In the Inequality.org op-ed, researchers Mishal Khan and Kung Feng lift up four core themes that emerged from their analysis of recent AI principles and statements released by unions and other worker organizations. laborcenter.berkeley.edu/a-first-look...

John Campbell asks is Uber's low pay model the future of work in New Zealand? I'd say, at the rate we are going, yes. More and more people are going to be employed by platforms and it's not clear those platforms will even be in New Zealand. www.1news.co.nz/2025/11/08/j...

Real-time End-to-end Surveillance.

It is beyond upsetting to me how after a tragedy of the magnitude of Pike River the government is weakening our occupational health and safety law. Anna Osbourne and Sonya Rockhouse are asking for signatures to their open letter to the government about this. www.together.org.nz/stand_with_pik

I think the banner of democratisation is a fig leaf to what's really going on which is the dehumanisation, disciplining and disempowerment of ordinary people. Bad tech make us lonely, makes us stupid and makes us scared.

Read more about the project at our website: www.dair-institute.org/projects/dri...

🚨NEW🚨 from DAIR: Today we are releasing "Driven Down", a new report on how workplace technology enables Amazon to steal wages, hide labor, intensify poor working conditions, and evade responsibility. Read the full report here: drive.google.com/file/d/1yBxy...

I think the Public Service Commission has breached good faith here see s32 (iii) of the Employment Relations Act ie. "the union and the employer— (iii)must not undermine or do anything that is likely to undermine the bargaining or the authority of the other in the bargaining"

This is an upsetting article about the underpaid and exploited hidden human labour in the AI supply chain www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/art...

Andrew Lensen and I have developed a fortnightly newsletter called The Reading List It does exactly what it says on the tin: ten good, interesting or challenging things we've read, watched or listened to in the last fortnight. Did I mention its totally free. open.substack.com/pub/lensenmc...

New Policy Brief by Data & Society "The Privacy Trap: How “Privacy-Preserving AI Techniques” Mask the New Worker Surveillance and Datafication" datasociety.net/library/the-...

New report from the ITCU ituc-csi.org/Artificial-I... on why workers' unions must shape the deployment and regulation of artificial intelligence.

The Austrian Data Protection Authority ("DSB") issued a decision finding that Microsoft 365 Education illegally tracks school children and uses student data for Microsoft's own purposes. noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-...

The advantages of unionization are obvious, so why don’t more workers join unions? Employer-led union suppression strategies are a key explanatory factor. theconversation.com/the-advantag... #canlab

Dark Patterns, Deceptive Design and the Law. "This is going on my TBR list. "It explains how laws fail to address deceptive design practices and explores the implications for privacy, autonomy and consumer protection in the digital age" www.bloomsbury.com/uk/dark-patt...

So it's not just in New Zealand this happens...

I'm cautiously optimistic proposed changes to the Holidays Act are sensible. newsroom.co.nz/2025/09/24/h... But in Australia casual employees get 25% casual loading on top of their base rate to compensate for insecurity & absence of paid sick leave & annual leave- so there is room for improvement.

Uber drivers are going to strike on 13 September due to unfair pay rates, cleaning fee reimbursements policies excessive working hours and lack of representation and transparency in Uber's policies. I hope Uber listens. www.hcamag.com/nz/specialis...

“Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known” apnews.com/article/chin...

Research shows that some of the richest multi-national technology corporations - like Facebook and Amazon - are paying very little tax on the money they are making in New Zealand www.tjanz.org/big_tech_med...

My latest newsletter is about how the double standards that allows big tech to commit the most appalling crimes -- and to get away with them. whatwelost.substack.com/p/big-tech-a...

For example, making a digital platform increasingly awful for gig workers. #labor onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This seems shortsighted. From a purely pragmatic perspective, while I'm not an expert on this, my understanding is that NZ has obligations under various trade treaties to comply with international labour standards.

Breaking up with big tech: a human rights based argument for tackling big tech's market power. This report by Amnesty International which lists the harms flowing from big tech's market power is spot on. www.amnesty.org/en/wp-conten...

I've lived through all of these changes and it won't be too much longer till I'm ready to walk away.

A new piece from @caileangallagher.bsky.social at the @workersobservatory.org 🔔 "That’s why we’re calling for this type of work to placed at the centre of the Scottish Government’s Fair Work agenda." www.scotsman.com/news/opinion...

My latest newsletter is about the excesses of big tech, why Europe should declare war on Silicon Valley, and how it can win. whatwelost.substack.com/p/how-europe...

BREAKING: California lawmakers have reached an agreement with Uber and Lyft that will open the door for app drivers to form unions and organize for increased pay and better benefits. www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

I suspect this number does not include all the students who are desperately seeking part time work to support their studies and not finding it. This is heartbreaking. These aren't just numbers, its people's lives.

Dependent contractors are poorly served by current law. They don't get the rights of employee but they are economically vulnerable. ilostat.ilo.org/blog/casting...

#BREAKING: We are calling on the Prime Minister to show leadership by removing Brooke van Velden as Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, following her recent comments that politicise the Employment Relations Authority and breach the Cabinet Manual. 1/6

Algorithmic Wage Discrimination is spreading beyond 'Gig' work: Healthcare, Customer Service, & Logistics bosses are buying AI products that set compensation structures & wages using real time data. @wilneida.bsky.social & I did an audit & here are our findings equitablegrowth.org/how-artifici...

Algorithmic wage discrimination was first documented in app-controlled ride-hail and food-delivery work. Read more on how surveillance pay works and where it is deployed in the U.S. economy, along with recommendations to ensure fairness in setting workers’ pay: equitablegrowth.org/how-artifici...

Here’s a giant screw-you to this bank and to the snake-oil peddlers who sold them on miracle AI—that ultimately can’t replace workers. Wild how yet another AI flop barely makes headlines, while every “AI taking jobs” story blows up everywhere. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Once again tapping the sign that reads “the alternative to collective bargaining is dragging out the factory owner from his house and beating him to death in front of his family,” because that’s what we had before collective bargaining Unions are there for *your* protection too, management

NEW ZEALAND: Pay equity: Five unions to take government to court over law changes www.1news.co.nz/2025/08/18/p...

Two amazing resources on worker voice and AI that you should know about: (1) ILO’s Global Case study of AI and algorithmic management by @vdoellgast.bsky.social and team The single best compendium of international law and union cases I’ve seen on this topic www.ilo.org/sites/defaul... (1/2)

This looks like a useful report on the uberisation of healthcare www.ituc-csi.org/ilo-yellow-r... I'm hoping to do some work on this over summer.

This is a good resource for people interested in regulation of platform work digitallabour.ilo.org e.g I can see Uruguay has just brought in quite comprehensive law on the protection of workers engaged in tasks through digital platforms. (Very much the opposite of the current New Zealand approach.)

On the NZ context "Rather than preventing the misclassification of workers, the law changes may make it easier. They do little to address the challenges vulnerable contractors face, fail to tackle the structural problems of platform work, & disregard how other countries are modernising their laws."

Just published on the Conversation a new piece by me with Annick Masselot and Lynne Coker about the government's proposed "gateway test" theconversation.com/contractor-o...

More than 30 of the companies, which collect and sell consumers’ personal information, hid their deletion instructions from Google...

"At once a source of demystification of AI for the recently concerned and an intervention which encourages veteran sceptics to sharpen their criticism, [The AI Con] serves as a call to action to ridicule AI hype as a consumer, argue against it as a citizen, and resist it as a worker."

“The Government’s pay equity overhaul has faced an onslaught from leading political figures and a former governor general, at the first unofficial People’s Select Committee into the changes - with three more hearings this month.” #nzpol www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...

It's depressing that New Zealand is about to become the latest success in Uber's regulatory arbitrage campaign.

Big Tech no longer cares if we like their products. As long as we stay. As long as we pay. Their real goal? Please shareholders. Lock users in. Push hype (especially AI) to boost stock prices. The actual service? Just good enough to avoid a painful switch. That’s a sad but accurate summary.

I know I shouldn't be surprised by anything that big tech does but really, this is so gross - firms want to adjust the price of services based on your location, phone model and even how much battery you've got left themarkup.org/artificial-i...

Emotion privacy. This might be a promising concept to push back against intrusive surveillance. www.ifow.org/news-article...

#nzpol 1/8 Brooke van Velden’s Employment Relations Amendment Bill is an attack on the fundamental rights of working people. The Bill has passed its first reading—here’s how it’ll threaten your rights at work. A 🧵

“In emails and briefings, the ministers and their staff acknowledged their plans would bypass public scrutiny, extinguish existing claims, and potentially breach people's rights.” This seems like a sentence less synonymous with democracy than, say “breach of rights poorly disguised as savings.” 🤔