Then there's the opacity - imagine if your boss refused to tell you how much you'll get paid for a job until *after* you've completed it, claimed that this was done in order to "protect privacy" - and then threatened anyone who helped you figure out the true wage on offer:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#boss-app

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Opacity is #WageTheft's handmaiden: every gig worker producing content for a social media algorithm is subject to having their reach - and hence their pay - cut based on the unaccountable, inscrutable decisions of a content moderation system:

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

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Making content for an algorithm is like having a boss that docks every paycheck because you broke rules that you are not allowed to know, because if you knew the rules, you'd figure out how to cheat without your boss catching you. Content moderation is the last place where #SecurityThroughObscurity is considered good practice:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

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When workers #SeizeTheMeansOfComputation, amazing things happen. In #Indonesia, gig workers create and trade #tuyul apps that let them unilaterally modify the way that their bosses' systems see them - everything from GPS spoofing to accessibility mods:

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

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So the tech and #labor story isn't wholly grim: there are lots of ways that tech can enhance labor struggles, letting workers collaborate and coordinate. Without digital systems, we wouldn't have the #HotStrikeSummer:

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

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As the historic writer/actor strike shows us, the resurgent labor movement and the senescent forces of crapulent capitalism are locked in a death-struggle over not just what digital tools do, but who they do it *for* and who they do it *to*:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

When it comes to the epic fight over who technology acts for and against, we need a diversity of tactics, backstopped by tech operated by and for its users - and by laws that protect workers and the public.

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That dynamic is in sharp focus in #UniteHereLocal11's strike against #OrangeCounty's #LagunaCliffsMarriottResort.

The #UNITEHERE strike turns on the usual issues like a living wage (hotel staff are paid so little they have to rent rooming-house beds *by the shift*, paying for the right to sleep in a room for a few hours at a time, without any permanent accommodation).

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They're also seeking health-care and pensions, so they can be healthy at work and retire after long service. Finally, they're seeking their employer's support for LA's #ResponsibleHotelsOrdinance, which would levy a tax on hotel rooms to help pay for hotel workers' housing costs (a hotel worker who can't afford a bed is the equivalent of a fast food worker who has to apply for food stamps):

https://www.unitehere11.org/responsible-hotels-ordinance/

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But the #Marriott - which is owned by the #UofCalifornia and managed by #AimbridgeHospitality - has refused to bargain, walking out negotiations.

But the employer didn't walk out over wages, benefits or support for a housing subsidy. They walked out when workers demanded that the #scabs that the company was trying to hire to break the strike be given full time, union jobs.

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These aren't just any scabs, either. They're predominantly Black workers who rely on the $700m #Instawork app for gigs. These workers are being dispatched to cross the picket line without any warning that they're being contracted as #strikebreakers. When workers refuse the cross the picket and join the strike, Instawork cancels all their shifts and permanently blocks them from new jobs.

This is a new, technologically supercharged form of illegal strikebreaking.

11/

It's one thing for a single boss to punish a worker who refuses to scab, but Instawork acts as a plausible-deniability filter for *all the major employers in the region*. Like the landlord apps that allow landlords to illegally fix rents by coordinating hikes, Instawork lets bosses illegally collude to rig wages by coordinating a blocklist of workers who refuse to scab:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/company-that-makes-rent-setting-software-for-landlords-sued-for-collusion/

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The racial dimension is really important here: the Marriott has a longstanding de facto policy of refusing to hire Black workers, and whenever they are confronted with this, they insist that there are no qualified Black workers in the labor pool. But as soon as the predominantly Latino workforce struck, Marriott discovered a vast Black workforce that it could coerce into scabbing, in collusion with Instawork.

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Now, all of this isn't just sleazy, it's *illegal*, a violation of Section 7 of the #NationalLaborRelationsBoard Act. Historically, that wouldn't have mattered, because a string of presidents, R and D, have appointed useless do-nothing ghouls to run the NLRB.

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But the #Biden admin, pushed by the party's left wing, made a string of historic, excellent appointments, including #NLRB General Counsel #JenniferAbruzzo, who has set her sights on punishing gig work companies for flouting labor law:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/10/see-you-in-the-funny-papers/#bidens-legacy

UNITE HERE 11 has brought a case to the NLRB, charging the Instawork, the UC system, Marriott, and Aimbridge with violating labor law by blackmailing gig workers into crossing the picket line.

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The union is also asking the NLRB to punish the companies for failing to protect workers from violent retaliation from the wealthy hotel guests who have punched them and screamed epithets at them. The hotel has refused to identify these thug guests so that the workers they assaulted can swear out complaints against them.

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