#wage discrimination

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Gig apps trap reverse centaurs in Skinner boxes

Enshittification is the process by which digital platforms devour themselves: first they dangle goodies in front of end users. Once users are locked in, the goodies are taken away and dangled before business customers who supply goods to the users. Once those business customers are stuck on the platform, the goodies are clawed away and showered on the platform’s shareholders:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Enshittification isn’t just another way of saying “fraud” or “price gouging” or “wage theft.” Enshittification is intrinsically digital, because moving all those goodies around requires the flexibility that only comes with a digital businesses. Jeff Bezos, grocer, can’t rapidly change the price of eggs at Whole Foods without an army of kids with pricing guns on roller-skates. Jeff Bezos, grocer, can change the price of eggs on Amazon Fresh just by twiddling a knob on the service’s back-end.

Twiddling is the key to enshittification: rapidly adjusting prices, conditions and offers. As with any shell game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. Tech monopolists aren’t smarter than the Gilded Age sociopaths who monopolized rail or coal — they use the same tricks as those monsters of history, but they do them faster and with computers:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

If Rockefeller wanted to crush a freight company, he couldn’t just click a mouse and lay down a pipeline that ran on the same route, and then click another mouse to make it go away when he was done. When Bezos wants to bankrupt Diapers.com — a company that refused to sell itself to Amazon — he just moved a slider so that diapers on Amazon were being sold below cost. Amazon lost $100m over three months, diapers.com went bankrupt, and every investor learned that competing with Amazon was a losing bet:

https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-bezos-went-thermonuclear-on-diapers-com.html

That’s the power of twiddling — but twiddling cuts both ways. The same flexibility that digital businesses enjoy is hypothetically available to workers and users. The airlines pioneered twiddling ticket prices, and that naturally gave rise to countertwiddling, in the form of comparison shopping sites that scraped the airlines’ sites to predict when tickets would be cheapest:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/knob-jockeys/#bros-be-twiddlin

The airlines — like all abusive businesses — refused to tolerate this. They were allowed to touch their knobs as much as they wanted — indeed, they couldn’t stop touching those knobs — but when we tried to twiddle back, that was “felony contempt of business model,” and the airlines sued:

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/12/30/airline-sues-man-for-founding-a-cheap-flights-website.html

And sued:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/business/southwest-airlines-lawsuit-prices.html

Platforms don’t just hate it when end-users twiddle back — if anything they are even more aggressive when their business-users dare to twiddle. Take Para, an app that Doordash drivers used to get a peek at the wages offered for jobs before they accepted them — something that Doordash hid from its workers. Doordash ruthlessly attacked Para, saying that by letting drivers know how much they’d earn before they did the work, Para was violating the law:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/tech-rights-are-workers-rights-doordash-edition

Which law? Well, take your pick. The modern meaning of “IP” is “any law that lets me use the law to control my competitors, competition or customers.” Platforms use a mix of anticircumvention law, patent, copyright, contract, cybersecurity and other legal systems to weave together a thicket of rules that allow them to shut down rivals for their Felony Contempt of Business Model:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Enshittification relies on unlimited twiddling (by platforms), and a general prohibition on countertwiddling (by platform users). Enshittification is a form of fishing, in which bait is dangled before different groups of users and then nimbly withdrawn when they lunge for it. Twiddling puts the suppleness into the enshittifier’s fishing-rod, and a ban on countertwiddling weighs down platform users so they’re always a bit too slow to catch the bait.

Nowhere do we see twiddling’s impact more than in the “gig economy,” where workers are misclassified as independent contractors and put to work for an app that scripts their every move to the finest degree. When an app is your boss, you work for an employer who docks your pay for violating rules that you aren’t allowed to know — and where your attempts to learn those rules are constantly frustrated by the endless back-end twiddling that changes the rules faster than you can learn them.

As with every question of technology, the issue isn’t twiddling per se — it’s who does the twiddling and who gets twiddled. A worker armed with digital tools can play gig work employers off each other and force them to bid up the price of their labor; they can form co-ops with other workers that auto-refuse jobs that don’t pay enough, and use digital tools to organize to shift power from bosses to workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to

Take “reverse centaurs.” In AI research, a “centaur” is a human assisted by a machine that does more than either could do on their own. For example, a chess master and a chess program can play a better game together than either could play separately. A reverse centaur is a machine assisted by a human, where the machine is in charge and the human is a meat-puppet.

Think of Amazon warehouse workers wearing haptic location-aware wristbands that buzz at them continuously dictating where their hands must be; or Amazon drivers whose eye-movements are continuously tracked in order to penalize drivers who look in the “wrong” direction:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/17/reverse-centaur/#reverse-centaur

The difference between a centaur and a reverse centaur is the difference between a machine that makes your life better and a machine that makes your life worse so that your boss gets richer. Reverse centaurism is the 21st Century’s answer to Taylorism, the pseudoscience that saw white-coated “experts” subject workers to humiliating choreography down to the smallest movement of your fingertip:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

While reverse centaurism was born in warehouses and other company-owned facilities, gig work let it make the leap into workers’ homes and cars. The 21st century has seen a return to the cottage industry — a form of production that once saw workers labor far from their bosses and thus beyond their control — but shriven of the autonomy and dignity that working from home once afforded:

https://doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk-463e2730ef0d

The rise and rise of bossware — which allows for remote surveillance of workers in their homes and cars — has turned “work from home” into “live at work.” Reverse centaurs can now be chickenized — a term from labor economics that describes how poultry farmers, who sell their birds to one of three vast poultry processors who have divided up the country like the Pope dividing up the “New World,” are uniquely exploited:

https://onezero.medium.com/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs-b2e8d5cda826

A chickenized reverse centaur has it rough: they must pay for the machines they use to make money for their bosses, they must obey the orders of the app that controls their work, and they are denied any of the protections that a traditional worker might enjoy, even as they are prohibited from deploying digital self-help measures that let them twiddle back to bargain for a better wage.

All of this sets the stage for a phenomenon called algorithmic wage discrimination, in which two workers doing the same job under the same conditions will see radically different payouts for that work. These payouts are continuously tweaked in the background by an algorithm that tries to predict the minimum sum a worker will accept to remain available without payment, to ensure sufficient workers to pick up jobs as they arise.

This phenomenon — and proposed policy and labor solutions to it — is expertly analyzed in “On Algorithmic Wage Discrimination,” a superb paper by UC Law San Franciscos Veena Dubal:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4331080

Dubal uses empirical data and enthnographic accounts from Uber drivers and other gig workers to explain how endless, self-directed twiddling allows gig companies pay workers less and pay themselves more. As @[email protected] explains in his LA Times article on Dubal’s research, the goal of the payment algorithm is to guess how often a given driver needs to receive fair compensation in order to keep them driving when the payments are unfair:

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-04-11/algorithmic-wage-discrimination

The algorithm combines nonconsensual dossiers compiled on individual drivers with population-scale data to seek an equilibrium between keeping drivers waiting, unpaid, for a job; and how much a driver needs to be paid for an individual job, in order to keep that driver from clocking out and doing something else. @ Here’s how that works. Sergio Avedian, a writer for The Rideshare Guy, ran an experiment with two brothers who both drove for Uber; one drove a Tesla and drove intermittently, the other brother rented a hybrid sedan and drove frequently. Sitting side-by-side with the brothers, Avedian showed how the brother with the Tesla was offered more for every trip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UADTiL3S67I

Uber wants to lure intermittent drivers into becoming frequent drivers. Uber doesn’t pay for an oversupply of drivers, because it only pays drivers when they have a passenger in the car. Having drivers on call — but idle — is a way for Uber to shift the cost of maintaining a capacity cushion to its workers.

What’s more, what Uber charges customers is not based on how much it pays its workers. As Uber’s head of product explained: Uber uses “machine-learning techniques to estimate how much groups of customers are willing to shell out for a ride. Uber calculates riders’ propensity for paying a higher price for a particular route at a certain time of day. For instance, someone traveling from a wealthy neighborhood to another tony spot might be asked to pay more than another person heading to a poorer part of town, even if demand, traffic and distance are the same.”

https://qz.com/990131/uber-is-practicing-price-discrimination-economists-say-that-might-not-be-a-bad-thing/

Uber has historically described its business a pure supply-and-demand matching system, where a rush of demand for rides triggers surge pricing, which lures out drivers, which takes care of the demand. That’s not how it works today, and it’s unclear if it ever worked that way. Today, a driver who consults the rider version of the Uber app before accepting a job — to compare how much the rider is paying to how much they stand to earn — is booted off the app and denied further journeys.

Surging, instead, has become just another way to twiddle drivers. One of Dubal’s subjects, Derrick, describes how Uber uses fake surges to lure drivers to airports: “You go to the airport, once the lot get kind of full, then the surge go away.” Other drivers describe how they use groupchats to call out fake surges: “I’m in the Marina. It’s dead. Fake surge.”

That’s pure twiddling. Twiddling turns gamification into gamblification, where your labor buys you a spin on a roulette wheel in a rigged casino. As a driver called Melissa, who had doubled down on her availability to earn a $100 bonus awarded for clocking a certain number of rides, told Dubal, “When you get close to the bonus, the rides start trickling in more slowly…. And it makes sense. It’s really the type of shit that they can do when it’s okay to have a surplus labor force that is just sitting there that they don’t have to pay for.”

Wherever you find reverse-centaurs, you get this kind of gamblification, where the rules are twiddled continuously to make sure that the house always wins. As a contract driver Amazon reverse centaur told Lauren Gurley for Motherboard, “Amazon uses these cameras allegedly to make sure they have a safer driving workforce, but they’re actually using them not to pay delivery companies”:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88npjv/amazons-ai-cameras-are-punishing-drivers-for-mistakes-they-didnt-make

Algorithmic wage discrimination is the robot overlord of our nightmares: its job is to relentlessly quest for vulnerabilities and exploit them. Drivers divide themselves into “ants” (drivers who take every job) and “pickers” (drivers who cherry-pick high-paying jobs). The algorithm’s job is ensuring that pickers get the plum assignments, not the ants, in the hopes of converting those pickers to app-dependent ants.

In my work on enshittification, I call this the “giant teddy bear” gambit. At every county fair, you’ll always spot some poor jerk carrying around a giant teddy-bear they “won” on the midway. But they didn’t win it — not by getting three balls in the peach-basket. Rather, the carny running the rigged game either chose not to operate the “scissor” that kicks balls out of the basket. Or, if the game is “honest” (that is, merely impossible to win, rather than gimmicked), the operator will make a too-good-to-refuse offer: “Get one ball in and I’ll give you this keychain. Win two keychains and I’ll let you trade them for this giant teddy bear.”

Carnies aren’t in the business of giving away giant teddy bears — rather, the gambit is an investment. Giving a mark a giant teddy bear to carry around the midway all day acts as a convincer, luring other marks to try to land three balls in the basket and win their own teddy bear.

In the same way, platforms like Uber distribute giant teddy bears to pickers, as a way of keeping the ants scurrying from job to job, and as a way of convincing the pickers to give up whatever work allows them to discriminate among Uber’s offers and hold out for the plum deals, whereupon then can be transmogrified into ants themselves.

Dubal describes the experience of Adil, a Syrian refugee who drives for Uber in the Bay Area. His colleagues are pickers, and showed him screenshots of how much they earned. Determined to get a share of that money, Adil became a model ant, driving two hours to San Francisco, driving three days straight, napping in his car, spending only one day per week with his family. The algorithm noticed that Adil needed the work, so it paid him less.

Adil responded the way the system predicted he would, by driving even more: “My friends they make it, so I keep going, maybe I can figure it out. It’s unsecure, and I don’t know how people they do it. I don’t know how I am doing it, but I have to. I mean, I don’t find another option. In a minute, if I find something else, oh man, I will be out immediately. I am a very patient person, that’s why I can continue.”

Another driver, Diego, told Dubal about how the winners of the giant teddy bears fell into the trap of thinking that they were “good at the app”: “Any time there’s some big shot getting high pay outs, they always shame everyone else and say you don’t know how to use the app. I think there’s secret PR campaigns going on that gives targeted payouts to select workers, and they just think it’s all them.”

That’s the power of twiddling: by hoarding all the flexibility offered by digital tools, the management at platforms can become centaurs, able to string along thousands of workers, while the workers are reverse-centaurs, puppeteered by the apps.

As the example of Adil shows, the algorithm doesn’t need to be very sophisticated in order to figure out which workers it can underpay. The system automates the kind of racial and gender discrimination that is formally illegal, but which is masked by the smokescreen of digitization. An employer who systematically paid women less than men, or Black people less than white people, would be liable to criminal and civil sanctions. But if an algorithm simply notices that people who have fewer job prospects drive more and will thus accept lower wages, that’s just “optimization,” not racism or sexism.

This is the key to understanding the AI hype bubble: when ghouls from multinational banks predict 13 trillion dollar markets for “AI,” what they mean is that digital tools will speed up the twiddling and other wage-suppression techniques to transfer $13T in value from workers and consumers to shareholders.

The American business lobby is relentlessly focused on the goal of reducing wages. That’s the force behind “free trade,” “right to work,” and other codewords for “paying workers less,” including “gig work.” Tech workers long saw themselves as above this fray, immune to labor exploitation because they worked for a noble profession that took care of its own.

But the epidemic of mass tech-worker layoffs, following on the heels of massive stock buybacks, has demonstrated that tech bosses are just like any other boss: willing to pay as little as they can get away with, and no more. Tech bosses are so comfortable with their market dominance and the lock-in of their customers that they are happy to turn out hundreds of thousands of skilled workers, convinced that the twiddling systems they’ve built are the kinds of self-licking ice-cream cones that are so simple even a manager can use them — no morlocks required.

The tech worker layoffs are best understood as an all-out war on tech worker morale, because that morale is the source of tech workers’ confidence and thus their demands for a larger share of the value generated by their labor. The current tech layoff template is very different from previous tech layoffs: today’s layoffs are taking place over a period of months, long after they are announced, and laid off tech worker is likely to be offered a months of paid post-layoff work, rather than severance. This means that tech workplaces are now haunted by the walking dead, workers who have been laid off but need to come into the office for months, even as the threat of layoffs looms over the heads of the workers who remain. As an old friend, recently laid off from Microsoft after decades of service, wrote to me, this is “a new arrow in the quiver of bringing tech workers to heel and ensuring that we’re properly thankful for the jobs we have (had?).”

Dubal is interested in more than analysis, she’s interested in action. She looks at the tactics already deployed by gig workers, who have not taken all this abuse lying down. Workers in the UK and EU organized through Worker Info Exchange and the App Drivers and Couriers Union have used the GDPR (the EU’s privacy law) to demand “algorithmic transparency,” as well as access to their data. In California, drivers hope to use similar provisions in the CCPA (a state privacy law) to do the same.

These efforts have borne fruit. When Cornell economists, led by Louis Hyman, published research (paid for by Uber) claiming that Uber drivers earned an average of $23/hour, it was data from these efforts that revealed the true average Uber driver’s wage was $9.74. Subsequent research in California found that Uber drivers’ wage fell to $6.22/hour after the passage of Prop 22, a worker misclassification law that gig companies spent $225m to pass, only to have the law struck down because of a careless drafting error:

https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2021-08-23/proposition-22-lyft-uber-decision-essential-california

But Dubal is skeptical that data-coops and transparency will achieve transformative change and build real worker power. Knowing how the algorithm works is useful, but it doesn’t mean you can do anything about it, not least because the platform owners can keep touching their knobs, twiddling the payout schedule on their rigged slot-machines.

Data co-ops start from the proposition that “data extraction is an inevitable form of labor for which workers should be remunerated.” It makes on-the-job surveillance acceptable, provided that workers are compensated for the spying. But co-ops aren’t unions, and they don’t have the power to bargain for a fair price for that data, and coops themselves lack the vast resources — “to store, clean, and understand” — data.

Co-ops are also badly situated to understand the true value of the data that is extracted from their members: “Workers cannot know whether the data collected will, at the population level, violate the civil rights of others or amplifies their own social oppression.”

Instead, Dubal wants an outright, nonwaivable prohibition on algorithmic wage discrimination. Just make it illegal. If firms cannot use gambling mechanisms to control worker behavior through variable pay systems, they will have to find ways to maintain flexible workforces while paying their workforce predictable wages under an employment model. If a firm cannot manage wages through digitally-determined variable pay systems, then the firm is less likely to employ algorithmic management.”

In other words, rather than using market mechanisms too constrain platform twiddling, Dubal just wants to make certain kinds of twiddling illegal. This is a growing trend in legal scholarship. For example, the economist Ramsi Woodcock has proposed a ban on surge pricing as a per se violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act:

https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-105-issue-4/the-efficient-queue-and-the-case-against-dynamic-pricing

Similarly, Dubal proposes that algorithmic wage discrimination violates another antitrust law: the Robinson-Patman Act, which “bans sellers from charging competing buyers different prices for the same commodity. Robinson-Patman enforcement was effectively halted under Reagan, kicking off a host of pathologies, like the rise of Walmart:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

I really liked Dubal’s legal reasoning and argument, and to it I would add a call to reinvigorate countertwiddling: reforming laws that get in the way of workers who want to reverse-engineer, spoof, and control the apps that currently control them. Adversarial interoperability (AKA competitive compatibility or comcom) is key tool for building worker power in an era of digital Taylorism:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

To see how that works, look to other jursidictions where workers have leapfrogged their European and American cousins, such as Indonesia, where gig workers and toolsmiths collaborate to make a whole suite of “tuyul apps,” which let them override the apps that gig companies expect them to use.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

For example, ride-hailing companies won’t assign a train-station pickup to a driver unless they’re circling the station — which is incredibly dangerous during the congested moments after a train arrives. A tuyul app lets a driver park nearby and then spoof their phone’s GPS fix to the ridehailing company so that they appear to be right out front of the station.

In an ideal world, those workers would have a union, and be able to dictate the app’s functionality to their bosses. But workers shouldn’t have to wait for an ideal world: they don’t just need jam tomorrow — they need jam today. Tuyul apps, and apps like Para, which allow workers to extract more money under better working conditions, are a prelude to unionization and employer regulation, not a substitute for it.

Employers will not give workers one iota more power than they have to. Just look at the asymmetry between the regulation of union employees versus union busters. Under US law, employees of a union need to account for every single hour they work, every mile they drive, every location they visit, in public filings. Meanwhile, the union-busting industry — far larger and richer than unions — operate under a cloak of total secrecy, Workers aren’t even told which union busters their employers have hired — let alone get an accounting of how those union busters spend money, or how many of them are working undercover, pretending to be workers in order to sabotage the union.

Twiddling will only get an employer so far. Twiddling — like all “AI” — is based on analyzing the past to predict the future. The heuristics an algorithm creates to lure workers into their cars can’t account for rapid changes in the wider world, which is why companies who relied on “AI” scheduling apps (for example, to prevent their employees from logging enough hours to be entitled to benefits) were caught flatfooted by the Great Resignation.

Workers suddenly found themselves with bargaining power thanks to the departure of millions of workers — a mix of early retirees and workers who were killed or permanently disabled by covid — and they used that shortage to demand a larger share of the fruits of their labor. The outraged howls of the capital class at this development were telling: these companies are operated by the kinds of “capitalists” that MLK once identified, who want “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor.”

https://twitter.com/KaseyKlimes/status/821836823022354432/

There's only 5 days left in the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon's Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they're DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

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#pluralistic #great resignation #twiddler #countertwiddling #wage discrimination #algorithmic #scholarship #doordash #para #Veena Dubal #labor #brian merchant #app boss #reverse centaurs #skinner boxes #enshittification #ants vs pickers #tuyul #steampunk #cottage industry #ccpa #gdpr #App Drivers and Couriers Union #shitty technology adoption curve #moral economy #gamblification #casinoization #taylorization #taylorism #giant teddy bears

[thisisthinprivilege]

Thin privilege is better pay, particularly if you're a woman.

Thin women are paid more than fat women -- tens of thousands more by some estimates. This means thin women are valued as if they had more years of education and experience than fat women. To be at parity wages with thin women, fat women need to be much more educated (almost two years more education than thin women) and experienced (about three years more experience than thin women).

Researchers trying to determine why, have discovered that fat women are more likely to work in physical jobs and less likely to work in public-facing jobs than thin women. Public-facing jobs are generally better paid. Discrimination against fat women in public-facing jobs, like upper management and performance and waitressing and modeling and sales, could be the reason fat women on average make so much less than thinner women.

The most pay on average nets to relatively thinner women--about a 22 on the outmoded BMI scale.

Finally, take a gander at this absolutely devastating graph that shows a significant negative relationship between BMI/body fat and income for women from the St Louis Fed (2011):

This is thin privilege---massive, obvious, thin privilege.

-ATL

#thin privilege #intersectionality #feminism #sexism #fat discrimination #fatphobia #fat hatred #employment #wage gap

[allthecanadianpolitics]

"Statistics Canada reported Wednesday that visible minorities are generally more likely than their white counterparts to earn a university degree but less likely to find a job that pays as well.

The findings based on data from the 2021 and 2016 censuses show that two years after graduating, visible minorities reported lower employment earnings and lower rates of unionization and pension plan coverage. However, the findings varied considerably by racialized group and gender.

“I think one of the main takeaways here is that a lot of these income gaps that we see and the differences in the job quality that these graduates have cannot be explained by the observed characteristics that we have,” Statistics Canada analyst Liliana Corak said during an interview on Wednesday.

Corak explained that “observed characteristics” refer to such things as the graduates’ age, place of residence, industry of employment and whether they work full or part time.

“But they (could be explained) by some unobservable characteristics, such as motivation and, of course, discrimination within the job market,” she said.

Employment income two years after graduation averaged $45,700 annually among racialized women with university degrees compared with $47,800 for non-racialized and non-Indigenous women; racialized male graduates earned $51,600 compared with $54,100 for non-racialized and non-Indigenous men."

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #canadian politics #canadian news #canada #canadian #employment #workers rights #racism #discrimination #wages

[harvest-is-tired]

Guess what the pizza plex people said they want us to use our powers to have unicorns or mythical creatures at themed parties and we now have special party rooms that an fit dragons

Well fazbear can go fuck themselves, I'm not doing that.

#never be rude to minimum wage workers #you don't have to either #if they try to make us we can sue for discrimination

[ivygorgon]

AN OPEN LETTER to THE U.S. SENATE

Women deserve equal pay! Pass S. 728, the Paycheck Fairness Act now!

393 so far! Help us get to 500 signers!

Women—especially women of color—are the backbone of our nation’s economy. But they are consistently underpaid and their work is undervalued. Action on equal pay is sorely needed to address these inequities, but Republican Senators have blocked vital legislation, S. 728, the Paycheck Fairness Act, that would achieve critical progress. The median annual earnings for women working full time, year-round in 2022 was $52,360, or just 84 cents for each dollar earned by men, with much wider gaps for most women of color compared with white, non-Hispanic men. All women—regardless of the number of hours worked during the year—typically made $41,320, or 78 cents for each dollar earned by all men. Discrimination is one of the factors contributing to this gap, leading to thousands of dollars in lost wages for women over the course of their careers. That’s why we need the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Paycheck Fairness Act would strengthen existing equal pay protections, prohibit retaliation against workers who discuss their pay or challenge pay discrimination, limit employers’ reliance on salary history, and much more. These robust measures would bring us one step closer to equal pay. Women and families cannot afford to wait for equal pay. We need to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act now.

▶ Created on April 3 by Jess Craven · 393 signers in the past 7 days

📱 Text SIGN PWBBDA to 50409

🤯 Liked it? Text FOLLOW JESSCRAVEN101 to 50409

#activate your activism #AN OPEN LETTER to THE U.S. SENATE #Women deserve equal pay! Pass S. 728 the Paycheck Fairness Act now! #393 so far! Help us get to 500 signers! #Women #women of color #WOC #S. 728 #the Paycheck Fairness Act #84 cents to 1 dollar #wage gap #intersectional feminism 101 #▶ Created on April 3 by Jess Craven #393 signers in the past 7 days #📱 Text SIGN PKEOQT to 50409 #🤯 Liked it? Text FOLLOW JESSCRAVEN101 to 50409 #JESSCRAVEN101 #PWBBDA #resistbot #equal pay #paycheck fairness act #women's rights #gender equality #women in the workforce #pay equity #economic justice #discrimination #salary history #workplace fairness #workplace equality

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Payman Taei

Published: Jan 22, 2019

Every year, the Department of Labor issues a report on the pay gap between women and men.

Women earn a median of $30,000[1] per year, while men earn $40,000 per year. In other words, working women earn 75% of what men earn.

But this gap doesn’t take into account the fact that on average, men work more hours than women. According to U.S. census data, men spend an average of 41.0 hours per week at their jobs, while women work an average of 36.3 hours per week.

Many argue that gender discrimination explains a large part of the difference in earnings. Others argue that parenthood and gender roles usually affect women’s earnings more than men.

To better understand the pay gap, we classified the respondents according to their marital and parenthood status2. The gap is dramatically higher between married couples versus singles without children. For married parents, the gap is even greater.

But we also found that married fathers work even more than other men, while married mothers work less than married women without kids.

We analyzed the pay gap across hundreds of U.S. occupations. According to our research, in most occupations, the main source of the pay gap lies in the difference between the number of hours spent at work by women and men, and marital status and parenthood explain almost all this difference in working times.

The different behavior of women and men3 has an impact on the gender wage gap. As we will see below, the decision of who does most of the work outside versus who stays at home influences the pay gap in two ways: it modifies the nominal income, but it also influences how much women and men earn per each hour worked4.

A few specific examples

Let’s take a look at the most common occupation in the US: Managers. This occupation is representative of the overall trend we see in the United States.

Single male managers without kids earn a median of $60,000 per year, while single female managers without kids earn $58,000 per year. On average, single male managers work 43.7 hours per week, while single female managers work 42.3 hours per week.

This means that men earn 3.4% more but work 3.5% more hours per week.

But when we look at the pay gap between married couples, we see a different picture. Both female and male married managers do have a higher salary. But men earn much more than women.

Male married managers without kids earn a median of $90,000, while female married managers without kids earn a median of $62,000. A pay gap of 31%. In other words, women earn $0.69 for each dollar earned by their male counterparts.

A large part of this gap is explained by the number of hours spent at work. Men tend to work more after they marry. The average weekly working hours of males increase 4.3%, while women keep working the same quantity of hours per week. This explains a part of the gap increase.

But the time spent at work does not explain all of the gender pay gap. Married men managers without kids also earn more for each hour at work: they earn $38.40 per hour while married women without kids earn only $28.70. That means that for each hour spent at their jobs, male married managers without kids earn about 34% more than women. As we will see in detail below, the different hourly rate is related to job market trends.

We can see the same pattern across occupations like school teachers, secretaries, nurses, customer service representatives, and a lot of other professions: a small pay gap for singles without kids and a larger pay gap for married people.

Exceptions to the overall trend

We have seen that, for the most common occupations, there is almost no absolute pay gap for singles without kids, and this gap could be explained by the difference in time spent at work. But there are some occupations that do show a gap for this group of people.

Notable examples are drivers, retail salespersons, supervisors and janitors. Interestingly, we can see the same general pattern in these occupations: the uncontrolled gap increases dramatically for married couples, even if they do not have kids.

The same general pattern repeats itself in occupations where single women without kids earn more than their male counterparts. Some of them are secretaries, customer service representatives, cooks, stock clerks, office clerks and receptionists.

In all of these occupations, the pay gap in favor of women reverts if they marry: married men still earn more than married women.

More time at work also means higher wages

Now, let’s look closely at the different hourly wages paid to women and men. The data shows that there is a persistent difference in the hourly rate earned by women and men, specially for married women and men. But the data also shows that men work more than women.

After taking a closer look at the data, we found a relationship between the hourly wage and the time spent at work. The average hourly pay increases as the number of hours worked per week increases. This is true for both sexes.

In the following chart, we plotted the hourly pay for women and men. To isolate the effect of marriage and parenthood, we took into account only singles without kids.

In the next chart, we can see the average number of hours worked for each group:

For the relevant range of hours worked per week, the average hourly pay increases as the time spent at work increases.

Because men tend to work more hours than women, especially if they are married, and even more if they are married parents, this could explain a large portion of the pay gap.

Also, the previous chart shows that on average, single women without kids are getting paid more than men for every hour spent at work. This could mean that if women worked the same amount of hours as men do, and other conditions remained the same, there would be no pay gap for this group 5.

What about age and experience?

It is important to note that age and job experience are also relevant factors in the gender gap debate. To isolate the possible effects that age and job experience may have in the pay gap for each of the different groups, we plotted the weighted average of working hours per age for single women and men without kids.

For singles without kids, there is a very small gap at every age. But for married couples, there is a significant gap in working hours at every age.

If we take into account how the hourly wage varies as men and women get older, the hourly wage of men increases more than the hourly wage of women. The same pattern can be seen in all three groups.

The charts above demonstrate that job experience is correlated with the time spent at work through the years. As years pass, men accumulate more practice and training than women. The job market pays more if the worker has more experience. In other words, the gap widens as men acquire more experience than women.

So what’s the real cause of the gender wage gap?

In this article, we found that one of the main sources of the gender pay gap is the fact that, on average, women and men devote a different number of hours to their jobs, specially after marriage and parenthood.

The literature on gender pay gap is very extensive. Different papers focus on diverse causes to explain it. Two of the most mentioned reasons are gender discrimination and motherhood and gender roles.

Gender discrimination against women occurs if a woman is paid less than a man for doing the same job.

If we consider that the quantity of hours devoted to a job determines whether we consider a job to be the same as another, the data doesn’t support the idea of gender discrimination at the aggregate level.

The hourly pay rate for married women is lower than for married men on average, but a probable explanation is because the job market pays less per hour if the number of hours worked decreases, and married women tend to work less. The same pattern can be seen in almost every occupation.

Also, men tend to devote more time to work, thus acquire more experience as years pass by, and the job market pays more if the worker has more experience.

This doesn’t mean that gender discrimination doesn’t exist. Our analysis just shows that, at the aggregate level, most of the gap is not explained by gender discrimination.

Regarding the second aspect of the pay gap, societal ideas of gender roles influence the behavior of women and men. Also, biological factors related to parenthood do play a role in the creation of differences in preferences. Namely, women get pregnant and women breastfeed. These differences between sexes could be a plausible explanation of why women tend to spend more time at home versus their couples, especially after marriage and parenthood6.

To conclude and to recap, we can say that, according to our analysis, job market forces and gender preferences in relation to marital status and parenthood could explain almost all of the pay gap. Most of the gap is not the result of gender discrimination.

Notes and Methodology

[ See here. ]

==

The "gender pay gay," like the resurrection of Jesus, is a tenet of faith, not a demonstrable reality. It's touted by Gender Studies majors and ideologues, not anyone with basic economics background (which is why they don't encourage or require numeracy in Gender Studies).

It's also disturbing how little respect the myth's proponents have for women's (and men's) choices and needs, valuing only money not lifestyle or fulfillment. Ironically, these people are usually staunch anti-capitalists, denouncing "shallow materialism" from one side of their mouth and demanding more money and free stuff from the other side.

#Payman Taei #myth of the wage gap #wage gap myth #wage gap #gender wage gap #feminist lies #gender discrimination #pay gap #gender pay gap #myth of the pay gap #pay gap myth #religion is a mental illness

[siriwesen]

TLDR: This is just a collection of my thoughts on the Bayern verbietet Gendern-Stuff. Do not approach this from a POV of an only English speaking person. German is a very gendered language and we have discourseTM. Language mixed for chaos and suffering of all who choose to read. Y'know, the issue with the Gendersternchen/ Semicolon etc. not being screenreader friendly, shouldn't mean, we abandon the notion of gendering in german. It should mean "We incentivise developers to include the Gendersternchen, Semikolon and other German gender Variants into their programming".

In written context, I definitely understand the accessibility option. Ich mein, als jemand der in einem pädagogischen author-bezogenen Bereich der Erwachsenenbildung gearbeitet hat und immer noch gelegentlich arbeitet, ist die Zielgruppe oft das A und O wenn Texte geschrieben werden. Gendern KANN Sätze umständlich und kompliziert gestalten. Lustigerweise ist "Lehrer:innen" oder "Lehrer*innen" jedoch schneller visuell zu fassen als z. B. das binäre Gendern. Beispieltext: "Lehrerinnen und Lehrer müssen sich der neuen Verordnung anpassen. Wenn die Lehrerinnen und Lehrer sich nicht anpassen, gibt es Diziplinarmaßnahmen von den zuständigen Kolleginnen und Kollegen. Viele Schülerinnen und Schüler verwenden womöglich bereits eine gegenderte Sprache. Wenn Jungen und Mädchen..." vs. "Lehrer:innen müssen sich der neuen Verordnung anpassen. Wenn die Lehrer:innen sich nicht anpassen, gibt es Disziplinarmaßnahmen von den zuständigen Kolleg:innen. Viele Schüler:innen verwenden womöglich bereits eine Gegenderte Sprache. Wenn Kinder..." Das ist jetzt nur ein Beispieltext den ich improvisiert verfasst habe, der natürlich nicht sehr sinnhaft ist oder perfekt ausformuliert. Aber in bestimmten E-Learning und Schreibkontexten muss man immer wieder die gleiche oder ähnliche Personengruppen erwähnen. Irgendwann ist man dann komplett genervt, weil man in einem Absatz drei mal "Beamtinnen und Beamten" oder "Verwaltungsmitarbeiterinnen und -Mitarbeiter" etc stehen hat. Vor allem wenn man als Author unter Zeitdruck steht und schlechte oder unzureichende Quellen zusammenfassen muss. Da gibt es dann viele Wiederholungen in bestimmten Begriffen und Phrasen, was auch eher eine Budget-/Zeitsache ist die da mit reinspielt. Wenn man gezwungen ist binär zu gendern im Text ist das anstrengend und ein Gender-Symbol ist tatsächlich weniger umständlich in diesen Kontexten. Alle Geschlechter sind mit eingebunden und der Text ist kürzer und griffiger. Das binäre gendern macht zwar Männer und Frauen sichtbar, aber es exkludiert auch ganz klar Intersex- und Transidentitäten. Ich selber gendere sehr häufig nicht, was eher aus Gewohnheit passiert. Ich verwende für mich selbst das generische Maskulinum, aber ich habe auch schon Personen getroffen, denen die weibliche Endung wichtig ist, oder denen das Gendersternchen wichtig ist. Von allen Arten gendergerecht zu schreiben ist das binäre Gendern von Personengruppen am längsten und zieht Texte am ehesten in die Länge.

Wir sind die Nation die zig Rechtschreibreformen innerhalb weniger Jahre durchgezogen hat. Ich habe zwei verschiedene Rechtschreibreformen mitgelernt in meiner Schulzeit. Wir haben Schulbücher innerhalb eines Jahres von DM auf Euro umgewandelt. Wir haben nach Jahren endlich offiziell ein großes scharfes ß in der Typographie eingeführt. Obwohl KEIN mir bekanntes deutsches Wort mit ß anfängt. Warum ist es so schwer zu sagen, wir führen ein Zeichen als Gendermarker ein, als Bestandteil unserer modernen Sprache, welches dann auch von Softwaredevelopern von z. B. Screenreadern wahrgenommen und umgesetzt werden muss? Zusätzlich, wenn man amtliche Dokumente in "leichter Sprache" beantragt, dann ist die Sprache und der Satzbau eh KOMPLETT anders, als man es von den üblichen Behördenschreiben gewohnt ist. Im Kontext mit leichter Sprache muss man vielleicht schauen, ob es einfacher ist "Menschen" oder "Personen" zu sagen anstelle von "Bürgerinnen und Bürger", "Einwohnerinnen und Einwohner" oder "Bürger:innen". Da kenne ich mich zu wenig aus, welche Worte da angebracht sind, ich weiß nur, dass lange Worte und Fremdworte vermieden werden müssen. Und dass Sätze kurz gehalten sein sollten. Aber es geht hier ja vorrangig nicht um leichte Sprache, sondern um das Beamtendeutsch. Und Beamtendeutsch war leider noch nie leicht. Behörden sind zwar angehalten Kommunikation so einfach wie möglich zu halten, aber dann ist die Verwendung Geschlechtergerechter Sprache (z.B. Personengruppen, Person, Studierende...) sinnvoller als überall "Studentinnen und Studenten" zu schreiben... like.

#if the regierung cared about the disability rights they would pay people with disabilities at least minimum wage in behindertenwerkstätten #i mean yeah a lot of the sozialversicherung and travel costs are covered by the amt for disabled people who work there #but 126 euros for a month of work is a fucking joke and exploitative #people with severe disabilities deserve to be able to build up a retirement fund and savings and live comfortably #like its good that system exists but its flawed and i feel like tehy should earn more #anyways back to main subject #why are we using disability and accessibility rights as a scapegoat for discrimination in 2024 #german stuff #im tired of this bs #also i wish alicia joe had never made her stupid gender video #her takes on trans stuff are so often super yikes and everyone who says she is german contrapoints needs to like... rewatch contrapoints #and apologise to natalie

[progressivemother]

Angry at our government.

Okay. I am angry right now. I am the most angry I have ever been in my life, I swear. American government is trying to take basic rights. It probably won’t stop at abortion.

They will try to take land from Native Americans or force segregation. Experts also say that they may try to limit birth control as well. They want to not just go back to the 1950’s but earlier. They want the “only rich white man have rights” and I won’t stand for it.

2/3rds of Americans won’t stand for government taking away our basic humans rights. We are working on becoming a 3rd world country instead of a 1st world country. In order to become the country we need to be, we need more things implemented.

First thing is get abortion right back. A few other things we need to work on include: free education, higher minimum wage, housing for homeless people, fix climate change, free health care, gun control, and no more discrimination or racism. I want to add that racism is not logical. Human evolution started in Africa. All of us are distantly related whether we be white or another race. So people need to stop being idiots and use their brains.

Most Americans want these things but the minority(rich and idiots) are winning out. We have to fight back. We are close to a civil war. Either we need to band together and get these things down peacefully or we will be fighting each other and be a weaker country than we already are.

Accept people no matter race, ethnicity, beliefs, or sexuality. Just be accepting and let people live their lives without taking basic humans rights.

I am American but I am starting to hate my own country for what the government is doing. Next election we need someone who will fight for these things. I am for Bernie Sanders. We need to separate religion from the government.

#human rights #abortion rights #no more #stop discriminating #free education #free healthcare #raise minimum wage #climate change #racisim #bernie sanders #gun control #human rights and civil liberties #liberal #democrats #progressive

[darkobssessions]

I'm getting really angry at how nothing about work or workplaces is geared for neurodivergents and especially autistics.

Absolutely nothing from the set up, the requirements, the social element, the hours, the expectations, the environment. Nothing.

Not the resumes and cover letters, nor the interviews, nor the vague conditions and agreements upon employment.

Am I a bit late to the party? Maybe. But it is because I only found out I was autistic in 2021 and have a patchy work history, leaving jobs, doing part-time gigs, and burning out in my education career.

I'm in severe burnout but also in a position where I have to get independent and fast away from my abusive family. I've basically dedicated my existence to job search, resume writing, and applications for the last 2 years (I lived with my partner for some of that time but had to leave the UK due to no full time job/visa and then with my parents the rest of the time working at the only career I've had that's paid me consistently: education).

The only problem is passion projects are impossible when you're burnt out, and careers often burn autistics out (because of set up of workplace cultures). I love teaching. I don't love demands, social elements and sensory overload.

My experience basically qualifies me most strongly for educational jobs.

But I am finding everyone is requiring so much all of the time, even in the process of hiring and giving you so so so little that it isn't even worth it.

'We'll hire you, but maybe only one day a week.'

'We don't know when you can start, HR has a huge backlog right now we will let you know when we know more.'

'You need to do these 5 trainings before you begin and go book fingerprinting and background checks.'

They want you to give everything and pay you a part-time wage.

Or they want you to give 40+ hours. Or super early in the morning (which is not possible with my burnout, mental health, moods and physical issues). Not to mention the 'benefits' of a minimal number of sick days they pat themselves on the back for 'awarding' you with, let alone miniscule holidays, and sickeningly low pay for cost of living.

It's all so hostile for NDs.

At first I looked and looked for something fulfilling, and since I have experience, education makes sense. I love teaching. But it's not great if I don't want to be burnt out and on the edge of meltdown daily.

Now I am looking for something part-time that leaves me alone and I can come home from not having been completely overloaded (maybe warehouse work, factories, bookstores, grocery stocking). I thought I wanted to be invested in what I was doing but coupled with what I'm experiencing and what I've read from others about their burnout and jobs, it looks like this may be the way to go.

To put this into perspective, even if something seems like a really good fit because of your experience/career/background or interests there will be a catch or a requirement that it is impossible to fulfill. There's a part-time youth instructing job at a recycling centre gearing them up for graduating and careers which sounded like a great fit until I got to the part where it said it needs you to have a driving license since you will 'ocassionally' need to transport students (ages 16-24!).

Why?

Why must I be an educator AND a social butterfly AND a driver and navigator?

Why?!

It's cheaper and better for them if their workers do everything but it's prohibitive to those of us that have issues and disabilities.

I'm sorry but my abilities as a teacher have no bearing whatsoever on my ability to drive. Driving extracts so much energy from me, is terribly dangerous when I am overwhelmed or melting down, and causes me to panic regularly. I don't notice as much what is going on around me when I am overwhelmed and make mistakes if I am pressured. I have trouble recognising a route even if I frequent it. Places look different at different hours of the day. My ability to navigate is extremely low. My ability to teach is honestly why I was born.

Why must every single role expect you to be neurotypical?

Why to protect our mental health can we only do minimum wage jobs?

Why is this system stacked against us?

I'm so frustrated right now and if I could just make some money to be independent of abuse I could funnel it into creating BETTER for us because we sure as anything deserve it.

#toxic workplace culture #accomodations #inclusivity #discrimination #actually autistic #neurodivergents #autistic burnout #talent profiles #patchy talent profiles #spectrum of abilities #ASD #personality disorders #mood disorders #ADHD #workplace accomodations #NT world #hiring #career #minimum wage #severe burnout #overstimulation #the system is broken #demand avoidance #high expectations #hostility #ND hostile #ableism in the workplace #looking for a job #routine based job #mental health

[vanilla-voyeur]

It simply isn't true that software as an industry is biased against hiring women. The reason only 25% of software developers are women is because 20% of high schoolers who take a computer science class are girls. You can't get a software job if you never learned to write code. There are 3 times as many qualified male applicants than qualified female applicants.

If you want to address the lack of female hires in software, starting anywhere later than high school is too late. We can talk about the misogynistic reasons why high school girls are reluctant to pursue computer science classes. But that's pretty much where the issue of hiring stops

#software developer #software engineer #software engineering #codeblr #progblr #hiring discrimination #misogyny #computer science #us centric #tbh if you look at most of the misogynistic stats regarding employment in general #they can mostly be explained by different genders making different choices #wages. hiring rates. seniority #i think where the people who rightly point this out go wrong is believing that proves theres no misogyny in the system #you have to ask why women are making the choices theyre making and why men are making the choices theyre making #thats where youll find the misogyny

[menalez]

i think that anon who said blonde women earn more money is looking at studies from 25 years ago lmao ☠️

eh theres studies from 2010 and 2015 about that so no, not 25 years ago

#i mean if u think about it who is more likely to be blonde? white women #a lot of these studies are saying in other words that women face weight discrimination & colourism & racism etc #and then dumb ppl call it 'pretty privilege' and then tell the same women disadvantaged by these pay gaps that theyre privileged bc #they personally deemed them pretty. even tho they have the exact traits studies found correlates with lower wages

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Lies, damned lies, and Uber

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in PHOENIX (Changing Hands, Feb 29) then Tucson (Mar 10-11), San Francisco (Mar 13), and more!

Uber lies about everything, especially money. Oh, and labour. Especially labour. And geometry. Especially geometry! But especially especially money. They constantly lie about money.

Uber are virtuosos of mendacity, but in Toronto, the company has attained a heretofore unseen hat-trick: they told a single lie that is dramatically, materially untruthful about money, labour and geometry! It's an achievement for the ages.

Here's how they did it.

For several decades, Toronto has been clobbered by the misrule of a series of far-right, clownish mayors. This was the result of former Ontario Premier Mike Harris's great gerrymander of 1998, when the city of Toronto was amalgamated with its car-dependent suburbs. This set the tone for the next quarter-century, as these outlying regions – utterly dependent on Toronto for core economic activity and massive subsidies to pay the unsustainable utility and infrastructure bills for sprawling neighborhoods of single-family homes – proceeded to gut the city they relied on.

These "conservative" mayors – the philanderer, the crackhead, the sexual predator – turned the city into a corporate playground, swapping public housing and rent controls for out-of-control real-estate speculation and trading out some of the world's best transit for total car-dependency. As part of that decay, the city rolled out the red carpet for Uber, allowing the company to put as many unlicensed taxis as they wanted on the city's streets.

Now, it's hard to overstate the dire traffic situation in Toronto. Years of neglect and underinvestment in both the roads and the transit system have left both in a state of near collapse and it's not uncommon for multiple, consecutive main arteries to shut down without notice for weeks, months, or, in a few cases, years. The proliferation of Ubers on the road – driven by desperate people trying to survive the city's cost-of-living catastrophe – has only exacerbated this problem.

Uber, of course, would dispute this. The company insists – despite all common sense and peer-reviewed research – that adding more cars to the streets alleviates traffic. This is easily disproved: there just isn't any way to swap buses, streetcars, and subways for cars. The road space needed for all those single-occupancy cars pushes everything further apart, which means we need more cars, which means more roads, which means more distance between things, and so on.

It is an undeniable fact that geometry hates cars. But geometry loathes Uber. Because Ubers have all the problems of single-occupancy vehicles, and then they have the separate problem that they just end up circling idly around the city's streets, waiting for a rider. The more Ubers there are on the road, the longer each car ends up waiting for a passenger:

https://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Uber-Lyft-San-Francisco-pros-cons-ride-hailing-13841277.php

Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. After years of bumbling-to-sinister municipal rule, Toronto finally reclaimed its political power and voted in a new mayor, Olivia Chow, a progressive of long tenure and great standing (I used to ring doorbells for her when she was campaigning for her city council seat). Mayor Chow announced that she was going to reclaim the city's prerogative to limit the number of Ubers on the road, ending the period of Uber's "self-regulation."

Uber, naturally, lost its shit. The company claims to be more than a (geometrically impossible) provider of convenient transportation for Torontonians, but also a provider of good jobs for working people. And to prove it, the company has promised to pay its drivers "120% of minimum wage." As I write for Ricochet, that's a whopper, even by Uber's standards:

https://ricochet.media/en/4039/uber-is-lying-again-the-company-has-no-intention-of-paying-drivers-a-living-wage

Here's the thing: Uber is only proposing to pay 120% of the minimum wage while drivers have a passenger in the vehicle. And with the number of vehicles Uber wants on the road, most drivers will be earning nothing most of the time. Factor in that unpaid time, as well as expenses for vehicles, and the average Toronto Uber driver stands to make $2.50 per hour (Canadian):

https://ridefair.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Legislated-Poverty.pdf

Now, Uber's told a lot of lies over the years. Right from the start, the company implicitly lied about what it cost to provide an Uber. For its first 12 years, Uber lost $0.41 on every dollar it brought in, lighting tens of billions in investment capital provided by the Saudi royals on fire in an effort to bankrupt rival transportation firms and disinvestment in municipal transit.

Uber then lied to retail investors about the business-case for buying its stock so that the House of Saud and other early investors could unload their stock. Uber claimed that they were on the verge of producing a self-driving car that would allow them to get rid of drivers, zero out their wage bill, and finally turn a profit. The company spent $2.5b on this, making it the most expensive Big Store in the history of cons:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/infighting-busywork-missed-warnings-how-uber-wasted-2-5-billion-on-self-driving-cars

After years, Uber produced a "self-driving car" that could travel one half of one American mile before experiencing a potentially lethal collision. Uber quietly paid another company $400m to take this disaster off its hands:

https://www.economist.com/business/2020/12/10/why-is-uber-selling-its-autonomous-vehicle-division

The self-driving car lie was tied up in another lie – that somehow, automation could triumph over geometry. Robocabs, we were told, would travel in formations so tight that they would finally end the Red Queen's Race of more cars – more roads – more distance – more cars. That lie wormed its way into the company's IPO prospectus, which promised retail investors that profitability lay in replacing every journey – by car, cab, bike, bus, tram or train – with an Uber ride:

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1RN2SK/

The company has been bleeding out money ever since – though you wouldn't know it by looking at its investor disclosures. Every quarter, Uber trumpets that it has finally become profitable, and every quarter, Hubert Horan dissects its balance sheets to find the accounting trick the company thought of this time. There was one quarter where Uber declared profitability by marking up the value of stock it held in Uber-like companies in other countries.

How did it get this stock? Well, Uber tried to run a business in those countries and it was such a total disaster that they had to flee the country, selling their business to a failing domestic competitor in exchange for stock in its collapsing business. Naturally, there's no market for this stock, which, in Uber-land, means you can assign any value you want to it. So that one quarter, Uber just asserted that the stock had shot up in value and voila, profit!

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-nine-despite-massive-price-increases-uber-losses-top-31-billion.html

But all of those lies are as nothing to the whopper that Uber is trying to sell to Torontonians by blanketing the city in ads: the lie that by paying drivers $2.50/hour to fill the streets with more single-occupancy cars, they will turn a profit, reduce the city's traffic, and provide good jobs. Uber says it can vanquish geometry, economics and working poverty with the awesome power of narrative.

In other words, it's taking Toronto for a bunch of suckers.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/29/geometry-hates-uber/#toronto-the-gullible

Image: Rob Sinclair (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Night_skyline_of_Toronto_May_2009.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #uber #hubert horan #fraud #toronto #geometry hates cars #urbanism #ontpoli #olivia chow #self-regulation #transport #urban planning #taxis #transit #urban theory #labor #algorithmic wage discrimination #veena dubal

[fantasticallydysfunctional]

I find interesting (as in very suspicious) that part time employees don't get sick days or vacation time. When 29% of the adults who are working part time jobs are disabled and can't work more than what they currently are.

And by interesting/suspicious I mean that society/companies value disabled people less than able bodied or able minded people. So they don't think we deserve the same benefits that our abled colleagues get.

At my old job part timers could ONLY miss 30 hours of work in a six month period that covered sick leave, emergencies, and personal. That's only 7.5 days that I had to be sick. And they wouldn't have cared if I had to get surgery. During COVID they let a full time guy go because he kept getting exposed and was quarantining (we were custodians) cause he was "calling in too much".

Even with a Union I'm not afforded many benefits. There's a system where we can work a 7 hour shift to make up the time we missed working to erase the points against us. But I CAN'T work more than 20 hours here without seriously jeopardizing my SSI. So MAYBE the union could help me negotiate with the company for that amount of time to be reduced.

I genuinely do not understand how part time workers can not be afforded vacation time or at the very least the same amount of sick time as full time workers.

I do not want to hear "But what is the incentive to work full-time if you get the benefits as a part timer?" You know what the incentive is? The increase in income. You work more you make more money. That's the incentive.

I should not have to worry about losing my job if heaven forbid I have to get treatment. If I have to be in the hospital for 2 weeks. I shouldn't have to worry about how I'm going to afford my place when I get out because I don't have sick time or vacation time I could use.

But I hear some of you say "They have SSI they'll be fine they're obviously getting enough to survive on." No they aren't the MAXIMUM amount you can get paid by SSI is 841 USD.

Let me repeat THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT YOU CAN RECEIVE FROM SSI IS 841 USD. And that is if you DON'T work. You cannot survive off 841 USD a month. That'll barely cover housing and utilities. You also don't get the maximum amount if you are working.

I might hear someone say "But disabled people are on SSDI and not SSI so they make more"

Slightly more, they make slightly more. The average individual on SSDI will receive 1,236 USD a month. Which is still not enough to live. Seeing that the amount an AVERAGE person needs to live in the United States of America is about 5,000 USD.

Also a lot of disabled people like myself cannot qualify for SSDI. I barely qualified to get SSI. I have like 8 diagnosed mental disorders, chronic pain, early onset arthritis, asthma, etc. And I still do not qualify for SSDI. And even if I did I couldn't earn more than 1,350 USD a month or I'd lose my Disability.

All this to say what is incredibly obvious to anyone that is disabled they don't care. They do not care if we have to destroy our bodies or minds further. They don't care if we survive. We are not worthy of existence in a lot of people's eyes. Especially when it comes to our corporate overlords. If we cannot produce a product. We haven't earned the right to exist. They can just decide that we aren't worth saving during a pandemic (they seriously did this with COVID-19. There were blanket DNRs. And yes I do understand triage.) That I am tired with how many times jobs have tried to fire me for having a disability. Or tried to take advantage of perceived naivety.

To anyone who is able bodied or able minded. If you don't think this effects you you are wrong. A bad enough injury can make you part of this community. A disease could put you in this exact same boat. Maybe you have a mental illness or neurological condition that will only show up later in life. Hell they could just decide that something you already deal with is a disability. They will find a way to discriminate against you. This could be something you have to suddenly worry about tomorrow. So maybe help us. Help us to help your family.

But seriously final thing. Why wouldn't anyone in the workforce not want part timers to have sick time or vacation time. I'm pretty sure everyone has been part time at some point and would have appreciated it. Would help with morale. Would also help with people desiring to stay at that job. This would benefit people who weren't disabled as well. Like give em PTO. The corporations can definitely afford it. The CEOs and stuff would maybe have to make slightly less than they already do. And well they already make an absurd amount of money.

#parttimework #part time income #disabled #disability #ssi #work #capitalism is a fucking disease #capitalism #work benefits #full-time #discrimination #i hate how often i am threatened with termination due to my disabilities #its fucking awful #i am not okay #part-time workers should be able to travel and see family. #don't even get me started on the minimum wage #the minimum wage was set in 1938 and was changing pretty much yearly for inflation except for periods where it was 10 ish years between #the federal minimum wage was last raised in 2009 #seriously even 15 dollars an hour isn't a fair wage now a days #if a company cant afford to pay their employees a living wage they shouldn't be in business. #you shouldn't be mad at minimum wage possibly rising. yiu should be mad that you aren't being paid what you're worth #unions are amazing #you have the legal right to unionize

[ohsochill]

i used to think working at a bookstore would be the perfect vibe for me.

love books. love reading. love bookstores. nice discount. why would this not be a good idea for me?

then, in my 20s, i got a job at barnes and noble and i hated it.

the store i worked at was very hell bent on selling memberships to customers. as cashiers, we were taught how to upsell a membership and i could only RARELY for the life of me, get someone to bite the bait. the membership gets you free shipping online, i think 40% off of hardcover bestsellers, some percentage off in the cafe, and 10% off anything else in the store. only for an annual/sign up fee of just $25 (which now seems like PENNIES. 25 bucks for a whole year for you rich mofos that spend $100+ dollars in here regularly? now that i have a real day job even i would sign up - if i didn't prefer just getting used books on amazon)

the only time i could get someone to sign up would be if they had spent $250 or more on their purchase, because signing up got you 10% off your order, and the membership was literally free at that point. i had a few instances where this happened and people still told me no.

i didn't care to haggle people to buy a membership. i would have preferred to ring them up normally and not even bring it up. and even though i was the lowest seller of memberships, the managers refused to stick me anywhere else. i would have been so much better at shelving books or doing inventory in the back, but they felt like i needed to get better at upselling first. which made no sense to me. if im not good in one area, just put me somewhere else. is that not common sense? i had this job during the time i fell into my first depression, and one day i could not hold it together. i was fighting back tears while ringing up a customer, so i went and asked the manager if i could be given a task in the back - something that didn't require me to talk to customers because i couldn't keep it together. instead she told me to go home. this was the better option anyway, but they just never wanted to show me how to do something else and i didn't get why.

i started to feel like the treatment was somewhat discriminatory. the bookstore was in a somewhat affluent area, in a shopping center with alot of pricey retail shops. 90% of the customers were white, and i was the only black girl on staff, so you can imagine. customers asking me a question, then asking a white employee, only for them to give the exact same answer i did. the latter time being sufficient somehow. any time i tried to speak up for myself, or just correct someone, - at a normal and sometimes low volume, people would respond as if i had yelled at them. when all i did was have the courage to speak directly. the same way they spoke to me.

something about working minimum wage jobs amongst teens and being spoken to and treated like one, even though you're an actual adult, bothered me. along with the microaggressions and refusal to train me on something else. i quit after about 6 months.

moral of the story:

things aren't always what they seem. &, any job involving sales is not a job for me.

#personal #story #books #discrimination #barnes and noble #jobs #minimum wage #minority #selling #sales

[tuiyla]

I was reading the reasoning behind why you chose Quinn as Catherine Parr for your Glee Presents: Six the Musical gifset and you said she has a brand of white feminism. Why do you think so? 🤔

Oh man that's kind of a big topic that definitely deserves more of an answer than I'm able to give right now, but if I save this ask for later I'll just end up never getting to it. So I hope you don't mind me giving a sort of half-answer with the potential of further elaboration in the future.

To be fair, in my mind I conflate Quinn's brand of pop feminism with more specifically white feminism a lot. But what I mean is that Six's well-intentioned but ultimately kind of flat message conveyed in Parr's song reminded me of how Quinn gets "woke" after getting pregnant. You know, the "boys objectify us all the time" and "women earn less than men" sort of thing. And to be clear, those are correct statements. The Glee guys objectify the girls all the time. The show does too, in fact. And women do statistically earn less for the same work. But these are the sort of "water is wet" generic statements that teen shows attempting some sort of feminism would say in 2010 without actually exploring patriarchal issues in any sort of depth.

The way I see it, Quinn became Glee's spokesperson for feminist phrases that often aimed to do one of two things. A) genuinely try to highlight an issue or B) poke fun at pop feminism and use the rich white girl who always ends up centering her life around men to do it. The problem with A), like in The Power of Madonna, is that Glee doesn't even get close to saying anything useful about issues it highlights and solves sexism with the boys singing What It Feels Like For a Girl. Okay? Now, that isn't on Quinn, but when she's so often the mouthpiece for meaningless buzzwords and generic statements of the kind of #girlbossery that 2010 took seriously but we make fun of now, it's hard not to associate it with her. And in the case of B), such as her wild Gloria Steinem spiel in I Do, well it just feels disingenuous for a number of reasons, and this is the part we probs don't have the capacity to get into today.

But what I'm trying to say is that Quinn was given so many of these #girlbossery lines and, when I rewatched season 1, I realized just how many of them also reeked of what we'd now recognize as white feminism. And far be from me to downplay Quinn's trauma and struggles, but she just ain't the girl for intersectionality with her WASPy background and distinctly feminism 101 approach to things. Maybe this is more of a vibe I get from her, and to be clear I blame the writers entirely, but I've talked to others who got this same vibe from her statements. I think any sort of feminism Glee attempts is also white feminism, though, so again I'm not blaming Queen Bee Quinn the ch. It's just the vibe that she'd point out the wage gap, something that doesn't actually affect them in high school, but ignore racist made at the expense of Santinacedes. I also get the vibes that, in-universe, even her feminism 101 only comes post-pregnancy when she experiences just some of the discrimination women like Mercedes have always faced. I mean, I love Quinncedes do not get me wrong. And this whole post feels like I'm dragging Quinn when I'm not lol. But they explicitly make the parallel of being black and pregnant in Quinncedes scenes and it's like, girl.

It's a Man's Man's Man's World, basically. Watch that performance. That's what I mean. And like I say it's sort of intentional on the writer's part but it's also sort of just how Glee operates when it comes to gender dynamics and (the lack of) intersectionality.

#i know that is less coherent than would be desirable #but i'm afraid it was either this response now or like. none ever #and i am trying to answer stuff! so that's what i have #anon #glee asks #quinn asks #i'm sorry quinn stans don't hurt me #i call upon randomcanbian to help me out here bestie i hope you have more coherent thoughts #it's so hard to talk about quinn's ignorance because the show's way too hard on her #and even some fans #so i don't wanna add fuel to that fire because she IS traumatized and IS discriminated against #she's not just some random white girl being mildly inconvenienced preaching about the wage gap #but that is the vibe glee sometimes goes for because they cannot conceive of quinn beyond her privilege #but two things can be true at the same time #in other news i've been sleeping on this song!!

[flintbian]

Well, I just resigned from my job. I have to for my health, and when I talked with my boss she admitted the conditions were terrible and they made a lot of mistakes and nothing was okay. It went as well as it could've, and now I'm going to finish up my projects over the next week and focus on my health. It's going to be a tough road with the degree of muscle atrophy I've had 😅

#well it went better than expected #and she seemed to know it was coming but then again i was harassed for the past week #i cant believe she actually admitted they fucked up i mean duh yall have several lawsuits going on the union is in #and they never even got me the ramp/lip cover so i could never come in (and got penalized for that) #they decreased my wage several times bc they couldnt afford it and it was small already for the industry #i never got accommodations #i had three supervisors in three months #four people left before me and now me and a co-worker are leaving rn #and we were understaffed and overworked and the backend was a mess and she said i came into a hurricane and we did nothing to accommodate #like was agreed with who hired me but then that person left #they decreased my wage several times and changed my job description (not allowed) several times to add more work yet decreased wage #and i got penalized for not being able to do stuff i never signed up for that they added bc it was manual labor #and i said hey i could do that extra stuff with minimal accommodations but they ignored and decreased my wage again #while i was breaking my back and overworked as is #and then my new boss straight up admitted they were assholes on top of all that and she pushed me too far #i love the mission and wish them well but it was a mess and not a good fit #and im now even allowed to talk about the lawsuits and shit bc i signed a whistleblower agreement and it could doom them if the public knew #shit is AWFUL discrimination assult etc #and they tried to rope me into fundraising bc they werent paying my coworker and she had to fundraise for her own goddamn wages #the amount of rage i have at them...and she's quitting too #and like i didnt even say anything just a short and nice letter saying i resign and gave enough notice #and what projects i need to wrap up and transfer over #at least now im out of the shitty job and can focus on my health #i was worried about money but DVR Hannah my family my PT's and new doc support me and it will be okay #im actively interviewing while sick too #my PT's are making a plan to help me build my strength back up but it's going to be HARD bc of my condition #it's actually near impossible for my legs so wish me luck #im surprised they aren't blacklisting me either it went as well as it could've #wish me luck for recovery im going to need it 😅 (see last personal post for context) #p