| 2020-10-04 | Amazon workers, organized by the Congress of Essential Workers, protested in front of Jeff Bezos' Beverley Hills mansion, calling for improved working conditions under covid, hazard pay, and better health benefits. |
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| 2020-10-01 | 35 Amazon workers in Shakopee, Minnesota walked off the job to protest the firing of Farhiyo Warsame. The company alleged that the employee violated "time off task" policies but workers claim that the employee was fired for raising concerns about covid-related safety. |
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| 2020-09-28 | A group of cross-company organizers in tech have started a repository called "Tech Truths" that highlights incidents of discrimination in tech, including "discrimination by race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, immigration status, and more". To date (10/7/2020), 107 different stories of discrimination have been shared and published. |
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| 2020-09-23 | Employees at Hootsuite succeeded in getting the company, a B-corporation, to drop its contract with U.S. ICE after protesting via social media and voicing their opposition internally to the company. A Tweet from a senior training specialist at Hootsuite, Sam Anderson, generated significant backlash within the industry, including from many social media managers at client companies. |
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| 2020-09-22 | Tech workers in the U.K. have started a union aimed at organizing a wide array of tech workers in the country. The United Tech and Allied Workers, a branch of the Communications Workers Union, offers legal counsel and representation at employment tribunals for its members. Under U.K. law, employees can join a union even if that union has not been recognized by their employer. In an interview with Vice, a member highlighted the union's "very broad definition of a tech worker", which spans white collar and blue collar labor. |
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| 2020-09-21 | A number of contractors for Google (employed through staffing firm Adecco) have filed a lawsuit alleging that confidentiality agreements with the company deprive them of basic legal rights, such as free speech. Contractors are prevented from discussing wages or working conditions, which they claim prohibit them from “disclosing violations of state and federal law, either within Google to their managers or outside Google to private attorneys or government officials”. The Sept. 21st filing with a California appeals court reverses a lower court decision, allowing the lawsuit to proceed. |
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| 2020-09-16 | Workers for delivery company Swiggy went on strike in a number of Indian cities including Hyderabad, Chennai, and Delhi to call for greater pay. They rallied outside of restaurants and prevented third-party companies from picking up orders. |
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| 2020-09-15 | Rideshare drivers protested in Abuja, Nigeria, calling for greater government oversight on pricing for apps like Uber and Bolt. Drivers threatened to go on strike within a week's time if the government did not respond to their demands. Drivers noted the disparity in prices between Abuja and other major cities in Nigeria and surrounding countries. Rising gas prices have also led to decreased profits for many drivers. Several organizations were involved: Abuja City Pilot Forum (ACPF), City Online Drivers Association (CODA) and the Online Hackney Practitioners Association of Nigeria (OHPAN). |
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| 2020-09-08 | 24 employees of tech non-profit Do Something walked off the job, calling for the resignation of current CEO Aria Finger. They have also sent two direct letters to the CEO and Board of Directors that have been shared on Twitter. Former employees shared experiences of racial discrimination and harassment via social media earlier this year. The letter states that Finger reacted to these posts by calling them untrue or "standard-issued American forms of microaggression and racism". Finger returned in August after a legal investigation did not find evidence of discrimination under her tenure. |
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| 2020-08-31 | Rideshare drivers in Lagos, Nigeria went on a one-week strike to protest new state regulations that added a fixed service tax to all trips. The agreement was reached between the companies, the Lagos state government, and the Professional E-hailing Drivers and Private Owners Association but did not include the National Union of Professional App-Based Workers, which union representatives claim was sidelined during negotiations due to its initial rejection of the proposal. |
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| 2020-08-31 | More than 300 Microsoft employees shared salary and pay bonus data in spreadsheet. A similar action took place last year. This year's survey asked whether employees identified as people of color or experienced discrimination because of their gender identity. Notably, 194 of 310 participants identified as people of color and 69 had experienced discrimination on the basis of gender identity. |
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| 2020-08-28 | More than 100 protesters, led by former Amazon worker Christian Smalls, placed a guillotine outside of Jeff Bezos' D.C. home to call on the company to raise minimum wages from $15 to $30/hour. |
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| 2020-08-26 | Foodora workers in Canada received a $3.5 million settlement after suing their employer for union busting. Foodora chose to leave Canada in April 2020 after the Ontario Labor Board voted to recognize the couriers as company employees. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers sued on behalf of the workers and declared that the settlement would be distributed between all Canadian Foodora employees. |
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| 2020-08-22 | Didi rideshare workers have started holding strikes in a number of Chinese cities including Suzhou, Nanjing, Nantong, and Zunyi City to protest high commission fees on the platform. Drivers in Zunyi City also issued a letter with 5 demands to their local government and transportation department. |
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| 2020-08-19 | Deliveroo workers in Sheffield, England kicked off two weeks of strike actions to demand higher pay and better working conditions, including the right to appeal terminations. The actions are designed to target companies, e.g. certain restaurants, that workers believe to be part of the exploitation. An outright strike was deemed too expensive by the workers, many of whom report working 60-70 hours a week to make ends meet. Actions will also include flyering and a demonstration. |
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| 2020-08-19 | Four former Google software engineers have filed a lawsuit in California claiming gender discrimination at the company and demanding that the company turn over sexist emails and memes created by two male company employees. The plaintiffs hope to mount a class action lawsuit against the company. |
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| 2020-08-14 | Pinterest employees staged a virtual walk out by posting messages to Slack and then logging off their work accounts, to protest the racial and gender discrimination brought to light by Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, and then again by Francoise Brougher. Workers also signed onto an online petition to CEO Ben Silberman calling for an end to discrimination and retaliation by the company. |
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| 2020-08-13 | After workers of N26 (digital bank) announced their intent to form a Works Council (Betriebsrat), management responded by issuing a legal injunction, banning 6 of the workers from partaking in formation of electoral committee. They forgot to include the service union Ver.di, so on August 13th, Ver.di chaired a meeting for N26 Operations GmbH, and workers voted for the first electoral committee. |
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| 2020-08-12 | Over 2,900 Belarusian tech workers, including top level management and investors, publicly signed onto an open letter calling the recent presidential elections a fraud. Signatories threatened to relocate their offices and investments outside of Belarus, stating that the atmosphere of fear and suppression was not conducive to a thriving technology sector. The letter denounced anti-democratic measures taken by the government, including the arrests of protesters and widespread Internet outages, and called for new elections, the release of those arrested, and freedom of press in the country. |
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| 2020-08-12 | A group of Black employees across tech companies have launched an initiative, Tech Can Do Better, to call for greater equity in the workplace. An Instagram account promotes the visibility and highlights the accomplishments of Black employees in tech. The group has also started an online pledge where workers can commit to "mak[ing] the changes needed to achieve equitable hiring, promotions, and compensation, mak[ing] significant Investment in social equity and driv[ing] advocacy for equitable legislation." |
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| 2020-08-09 | Several dozen Former Amazon workers held a protest outside of Jeff Bezos' New York City penthouse to call for greater protections for warehouse workers during the pandemic, along with the right to unionize and a national wealth tax on the top 3 percent of earners. The protest was organized by Christian Smalls, a former Amazon employee who was fired after organizing a walkout to protest the company's handling of coronavirus. Since then, Smalls has founded an organizedcalled the Congress of Essential Workers, dedicated to protecting workers during the pandemic. |
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| 2020-08-01 | A caravan of protestors demanding increased pay and COVID-19 protections disrupted business at an Amazon Distribution Center in the San Francisco Bay Area. The caravan was organized by Bay Area Amazonians. |
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| 2020-08-01 | Amazon workers and supporters blocked the entrance of a San Leandro warehouse for several hours in a call for improved coronavirus safety measures. |
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| 2020-07-26 | Whole Foods employees and local residents protested in front of a Cambridge location that turned away seven employees on June 25th for wearing masks with "Black Lives Matter" slogans. The event is part of a larger boycott that has been ongoing since the incident. Suverino Frith, one of the seven employees, spoke at the event and called on the company to live up to their "core values". |
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| 2020-07-21 | In 2019 employees of Bosch.io (subsidary of Bosch) formed a Works Council (Betriebsrat). In 2020 they formed their first Collective Bargaining Agreement, and Bosch.IO will join employer association. The CBA (Tarifvertrag) including provisions related to short time work (Kurzarbeit), home office usage during the coronavirus pandemic. An interview with several elected Works Councilors is included in German. |
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| 2020-07-20 | Amazon, Google, Uber, Lyft, and Postmates workers were reportedly among the "tens of thousands" of employees across the U.S. that took part in a protest of the country's long-standing systemic racism. Those that were unable to leave their jobs were encouraged to take an 8 minute, 46 second break (the amount of time a police officer knelt on George Floyd's neck) or to bend a knee in solidarity (a reference to protests by the NFL). The Washington Post reports that demonstrations took place in over 200 cities. |
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| 2020-07-20 | In the United Kingdom, four Uber drivers have filed a lawsuit to gain access to Uber's algorithms. The drivers along with The UK App Drivers and Couriers Union argue that under Europe's General Data Protection Regulation they should have access to the data that Uber collects on their drivers. If given access to this data, drivers on the platform will be able to calculate an hourly wage as well as understand why they have been deactivated using trip ratings. |
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| 2020-07-20 | Employees at Google's Zurich office voted to recognize the Syndicom union as their employee representative. Employees first reached out to Syndicom after management failed to address their concerns over "Project Dragonfly", a search engine that would enable the Chinese government to censor certain results. Employee representatives function as consultants and do not engage in collective bargaining. |
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| 2020-07-20 | Github users have launched a campaign to pressure the company to drop its contracts with ICE. Users have changed their profile pictures to the company's mascot, Octocat, with a message reading "Drop ICE". |
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| 2020-07-15 | Shipt workers went on strike across the U.S. to protest the company's move to a new, less transparent algorithmic pay model that reduces their wages by 25-50%, according to reports. Workers also called for consumers to boycott the service. Shipt has more than 100,000 workers in the U.S. and is used by companies such as Target. Willy Solis, from the Gig Workers Collective, was the lead organizer for the event and used social media groups and word-of-mouth (encouraging each committed worker to recruit five additional participants) to drive the strike. |
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| 2020-07-01 | Thousands of delivery workers have engaged in a strike on Wednesday demanding better working conditions in more than 10 Brazilian capitals, as well as in cities in Argentina and Mexico. This was spurred by lack of health benefits in light of the covid-19 pandemic. The workers organized themselves outside the unions with broad popular support as they spread their movement through the internet using the hashtags #BrequeDosApps (brake the apps) and #YoNoReparto (I won’t deliver). Besides the risk of being exposed to the virus, workers report long working hours—often more than 14 hours a day—for increasingly low pay, without health insurance or labor rights. |
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| 2020-06-26 | The Supreme Court of Canada allowed a C$400 million lawsuit against Uber by its drivers to proceed. The lawsuit alleges that drivers are, in fact, company employees. |
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| 2020-06-26 | Approximately 300 Uber Black drivers in the Toronto area voted to unionize with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). |
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| 2020-06-23 | Two former Pinterest employees, both Black women, spoke out on Twitter about the racism they experienced in the workplace. One of the employees, Ifeoma Ozoma, said she was not being fairly paid according to company data. She also said she had to come up with a list of pros to defend promoting former slave plantations for wedding venues. After speaking out, a white employee of the company doxxed her, placing her personal contact information online. He was fired soon after. Another former employee, Aerica Shimizu Ban, said her expenses with Black organizations had been repeatedly questioned. |
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| 2020-06-23 | Hundreds of expert researchers and practitioners across a variety of technical, scientific, and humanistic fields (including statistics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, law, sociology, history, communication studies and anthropology) sign a letter calling for a forthcoming publication entitled “A Deep Neural Network Model to Predict Criminality Using Image Processing”, to be rescinded from publication. The letter also urges for such research topics to not be published in the future. |
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| 2020-06-22 | Over 1, 650 Google employees have signed an open letter to CEO Sundar Pichai demanding the company stop selling its technology to police forces across the US. “The past weeks have shown us that addressing racism is not merely an issue of words, but of actions taken to dismantle the actual structures that perpetuate it, ” the letter, written by the employee group Googlers Against Racism, reads. “While we as individuals hold difficult but necessary conversations with our family, friends and peers, we are also incredibly disappointed by our company’s response.” |
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| 2020-06-18 | Gig Workers Rising organized an open letter from workers calling for economic justice from their employees, many of whom are Black and Brown, as a means of responding meaningfully to anti-racist protests. The letter calls out companies for releasing statements that "have included various platitudes about your commitment to Racial Justice and the Black community" without promising "real change". Among the demands are: (1) "meaningful representation at work", (2) "benefits to take care of ourselves and our families", (3) "a living wage", (4) and dropping the AB5 ballot measure. To date, the letter has received over 330 signatures. |
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| 2020-06-15 | Over 90 individuals and organizations affiliated with MIT have signed a letter to the MIT College of Computing Leadership calling for the college to make a public statement condemning the death of George Floyd, developing a plan to address "the legacy of anti-blackness and the relationship between technology and policing", and breaking ties with companies that sell to police departments and ICE. Long-term asks include hiring more Black faculty and recruiting and accepting more Black undergraduate and graduate students. |
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| 2020-06-12 | Foodora couriers overwhelmingly voted to join the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). 88% of workers who voted supported joining the union. In April 2020, Foodora announced it was leaving the country after the Ontario Labor Board voted to recognize the couriers as company employees. While this makes the vote largely symbolic, it nevertheless makes Foodora's union the first certified gig workers' union in Canada. |
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| 2020-06-09 | Loggi delivery workers in Brazil went on strike starting June 9th to protest poor working conditions, including lack of protections against coronavirus, and low pay. Protestors also commemorated the death of a fellow worker, Thiago Coelho, who was killed in a motorcycle accident. |
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| 2020-06-08 | Hundreds of Microsoft employees have signed a letter to the company’s top executives asking for Microsoft to take action in the wake of national protests. The initiative came out of a Facebook group called "Young Microsoft FTEs". The email to the Microsoft executives includes a list of requests, including increased leniency for Microsoft workers in performance reviews due to the coronavirus pandemic and protests; the company formally condemning the use of tear gas, rubber bullets, and flashbangs; increasing Microsoft’s employee donation matches; the cancellation of contracts with SPD and other law enforcement agencies; support for defunding the SPD; signing a petition for the resignation of Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan; and support for a list of demands from BLM Seattle. Employees volunteered to be CC’d on the email in a show of solidarity, though their inclusion was not intended to show explicit support for every request, according to the email. |
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| 2020-06-08 | Nine current and former Facebook content moderators posted a message of solidarity with the Black community in the wake of the George Floyd protests and in support of the virtual walkout. The authors noted that they would have attended the walkout "if Facebook would allow it. As outsourced contractors, non-disclosure agreements deter us from speaking openly about what we do and witness for most of our waking hours." The workers also remarked on the lack of protections they receive from their employer. "We would walk out with you — if we could afford it. At the moment, content moderators have no possibility, no network or platform or financial security — especially when we are atomized in pandemic and remotely micromanaged — to stage an effective walkout without risking fines, our income and even our right to stay in the countries where we live and work." |
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| 2020-06-06 | Contract workers for Facebook in Austin, Texas, say they have been retaliated against for union organizing, resulting in two workers’ departure in recent weeks. The workers, who help Facebook find and triage internal bugs, are unhappy with their employer, the India-based firm WiPro, and have been organizing in the workplace to pressure both companies for improvements. Recently, two people involved in the organizing campaign who were vocal about these issues departed the company. Both had posted heated messages on an internal message board about the need to improve conditions for the contingent workers and encouraging remaining staff to support a union drive, and say their departures followed retaliation from WiPro. Since January, the Communication Workers of America (CWA) labor union has been promoting its Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE). The organization is especially interested in organizing workers who, like the Austin-based contingent Facebook workers, perform work for major tech firms but aren’t directly employed by them. |
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| 2020-06-06 | Scientists funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative addressed a letter to Mark Zuckerberg critiquing Facebook's role in diffusing inaccurate information, in particular Donald Trump's "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" comment in relation to the George Floyd protests. The authors argued that the letter promotes violence. |
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| 2020-06-04 | Employees at Coinbase held a virtual walkout following an "ask me anything" session with company management where CEO Brian Armstrong did not indicate that the company would be willing to publicly express support for the Black Lives Matter movement. WIRED reports: "Pressed on whether the company would say the words “Black Lives Matter,” Armstrong again demurred. 'TBD'" |
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| 2020-06-03 | Nearly three dozen early Facebook employees, including its first Chief of Communications, wrote a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg protesting his decision to leave Donald Trump's posts up on the website without action. Twitter chose to add labels to several of these posts warning that they were inaccurate or glorified violence. They claimed Facebook's inaction against these posts violated many of the original ideals the company had been founded on. |
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| 2020-06-01 | Facebook employees hosted a virtual walkout, refusing to work for the time of the event, in protest of the company's failure to take a tougher stance on Trump's posts in reaction to the George Floyd protests. Many employees also expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. The New York Times reports that employees have also circulated petitions internally and threatened to resign in response to the event. The previous week Twitter added fact-check and warning labels to two tweets from the president that broke Twitter’s rules around voter suppression and glorification of violence. |
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| 2020-05-28 | Jana Jumpp, an Amazon employee in Indiana, has been tracking cases and logged at least 500 cases in 125 Amazon facilities as of late April. Jumpp has a counterpart at Amazon-owned Whole Foods, Katie Doan, who has been collecting cases since April 2. The two women have never spoken, but they describe nearly identical work fielding a torrent of private messages, searching Facebook groups, Reddit, Twitter and news outlets for reports of infections, and meticulously updating Google documents with the numbers. |
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| 2020-05-23 | Deliveroo workers went on strike for multiple days in Hong Kong over the company's new payment structure. |
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| 2020-05-11 | Around 100 Uber and Lyft drivers are staging a caravan protest at Uber's San Francisco headquarters to demand Uber comply with gig worker protections law AB 5, pay into the state's unemployment insurance fund and drop the ballot initiative it proposed along with Lyft and DoorDash that aims to keep gig workers classified as independent contractors. 'Uber, Lyft and other gig companies are continuing in the same path of abusing and completely taking advantage of workers while putting them at risk,' rideshare driver and organizer with Gig Workers Rising Edan Alva told TechCrunch. This protest comes shortly after California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with city attorneys from Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, filed a lawsuit asserting Uber and Lyft gain an unfair and unlawful competitive advantage by misclassifying workers as independent contractors. |
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| 2020-05-07 | Amazon warehouse workers plan to deliver thousands signed petitions to the residences of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and lead Amazon spokesperson Jay Carney on Thursday, demanding the reinstatement of its recently terminated unlimited paid leave policy. In late April, Amazon announced that it would end its unlimited unpaid leave policy on May 1. The policy, which was introduced in response to COVID-19, allowed workers to call out sick without penalty. As of Wednesday, more than 5,300 workers from 350 locations, including Amazon warehouses, delivery pick-up stations, and Whole Foods stores, had signed onto petitions. The action was organized by a number of labor groups including the Athena coalition. |
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| 2020-05-05 | Hundreds of thousands of writers signed to China Literature (subsidiary of Tencent), the country's biggest online publisher, went on an online strike, protesting against exploitative contracts and the company's regular infringement of their intellectual property rights. The strike's organizers were demonstrating against proposed changes to China Literature’s business model and contracts with its writers. Writers stopped publishing new content on the website on the day of the strike. This change would negatively affect writers' income, which primarily comes from subscription fees and tips from their readers. 'Financially speaking, we were already drowning in quicksand before the rumors. Now they are trying to give us a death blow' a China Literature writer |
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| 2020-05-05 | Amazon has been sued by workers at two different locations, New York City and Salem, Oregon, for its failure to protect its employees during the coronavirus pandemic. Three Amazon employees from the New York fulfillment center sued the company for failing to follow local public health guidance, claiming the company purposefully miscommunicated with workers. The employees are not seeking compensation, only an order that Amazon comply with guidance. A former employee from Salem alleged that she was fired after taking a medical leave for a coronavirus infection and speaking out publicly about safety issues. |
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| 2020-05-01 | Workers at Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, Target, and Shipt walked off the job on May 1st (International Workers' Day) to call for better working conditions under the covid-19 pandemic. The Washington Post reports that "a small crowd" outside of an Amazon Staten Island warehouse was made up of Amazon workers and also healthcare professionals who appeared out of solidarity with their cause. The scale of the action is difficult to measure, given its broad geography. Walkouts and protests were reported in Atlanta, New York, and the Bay Area. |
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| 2020-04-30 | Amazon Workers International, speaking on behalf of Amazon workers across the U.S. and Europe, sent an open letter to Jeff Bezos and Stefano Perego, VP of European Fulfillment. The letter called for making covid-era wage increases and breaks permanent and suspending productivity feedback. In addition, AWI demanded more transparency around covid cases at Amazon, improved sick leave, and good faith bargaining with unions. |
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| 2020-04-26 | Amazon employees went on strike after the company allegedly fired a worker who chose to stay at home with her two children during the pandemic. Workers also protested the company's announcement that it would phase out their new paid-leave policy on May 1st. The company announced that two more employees had tested positive for the virus the night before the protest. Reporting from Vice and a tweet from a local community center suggest that this also served as impetus for the strike. Organizers claimed that more than 50 employees were involved in the strike, while management claimed it was 25. |
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| 2020-04-24 | Two former Huawei employees are suing the company alleging that it used its local connections to the police to detain employees who posed problems for the company. One of the employees had started a chat group where there was open discussion of Huawei breaking US sanctions with Iran. That same employee claims two other members from the chat group were detained and later released as well. The Financial Times quoted Shenzhen-based labour rights lawyer, Pang Kun, who estimated that there were more than 10 others currently detained at a local jail as a result of company disputes. |
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| 2020-04-21 | Over 300 Amazon workers across the country signed a pledge to call out of work to protest the company's reaction to the coronavirus pandemic. Participants claim the company continues to fall short in providing personal protective equipment and are calling for a more flexible paid leave policy that would allow them to take care of sick family members. |
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| 2020-04-20 | Over 300 academics from 26 countries signed a letter calling for contact-tracing apps to respect user privacy and to limit large-scale, centralized surveillance in favor of decentralized systems. The signatories favored the DP-3T protocol and systems like Apple and Google’s cross-platform solution over the PEPP-T system designed by a set of European countries. |
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| 2020-04-17 | Over the past few days, food delivery workers have carried out strikes in several countries demanding safe working conditions in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and an increase in delivery rates to ensure the workers a livable income. The countries include Brazil, Spain, Argentina, and Ecuador. |
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| 2020-04-13 | As a gesture of solidarity, tech workers have started tweeting with the hashtags #TechSolidarity, #AmazonStrike, #HuelgaAmazon to indicate support for striking Amazon workers. The Twitter page, @TechSpeaksOut, was reportedly designed to exert public pressure tech corporations. In addition to taking to Twitter, activists have started GoFundMes and mutual aid campaigns to benefit workers. |
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| 2020-04-10 | Rideshare drivers, partnered with the Mobile Workers Alliance, sent a letter to the Los Angeles City Attorney calling for the city to mandate that Lyft and Uber provide personal protective equipment to their employees, including masks and hand sanitizer, as well as access to handwashing stations in certain locations such as the airport. |
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| 2020-04-08 | Workers at Amazon’s Eastvale fulfillment center in Riverside County filed complaints with state and county regulators alleging that the company failed to properly shutdown and disinfect facilities after receiving its first reported case of coronavirus. The company also delayed telling employees of third case of coronavirus for over five days, putting employees at risk. The filings were compiled by the Warehouse Worker Resource Center on behalf of LGB3 employees. |
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| 2020-04-06 | For the second week in a row, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island held a walkout to protest the company's handling of the coronavirus crisis. Organizers state that they have heard of over 25 cases of coronavirus at the facility. In response, workers are calling for an extension of paid time off and improved sanitation in the facility. Last week, the company fired one of the organizers of the previous week's walkout. |
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| 2020-04-04 | Amazon workers, organized by DCH1 Amazonians United, staged a walkout at a facility in Chicago calling on the company to temporarily close and sanitize the facility following two positive coronavirus tests among employees. Additionally, the workers are calling for the company to cover any health bills accrued by employees and family members that have contracted coronavirus at the facility, plus more time on-the-job to incorporate safety practices such as regular hand sanitizing. This is the fourth such action organized by DCH1 Amazonians in response to the coronavirus outbreak. |
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| 2020-04-01 | Amazon's French SUD-Commerce union launched a lawsuit against the company alleging that they had failed to uphold coronavirus safety measures at six different warehouses in the country. French courts ruled in favor of the union. The company was forced to stop its operations for five days, while continuing to pay workers, in order to improve safety. Delivery was also restricted to food, hygiene, and medical products at this time. |
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| 2020-03-31 | Whole Foods employees went on strike to call for guaranteed pay during sick leave, reinstatement of health insurance for part-time and seasonal employees, coverage of coronavirus testing and treatment, improved sanitation at worksites, and immediate shutdown of any locations where employees test positive. The strike came amid a surge of activism from grocery and delivery workers at several companies. |
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| 2020-03-31 | Amazon warehouse workers near Detroit staged a demonstration to call for more stringent cleaning practices in their facility and reimbursement for any health bills incurred by employees (and their families) who had contracted coronavirus on the job. Management reports that fewer than 15 employees joined in, while organizers say there were 40 participants. |
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| 2020-03-30 | Instacart workers, organized by Instacart Shoppers and Gig Workers Collective, went on strike on Monday in protest of lack of protections offered by the company during the coronavirus epidemic. Strikers are calling for the company to provide hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, hazard pay, and easier qualification standards for the 14 days of sick leave currently offered by the company (a policy set to expire on April 8th). Update: Instacart has said it will give all workers a health kit including a reusable cloth mask, hand sanitizer, and a thermometer. The size of the strike has not been reported. |
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| 2020-03-30 | Amazon workers in Staten Island walked off the job to call for the company to temporarily close and sanitize the facilities following several positive tests for coronavirus among employees. The NY Post reported than more than 100 workers participated in the action. Vice has reported 62. |
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| 2020-03-22 | Amazonians United, a group of Amazon employee advocates around the US, won paid time off for part-time logistics workers in the midst the coronavirus pandemic. Amazon has also said it will raise pay for warehouse workers and delivery drivers by $2 per hour through April. For several weeks, the Amazonians United group has been calling for improved working conditions and paid time off using petitions and walkouts, including actions by groups in the Sacramento, Chicago, and New York areas. |
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| 2020-03-19 | A group of 153 Google employees from 11 European offices wrote to the company’s management requesting the establishment of the council. Google’s management agreed to take the first steps toward creating the council and will soon begin negotiating with employees about its scope. (The creation of such works councils-- which aim to give employees the right to be consulted by management about issues such as organizational changes or job cuts -- is required by the European Union if enough of a company’s employees in at least two countries file a written request). The works council is likely to include employee representatives from more than 35 Google offices across Europe, according to the people familiar with the matte |
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| 2020-03-19 | Ride-hail drivers in California gathered outside Uber headquarters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego to demand that gig platforms provide immediate relief to their cash-strapped, at-risk workers, including by adhering to California’s new labor law known as AB5. Drivers are calling on California to enforce its new employment law as illness, confusion, and hardship from COVID-19 sweep their industries. They are also calling for the $110 million set aside by Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Postmates, and Instacart for fighting that law to instead be used to give workers some relief. |
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| 2020-03-19 | As the novel coronavirus spreads around the world, Uber and Lyft drivers in California are asking both companies to do more to protect them. A coalition of drivers released a list of demands, signed by thousands, asking the ride-hailing services to take immediate steps to help ensure their safety. The demands include providing free COVID-19 screenings to all drivers, along with 14 days paid leave for all affected drivers. The drivers are organized with advocacy group Mobile Workers Alliance. |
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| 2020-03-19 | Food delivery drivers carried out a series of strikes in several major cities across China in protest of lowered wages from the dominant food delivery platform, Meituan Dianping. Workers lined up delivery scooters and bikes displaying signs that read, "stop taking orders.” The work stoppage created tension between delivery drivers and food vendors, sometimes leading to physical confrontation. |
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| 2020-03-19 | The staff of podcasting company Gimlet Media, recently acquired by Spotify Media, voted in favor of unionization with the Writers Guild of America, East. Gimlet is the first podcasting company to join the WGAE. Notably, the union includes contractors. Update: In April, management announced they would recognize the union. |
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| 2020-03-19 | Mijente, an immigrant rights group is calling on ICE to stop hunting down undocumented immigrants amid the coronavirus crisis. In an open letter published on Github, Microsoft workers backed mijente's campaign, calling on tech companies not to share their technologies with ICE. |
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| 2020-03-18 | French Amazon employees at six warehouses protested and threatened walkouts over lax covid-19 protections, calling for the company to adhere to social distancing, provide personal protective equipment, and initiate employee temperature checks. A spokesperson for Amazon's French CFDT union estimated that between 30-40% of Amazon employees in the country were no longer showing up to work over safety concerns or because of childcare obligations. A French law requires workplaces to keep paying workers who refuse to work over safety concerns. |
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| 2020-03-18 | At an Amazon warehouse and shipping center at Saran just outside Orleans, a city south of Paris, 250-300 workers staged a strike, gathering outside and calling for its closure. It normally employs some 1,800 full-time staff. They are calling on the online retailer to cease operations or make it easier for employees not wanting to work during the coronavirus outbreak to stay away. |
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| 2020-03-17 | As the coronavirus continues to spread, Amazon logistics workers circulated a petition calling for the company to put in place more “protective measures,” in which they demanded that the company provide paid sick leave to all its employees, even those who do not have a positive COVID-19 diagnosis, given the scarcity of coronavirus tests. They also requested child-care funds for workers with children, increased hazard pay, an end to penalties for working too slowly, and an immediate closure of any facility where a worker tests positive. “While Amazon has made some limited coronavirus accommodations, it needs a comprehensive plan to ensure the safety of all of its workers and the larger public, including giving workers paid leave and not simply extending our unpaid leave, as was announced recently,” the petition states. |
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| 2020-03-17 | Over 5000 Amazon employees signed an open letter to Jeff Bezos calling for improved working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic, including paid sick leave regardless of diagnosis, child care, and 1.5x hazard pay. Since then, on March 22nd, the letter has been updated to include a call for transparency on any diagnosed covid-19 cases at the facilities, a halt on the shipping of non-essential items, and medical coverage to part-time employees. On March 27th, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice emailed its constituents (mostly corporate employees) to encourage them to sign the open letter, which purportedly lead to an additional 580 signatures. |
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| 2020-03-17 | A group of Google employees has sent a memo to company leadership demanding stronger commitments to protect the more vulnerable members of Google’s workforce, primarily its contract workers, during the ongoing coronavirus crisis. The memo notes that some Google contractors, like those in the company’s Pittsburgh office employed by an independent company called HCL Technologies, have been forced to come into the office, even as full-time Google employees were first allowed and then instructed to stay home. |
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| 2020-03-17 | Pittsburgh's office Google contractors employed by an independent company called HCL Technologies, have been forced to come into the office, even as full-time Google employees were first allowed and then instructed to stay home. Some HCL contractors wore black in a protest at the Pittsburgh office’s cafeteria on Monday. This action is linked to the memo that Googlers sent out on the same day. |
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| 2020-03-13 | Employees of online software collaboration tool Glitch won their union with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The move comes after 90% of the workers indicated their support for joining CWA and authorized CWA to be their bargaining representative. Glitch will join the CWA Local 1101, as part of the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE-CWA) initiative, which was launched back in January. |
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| 2020-03-12 | A group of five baristas who operate the espresso machines at Slack’s corporate headquarters in San Francisco learned on March 6 that they were losing their contracted positions just prior to a decision by the company to move to remote operations to curb the spread of COVID-19. The baristas claim that Slack caught wind of their intention to criticize the company publicly—and in what they claim to be an organizing victory, they learned that their severance would be extended to 90 days. |
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| 2020-03-10 | The Berlin office of Babbel, the language learning platform elected a Works Council with consultation and guidance of IG Metall. |
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| 2020-03-06 | Gig Workers Rising launched a petition calling on the heads of the biggest gig economy platforms to give workers paid sick leave amid the coronavirus outbreak. That petition garnered more than 900 signatures. In the petition, the workers say they are often on the “front lines of exposure,” given that every day they come in contact with various people, including those arriving at airports or heading to the hospital. Without paid sick leave, the gig workers say they are often forced to choose between making ends meet and taking care of their health, and therefore the health of the company's customers. |
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| 2020-02-29 | Over the past few months, Amazon workers across the country have called on the company to provide part-time employees with paid sick leave. Amazon workers in New York City have started an online petition on coworker.org to advocate for paid time off, paid sick leave, and a process to appeal final warnings. Over 1,200 people have signed the petition. Workers at the Skokie, Illinois facility have written a letter to management and are circulating a petition demanding backdated paid time off. Though many workers log more than 20 hours a week, they are still recognized as part-time employees of the company. These events follow similar actions taken by Amazon workers in Sacramento late in 2019. |
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| 2020-02-20 | People left their desks at Oracle offices around the world to protest Chairman Larry Ellison’s fundraiser a day earlier for President Donald Trump. The protest, called No Ethics/No Work, involved about 300 employees walking out of their offices or stopping work at remote locations at noon local time and devoting the rest of the day to volunteering or civic engagement. |
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| 2020-02-18 | Employees at the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter voted to unionize. The decision, which was formalized by a vote count at the National Labor Relations Board, came down to a narrow margin, with 46 employees voting in favor of the move and 37 opposing it. The debate over a union — and whether such representation was appropriate for highly paid tech workers — had been a source of tension at the company for many months. |
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| 2020-02-14 | Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison‘s decision to throw a fundraiser for President Donald Trump has angered Oracle employees, who have set up a Change.org petition demanding he cancel the fundraiser. “As Oracle employees, we must hold our leaders accountable for upholding their ethical responsibilities,” the petition, which anyone can sign, continues. “Ellison’s financial support of Donald Trump endangers the well-being of women, immigrants, communities of color, the environment, LGBTQ and trans communities, disabled people and workers everywhere.” |
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| 2020-02-12 | Rideshare workers have signed a petition calling on the LAX (Los Angeles) airport to provide them with better bathrooms. Currently all workers are forced to use six port-a-potties and one external handwashing station located on airport grounds. LAX management responded by saying they will install three additional port-a-potties and two more external handwashing stations. Drivers, organized through the Mobile Workers Alliance, continue to call for more. |
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| 2020-02-09 | AI researchers and engineers from around the world signed an online open letter calling for the tech industry to refrain from using AI technologies to 'exacerbate the climate crisis'. The letter, authored by Tech Won't Drill It, has been signed by over 100 AI researchers. |
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| 2020-02-05 | Rideshare workers organized under Rideshare Drivers United filed wage claims with the California Labor Commissioner's Office seeking to be reimbursed for unpaid wages under AB5. AB5 took effect on Jan. 1 in California but is being disputed by rideshare companies who seek to keep drivers classified as contractors as opposed to employees. Under AB5, many drivers would be entitled to higher wages, pay for overtime, and compensation for work-related expenses. |
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| 2020-02-03 | Members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice submitted comments to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against a new regulation that would prevent smaller shareholders from proposing shareholder resolutions (i.e. proposals to change how a company is run). Under the new rules, shareholders would have to presently hold at least $25,000 worth of shares or have held $2,000 worth of shares continuously for the last three years. The group has argued that this prevents smaller shareholders from voicing their opinion. Included in this group are many recently hired tech employees with small caches of employer stock. While shareholder resolutions are not binding, they have had some success in pushing corporations towards taking a stance on social issues such as gender equity. |
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| 2020-02-03 | A group of Instacart employees in the Chicago suburb Skokie voted to unionize with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1546—a historic win for the grocery delivery platform. The vote was 10-to-4 in favor of the union, according to workers. 'The overwhelming majority of the employees made history by becoming the first Instacart employees to win a certified union election in the United States,' UFCW Local 1546 wrote in a press statement. |
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| 2020-01-26 | Amazon Employees for Climate Action published a Medium post with quotations from 364 employees criticizing the company for its continued involvement with the fossil fuel industry. Notably, all quotes included employee name and company title. Some quotes touched on other ethical issues in addition to climate change, such as the company's contracts with ICE. The action violates a company policy that prohibits employees from publicly speaking about the business without prior company approval. The employee group is currently calling for Amazon to go carbon neutral by 2030, to cut ties with fossil fuel companies, and to stop funding politicians and lobbyists who deny climate change. This action is a response to Amazon's previous threats to fire internal critics. Update: Quotations received from 400 employees. |
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| 2020-01-13 | Many of the app's 130,000 workers claim to have seen their pay drop by more than 50 percent in 2019 alone, as the company has sought to lower costs and appease its investors. Workers are now calling for a national boycott. They’re asking customers and the general public to tweet under the hashtag #DeleteInstacart on January 19, and to email Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta on January 20, asking him to restore the 10 percent default tip—which workers lost back in 2016. (The default tip sits at five percent.) |
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| 2020-01-01 | The Hong Kong Information Technology Workers’ Union form out of the 2019 Hong Kong movement, and is developing a database of employers who do not threaten or dismiss employees for political protests. Reuters reports that unionizing in Hong Kong has grown since anti-extradition protests began last year. Organizers see unions as a means of protecting politically engaged workers from retaliation. |
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| 2019-12-23 | More than 30 Amazon workers at a Sacramento warehouse walked off the job, demanding they receive paid time off. 36 workers — out of around 100 in total on the shift— left work two hours early after they read a letter to management out loud stating their demands to be granted paid time off (PTO) and meet with management to discuss their concerns, according to a worker at the site. These workers — who say they lift hundreds of packages a day in “back-breaking” labor —currently receive zero PTO days a year. The walkout comes weeks after workers say management has ignored their requests to meet with leaders of a group organizing around the issue. So far, workers have circulated an internal and public petition gaining over 4,000 signatures in total. |
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| 2019-12-23 | One-third of the night shift at one of Amazon's Sacramento warehouse walked off the job in the wee hours of December 23. Workers went together on a break to deliver their demands to management, then clocked out. Night-shift workers delivered a petition with 4,015 signatures to management during their 2:30 a.m. break on December 23. After reading out loud their demands for a meeting with management and paid time off, 36 of the 100 night-shift workers clocked out at 2:45 a.m. and walked off the job mid-shift. |
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| 2019-12-19 | In an open letter, several engineers, researchers, analysts, and designers working with global companies such as Google and Facebook have condemned the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in India. The letter, issued 'in solidarity with the Indian democracy', was posted through the 'TechAgainstFascism' handle on Medium. It called upon technology leaders to take a stance and publicly denounce the 'fascist acts by the Indian government'. 'We call upon the leaders to use technology as a force for good, to refuse to share user details with the government, refuse to shut off the Internet at the government's whim, provide tools for citizen mobilization, and ensure that content moderation is not skewing pro-government,' it said. |
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| 2019-12-13 | A group of Googlers unhappy with the company's expanding 'need to know' restrictions on internal documents have come up with a clever form of protest: A new tool that sends auto alerts to Google's top lawyer every time an employee opens a company document. The deluge of notifications was meant as a protest to what they saw as Walker’s insistence on controlling the minutiae of their professional lives. |
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| 2019-12-12 | E-scooter workers in San Francisco at the Ford-owned start-up Spin joined a union on Wednesday—a first in the fledgling industry. Roughly 40 Spin workers—who collect, repair, deploy, and charge Spin’s fleet of more than 500 electric scooters on the streets of San Francisco—are now part of Teamsters Local 665, as first reported by the San Francisco Examiner. The union says workers want to negotiate for better pay, health care, and retirement security in their first contract. |
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| 2019-12-10 | Injured former Amazon warehouse workers and labor organizers in Chicago are protesting dangerous work speed and high injury rates today outside one of the company’s brick-and-mortar stores in downtown Chicago. The action coincides with the release of a new report on injury rates in one of the region’s largest and most dangerous warehouses, MDW7, the first in Illinois with automated robots. The report and protest in Chicago coincides with the launch of a national coalition, known as Athena, of three dozen grassroots labor, antitrust, and digital rights organizations—the first unified resistance effort in the United States against the delivery giant. |
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| 2019-12-04 | In an open letter published Wednesday on GitHub, software developers representing the open source community joined the call for GitHub to immediately cancel the $200,000 contract with ICE. 'Open source is about inverting power structures and creating access and opportunities for everyone,' the letter, signed by 167 developers at the time of publication, reads. 'We, the undersigned, cannot see how to reconcile our ethics with GitHub’s continued support of ICE. Moreover, your lack of transparency around the ethical standards you use for conducting business is also concerning to a community that is focused around doing everything out in the open.' |
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| 2019-12-03 | Amazon delivery station employees in Sacramento are demanding fair treatment and benefits equal to those of other Amazon workers. By Sunday, more than 200 workers had signed a petition requesting an explanation for why they receive fewer paid days off per year than typical Amazon warehouse workers. The workers, who call themselves Amazonians United Sacramento, say that unlike other Amazon employees, they receive no paid time off. These workers, who sort and prepare packages for final-mile delivery in a station called DSM1, said they were told by Amazon managers that they get less paid time off (PTO) because they are classified by the company as Class Q workers. The Sacramento employees said they were previously unaware of any such classification. |
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| 2019-12-03 | Four recently fired Google engineers who were active in organizing within the company say they will push for a federal investigation into the search and advertising giant for unfair labor practices. In a medium post, the four former employees announced their intent to file charges with the National Labor Relations Board for what they allege was retaliation from the company against their roles in organizing workers. In the letter, they write: 'Last week, Google fired us for engaging in protected labor organizing.' Update: Complaint was officially filed with the NLRB. |
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| 2019-11-29 | Amazon was targeted by a UK-wide protest organised to coincide with Black Friday and Cyber Monday demanding an end to ‘appalling’ working conditions. Trade union GMB co-ordinated the British demonstrations to take place across two of the busiest shopping days of the year. 'Workers are breaking bones, being knocked unconscious and being taken away in ambulances,' GMB national officer Mick Rix said in a statement. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn visited protesters outside an Amazon depot in Sheffield. The union cited figures suggesting there had been more than 600 ambulance call-outs to Amazon warehouses over a three-year period and just as many serious incidents reported to the Health and Safety Executive for various injuries. |
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| 2019-11-29 | Hundreds of Amazon workers in Germany walked off the job as the online retailer kicked off its 'Black Friday' sales bonanza, escalating a long-simmering battle for better pay and working conditions. The strike called by the powerful Verdi union is set to last until Tuesday morning and will also cover 'Cyber Monday', another extravaganza of online discounts in what is a crucial sales period for Amazon. Verdi members are demanding a collective agreement for a living wage. |
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| 2019-11-25 | Over a hundred Amazon workers and their supporters gathered outside the facility to protest working conditions that they say only worsen as the e-tailing giant gears up to deliver a rush of packages ahead of Christmas and Hanukkah. 600 workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in New York signed a letter and protested working conditions. Amazon workers face injury rates over three times the industry average, and are asking for increased break time and better transit benefits. |
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| 2019-11-22 | A group of roughly 200 Googler and other protesters rallied outside of the search giant’s offices in San Francisco on Friday, demanding the company reinstate two colleagues who they say were unjustly punished for workplace organizing at the company — calling it an attack on accountability and transparency in tech. Google has said the employees were placed on administrative leave for violating company policies about accessing sensitive internal documents and monitoring employees’ calendar events. They accuse management of targeting Rebecca Rivers and Laurence Berland, because of their involvement in worker activism at the company. Rivers helped put together a petition against Google’s work for US immigration enforcement agency Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and Berland was involved with employee protests about hate speech policies on YouTube. Protesters are demanding that Rivers and Berland be reinstated at work immediately. Organizers called their suspension an “attempt to silence workers,” in an email about the rally. |
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| 2019-11-20 | About 2,300 Google cafeteria workers (contracted through Compass) voted to unionize to call for better pay and benefits. These workers include dishwashers and food preparers who serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner to Google employees. The service workers are considered contract workers and don't receive the same benefits such as retirement plans which are standard for direct Google employees. The cafeteria workers voted to unionize with a local chapter of Unite Here, which represents 300,000 workers in food, casino, laundry, hotel, and warehouse industries. Workers expressed dissatisfaction with their low wages, which start at $35,000 in the Bay Area, and lack of benefits compared to full-time Google employees. Some reported incidents of discrimination and bullying. The workers are officially employed by Compass Group, a third party contractor. The vote followed a two year effort. |
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| 2019-11-19 | Google employees held a protest in San Francisco days before the company ended its long-held TGIF meetings, according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC. Some 20 people organized at Google's office in downtown San Francisco to protest the company placing Rebecca Rivers and Laurence Berland on sudden and indefinite administrative leave the prior week, the memo states. Authors of the memo, which was circulated internally at Google on Monday, claimed the actions were an act of retaliation against the workers. |
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| 2019-11-13 | Before Github’s CEO Nat Friedman delivered his keynote address at Github Universe, an annual Github-hosted conference, dozens of tech workers and immigrant rights activists protested outside with a replica of the cages ICE uses to detain migrant families and children. “The demonstration [is in response to] GitHub's contract with ICE and is intended to show support for the GitHub workers who are organizing internally to get the contract cancelled,” said a representative of Tech Workers Coalition, the group organizing the protest. Just before the annual conference, 5 Githubbers left the company, citing Github's involvement with ICE. |
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| 2019-11-12 | Tech activists, artists, and creators who helped organize Google, Facebook, WeWork, Kickstarter, and more annotated an assemblage of common anti-union statements. The zine's organizer-driven content is an inoculation tool for tech workers that exposes them to union busting rhetoric and arms them with pro union rebuttals. |
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| 2019-11-08 | WeWork employees have formed a group to campaign for better severance pay, employment conditions and an end to 'deception, exclusion and selfishness at the company's highest levels' following the turmoil of its failed IPO process. The WeWorkers Coalition announced its existence on Friday with a letter to management setting out demands including for sexual assault claims to be 'taken seriously' and for thousands of employees about to lose their jobs to receive 'fair and reasonable separation terms'. 'Thousands of us will be laid off in the upcoming weeks. But we want our time here to have meant something' the group said in its letter. A software engineer at WeWork who is helping to organise the WeWorkers Coalition, said 185 people had signed the letter to management, while at least 600 expressed an interest in joining ahead of the group publicising its launch this week. The coalition wants cleaners and maintenance staff to receive full benefits and fair pay. |
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| 2019-11-06 | Shutterstock engineers were tasked with the creation of a search blacklist that would wipe from query results images associated with keywords forbidden by the Chinese government, including images of the Hong Kong protests. The company's decision to silently aid China's censorship agenda comes at a time of heightened scrutiny into the relationship between corporate America and President Xi Jinping's authoritarian regime. More than 180 Shutterstock workers to sign a petition against the search blacklist and accuse the company of trading its values for access to the lucrative Chinese market. They write that by 'complying, we are enabling injustices, including the discrimination of the people of Hong Kong, the suppression of Chinese political dissent, and undermining the sovereignty of Taiwanese people.' |
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| 2019-11-06 | Uber and Lyft employees protested outside the homes of three company investors to highlight the inequality between them and their workforce in a campaign called 'Deactivate Uber Billionaires'. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that protests occured at 'the San Francisco office of GV, the venture capital arm of Google parent Alphabet that was an early Uber investor; the Atherton mansion of Bill Gurley, an Uber board member and venture capitalist; and the Beverly Hills home of Uber co-founder Garrett Camp'. The protests coincide with the end of Uber's stock lockup period six months after their IPO. |
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| 2019-11-04 | Over 1000 Google employees have signed a letter calling for their employer to take action on the issues of climate change and immigration. The letter called on Google to commit to zero carbon emissions by 2030, end all contracts with fossil fuel companies and climate change denying or delaying 'think tanks, lobbyists, and politicians', and end all collaboration with organizations or individuals 'enabling the incarceration, surveillance, displacement, or oppression of refugees or frontline communities'. |
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| 2019-11-03 | Thousands' of Instacart shoppers went on strike from Nov. 3rd to Nov. 5th to protest the company's new tipping policy, which returns a portion of tips to the corporation rather than the workers. Participating shoppers refused to answer requests on the app. Instacart workers are considered contractors currently but this will change on January 1st in the state of California under AB5 legislation. |
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| 2019-11-01 | Instacart workers circulated an open letter on Medium prior to a walkout scheduled for Nov. 3rd to Nov. 5th. Employees are protesting the company's history of systematically devaluing labor, using algorithms to reduce pay to employees and changing tipping structures to return profit to the company. Over 200 workers have signed the letter. |
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| 2019-10-29 | Over 200 employees of the data visualization company Tableau protested their company's contracts with the federal government. They called on their company to drop these contracts in oppositio to the actions of ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) throughout the US and at the US-Mexico border. An open letter was also published on Medium. |
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| 2019-10-28 | More than 250 Facebook employees signed a letter to management protesting the company's decision to keep political ads, including those making false claims, on the social network during the 2020 US Presidential election. The letter was posted on Facebook Workplace, an internal communication service within the company. |
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| 2019-10-21 | Approximately 40 Google employees in Zurich held a meeting at the office to discuss unions and labor rights with representatives from Syndicom, a Swiss labor union. Employees had invited Syndicom to speak earlier in June but the event was cancelled at the request of management. Management later announced they would be holding a series of talk on labor rights and would allow Syndicom to join. |
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| 2019-10-04 | Microsoft employees are circulating a letter supporting an effort to get its GitHub subsidiary to cancel a contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the latest effort among tech-company staff to influence corporate policy on government work. The letter reflects concerns that Microsoft’s sales to the agency implicate the software maker in the government’s detention of immigrants. |
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| 2019-10-03 | Staff in Japan of ride-hailing company Uber's food delivery service formed a labor union Thursday to negotiate contract terms and seek improved working conditions. The union, formed by 17 platformers, also plans to request the Japanese unit of the U.S. company to ensure fair treatment among delivery riders and review how distance-based wages are set. |
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| 2019-10-03 | After GitHub CEO Nat Friedman wrote in an internal letter on Tuesday that the company plans to renew a contract worth $200,000 with ICE to license its GitHub Enterprise Server, GitHub's employees began publicly pressuring their company's leadership to stop working with the immigration agency over human rights concerns. |
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| 2019-10-03 | Approximately 60 Amazon workers walked out of a delivery center in Eagan, Minnesota to demand increased wages, weight restrictions on boxes, and abolishing a cap on 30 hour workweeks. The strike lasted two and half hours until a manager promised to address concerns the following morning. |
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| 2019-10-02 | A coalition of students protested Palantir & other ICE-friendly recruitment on the Carnegie Mellon University campus. They disrupted a Palantir recruitment event, held 500 in-person conversations with passing colleagues, & collected 150 promises from fellow students to not work or engage with Palantir. |
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| 2019-10-02 | Kickstarter workers have sent a letter to management asking them to voluntarily recognize their union. If management refuses to recognize the union, workers have the option to go to the NLRB to authorize a union election. |
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| 2019-09-30 | Amazon workers at a delivery center in Sacramento circulated a petition to reinstate two workers believed to have been unfairly fired and to give part-time workers paid time off. Management reinstated the two fired workers but did not acquiese to the request for paid time off. The action led workers to form a new group: Amazonians United Sacramento. |
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| 2019-09-28 | Deliveroo workers held wildcat strikes in 16 different UK cities in September in response to lowered wages. Strikers have blocked access to delivery-only kitchens that specifically cater to Deliveroo and other services and have publicly picketed. The Independent Workers of Great Britain Couriers and Logistics Branch (IWGB CLB) has been involved in organizing protests and reports that membership has grown 25% in recent months. |
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| 2019-09-26 | Over 400 Facebook employees protested publicly against the company's treatment of foreign workers on H1B visas days after a Chinese employee committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a company building. Workers at the company have started publicly posting and speaking out about the mistreatment of international workers, who are only allowed to stay in the US if they are sponsored by their employer and thus face greater pressures not to speak out against working conditions. Two separate GoFundMe pages have been started to raise money for a memorial and a protest event (over $6,000) and for Chen's family (over $122,000). Facebook has since fired one of the employees who organized the protest, Yi Yin. Yin also spoke to the press about the suicide after the company instructed him not to speak about the suicide. |
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| 2019-09-26 | Students at UC Berkeley have led protests and circulated petitions to stop Palantir from attending campus events due to their standing contracts with ICE. 50 students attended a protest and over 700 students and faculty signed a petition to stop an upcoming informational session. |
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| 2019-09-25 | Students at Brown demonstrated against four companies (Amazon, Microsoft, Palantir, and Ernst & Young) at an on-campus career fair. All four companies have done business with ICE. The students have also started an online petition to protest Brown's connections to these four companies. |
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| 2019-09-23 | Google employees created an internal document describing cases of discrimination and retaliation by the company. 45 cases were reported. |
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| 2019-09-19 | Hopkins Coalition Against ICE (HCAI), a student organization, organized three protests over the course of the 2018-19 school year against contracts between Johns Hopkins University Center for Law Enforcement Medicine and ICE (U.S. Dept. of Immigrations Customs and Enforcement). In response, the Center announced that they would not be renewing their contract. |
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| 2019-09-19 | A former employee of Chef, a Seattle-based tech firm, protested the company's involvement with ICE by deleting open source projects used by Chef customers. The CEO of Chef initially defended the decision to work with ICE but within a week, reversed course and canceled their contract following internal protests and advocacy by Chef employees. |
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| 2019-09-18 | Mere days before Microsoft workers are set to walk out of their jobs and publicly call on their employer to reduce carbon emissions and sever its ties with fossil fuel companies, the tech giant has announced a major partnership with two of the biggest corporations in the oil industry. Microsoft employees have responded with a fiery statement condemning the partnership and calling on fellow employees to join them in walking out on September 20th. The protest is part of a global general strike on September 20th 2019. |
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| 2019-09-17 | Google employees have announced they are joining their big tech counterparts at Amazon and Microsoft in walking off the job on Sept. 20 to participate in the global climate strike. Over 2,000 Google workers have signed a pledge supporting climate action at Google. They will be sharing their reasons for signing on their Twitter page. The protest is part of a global general strike on September 20th 2019. |
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| 2019-09-16 | Over 2000 students from at least two dozen universities have signed a petition calling for universities to cut their ties with Palantir and vowing not to work for the company due to their connections with ICE. The petition was organized by Mijente and has concided with multiple protests on college campuses in recent weeks, coinciding with recruiting season. |
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| 2019-09-13 | Microsoft employees are using a shared Google spreadsheet to compile data on salary and bonuses. The spreadsheet also makes note of employee level, or rank, within the company in an attempt to encourage greater transparency on compensation. |
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| 2019-09-12 | Uber drivers filed an injunction to classify workers as employees and to compensate them for overtime pay, paid sick leave and reimbursement for business expenses. On September 17, Lyft drivers filed a similar injunction. Update: New motions have been added to the injunction in March 2020 in light of the coronavirus outbreak. On March 20, 2020, a Massachusetts federal judge ruled that the companies would not be required to classify their drivers as employees. |
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| 2019-09-09 | Over 1700 Amazon employees have signed an internal petition pledging to walk out over their employer's lack of action on climate change. The demonstration, scheduled to start at 11:30 am Pacific time on September 20, will mark the first time in Amazon’s 25-year history that workers at its Seattle headquarters have walked off the job, though many are taking paid vacation to do so. Most of the workers who have signed on so far work in Seattle, but employees in other offices, including in Europe, have indicated an interest in the event as well. The protest is part of a global general strike on September 20th 2019. |
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| 2019-09-07 | A group of Facebook employees published an anonymous memo saying the culture at the company has only gotten worse for nonwhite workers. Published on Medium, the letter documents a variety of micro- and full-blown aggressions employees say they have endured over the last year from managers, HR, and their white colleagues. The memo was co-written by 12 current employees, including black, Latinx, and Asian women workers. One program manager describes being told by two white employees to 'clean up after their mess' at breakfast. When the program manager flagged the incident for their supervisor, they were told to 'dress more professionally.' |
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| 2019-09-05 | Employees from Instacart, Doordash, and Postmates rallied outside of company headquarters to protest low wages. Doordash is rolling out a new pay model at the end of September which, it claims, will offer better pay for shoppers. |
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| 2019-09-04 | In Oslo, hundreds of striking riders are cycling around to gather support for their demand for a collective agreement. The striking riders are organised in what used to be the Norwegian Transport Workers' Union, which is now part of Fellesforbundet. The strike has already had consequences for Foodora. The employees demand higher salaries and compensation for expenses incurred using their own private bikes at work. The striking riders cycle around Oslo every day in what they call Critical Mass, something that demonstrates the strike is ongoing and that it is growing day by day. The strike lasted 5 weeks. |
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| 2019-08-30 | Google contract workers in Pittsburgh voted to unionize and petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to set up a representation election. Two-thirds of the workers, formally employed by HCL America, were in favor of the action. United Steelworkers helped to organize the union drive through their Pittsburgh Association of Tech Professionals (PATP) project. News outlets report that this is the first successful unionization of white-collar tech contractors. Workers intend to use their position to bargain for compensation, benefits, and job security comparable to Google employees. Google currently employs more contract workers (135,000) than direct Google employees (115,000) according to the Guardian. A group of Google employees have signed a letter of support and others have published a petition calling for the company to sign a neutrality agreement and abstain from union-busting tactics. |
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| 2019-08-22 | Gig Workers Rising and Mobile Workers Alliance have organized a protest caravan of rideshare workers to advocate for AB5, a bill in the California State Legislature that would require rideshare companies to recognize their drivers as employees. The caravan plans to drive roughly 600 miles, from Southern California to San Francisco to Sacramento, as part of their action. |
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| 2019-08-22 | More than 60' Palantir employees have signed a petition to management calling for the company to send profits from ICE contracts to charity. This comes after the company renewed its second contract with ICE on Aug. 19. |
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| 2019-08-14 | A group of Caviar employees has banded together to request a good faith renegotiation from DoorDash and Square, claiming mistreatment in the job transition process as DoorDash finalizes its plans to acquire Caviar from the payment company. It is unclear how many people this letter represents, though an anonymous Caviar member claims that the group is made up of the 'majority' of non-management employees. (According to Crunchbase, Caviar employs between 100 and 250 people.)t |
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| 2019-08-14 | Google employees are demanding an end to the company’s work with agencies like CBP and ICE. Employees are circulating a petition asking the company not to bid on contracts with government agencies that enforce controversial immigration policies such as child detention. |
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| 2019-08-13 | After the El Paso and Gilroy shootings, A collective of prominent tech leaders that calls itself Build Tech We Trust signed a letter demanding that the tech industry stop the spread of hate and terrorism on digital platforms. 'We are a collective of tech CEOs, activists, changemakers, and workers who believe the time to act to counter the hate and terrorism is now,' stated the letter, which was signed by over 20 notable figures in the tech industry, including Ellen Pao, ReadySet CEO Y-Vonne Hutchinson, and Code2040 CEO Karla Monterroso. |
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| 2019-08-12 | A group of anonymous Whole Foods workers denounced their parent company Amazon's ties to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in an open letter. The letter from Whole Foods workers is the latest push from within Amazon, where workers have been protesting their employer's opaque relationship with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for more than a year. Whole Worker — the protest group of Whole Foods employees — is calling for Amazon to 'cease all business with Palantir and any other company involved in the continued oppression of marginalized groups. |
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| 2019-08-08 | A group of Amazon employees protested outside the Eagan, Minnesota, warehouse Thursday morning. While past protests have focused on allegedly poor workplace conditions, the Eagan protest was to raise concerns about a lack of parking at the warehouse. This is an issue because these workers' cars can be towed and fined at a cost of hundreds of dollars for being double-parked. |
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| 2019-08-07 | Dozens of WalMart tech workers rallied in San Bruno to protest gun violence and continued sale of weapons by WalMart which is the largest distributor of guns in the United States. They also had a moment of silence for the victims and families murdered and injured in the violent racist attacks. There are over 1,000 workers at the largest tech center of WalMart in the world. This was the first collective action of WalMart tech workers in the United States. They were also joined by a delegation of Youtube workers in solidarity. Youtube workers have also faced violent attacks at their work location in San Bruno. |
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| 2019-08-01 | Foodora couriers in Toronto are preparing to vote on union certification in what could create Canada's first unionized workforce of app-based workers. An application by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers was filed last week with the Ontario Labour Relations Board, months after a campaign was launched that addressed working conditions. The union says couriers intend to negotiate a better compensation model, health and safety protections when workers are injured and recognition of basic rights of workers that aren't recognized by Foodora, which classifies them as independent contractors. Update: In February 2020, the Ontario Labour Relations Board rules that Foodora workers are dependent contractors and have the right to unionize. In April 2020, Foodora announced it was pulling out of the Canadian market. |
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| 2019-07-30 |
In Nairobi, subcontracted Facebook content moderators employed by Sama face poor wages and working conditions.
In 2019, more than 100 workers known as The Alliance demanded higher wages, increased transparency about what the job entails, its mental impact, and better working conditions in a petition to management, with a threat to strike. As a result, some workers were suspended. Sama also allegedly threatened the employees to remove their signatures from the petition by emphasizing that they were replaceable. Daniel Motaung, a key organizer, worked to establish The Alliance as a union but was fired. Since then, Sama has improved the transparency of the role in their onboarding program. No strike or unionization has happened. During the pandemic, many content moderators requested sick leave. However, unless they had a not from a specific hospital, HR didn’t grant sick leave. As a result, many continued going to the office, even if they had symptoms. |
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| 2019-07-26 | YouTubers Union joined with German trade union, IG Metall, to launch the FairTube campaign. The campaign is calling for greater transparency into YouTube's monetization policy, individual responses to queries about videos that have been taken down by the site, creation of an independent mediation board, and formal representation from content creators in the company's decision-making process. In addition, FairTube has argued that YouTube's data collection policy for uploaded videos violates the GDPR. Leadership has given YouTube until Aug. 23rd to respond, threatening legal action if they fail to do so. YouTubers Union is designed to serve as a union for YouTube content creators and has over 20,000 Facebook members as of August 9th, 2019 but it is not clear how many are actively involved in the campaign. It does not require dues from its members. |
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| 2019-07-26 | GitHub users have created a repository to protest the company's decision to ban Iranians from accessing the site due to US sanctions. The repository combines multiple types of actions, serving as an open letter to the company and collecting known incidences of Iranian users being denied access, in addition to highlighting the contributions of Iranian developers. |
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| 2019-07-23 | Google settled a class action lawsuit launched by several hundred older workers who claimed they were not hired by the company on the basis of their age. The company paid out $11 million to the plaintiffs. Between 2007 to 2013, they argued, the median age in the tech industry was 41, while the median age at Google was 29. |
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| 2019-07-19 | Uber and Lyft drivers chanted and cheered outside the Uber headquarters building in San Francisco on Friday as they delivered a letter demanding negotiations for better working conditions. In an open letter, published to coincide with the protest, drivers called on Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Lyft co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer for changes in treatment. Drivers tried to present the letter at the protest, but weren't able to enter Uber's headquarters. |
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| 2019-07-19 | As Assembly Bill 5 makes its way through the California state legislature, Uber and Lyft drivers are voicing their demands for better pay, basic workplace protections and the right to organize through unions. Drivers chanted and cheered outside the Uber headquarters building in San Francisco as they delivered a letter demanding negotiations for better working conditions. |
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| 2019-07-16 | Cafeteria workers from Facebook's downtown San Francisco office picketed for higher wages, shorter working days, and improved healthcare coverage. The actions followed months of negotiation with the group's union Unite Here Local 2. The employees, who are contracted by Facebook through Flagship Facility Services, cited the high cost of living in the Bay Area and their need to work multiple jobs as motivations for the protest. Full-time employees from Google and Facebook joined the protest in support. |
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| 2019-07-16 | Rideshare drivers in Nairobi have gone on strike because of what they describe as low wages and poor working conditions. They are protesting unfair commissions from US-based Uber, Estonian firm Bold (formerly Taxify) and locally owned Little Cab. The strike entered its second week, continuing the protest over pitiable rates for the drivers. |
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| 2019-07-15 | Amazon employees, many who are Somali-American workers, at a fulfillment center outside Minneapolis are calling on the company to improve safety and benefits on one of the top sales days of the year. 100 fulfillment workers and labor groups outside the cavernous warehouse are protesting the company's working conditions, benefits and corporate culture. The demonstration is planned for the first day of Prime Day, one of Amazon's flagship shopping events that generates billions of dollars in sales for the retail giant. White collar employees from Amazon HQ (of the group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice) in Seattle are flying out to support the protesters. |
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| 2019-07-15 | Amazon employees of DCH1 Amazonians United sign a petition to demand that their site leader meet with them to discuss providing the appropriate measures for days of excessive heat, among other issues. The top 3 are: 1) Prime Pay for Prime Days. 2) Health Insurance. 3) Getting A/C |
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| 2019-07-13 | After increasing concerns about accident and death rates for delivery drivers, delivery workers across Mexico rallied under the hashtag #NiUnRepartidorMenos (translation: Not One Deliveryperson More). The workers have demanded better working conditions, and advocate that labor law better considers gig apps. They look to companies for improved insurance coverage, company protection from theft, and look to governments for fairer delivery driver licensing. Workers in the movement have succeeded in meeting with several companies. |
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| 2019-07-13 | A group of Glovo delivery drivers went on strike for one day, citing the loss of guaranteed hours without proper notice and lower pay rates than comparable cities. They also cited Glovo's failure to fulfill promises on worker conditions, including that the company failed to provide promised protective clothing for cold and rain. They gathered at Plaza Chile in Mendoza, Argentina. |
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| 2019-07-11 | Amazon employees sent out an internal email calling on Amazon to stop working with the big data company Palantir, which works with federal agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This email, sent to employee mailing lists within Amazon Web Services, demanded that Palantir be removed from Amazon's cloud for violating its terms of service. It also called on Amazon to take a stand against ICE by making a statement establishing its position against immigration raids, deportations, and camps for migrants at the border. |
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| 2019-07-11 | Hundreds of protestors, including those from the Tech Workers Coalition, demonstrated outside of the annual Amazon Web Services summit in New York, demanding the tech giant cut ties with government agencies that take part in immigrant deportations. The demonstrators, including Amazon warehouse workers, other tech employees, and immigrants outside the tech world, are calling on Amazon to cease its relationships with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security. |
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| 2019-07-10 | Hundreds of Uber and Lyft drivers from the Bay Area traveled to Sacramento to persuade legislators to vote in favor of Assembly Bill 5. This piece of legislation would require rideshare companies to extend employee benefits to their drivers, who are currently classified as independent contractors. Workers protested outside the Capitol building, spoke at a public comment session, and met with individual legislators to argue for the passing the bill. A separate coalition of drivers was organized to protest the bill on the grounds of maintaining flexible working hours. Uber encouraged drivers to attend an opposition rally via in-app notification, and both Uber and Lyft offered funding to cover certain fees associated with attending the rally. The Senate Labor Committee ultimately voted to pass the bill, sending it to the Senate floor. |
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| 2019-06-30 | Google workers, under the name “Ban Google From Pride,” protest their employer at Pride Parade amid controversy in the LGBTQ community over the company's harassment policies on YouTube videos. |
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| 2019-06-26 | Hundreds of workers at the online retailer Wayfair walked out of their jobs yesterday to protest the comapny's sale of $200,000 worth of bedroom furniture to a government contractor that operates a network of shelters for migrant children near the southwestern border. More than 500 employees signed a petition to the CEO calling for him to cease all business with the contractor and establish a code of ethics for their sales. |
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| 2019-06-26 | About 100 Google employees urged the organizer of this weekend's San Francisco Pride parade to kick the company out of the celebration, escalating pressure on the internet giant to overhaul its handling of hate speech online. The employees wrote a letter to the board of directors of San Francisco Pride, asking that Google be dropped as a sponsor of the parade as well as excluded from having a presence at the event. |
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| 2019-06-24 | A group of more than 30 Microsoft employees is lobbying coworkers to stop donating to the company's political action committee in an effort to starve the PAC of funds. While Microsoft pitches itself as an inclusive and progressive company — especially during Pride Month, with tweets and donations to LGBTQ+ causes — employees who have donated to the PAC say they have no control over which candidates are being supported, meaning that they have no say when the PAC financially supports bigoted candidates. On July 2019, Microsoft has temporarily halted political donations through its political action committee after facing this backlash from employees. |
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| 2019-06-19 | Google employees protest at Alphabet's shareholder meeting, joining community activists in demanding change from Google on how it handles sexual harassment in the workplace and its plans to build a censored search engine for China. Around 100 Google employees and community activists also protested as a united group outside Alphabet headquarters during the meeting. Google employees; labor and activist coalition Silicon Valley Rising; SEIU-USWW (a union representing janitorial staff and security officers); and local community groups helped organize the rally outside the meeting. |
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| 2019-06-15 | Thousands' of Postmates employees activated a Blitz Up app on June 15. The app prevented them from taking any delivery jobs without a 'Blitz bonus' of 1.5x the typical rate. The action was taken to protest pay cuts that went into effect May 2019. Blitz Up was created by the Pay Up Campaign, a group of Instacart workers that organized to protest pay cuts in January 2019. |
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| 2019-06-13 | Food delivery staff working in Japan for ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc. said Wednesday they plan to form a labor union in a bid to improve what they see as disadvantageous treatment for being classified as independent contractors rather than employees. |
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| 2019-06-12 | Workers for workers, a group of Facebook employees who organize to support the company's contract workers, started a gofundme campaign to materially support 9 contingent workers who were fired for violating non-existant company policy. Workers for Workers is drawing on its network of mostly tech workers to provide support for the 9 contingent workers who were suddenly let go. The campaign will support these folks in their hour of greatest need, aiming to raise $40,000 to cover their basic living expenses for the next two months as they seek to clear their name within Facebook and find a new job on short notice. |
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| 2019-06-07 | Bikes Make Life Better (BMLB) contract staff working at Facebook started organizing with the Transport Workers Union, seeking to improve their pay and their safety. The union claims BMLB management has responded with intimidation tactics, including holding mandatory anti-union meetings in which they tell workers that they can’t talk about organizing at work, and if they become unionized, they could lose their contract with Facebook and therefore their jobs. |
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| 2019-06-06 | Students for the Liberation of All People (SLAP), a student organization at Stanford, places a banner across the street from Palantir's entrance reading “OUR SOFTWARE IS SO POWERFUL IT SEPARATES FAMILIES.” in protest of the company's involvement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. |
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| 2019-05-27 | Spanish on-demand delivery startup Glovo is facing angry protests from couriers on its platform following the death of a 22-year-old rider in Barcelona where the business is headquartered. The victim was a Nepalese national called Pujan Koirala, who had been substituting for a registered Glovo courier at the time he was struck and killed by a garbage truck. |
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| 2019-05-22 | More than 50 Amazon employees from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice attended the shareholder meeting, where Emily Cunningham delivered an impassioned speech to shareholders urging them to support the resolution for Amazon to adopt a strong climate plan. Jeff Bezos did not come on stage when asked by Cunningham to make an appearance. Shareholders voted no. |
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| 2019-05-22 | Developers have created the Climate Strike License, which can be used to prohibit certain fossil fuel companies from using their code, as they have been using open source technologies, cloud computing, the internet of things, and AI for increasing fossil fuel extraction efficiency. |
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| 2019-05-11 | Tech workers organized by the Tech Workers Coalition are protesting the Palantir's contract with ICE on the company's GitHub projects. The plan calls for organized waves of digital protesters to post a prepared message to their GitHub boards. The protest appeals to workers to consider their role, even if indirectly, in Palantir’s work with ICE. It also encourages people to add their own personal sentiments. |
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| 2019-05-09 | Staff at US-owned tech giant Oracle's China Development Centre in Beijing have staged protests after the company fired 900 staff from its China team, making up 60 per cent of its research and development effort there. Employees blamed tensions between the US and China for the cuts which came in the same week as the US announced additional tariffs on Chinese goods. An employee referred to the Oracle co-founder's interview with Fox Business last October, in which Larry Ellison said that 'we [the US] have a serious competition going with China, I’m on Team USA', and 'if we let China produce more engineers than we do, if we let China's technology companies beat our technology companies, it won't be long that our military is behind technologically also'. |
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| 2019-05-08 | Google employees publish an open letter demanding that Alphabet CEO Larry Page 'immediately and publicly address the Walkout’s demands, and recommit Google to meeting them.' The list of demands also asks for the company to allow Meredith to continue her work, fully funded, as before and to allow Claire to change teams without further retaliation. The letter calls out the broken nature of the HR department at Google, and demands for an open and transparent investigation on the department. |
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| 2019-05-08 | But for the past seven months, roughly a dozen moderators in the United States have been spearheading a quiet campaign inside the social media giant to air their grievances about unsatisfactory working conditions and their status as second-class citizens. The contractors, who have not previously spoken publicly about their efforts, are using their access to Facebook Workplace, the social network’s internal communication system, to wage their battle. |
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| 2019-05-08 | Three Muslim Somali Workers at Amazon File Federal Discrimination Complaint, accusing the company of creating a hostile environment for Muslim workers and of retaliating against them for protesting their work conditions. These are the same workers who in December of 2018 protested against Amazon. |
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| 2019-05-01 | Google workers stage a sit-in on May Day, following allegations of retaliation from the company against employees who participated in walkouts last year. 'Googlers from around the world gathered at 11am local time to sit together and show retaliation is #NotOkGoogle. The stories we've been collecting will be shared, demands will be read, and all will be in solidarity with those withstanding this chilling practice. |
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| 2019-05-01 | Foodora couriers announced their intention to join a union of Canadian post workers and held a union drive. If successful, this would make Foodora workers the first app-based employees to unionize in Canada. In April 2020 the company announced its intention to leave the Canadian market and initiated bankruptcy proceedings, making the future of the business and the unionizing effort uncertain. |
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| 2019-04-26 | Meredith Whittaker and Claire Stapleton held a town hall for Google workers to discuss the retaliation they have faced from management for engaging in organizing, and to share more than a dozen other stories of retaliation they have gathered. The meeting was held in New York but live-streamed to Google offices elsewhere. This action involved hundreds of workers. |
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| 2019-04-25 | A GitHub user called on those who condemn 996 to respond to Jack Ma's endorsement of the widely criticized work schedule by sending an official copy of China's labor law on May 4 to the Alibaba headquarters. Ma, founder of Alibaba and the richest man in China, dismissed outcry on social media over the grueling working hours in China's tech industry in a blog post on April 12. 'To be able to work 996 is a huge blessing,' he said. The GitHub post estimates 1,000 participants will participate. |
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| 2019-04-22 | Microsoft and GitHub workers have published an open letter of solidarity with the 996 movement on GitHub at https://github.com/MSWorkers/support.996.ICU, and have called on Microsoft to resist all pressure from the Chinese government to block or censor the 996 repo. |
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| 2019-04-19 | Deliveroo riders took to Nottingham city centre again to protest for improved working and pay conditions. Protesters are growing frustrated with a 'lack of communication' and an 'unwillingness to have their demands listened to' by the food delivery company. |
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| 2019-04-17 | Instagram memers have had enough. They generate the engagement that helps keep Instagram growing—but, they argue, the multibillion-dollar platform doesn't pay them for their work, or give them any control. So they're fighting back. And before you write off IG Meme Union Local 69-420 as a joke, the organizers of the collective would like you to know that they are very serious. |
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| 2019-04-10 | The company's corporate employees signed their names to a letter published on Wednesday that urged Jeff Bezos to create a comprehensive climate-change plan for the company. |
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| 2019-04-04 | A group of Microsoft employees appeared at an employee meeting with CEO Satya Nadella Thursday to protest the companies's treatment of women. It's not clear how many were part of the protest, but some female and male employees at the event wore all white, inspired by the congresswomen who wore suffragette white to the State of the Union in February. |
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| 2019-04-02 | More than 900 Google workers have signed a letter objecting to the tech giant's treatment of temporary contractors, in what organizers are calling a 'historical coalition' between Google's full-time employees (FTEs) and temps, vendors and contractors (TVCs). |
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| 2019-04-01 | A group of Google employees have called for the removal of a rightwing thinktank leader from the companies's new artificial intelligence council, citing her anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant record. Academic, civil society, and industry supporters have also signed the petition in mass. |
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| 2019-04-01 | Recently fired NPM employees claim they were punished for trying to form a union. Four complaints have been filed with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging labor law violations by management. |
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| 2019-03-28 | A campaign against long working hours by professionals in China's technology sector has become one of the fastest growing Github repository in Github's history. The 'anti-996' campaign opposes employees working shifts of 9am-9pm, six days a week, which are commonly required by the country's tech giants. |
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| 2019-03-26 | Researchers are calling on Amazon to stop selling facial recognition software to law enforcement. This letter follows similar calls by Amazon workers and civil rights organizations. 'We call on Amazon to stop selling Rekognition to law enforcement as legislation and safeguards to prevent misuse are not in place. |
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| 2019-03-25 | Uber and Lyft drivers in Los Angeles are refusing to pick up customers today — part of a one-day strike to protest Uber's recent decision to slash pay rates for drivers in the area. |
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| 2019-03-19 | Employees at Brooklyn's crowdfunding giant Kickstarter are forming a labor union called Kickstarter United, which will aim to secure more rights for the companies's workers. If recognized by the companies, Kickstarter would become the first major tech companies in the US to have union representation. |
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| 2019-03-06 | At least 16 Mexican app delivery drivers met to form the Sindicato Independiente de Repartidores en Aplicaciones (SIRA APPS, rough translation: Independent Union of App Deliverypeople). The union seeks legal recognition, and demands worker accident insurance, worker-led onboarding for new delivery drivers, and assistance with social benefits registration. |
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| 2019-03-04 | A group of employees at Amazon have called for the company to provide a backup daycare benefit. The group collected accounts of employees who have been negatively impacted by a lack of daycare to present to senior managers. They have also called for management to collect more data on child care among employees. |
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| 2019-02-27 | Ten Stanford students with a group called Students for the Liberation of All People (SLAP) protested a guest lecture by Salesforce executive Richard Socher. The students, who held signs — 'Salesforcing families apart,' 'Richard are you getting rich from deportation?' and 'Salesfart' — oppose the company’s contract with Customs and Borders Protection (CBP). |
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| 2019-02-22 | Microsoft employees circulated a letter among the companies' over 130,000-person staff demanding that executives cancel a $479 million contract with the US Army, IVAS, that will provide weapons technology to the U.S. Military to 'increase lethality' to army soldiers. 'We did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used. |
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| 2019-02-18 | Food delivery workers in at least five cities across China have staged a series of strikes protesting arbitrary reductions in pay rates introduced after the Lunar New Year Holiday. Workers for both major food delivery platforms, Meituan and Ele.me, stopped taking orders starting in February. |
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| 2019-02-01 | Deliveroo riders took to Nottingham's Speakers' Corner to strike in a pay dispute. Riders were striking over the fees paid for long and short distance deliveries in the Nottingham area. Riders receive no pension, holiday or sickness pay, and must cover their own equipment costs and expenses and pay national insurance and tax on their earnings. |
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| 2019-01-18 | Attorneys seek to represent more than 4,200 women in a lawsuit against Oracle that alleged that female employees were paid on average $13,000 less per year than men doing similar work. An analysis of payroll data found disparities with an 'extraordinarily high degree of statistical significance', the complaint said. Women made 3.8% less in base salaries on average than men in the same job categories, 13.2% less in bonuses, and 33.1% less in stock value, it alleges. |
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| 2019-01-17 | 150 Instacart workers have started a petition to protest changes in how they are paid. The petition urges the company to change this policy. It also encourages Instacart users to pay 'shoppers' the minimum $0.22 tip through the app and to pay the remainder of the tip in cash to ensure the tip amount primarily goes to workers. |
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| 2018-12-31 | Knights League, a WeChat group that serves as an informal union for Chinese food delivery platform workers, was founded in 2018. They share news and information with each other. |
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| 2018-12-16 | Hundreds of temporary workers for FoxConn rallied on the streets on Zhengzhou to protest unpaid signing bonuses. Protests continued for two nights before being broken up by police. |
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| 2018-12-14 | Amid chants of 'Hear our voice,' a group of about 100 Somali-American workers and their supporters marched to the entrance of Amazon's Shakopee fulfillment center Friday evening to protest unfair working conditions. |
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| 2018-12-06 | 20 subcontractors working at Facebook Reality Labs signed a letter to their contracting firm, Filter Digital, seeking better employment terms. The letter addressed inequities between the Filter employees and other employees at the Facebook facility, including workers employed by other contractors. Ex. Facebook closes its office for 11 holidays per year, according to the letter, but Filter only observes five of those holidays. Since Facebook's offices are closed on those days, preventing the Filter employees from working, they are forced to use six out of their 10 days of paid time off to cover the other holidays – or go without pay. A Facebook FTE shared a copy of the letter on Workplace and 'got a lot of positive reception from full time employees and other contingent workers |
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| 2018-12-06 | For Uber drivers, the only way to go after the company for alleged state and federal employment law violations was to file an independent arbitration claim. Amazingly, thousands of Uber drivers did just that. 12,501 Uber drivers took the company at its word and filed arbitration claims in California. Under the terms of the contract that Uber crammed down these drivers' throats, it must now pay $1,500 per driver to JAMS, the arbitration service it uses -- a total of $18.7m. |
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| 2018-12-04 | After a multiyear campaign by app-based drivers, some of whom were organized under the Independent Driver's Guild, New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission passed a new law setting minimum wage at $17.22 per hour in the city. |
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| 2018-11-27 | Google employees have signed an open letter published Tuesday on Medium demanding that the companies cease work on Project Dragonfly, which is aimed at creating a search engine that the Chinese government would be able to control to censor certain results and surveil users. 'International human rights organizations and investigative reporters have also sounded the alarm, emphasizing serious human rights concerns and repeatedly calling on Google to cancel the project,' the letter reads in part. 'So far, our leadership's response has been unsatisfactory. |
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| 2018-11-23 | A group of Instacart delivery workers is waging an ongoing 'soft strike' against the companies to demand better pay this Thanksgiving weekend for the third year in a row. The workers, who are independent contractors, say a recent change to the grocery delivery platform's pay structure was an effective pay cut that’s threatening their livelihoods. As a result, they’re refusing to deliver extra-heavy items, drive more than eight miles per order, or accept time-consuming, low-paying jobs. A group of delivery workers wrote a letter sent to Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta. |
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| 2018-11-23 | Thousands of Amazon staff members across Europe protest on Black Friday over the way the companies treats its warehouse workers. As shoppers in the U.S.A. log in to Amazon to find Black Friday deals, Amazon workers in the UK, Spain, France, Italy, and Germany are striking to protest working conditions in the company’s warehouses. |
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| 2018-11-20 | Blue Apron employees have filed a class-action lawsuit against the companies, alleging that they weren't paid overtime, or for meal breaks, among other labor law violations. They are seeking back pay for missed wages and a trial by jury. Blue Apron employs thousands of low-wage workers in food processing plants in New Jersey, Texas, and California, where this suit was filed. An employee alleges that Blue Apron routinely forced hourly employees to clock out before their meal break, effectively cheating them out of thirty minutes of pay per shift, a practice known in the world of labor law as “time shaving.” |
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| 2018-11-01 | Google employees and contractors walked out of the companies's offices around the world, one week after the New York Times reported that Google had protected three executives accused of sexual misconduct. |
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| 2018-10-24 | Hundreds of regular Didi drivers in Xiamen went on strike in protest against the company's advantageous policy towards drivers who have not yet formally registered. Drivers said their daily incomes had fallen to around 200-300 yuan per day, about the same as regular taxi drivers in the city, and that they were now struggling just to get by. After police arrived at the site of the protest and dispersed the crowd, the workers elected their own representatives to hold talks with the company, and vowed to continue with their protests until the situation improved. |
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| 2018-10-12 | An open letter signed by 'employees of Microsoft' asks the cloud giant to abstain from bidding on the military's massive JEDI cloud computing contract for ethical reasons involving the application of artificial intelligence. |
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| 2018-10-09 | Hundreds of Uber drivers are expected to switch off their apps from 1pm, making themselves unavailable for work, union organisers said. Protests are also being held outside the ride-hailing app's offices in London, Nottingham and Birmingham. |
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| 2018-10-04 | UberEats riders and a small number of workers from JD Wetherspoon, McDonald's and TGI Fridays have been staging walkouts in a pay dispute. Protests were being held in several UK cities, along with a rally in London. |
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| 2018-08-23 | Members of the union that represents the folks behind the wheels of corporate shuttles stood and sat in front of those buses in the Castro district, demanding a secure pension for high-tech shuttle drivers. About 40 Teamsters blocked tech buses in a surprise protest. The drivers were from WeDriveU and Loop/Hallcon and transport employees for high-tech companies including Apple, Tesla, Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Electronic Arts, Lam and Facebook. |
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| 2018-08-01 | Danish gig workers from an online cleaning services platform Hilfr.dk signed a collective agreement that guarantees them benefits including holiday, sick leave, pension contributions, and higher pay once they reach a certain number of hours worked. Danish trade union 3F was a technical advisor on the agreement. As part of the agreement, Hilfr employees can automatically become members of the union once they have worked 100 hours on the platform. The agreement is preliminary and lasts one year. |
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| 2018-07-31 | Dozens of protesters gathered outside the data analysis companies Palantir in Palo Alto, California, on Tuesday to present Palantir's employees and CEO Alex Karp with a letter asking for an end to the companies' contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). |
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| 2018-07-26 | Two Microsoft employees presented their CEO with an online petition including more than 300,000 signatures (including 500 employees) calling for the firm to cancel their contract with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. The action took place during an annual gathering at company headquarters. Earlier in the year, the company had published a blog post saying it was "proud to support" the agency through technologies that included facial recognition software. |
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| 2018-07-24 | A group of Samsung factory employees in South Korea organized to call for safer working conditions and medical compensation from the company. After three years of protests, Samsung has agreed to accept the compensation terms and issue an apology. |
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| 2018-07-10 | Spanish labor unions have called on around 1,000 Amazon employees to walk out for three days next week in a dispute over what it says are efforts to reduce workers' rights. The strike will took place at the San Fernando warehouse on the outskirts of Madrid, Amazon’s biggest in Spain, on July 16, 17 and 18, to coincide with a 1-1/2 day sale on the platform. |
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| 2018-07-03 | A section of drivers from five taxi hailing companies including Uber and Taxify (now known as Bolt) took part in the industrial strike which started in early July 2018. The drivers through their association, Digital Taxi Forum want Uber and Co to double their rates and reduce their commissions so they can earn decent wages. The strike lasted 9 days, ending after Uber signed an agreement to ensure better pricing for drivers and improve welfare on the job. |
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| 2018-06-25 | Hundreds of Salesforce.com Inc. employees signed a letter to Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff criticizing the companies's contracts with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. |
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| 2018-06-21 | Earlier this year, a group of influential software engineers in Google’s cloud division, referred to as the 'Group of Nine', surprised their superiors by refusing to work on a cutting-edge security feature. Known as “air gap,” the technology would have helped Google win sensitive military contracts. The coders weren’t persuaded their employer should be using its technological might to help the government wage war, according to four current and former employees. After hearing the engineers’ objections, Urs Hölzle, Google’s top technical executive, said the air gap feature would be postponed, one of the people said. |
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| 2018-06-21 | Workers at Amazon are circulating an internal letter to CEO Jeff Bezos, asking him to stop selling the companies's Rekognition facial recognition software to law enforcement and to boot the data-mining firm Palantir from its cloud services. |
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| 2018-06-19 | In an open letter posted to Microsoft's internal message board on Tuesday, hundreds of employees protested Microsoft's work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and demanding that the companies stop working with the agency. |
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| 2018-06-08 | Nearly one hundred Didi drivers gathered in front of the company office in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, on 8 June protesting its new “guarantee scheme.” The scheme, rolled out in April, claimed to provide drivers with a stable income but required them to work at least ten hours a day. Didi then gradually reduced the orders for those drivers who refused to join the new scheme, sparking anger among drivers who wanted to maintain a more flexible work schedule. One driver said his income had fallen by 5,000 yuan as a result of the new system. |
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| 2018-06-04 | Hundreds of Didi drivers in the central city of Shaodong, Hunan, went on strike on 4 June in protest at a policy change that made it more difficult for them to claim their bonus payments. Videos posted online showed a long line of cars with drivers staging a protest on the side of the road. Drivers stayed on strike for six days, which coincided with the National College Entrance Examination. Drivers posted statements asking for support and understanding and apologizing for any inconvenience caused. |
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| 2018-06-04 | There have been at least 15 strikes and protests by food delivery workers in China since 1 May as increased competition among delivery platforms has drastically reduced workers' take-home pay. Workers contracted to food delivery giant Meituan in the northern city of Taiyuan staged a work stoppage in protest at a wide range of issues including pay levels, delivery times, insurance and high accident rates. |
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| 2018-05-30 | Google employees have led a campaign demanding that the companies terminate its contract with the Pentagon for Project Maven, a program that uses machine learning to improve targeting for drone strikes. Nearly five thousand Google workers signed an internal petition to cancel the project, and dozens resigned. |
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| 2018-05-15 | Fellow gig workers have banded together through a GoFundMe fundraiser to cover the immediate funeral costs of a delivery worker for Caviar who was killed on the job, while demanding that the company ultimately cover the amount. More than $19,000 has been raised. Referenced on page 142 of Ghost Work (Mary Gray and Siddarth Suri) |
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| 2018-05-14 | Workers of Oracle Korea sat outside the main office for more than 50 days after 19 negotiations with the management from December to April failed. This is now the longest strike by employees of a foreign IT companies in Korea. 'Some people think we don't need a union because they believe we work at a leading global IT companies and have well-paid jobs,' Kim Chul-soo, president of the Oracle labor union, said. 'It's not true at all.' Workers are suffering from a decline in real wages because there has been no increase in basic salary for the last 10 years, while half of the salary is based on incentives. Hiring scams similar to those at local banks, along with sexual harassment are also among the union’s accusations. |
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| 2018-05-14 | Food delivery riders have marched in Sydney to demand UberEats, Deliveroo and Foodora provide pay increases and better working conditions to the many contractors darting from door to door around Australian cities. Dozens of protesters voiced their concerns in Surry Hills about the lack of regulation surrounding rider pay, safety protections and benefits like sick pay and superannuation. |
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| 2018-04-28 | Around 30 drivers gathered on Thursday at lunchtime, the peak hour for deliveries, to express their dissatisfaction with a serious drop in the number of orders and a change in rules for payments. The majority of the protesters were freelancers for Didi Waimai who complained of unfair rules and meager earnings. |
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| 2018-04-06 | A group of academics working on artificial technologies call for a boycott of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, a South Korean university. KAIST is believed to be developing AI weapons through a collaboration with a defense contractor. An open letter has been signed by 50 academics. |
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| 2018-04-02 | Naver Corp., South Korea's dominant Internet portal and search engine, said that it has established the company's first labor union. After receiving official approval, the union started receiving membership applications from potential members, Naver's union said. More than 300 people joined within two hours. |
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| 2018-03-21 | Over one thousand Amazon workers in Spain plan to stage their first strike with a two-day walkout to protest what unions claim are efforts to reduce employees' rights. The union claimed the companies aims to block salary increases, cut wages and reduce payments for those working weekends or holidays as part of a new contract agreement. |
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| 2018-03-06 | Stanford Students Against Addictive Devices, a group of computer science students at the university, stage a protest at Apple Headquarters. They call for Apple to design devices with an 'essential mode', allowing the user to activate only basic functions. The group previously held a protest at the Apple store in downtown Palo Alto. |
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| 2018-02-18 | After raising a round of $400 million, tech workers protest Doordash using workers' tip money to subsidize base pay. 'Silicon Valley investors clearly don't care that DoorDash cheats drivers — in fact, DoorDash is likely being rewarded for adopting practices that improve their profit margins and treats drivers unfairly. However, investors do care that their startups can hire the best tech talent to help them execute on their mission. |
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| 2018-01-16 | After fighting for better working conditions, tech workers at Lanetix sent a letter to management outlining workplace grievances and announcing their intention to unionize with NewsGuild-CWA. They also filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The entire engineering staff was terminated after the petition was filed. In response, the San Francisco Tech Workers' Coalition, Lanetix workers from Virginia and San Francisco, and picketed Lanetix's offices in San Francisco. The NLRB investigation found evidence of unfair labor practices and the workers received a settlement in exchange for waiving their right to be reinstated. |
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| 2018-01-14 | One of FITE's (Forum of IT Employees) chapters, located in Pune, became the first registered trade union for IT industry. FITE helps IT employees through legal actions under the Industrial Disputes Act. The Pune chapter can now represent IT employees statewide. FITE also mobilizes to help IT workers and laid off employees utilize resources. |
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| 2017-12-31 | A nonprofit, The Solidarity Fund by Coworker, offers no-strings-attached $2,500 checks to tech workers involved in workplace organizing. Some fund recipients have donated the money to unions or for worker solidarity activities. Notably, the nonprofit uses a grassroots fundraising model based on worker solidarity. |
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| 2017-12-13 | 118 food service workers at Yahoo won union representation at its headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA. The food service workers, who are employed by Yahoo's contractor, Bon Appetit, are calling for respect and dignity, affordable health care, and increased wages to compete with increasing rents in the Bay Area. |
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| 2017-12-13 | Workers from Amazon's New Jersey warehouses protested outside of an Amazon Books store in Manhattan calling for better compensation, benefits, and working conditions. |
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| 2017-11-25 | Workers in six Amazon warehouses in Germany and at the company's main distribution hub in Italy strike on Black Friday over a pay dispute. |
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| 2017-08-23 | Mechanical Turk workers and organizers collaborated with researchers at Stanford’s Crowd Research Collective to create Daemo, a crowd-sourced platform that provides a higher-paying alternative to Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Some Mechnical Turk workers involved with the project later came out in opposition to the original WIRED article in their own Medium article. They argued that WIRED incorrectly identified Daemo as a project originating at Stanford, as opposed to from the workers themselves and called for changes to Daemo's governing board. |
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| 2017-07-24 | Over 500 food service workers at Facebook won union representation at the tech giant's campus in Menlo Park, CA. The workers, who are employed by contractor Flagship Facility Services, are calling for increased wages to compete with skyrocketing rents and more affordable health benefits. |
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| 2017-03-22 | About 17,000 AT&T workers walked off the job Wednesday. Workers say that AT&T was forcing technicians to work outside their areas of expertise. The union also was protesting the companies's outsourcing and offshoring of jobs. AT&T wireless workers were not affected. |
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| 2017-03-14 | Organizers say up to 1000 protesters have attended a demonstration held by Silicon Valley workers against the anti-immigration policymaking of US President Donald Trump and his administration. The protest was nearly five-hour-long outside Palo Alto City Hall in objection to Trump's immigration ban as well as in support of immigrants who spark innovation or work blue-collar jobs that keep those tech companies operating. |
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| 2017-02-04 | A 'handful' of Facebook employees have vowed not to fly for 90 days following Pres. Trump's immigration ban. The company has said it is not affiliated with this protest. |
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| 2017-02-01 | Google employees around the world walked off the job to protest Pres. Trump's immigration ban. Google co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai spoke at the walk-out at the Mountain View headquarters. |
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| 2017-01-30 | In what union officials described as Silicon Valley's largest private sector organizing effort, 3,000 private security guards on high tech campuses like Facebook, Cisco and Genentech have won recognition as members of Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West (SEIU-USWW). |
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| 2017-01-18 | 50 people in the tech community came out in the pouring rain to demand the data mining startup take a firm stand against the makings of a Muslim registry. |
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| 2016-12-16 | IBM employees sign a petition protesting IBM's cooperation with Trump. After the IBM CEO Ginny Rometty sent a letter congratulating Trump on his presidency and refusing to rule out participation from building a muslim registry, IBM employees created a petition on coworker.org to demand that the company acknowledge the diversity of its staff and not work to further the more xenophobic aspects of Trump's agenda. |
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| 2016-12-13 | Online petition by information technology workers to work against a United States government database identifying people by race, religion, or national origin, specifically in response to the Trump presidential campaign statements about creating a Muslim registry and deporting millions of illegal immigrants. |
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| 2016-12-03 | Uber drivers in 20 cities join the Fight for $15 movement, boycotting the app for one day to protest wages. |
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| 2016-10-14 | Workers threatened to boycott Instacart after it announced plans to replace their tips with an optional 10% service fee. Two days ahead of the planned boycott, Instacart said tips will stay. |
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| 2016-10-05 | Intel cafeteria workers voted to unionize joining forces with Unite Here Local 19. |
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| 2016-08-11 | After trialling a new payment model, which Deliveroo claims has been a success, the company will begin paying riders a fixed fee per deliver of £3.75 rather than the current hourly rate of £7 per hour plus £1 per delivery. This has left some of Deliveroo’s couriers unhappy enough to hold something akin to a strike. Outside the Deliveroo headquarters more than 100 self-employed workers gathered calling for the company to keep the hourly rate. |
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| 2016-05-10 | Uber recognizes an association of drivers, the Independent Drivers Guild, which is affiliated with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The organization represents approximately 35,000 drivers in the New York City area and provides access to discounted insurance, legal services, and roadside assistance. The group has been promised monthly meetings with management but at the expense of agreeing not the formally unionize for the next five years. |
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| 2016-04-21 | Uber settled two class-action lawsuits that argued independent contractors should be classified as company employees. Uber agreed to pay drivers $84 million (and an additional $16 million upon IPO and pending increased valuation). Drivers were allowed to form associations in California and Massachusetts and see the data behind their rating. In later months, more than 150 drivers called for the judge to vacate the settlement. |
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| 2016-03-31 | Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West janitors' San Jose rally targets Adobe. Hundreds of SEIU-USWW members congregated on Cesar Chavez Day to draw attention to ongoing contract negotiations with cleaning service contractors and protest abuse of workers in the janitorial industry. |
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| 2016-02-17 | Hundreds of Lexmark workers have protested working conditions at manufacturing plants in Juarez, Mexico for months. At least 700 workers went on strike in December 2015. Workers have called for union representation, improved wages, and investigation into sexual harassment allegations. |
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| 2016-02-10 | Intel cafeteria workers held a rally outside of company headquarters in Santa Clara to protest wages that have failed to keep up with the area's rising cost of living. Two weeks earlier the employees delivered a petition to management asking for fair process to form a union. |
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| 2016-02-07 | Uber drivers protested fare cuts by boycotting the app on Super Bowl Sunday and demonstrating outside of company headquarters. The boycott came in the midst of a promotion by Uber to provide free rides to fans of the winning team. Earlier in the week a caravan of 100 drivers drove through the city before stopping to protest at headquarters in downtown San Francisco. Earlier in the year the company imposed fare cuts in several cities around the U.S. |
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| 2015-08-20 | Three online petitions were started to protest parental leave policies at Netflix. The company recently began to offer a one-year paid parental leave but excluded employees in its DVD-by-mail service, who are typically lower paid than streaming employees and receive fewer benefits. |
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| 2015-07-20 | Google employees have started an internal spreadsheet to share data on salary and bonuses. Employees have reportedly used the spreadsheet to advocate for greater compensation. |
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| 2015-06-18 | Janitors of WeWork protest at their companies's Manhattan headquarters at 222 Broadway. In that same building, other renters and owners hire cleaning contractors at the standard city-wide rate, while WeWork pays an average of $11 an hour. |
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| 2015-06-17 | Intel announced layoffs in June 2015 and an additional 12,000 layoffs in April 2016. In response, a group of laid-off Intel employees in Portland, OR formed a group called the "The Intel Eliminati" in fall of 2015 and launched a website (pdx-tie.org) in June 2016 for former Intel employees. In June 2016, the group had 200+ members. The group's website features career resources, support, and posts critical of Intel and its management, including alleged age discrimination against older Intel employees in the lay-offs. |
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| 2015-05-04 | Security guards at Broadcom, contracted through Universal Protection Service, rallied outside of company headquarters to protest retaliation for union organizing. The group was joined by Rev. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, which has recently been pushing for greater diversity and equity in tech. UPS employees who have pushed for union organization through SEIU have reportedly had their wages cut. |
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| 2015-02-26 | Union supporters of drivers who shuttle around Apple employees, were protesting outside the tech giant's Cupertino headquarters on Wednesday morning, ahead of their big vote Friday on whether to join the Teamsters Union. The teamsters trucked into Cupertino to protest working conditions for 120 full and part-time shuttle and bus drivers who work at Apple and other Silicon Valley companies, like Yahoo, eBay and Genentech |
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| 2015-02-03 | Employees at H3C, a Chinese network device company acquired by HP, have been protesting the appointment of a new chairman for the last three weeks. More than 4,400 people have signed a petition and 3,000 have joined the strike. Workers have expressed concern that the election of Mao Yunan, a senior manager at HP, would lead to layoffs and would endanger promised employee stock option plans. |
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| 2015-01-09 | A lawsuit alleges that Instacart, an on-demand grocery delivery service valued at $2 billion, misclassifies its workers as independent contractors to avoid paying expenses like overtime, reimbursements for gas and workers' compensation. The class action complaint, which was filed on Jan. 9th but has not been previously reported, describes Instacart's business practices as 'unethical, oppressive and unscrupulous' and seeks damages for anyone who has worked as a 'shopper delivery person' for the company since 2012. In 2017, Instacart won a small victory — the grocery-on-demand startup just settled a class action lawsuit to the tune of $4.6 million. |
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| 2014-12-03 | Hundreds of Mechanical Turk workers participate in an email writing campaign to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to protest low pay and worker representation. The workers are organized by 'We Are Dynamo', a self-described guild for crowdsourced workers started by workers and academics. |
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| 2014-11-19 | The shuttle bus drivers who ferry Facebook employees to and from work voted on Wednesday to unionize, 43 to 28. The drivers, who are employees of Loop Transportation, a contractor for Facebook, voted to join Teamsters Local 853, with several of them saying their main concerns were inadequate pay and a stressful split shift schedule. |
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| 2014-11-04 | Artesyn Technologies announced through their QQ blog that employees mainly from the hardware department were participating in a protest against Sony. They held their protest against what they called violent layoffs and discrimination and they appealed to Sony to disclose a list of those being discharged. They also demanded negotiations and a 'fair, transparent and open' process. |
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| 2014-09-19 | In front of Apple stores nationwide, tech companies employees gathered to protest alongside hundreds of eager customers waiting in line to buy the iPhone 6. The protesters weren't disgruntled Apple engineers or developers; they were security officers, maintenance and custodial staff demanding better wages from tech companies. |
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| 2014-09-11 | A group of temporary workers at Microsoft has signed its first union contract with their employer, a rare feat in a technology industry typically unfriendly to organized labor. 38 bug testers who review Microsoft apps voted to create a union, the Temporary Workers of America. They work full time in Microsoft's offices but are employed by cloud services contractor Lionbridge. |
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| 2014-09-01 | Over two hundred Mechanical Turk workers and academics, organized through Dynamo, have collaborated and signed a set of ethical guidelines for scholars requesting labor through the platform. The Wiki page includes information on fair payment, communication practices, and the basics of requesting. |
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| 2014-04-19 | Tech workers from Google, Apple, Intel, and Adobe Systems brought a class action lawsuit against their respective companies, claiming that they conspired to keep salaries down by adhering to 'no-hire' agreements among themselves. The case ended in a $325 million settlement that paid out roughly $4,000 to 60,000 employees. |
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| 2014-04-03 | Mozilla employees used a number of means to call for the resignation of CEO Brendan Eich who donated $1,000 in 2008 to support California's Proposition 8, legislature that would have made gay marriage illegal in the state. Three of Mozilla Foundation's board members resigned in protest, and other employees took to social media and wrote blog posts. Other companies, most prominently dating site OKCupid, encouraged their users to stop using the Firefox browser. Eich did ultimately resign. |
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| 2014-04-01 | In the UK, an activist group called Amazon Anonymous delivered a letter and a petition with 55,000 signatures to Amazon. The letter called for higher wages and improved working conditions for warehouse workers, including longer breaks and an end to the practice of compulsory overtime. |
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| 2014-03-31 | Several hundred Amazon workers in Leipzig, Germany went on strike as part of a union effort to raise wages. The company reported 340 workers were involved whereas the union (Verdi) reported the number was closer to 500. |
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| 2014-03-03 | More than 1,000 IBM factory workers walked off the job at the factory in Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong, after managers on announced the terms of their transfer to new ownership under Chinese PC maker Lenovo Group Ltd. Experts say - the impetus for a strike was underpinned by the fact that the factory branch of the state-backed union was seen as a farce. |
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| 2014-01-16 | A group of technicians at an Amazon facility in Middletown, Delaware filed a petition with the NLRB to organize a union but ultimately voted against it, 21-6, after pressure from management and anti-union consultants. |
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| 2013-12-16 | Amazon workers in four German facilities (Bad Hersfeld, Leipzig, Graben, Werne) went on strike before Christmas to pressure the company to accept industry-wide collective bargaining agreements for worker pay. Protests began in May 2013 and have continued throughout the year. A contingent of German workers traveled to Seattle to protest outside of the company's headquarters, joined by U.S. union organizers. |
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| 2013-11-19 | Hundreds of workers at a Chinese Nokia factory located in Dongguan, Guangdong Province have on strike. They're holding up a large banner in protest, which reads 'Workers are not simple merchandise, assets or slaves. Please do not sell us. We have DIGNITY and RIGHTS! |
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| 2013-09-19 | German Amazon workers have continued to strike and protest in an attempt to get the company to recognize industry-level wages set under collective bargaining agreements. Workers in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig have conducted a series of strikes since May. On Sept. 20th, a bus drove workers from Bad Hersfeld to Leipzig to join the two movements. |
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| 2013-09-19 | Students from Leipzig University have formed an organization known as 'Amazon Solidarity Alliance' and have collected 500 signatures in support of ongoing strikes by Amazon workers in Leipzig. The company frequently employs students in temporary positions. |
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| 2013-07-04 | Reddit and Mozilla, among others, posted prominent messages protesting NSA surveillance practices unveiled by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The protest was organized by the Internet Defense League, an organization of more than 30,000 websites that fights for Web freedom. |
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| 2013-05-19 | Amazon workers at two German facilities (Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig) walked off the job to protest low wages and the company's refusal to sign a collective bargaining agreement for the retail sector. Der Speigel reports that this is the 'first strike in the online retail giant's history'. |
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| 2013-03-15 | A group of approximately 30 Uber drivers protested outside of the company's San Francisco headquarters to protest lowered pay and lack of job security, including the firing of 500 drivers over the last month. |
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| 2013-02-06 | Mechnical Turk workers have adopted a platform named Turkopticon, which allows them to review tasks and requestors on the platform. Turkopticon was created through a collaboration between a UC Irvine computer scientist and a union leader for IG Metall. |
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| 2012-10-01 | FoxConn workers in Zhengzhou held walkouts on three separate days to protest working conditions at the plant. News outlets also report workers have been purposefully scratching newly manufactured iPhones in protest. China Labor Watch estimates that 3,000 workers took part in the walkouts. |
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| 2012-06-05 | Outside of Taiwan's Computex trade show, labor groups protested poor working conditions and inadequate pay for both white-collar and blue-collar workers |
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| 2012-05-01 | Thousands of FoxConn workers in Jundiai, Brazil protested dangerous working conditions outside of the company's local plant. Complaints included lack of water and air conditioning at facilities, covercrowded buses, and low quality food in the cafeterias. |
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| 2012-04-27 | Approximately 200 FoxConn workers in Wuhan, China threatened to jump of the roof of a building yesterday to protest low wages. The protests recalled a series of worker suicides in 2010 and a similar protest held in January at the same facility. |
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| 2012-01-17 | A number of prominent websites including Wikipedia, Reddit, and the Internet Archive staged blackouts, taking their websites temporarily offline, to protest anti-piracy legislation in the U.S. Congress. Wikipedia staged a 24-hour blackout, while Reddit's protest lasted 12 hours. Both the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act ultimately failed to pass. |
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| 2012-01-11 | 150 FoxConn workers in Wuhan, China threatened suicide and ultimately spent two days on the roof of their plant to protest forced reassignments. In 2010, 18 FoxConn workers attempted suicide with a resulting 14 deaths. |
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| 2011-12-28 | LG workers in Nanjing went on strike to protest the low pay they receive relative to Korean LG employees at the same plant. |
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| 2009-12-16 | Engineers at Yahoo France held a strike to protest the company's plans to shut down an R&D office in Echirolles, laying off 78 people or roughly one-third of the company's total employees in the country. |
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| 2009-05-18 | Thousands' of Baidu employees filed complaints at the Labor Office in Shenzen to protest recent wage cuts. Earlier in the month, 'hundreds' of employees were part of an office sit-in. The company cut wages for sales employees by approximately 30% in response to cost pressures resulting from the global financial crisis. |
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| 2007-10-30 | Hundreds' of immigrant tech workers protested H1B visa caps on the streets of San Jose carrying banners and signs. A shortage of H1B visas has led to insecure working conditions and labor shortages among tech firms. |
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| 2007-09-26 | Roughly a thousand foreign tech workers protested US H1B visa caps in Washington DC. They urged Congress to increase the number of visas supplied annually. |
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| 2007-07-14 | Approximately a thousand foreign tech workers protested US H1B visa caps on the streets of San Jose. A shortage of visas has created difficult conditions for workers. |
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| 2006-03-09 | After anonymously receiving several pages of confidential compensation guidelines, the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers has relaunched an effort the unionize employees at Microsoft. The leaked guidelines showed that wages at the company barely rose in the last two years, which the union hopes will be a rallying cry for workers. In 2003, the company stopped giving employees stock options, opting for stock instead. |
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| 2004-09-29 | IBM employees launched a class-action lawsuit against the company, alleging they faced age discrimation when they were forced to transition from a traditional pension plan to a cash balance plan. The company paid $320 million to settle with 15,000 employees. A federal judge ruled in favor of employees but the company launched an appeals process that dragged on until 2006 when they officially froze pension plans. |
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| 2003-09-16 | The Communications Workers of America organized a protest by union leaders and tech workers outside of a Silicon Valley conference on offshore outsourcing. The protest is part of a long-term campaign to raise awareness among the public and politicians about the growing trend of overseas outsourcing of IT jobs. |
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| 2001-01-09 | Customer service representatives at etown.com, a website that provides information on consumer electronics voted on whether to join the Communication Workers of America. The New York Times reports that this is the first unionization vote at a dot com. Two workers who lead unionization efforts were reportedly fired by the company in the time leading up to the vote. Management threatened to shut down the company if unionization proceeded, which prompted CWA to file a motion with the NLRB. The company ultimately did shut down in mid-February 2001, due to failure to secure additional venture capital funding. |
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| 2000-11-23 | The United Food and Commercial Workers Union is attempting to organize roughly 5,000 workers at eight Amazon distribution centers across the U.S. The New York Times reports that 'low-key' unionization efforts have been going on in the company for the last two years. |
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| 2000-11-16 | In one of the first reported unionization attempts at a 'dot com company', an affiliate of the Communication Workers of America known as the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WashTech) sought to unionize a group of 400 customer service employees at Amazon. Amazon closed the call center before the campaign could proceed further due to financial pressures following the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s. Amazon has disputed unionization by arguing that the employees are owners of the company since they are given stock options. |
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| 1999-10-01 | The Communications Workers of America have renewed their drive to organize IBM employees. CWA previously attempted to unionize IBM in 1985. This time around the union started a new organization, Alliance @IBM. It reports that roughly 100 thousand of the company's 140 thousand workers are eligible for unionization. Union supporters have started outreach and leafletting efforts at multiple locations, including the Research Triangle in North Carolina. The new organization will work with the existing IBM Employee Benefits Action Coalition. This effort continued for the next seventeen years, until it was ended 2016. At its peak, the Alliance had 400 dues-paying members. |
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| 1999-06-04 | A group of temporary workers at Microsoft that includes accountants and lawyers has organized into a bargaining unit and is asking for representation through a local union, the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers. The employees expressed frustration at their status as contract workers, citing a lack of benefits as a motivating factor for the unionization attempt. |
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| 1999-05-04 | Seeking to attract younger workers, IBM announced plans in May 1999 to switch from traditional pension plans to a cash balance model for all American employees. Older employees with longer tenures at the company, who would lose 30-40% of their pension checks as a result of the switch, protested this change with rallies, emails to the company, a new online website, and lobbying policymakers in DC. Employees also accused IBM of age discrimination. In September 1999, IBM backtracked on its pension policy change. |
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| 1998-11-23 | A law firm representing 10 current and former contract workers at Microsoft Corp. filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Tuesday against the software giant, seeking damages and full-time employee benefits for its plaintiffs and thousands of other 'misclassified' temporary employees. The 10 plaintiffs seek class-action status because they want to include some 6,000 current full-time Microsoft employees who have been 'misclassified as nonemployees' under 'various erroneous labels' and denied company benefits. |
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| 1995-04-17 | Former Intel engineer Kourosh Kenneth ("Ken") Hamidi alleged wrongful termination and discrimination after his claims for workers' compensation, following a car accident, were denied and he was fired in 1995. He formed a small (~10 member) online group called Former And Current Employees of Intel (FACE-Intel) to coordinate six mass emails over 21 months to Intel employees about company wrongdoing. Intel sued Hamidi and the FACE-Intel group for "trespass to chattel" and "nuisance" resulting in the California Supreme Court's ruling in Hamidi's favor in Intel Corporation v. Hamidi (2003). The case is considered a landmark ruling on electronic employee communications and concepts of trespass. |
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| 1994-01-24 | Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) launches an online petition in opposition to the Clipper Chip, a cryptographic device intended to provide a standard for securing private voice communication. The group expresses concern about the possibility of surveillance through decryption keys held by government agencies. The petition obtains over 50,000 signatures. An earlier physical letter, sent directly to the President, received 40 signatures from cryptography and computing experts. |
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| 1992-10-16 | Workers at Versatronex Corporation, a company in Silicon Valley that makes circuit boards, went on strike to protest low wages and a lack of health care and other benefits. Most of the strikers were Latina women and had contacted the United Electrical Workers Union - they struck after the company fired a worker who was vocal in supporting unionization. |
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| 1986-09-16 | A group of computer professionals, led by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), signs a petition arguing that Pres. Reagan's Star Wars system is not feasible given current technology. Such a system would be prone to major errors, they argued, and would be irresponsible to implement. |
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| 1986-09-16 | Fourteen employees at AT&T sign a letter warning the U.S. military of over 10,000 possible errors in the Star Wars system. |
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| 1979-09-01 | IBM workers formed an organization, IBM: Speak Up!, to protest the company's involvement with apartheid South Africa. The company created the computer system that upheld the country's passbook system. The company officially divested from South Africa in 1987. |
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| 1973-01-01 | Workers at Silicon Valley conglomerate Smith-Corona-Marchant (S.C.M.) held a unionizing drive and a hearing with the National Labor Relations Board. The ultimately gained enough votes to continue forward with an NLRB election before losing momentum due to anti-unionizing efforts from company management. |
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| 1970-12-01 | The Committee to Plan a Computer Union meets to plan an "industry-wide, all-inclusive union which would span the gap between professionals (programmers/ analysts/operators) and non-professionals (key-punch operators/tape-handlers)". While the plans were not realized, it is one of the first known attempts at unionizing in the computer technology industry. |
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| 1970-10-08 | Polaroid workers affiliated with the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement (PRWM) rallied at an anti-apartheid protest in Technology Square in Cambridge, MA and organized what is believed to be the first anti-apartheid boycott of a U.S. corporation. The organization was founded by two of the company's Black employees, Caroline Hunter (a chemist) and Ken Williams (a photographer). The two employees discovered that Polaroid was selling equipment to the South African government that allowed for a racist system of surveillance known as passbooks. The company responded by the surveilling and threatening the workers, first denying and then continuing their operations, and starting a public relations campaign to improve their image. |
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| 1970-01-01 | Black IBM employees founded the National Black Workers Alliance of IBM (BWA), "the first-ever movement of hi-tech minority workers". The organization was one of the first to speak out against the company's involvement in South Africa and to demand equal pay and better opportunities for promotion for Black employees. They collected data on internal pay guidelines salaries at IBM to increase their leverage with management and supported fellow employees who faced retaliation after speaking out. |
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| 1969-03-04 | Computer People for Peace (established as Computer People for Peace - name changed in 1970) formed in 1968/1969 in protest of the Vietnam War. The group pressured the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to adopt an anti-war position and NYC members collected 320 signatures on petitions against the military's use of technology. They raised funds to pay for the bail of a fellow programmer, Clark Squire, who was arrested for his activity with the Black Panthers. The group also attended an event at NYU to support work and research stoppages in universities. |
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Open Source Agenda is not affiliated with "Collective Action in Tech" Project. README Source: collective-action/tech
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