If the myth of tech over the past decade has been one of constant innovation, algorithmic scale, and new products and devices that “simply work,” the truth is that all of those illusions were made possible by the obfuscation of labor: the contract content moderators who sanitize the feeds of Facebook and YouTube from violence and extremist content; the warehouse workers at Amazon fulfillment centers trying to meet the guarantees of same-day shipping; the gig workers of all kinds — Uber drivers, food delivery cyclists, Instacart shoppers, among them — all of whom are at the whims of increasingly efficient platforms and wayward legislation.
And that’s not even to speak of the white-collar tech workforce that, while better compensated, is still being taken advantage of by NDAs and mandatory arbitration clauses that keep hidden the realities of discrimination and harassment in the office. But now, some workers across tech companies are organizing for better treatment and pay. Others are making efforts to unionize. Most importantly, the movement will reach everyone who works in tech — and anyone who uses those platforms. The story of the tech industry over the next decade will be the reckoning brought on by its workforce.
The contract, which will cover more than 70 workers, includes things like guaranteed wage increases, restrictions on mandatory “crunch time,” and “enhanced regulations around the usage of AI and generative AI in the workplace,” the Communications Workers of America (CWA) says in a press release.
[Communications Workers of America]
The previously-rumored cuts follow an accidental calendar invite sent last night. They come after 14,000 corporate jobs were cut in October, attributed partially to advances in AI. This latest round of layoffs is less than 5 percent of Amazon’s 350,000 corporate workforce.
We’ve been working to strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy. While many teams finalized their organizational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now.
A survey of 5,000 white collar workers suggests experiences differ greatly between CEOs and non-management employees. Forty percent of workers say it saves them no time each week to use AI and just two percent say it saves them more than 12 hours. Meanwhile, two percent of executives say they don’t save any time, and 19 percent say it saves them more than 12 hours a week.
[The Wall Street Journal]
The GTA VI studio now claims that firing dozens of employees last week for “gross misconduct” was because they were “found to be distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum.”
The president of the IWGB said to Bloomberg in response that Rockstar is “prioritizing union-busting by targeting the very people who make the game.” It’s planning a protest on Thursday morning.
Sources tell Reuters and Bloomberg that the job cuts could start on Tuesday, potentially impacting almost 10 percent of Amazon’s 350,000 corporate employees across logistics, gaming, payments, and cloud computing teams.
Amazon last held a major round of job cuts at the end of 2022 and into 2023, when it laid off 27,000 workers.
Unionized employees are striking for a codified four-day work week and more money for the lowest paid employees, Kickstarter United announced. Importantly, the union isn’t asking for a boycott of the crowdfunding platform — instead, they’re asking creators to complain about issues they run into, use the union logo in projects, and to send letters of support to management.
As Mark Gurman noted in a tweet, the lawsuit claims the management of an Apple Store in Reston, VA, “failed to accommodate an employee’s Jewish faith and subsequently fired him because of his religion and in retaliation for complaining of religion-based discrimination.”
Engadget and The Register note that Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman has announced layoffs affecting 30 percent of its workforce, after telling employees in May that “...AI is coming for your jobs. Heck, it’s coming for my job too.”
Millions of businesses around the world already depend on Fiverr to stay competitive, but we know there are even larger opportunities that we have yet to tap into - AI applications, enterprise budgets, and long-term projects.
The story and franchise development team at Activision Blizzard will join the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 9510. This is the second union coming out of Blizzard this year after the Overwatch team voted for unionization in May. The department focuses on creating cinematics, animation, and narrative content, as well as being the place that houses franchise historians.
[Communications Workers of America]
Workers at Raven Software have finally secured their first union contract winning for its members guaranteed wage increases, protection against mandatory overtime known as crunch, and more. The win comes three years after quality assurance workers at the Call of Duty support studio organized the Game Workers Alliance in collaboration with the Communications Workers of America.
The GWA would become the first union organized at Activision Blizzard before Microsoft acquired the publisher in 2023. The organization efforts at Raven heralded a string of unionization drives within Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, and beyond.
[cwa-union.org]
SAG-AFTRA members voted to conclude the year-long strike and approve a new media agreement after three years of total bargaining. The new contract establishes AI guardrails to protect performers from having their likeness used without consent, alongside increases to salary requirements, overtime, and other provisions.
Jenna Shumway, a former manager at SpaceX, accuses the company of failing to pay her as much as her male counterparts for similar work, as reported by TechCrunch.
In the lawsuit, Shumway also claims that one of her superiors, Daniel Collins, fostered a hostile work environment by beginning “a campaign of harassment and retaliation,” while also making “concerted efforts to terminate” her employment.
Sources tell Bloomberg that the job cuts could heavily impact workers in sales, while also spanning other areas of the company. My colleague Tom Warren reported earlier this month that there could soon be Xbox-related layoffs as well.
Microsoft is expected to announce the move in July, just two months after it laid off over 6,000 workers across the company.
In a memo seen by The Oregonian, Intel manufacturing Vice President Naga Chandrasekara tells workers that the company could cut between 15 and 20 percent of workers in its Foundry division. “These are difficult actions but essential to meet our affordability challenges and current financial position of the company,” Chandrasekara writes, according to The Oregonian.
This latest round of layoffs could happen next month, and follows last year’s job cuts affecting over 15,000 employees.
[oregonlive.com]
As of 3 PM PT today, SAG-AFTRA will officially suspend the strike against the signatory companies of the interactive media agreement. With this suspension, the nearly year-long voice performer strike against video game companies including Take-Two Interactive, Activision Publishing and more will be tentatively over.
While the details of the agreement are not yet public, the 10-month strike started over disagreements regarding AI protections for voice and motion performers.
[sagaftra.org]
The layoffs on Tuesday impact around 3.5 percent of Paramount’s global workforce, with the company having laid off around 2,000 US employees last year. In an internal memo seen by Deadline, Paramount execs said the cuts were driven by linear TV declines and broader economic concerns as the company focuses its efforts on streaming.
“These changes are necessary to address the environment we are operating in and best position Paramount for success.”
[deadline.com]
The head of the Ikea-owned gig work platform on AI automation, the state of the gig economy, and the future of labor.
A notification on Washington’s statewide Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) layoff and closure database says the exact number is 305. According to a statement from Microsoft to GeekWire, that number is in addition to the 6,000 layoffs it announced last month,
Deadline reports on another round of mass layoffs at Disney, affecting hundreds of people. “...across divisions of Disney Entertainment, including marketing for both film and television as well as television publicity, casting and development,” as well as corporate financing.
This latest round comes just weeks after 200 employees were laid off in the TV and ABC News divisions.
Amazon engineers related their experience creating software to The New York Times:
The engineers said that the company had raised output goals and had become less forgiving about deadlines ... One Amazon engineer said his team was roughly half the size it had been last year, but it was expected to produce roughly the same amount of code by using A.I.
The Times likens the shift to that of Amazon warehouses, where robots “have increased the number of items each worker can pick to hundreds from dozens an hour.”
Unionized workers at Politico allege the company violated its contract by using AI-generated content in a live blog — and are escalating their complaint to arbitration this summer. The union says the AI-generated summaries contained factual errors and language that’s off-limits for writers. The result of arbitration could set an important precedent for an industry that’s seen countless AI disputes in recent years.
Last week, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby partially blamed a “walkout” by air traffic controllers, along with equipment failures and understaffing, for massive delays and the cancellation of 35 daily round-trip flights.
On Monday, the New York Times reports a National Air Traffic Controllers Association statement saying the April 28th incident wasn’t a walkout. After radar and comms dropped out for about 90 seconds, according to Bloomberg, leaving them shaken and concerned about possible accidents. “...controllers took absences under a law that allows federal workers who are physically injured or experience a traumatic event on the job to leave work.”
Update: Added NATCA statement and newer reports.
