Work Reform

"workers remain on strike on Friday morning and have taken the keys to hundreds of vehicles".

"workers remain on strike on Friday morning and have taken the keys to hundreds of vehicles".

Amazon trying to cover their ass?

Updated Wednesday, September 4, 2024 5:10 p.m. EST - Amazon reached out to deny the reports of a crack down on singing along with the radio in trucks and provided this PR video clip as evidence. A PR spokesperson told Jalopnik: “This post is completely inaccurate. Amazon has never issued guidance or communications to Delivery Service Partners that prohibits singing in the vehicle.”

https://youtu.be/3ddtY_iOrk8

At the conclusion of a two-day meeting of the union’s wage committee on Thursday, union members voiced unanimous support for a strike on Oct. 1 if a new contract meeting its demands doesn’t materialize. Harold Daggett, president of the ILA and the union’s chief negotiator, has said he wants a good economic deal for his members, which includes union opposition to port automation and exclusive port contracts.

In a video featuring Daggett played before the energized crowd, he said bargaining in good faith is the only way to get an agreement and threatened a worker slowdown if the Biden administration forces the union workers back to the docks using the Taft-Hartley Act.

A strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association, which moves the trade at the ports along the East Coast, Gulf Coast and Puerto Rico, would impact 43% of all U.S. imports and billions of dollars in trade monthly.

Youtube link

Notorious for a hardworking culture, Japan launched an initiative to help people cut back. But three years into the effort, the country is having a hard time coaxing people to take a four-day workweek.

Japanese lawmakers first proposed a shorter work week in 2021. The guidelines aimed to encourage staff retention and cut the number of workers falling ill or dying from overwork in an economy already suffering from a huge labor shortage. The guidelines also included overtime limits and paid annual leave.

However, the initiative has had a slow start: According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, only about 8% of companies in Japan allow employees to take three or more days off a week.

It's not just companies — employees are hesitant, too.

Electronics manufacturer Panasonic, one of Japan's largest companies, opted into the effort in early 2022. Over two years in, only 150 of its 63,000 eligible employees have chosen to take up four-day schedules, a representative of the company told the Associated Press.

Other major companies to introduce a four-day workweek include Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing, electronics giant Hitachi, and financial firm Mizuho. About 85% of employers report giving workers the usual two days off a week.

Much of the reluctance to take an extra day off boils down to a culture of workers putting companies before themselves, including pressure to appear like team players and hard workers. This intense culture stems from Japan's postwar era, where, in an effort to boost the economy, then-Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida enlisted major corporations to offer their employees lifelong job security, asking only that workers repay them with loyalty.

A conversation with Ali Breland about the long-simmering ideas animating Silicon Valley’s rightward turn.

Paywall removed: https://archive.is/rRQ5W

Indian IT firm Infosys has been accused of being “exploitative” after allegedly sending job offers to thousands of engineering graduates but still not onboarding any of them after as long as two years. The recent graduates have reportedly been told they must do repeated, unpaid training in order to remain eligible to work at Infosys.

Last week, the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES), an Indian advocacy group for IT workers, sent a letter [PDF], shared by The Register, to Mansukh Mandaviya, India’s Minster of Labor and Employment. It requested that the Indian government intervene “to prevent exploitation of young IT graduates by Infosys." The letter signed by NITES president Harpreet Singh Saluja claimed that NITES received “multiple” complaints from recent engineering graduates “who have been subjected to unprofessional and exploitative practices” from Infosys after being hired for system engineer and digital specialist engineer roles.

According to NITES, Infosys sent these people offer letters as early as April 22, 2022, after engaging in a college recruitment effort from 2022–2023 but never onboarded the graduates. NITES has previously said that “over 2,000 recruits” are affected.

NITES claims the people sent job offers were asked to participate in an unpaid, virtual “pre-training” that took place from July 1, 2024, until July 24, 2024. Infosys' HR team reportedly told the recent graduates at that time that onboarding plans would be finalized by August 19 or September 2. But things didn’t go as anticipated, NITES’ letter claimed, leaving the would-be hires with “immense frustration, anxiety, and uncertainty.”