Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Robot arms weld a vehicle at the General Motors plant in Lansing, Mich. Automakers are the biggest users of industrial robots, which have decreased employment and wages in local economies. Credit Bill Pugliano/Getty Images Who is winning the race for jobs between robots and humans? Last year, two leading economists described a future in which…
Image via AP. When a fire broke out on the ninth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York in 1911, 146 garment workers died—123 of whom were women. In the wake of one of the deadliest workplace tragedies in American history, it was the women of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU)…
Fiverr, an online freelance marketplace that promotes itself as being for “the lean entrepreneur,” recently attracted ire for an ad campaign called “In Doers We Trust.”CreditCOURTESY FIVERR Barrier Status: ‘none’ Last September, a very twenty-first-century type of story appeared on the company blog of the ride-sharing app Lyft. “Long-time Lyft driver and mentor, Mary, was…
There are people who will tell you that you should use LinkedIn to flirt with women. Here’s our much better advice: Don’t do this. Ever. Flirting on LinkedIn isn’t just counterproductive — it can come across as wildly inappropriate. Yet we find that there’s still plenty of need to explain why you should never, ever — no, really,…
A Twitter thread has gotten some attention recently, where my former-coworker / current-best friend, Marty, recounted the day he realized just how bad, and insidious, workplace sexism could be. After noticing that a client was treating him like crap while his email signature was accidentally set to my name, we came up with an experiment….
Touting the first jobs report of Donald Trump’s tenure, White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed without evidence Friday that the jobs figures “may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.” Spicer, addressing reporters at the afternoon briefing, did not back up the assertion that previous federal jobs reports were “phony,”…
The good news: our relatively strong economy helped to raise wages for everyone in 2016. The bad news: this is a mere blip in the context of overall inequality. And it’s likely to get worse. The Economic Policy Institute today released its annual report on the state of wages in America. Last year had some…
Illustration by Jim Cooke Successful union campaigns have flourished across the digital media industry over the past year and a half. Few have run into more anti-union pushback than the one currently happening at Thrillist. And employees are pissed. On February 15, editorial staffers at the lifestyle site Thrillist announced that they were joining the…
It wasn’t one thing that transformed Maker Studios from a Disney princess to a pumpkin — there were a whole lot of many things. Times were better for the YouTube network in March 2014, when Disney had decided to buy the company for $500 million. With various performance-related revenue targets included in the contract, the final…
President Trump’s nominee to lead the Labor Department, Andy Puzder, is expected to withdraw his nomination, according to a number of reports Wednesday. NBC News: Labor Secretary nominee Andy Puzder is expected to withdraw, sources tell @PeterAlexander Puzder’s spokesperson said he does not have any information to share. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions…