Students are making history. All of us should join them
May 17, 2024
Statement from Ontario Federation of Labour President Laura Walton on the one month anniversary of the start of the university protests in solidarity with Palestine.
Much as I dislike the theft of human labor that feeds many of the #generativeAI products we see today, I have to agree with @pluralistic that #copyright law is the wrong way to address the problem.
To frame the issue concretely: think of whom copyright law has benefited in the past, and then explain how it would benefit the individual creator when it is applied to #AI. (Hint: it won’t.)
Copyright law is already abused and extended to an absurd degree today. It already overreaches. It impoverishes society by putting up barriers to creation and allowing toll-collectors to exist between citizen artists and their audience.
Labor law is likely what we need to lean on. #unions and #guilds protect creators in a way that copyright cannot. Inequality and unequal bargaining power that lead to exploitation of artists and workers is what we need to address head-on.
Very amusing 4-minute video by Robert Reich about how Musk and Bezos want to dismantle government protection for workers.
Quote by RR:
"14 mei 2024
Nothing tells you how important unions are like corporations controlled by the richest men on earth suing to dismantle the government agency that protects the right to organize."
Talking of Chameleons, I am always impressed by the way Apple have managed to maintain much of their ‘outside, liberal’ image - even when they dominate mobile markets. Jobs was a shite, indifferent to others in his company, family and community. The organisation maintains that process - with a ‘friendly face’.
I do use their hardware/software but am under no illusions about the company.
#Amazon#UK#Unions#AntiLabor#AntiUnions#LaborUnions: "Amazon has once again discovered its incredible facility for ease-of-use. The company has blanketed its shop floor with radioactively illegal "one click to quit the union" QR codes. When a worker aims their phones at the code and clicks the link, the system auto-generates a letter resigning the worker from their union.
As noted, this is totally illegal. English law bans employers from "making an offer to an employee for the sole or main purpose of inducing workers not to be members of an independent trade union, take part in its activities, or make use of its services."
Now, legal or not, this may strike you as a benign intervention on Amazon's part. Why shouldn't it be easy for workers to choose how they are represented in their workplaces? But the one-click system is only half of Amazon's illegal union-busting: the other half is delivered by its managers, who have cornered workers on the shop floor and ordered them to quit their union, threatening them with workplace retaliation if they don't.
This is in addition to more forced "captive audience" meetings where workers are bombarded with lies about what life in an union shop is like.
Half thinking of starting an #AcademicVenting hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse.
Won’t work of course because most of us can’t risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail. #Universities#AcademicChatter#neoliberalism