Posts tagged Meta
Why Chicago Teachers Union’s $7.3B tax hike will hurt all of Illinois
May 18, 2025 // The Illinois Revenue Alliance, a group which includes the Chicago Teachers Union, has released a proposal to impose nine tax increases and hike statewide taxes by $7.3 billion annually. Some of CTU’s ideas are likely illegal and tax all Illinoisans for the union’s excesses. The Chicago Teachers Union has released a new proposal that calls for nine new tax hikes that would increase statewide taxes by $7.3 billion.
Behind the AI boom, an army of overseas workers in ‘digital sweatshops’
August 31, 2023 // In the Philippines, one of the world’s biggest destinations for outsourced digital work, former employees say that at least 10,000 of these workers do this labor on a platform called Remotasks, which is owned by the $7 billion San Francisco start-up Scale AI. Scale AI has paid workers at extremely low rates, routinely delayed or withheld payments and provided few channels for workers to seek recourse, according to interviews with workers, internal company messages and payment records, and financial statements. Rights groups and labor researchers say Scale AI is among a number of American AI companies that have not abided by basic labor standards for their workers abroad.
Google’s return-to-office crackdown gets backlash from some employees: ‘Check my work, not my badge’
June 15, 2023 // “Managers of non-remote Googlers who have been consistently absent from the office will be cc’ed on emails to these Googlers (subject to local requirements), so they can support Googlers in either ramping back to the office or exploring other flexibility options,” the document says. On Friday, YouTube held its own all-hands meeting with employees about the office policy update. At the event, executives presented the plans virtually, a paradox that didn’t go unnoticed.
Google Axes 12,000 Jobs As Big Tech Layoffs Continue
January 25, 2023 // The Google layoffs follow heavy jobs cuts at Facebook parent company Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce and numerous other firms as higher interest rates and fears of a recession hammer the tech sector. According to an analysis conducted earlier this week by The Standard, tech companies have laid off roughly 90,000 workers in the last year and more than 12,000 workers in San Francisco during this month alone. Those layoffs span major local employers such as Salesforce and a smattering of smaller startups.
Tech Layoffs Threaten Unions’ Plan to Draw White-Collar Workers
January 18, 2023 // Some 500 technology companies have axed nearly 100,000 workers since last October, according to Layoffs.fyi, a public database of tech layoffs. Amazon this month announced it would cut 18,000 jobs, and on the same day, cloud computing company Salesforce and the online video-sharing service Vimeo said they would slash 10% and 11% of their staffs, respectively. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, said in November it would eliminate 11,000 jobs—about 13% of its staff. Those reductions in force don’t bode well for unions that have increasingly funneled resources into tech organizing, which was, until recently, seen as an ever-growing pool of potential members. The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, last year raised membership fees for the first time in two decades, hoping to raise $10 million a year for new organizing. Union leaders this month flocked to Las Vegas for the CES technology conference, set on understanding how the latest innovations in artificial intelligence could disrupt their industries.
Salesforce to cut workforce by 10% after hiring ‘too many people’ during the pandemic
January 5, 2023 // In a letter to employees and a corresponding filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff referenced the “challenging” environment in which it’s operating, pointing to the “more measured approach” its customers are making with their purchasing decisions. Similar to other companies hit by significant layoffs over the past year, Benioff added that Salesforce had hired too many people through the pandemic during the boom times. For context, the company claimed 79,000 employees last February, a 30% increase on 2020.
Ongoing concrete union strike snarls projects, including light rail expansion
January 29, 2022 // An ongoing strike of concrete truckers and drivers is slowing down or stopping major projects in the Seattle region, including the light rail expansion, resulting in hundreds of layoffs. Ongoing concrete union strike snarls projects, including light rail expansion.