Labor

Apple’s main supplier in Asia has been employing students illegally working overtime to assemble the iPhone X, as it struggles to catch up with demand after production delays.  Six high school students said they routinely work 11-hour days assembling the iPhone X at a factory in Zhengzhou, China, which constitutes illegal overtime for student interns under Chinese law.

As AT&T prepares to fight for its merger with Time Warner if necessary, it has the Communications Workers of America solidly in its corner, and against any CNN-prompted spin-off demands by the Justice Department. The union said Nov 14 that is it fully supportive of the deal. “This merger is about maintaining and creating good U.S. jobs and developing new and innovative ways to deliver technology and content,” said CWA President Chris Shelton.

[Commentary] Big Tech is broken.  Suddenly, a wide range of journalists and politicians agree on this. For decades, most of the media and political establishment accepted Silicon Valley’s promise that it would not “be evil,” as the first Google code of corporate conduct put it. But the past few months have brought a constant stream of negative stories about both the internal culture of the tech industry and the effect it is having on society. The Tech Left believes it must urgently transform the industry in order to stop it from serving nefarious ends.

Since this is my first official speech, I want to highlight a few of the issues I hope to focus on during my time on the Federal Communications Commission. I intend for this to be the beginning of a conversation. I welcome all stakeholders to reach out with ideas on where you think the FCC should be heading.

I want to focus my remarks this morning on some of the ways the FCC can incentivize even greater broadband deployment. This is particularly important as we make the transition to 5G—a shift that will require a massive investment in both wired and wireless infrastructure. In fact, if we get the right policies in place, this transition could mean $275 billion in network investment, three million new jobs, and a half a trillion dollars added to the GDP. So how do we get there? How do we ensure that the United States wins the global race to 5G? I want to talk this morning about three of the key pieces—(1) spectrum, (2) infrastructure, and (3) ensuring we have the skilled workforce in place to deploy these next-generation networks—before I talk more broadly about the need for regulatory reform.

The Content Creators Coalition (c3), which advocates on behalf of musicians, is launching an ad campaign against YouTube and its parent company Google, accusing them of exploiting artists. The group unveiled a pair of video ads on Oct 25 that call out YouTube for undermining musicians’ control over their content and cutting into their ad revenue streams.

“Google’s YouTube has shortchanged artists while earning billions of dollars off our music,” said Melvin Gibbs, an accomplished bassist and the president of c3. “Artists know YouTube can do better. So, rather than hiding behind outdated laws, YouTube and Google should work to give artists more control over our music and pay music creators fairly when our songs are played on their platform.” The group wants Congress to update the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which it believes places too much of a burden on content creators to police the internet for copyright infringements while letting internet platforms off the hook.

[Commentary] Some sectors have learned to exploit the explosive possibilities of digital tools, while others by and large have not. I call this the “information gap.” The upshot is that information technologies have not lost their power and can in fact lead to a productivity resurgence. These results reinforce our hypothesis that a more rapid diffusion of information technology into the physical industries, such as healthcare, education, transportation, manufacturing, and energy, could substantially boost innovation and incomes in these sectors.

Cloud computing and 5G wireless networks are thus foundational platforms to increase economic opportunity to more people in more places.

[Bret Swanson is concurrently president of Entropy Economics LLC.]

With nearly half a million computing jobs going unfilled this year, according to Code.org, everyone from Google to the White House is eager to emphasize tech training. It's offered in the name of closing the so-called “skills gap,” and giving a more diverse set of people, beyond Silicon Valley and New York City, a crack at lucrative careers in tech. But Hopeworks’ founders and staff recognized nearly two decades ago that propelling people into the tech workforce from communities like Camden (NJ), notorious for its high rates of poverty and crime, requires a lot more than just teaching them to code.

The American Psychological Association recognizes that poverty and exposure to violence at a young age can be linked to post traumatic stress disorder in young adults. So Hopeworks' leaders believe that to prepare their students for work, teaching them social and emotional coping skills is at least as important as teaching them Javascript.

Nearly two dozen major companies in technology and other industries are planning to launch a coalition to demand legislation that would allow young, illegal immigrants a path to permanent residency.

The Coalition for the American Dream intends to ask Congress to pass bipartisan legislation in 2017 that would allow these immigrants, often referred to as “Dreamers,” to continue working in the United States, the documents said. Alphabet's Google, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Facebook, Intel, Uber, IBM, Marriott International Inc and other top U.S. companies are listed as members.

Few things unite a Republican stalwart like Sen Roy Blunt (R-MO) and a Democratic firebrand like Sen Claire McCaskill (D-MO). But the prospect of a political win prompted the two Sens to put aside their differences this week — and practically plead with Amazon to plop its new headquarters in their shared home state of Missouri. In doing so, the duo joined a growing group of federal lawmakers — from Pennsylvania to Texas — who are actively angling for the e-commerce giant’s second corporate outpost, dubbed HQ2.

The new hub could generate 50,000 new jobs and $5 billion in fresh Amazon investment wherever it ultimately lands, at least in the company’s eyes. For members of Congress, though, this sort of race to capture corporate cash and attention always presents an immense contradiction. Enticing new jobs and dollars sometimes means that lawmakers must woo the very businesses that they’re supposed to be regulating with a far more objective eye. And they face a special challenge when it comes to Amazon, a tech behemoth that has long faced criticism for its hyperaggressive tactics as it conquers new industries, from entertainment to cloud computing to smart-home devices.

Facebook is looking to hire people who have national security clearances, a move the company thinks is necessary to prevent foreign powers from manipulating future elections through its social network, apparently. Workers with such clearance can access information classified by the US government. Facebook plans to use these people -- and their ability to receive government information about potential threats -- to search more proactively for questionable social media campaigns ahead of elections, apparently. Job candidates like this are often former government and intelligence officials or contractors. The status can carry over to private-sector jobs, as long as the position still requires access to sensitive information. Previously granted clearances become inactive when intelligence workers leave government employment, but they can be reactivated on Facebook’s behalf, the person said.