So says Bernie, so say we all:
Great video from @BernieSanders, in 2018, on the importance of canvassing pic.twitter.com/1U0WXRd2uy— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) June 28, 2019
Seriously, it’s tough to go up to strangers an ask them to vote for your candidate, but just do it.
I love it when evil goes up against evil, because it’s a win-win for the rest of us:
A leading U.S. retail group, whose members include Walmart, Target, Best Buy and others, has penned a letter to the Federal Trade Commission that details its concerns over big tech companies’ dominance. The letter specifically calls out Amazon and Google for their control over the majority of internet product searches, how price and product information reaches consumers and other concerns.
The letter, written by The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), urges the FTC to take a closer look at the big tech platforms. The group also offers to help in any antitrust investigations.
“It should…be quite concerning to the Commission that Amazon and Google control the majority of all Internet product search, and can very easily affect whether and how price and product information actually reaches consumers,” write the RILA. “Moreover, these firms are extraordinarily adept at determining how small changes in the way in which information is conveyed affect consumer behavior — given that nearly everything they do is driven by big-data science and machine learning models,” the letter continues.
………
The group asks the FTC to consider rules and enforcement actions that require companies to disclose where products come from, whether they’re new or used, whether their sale is authorized and how the price from one seller compares to others. Amazon is mentioned here as an example of the problems that can arise when a firm controls an “essential platform” like Amazon Marketplace and also competes on that same platform.
Additionally, the letter asks the FTC to look beyond the consumer benefit of lowered prices or free services — sometimes by subsidizing the platform with other profit streams.
Here is hoping that they manage to reduce each other to a bloody pulp.
The oil rich former Soviet Republic has spent billions attempting to save its failing banks, and now, it is ditching the banks, and will write down its people’s debts, the exact opposite of what Geithner and the Federal Reserve did in the USA.
I expect the new Kazakh President to become Hitler of the Week™ shortly, because bailing out people and letting the banksters and their investors take the the hit is just unAmerican.
I am aware that there is very little to recommend Kazakhstan.
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was elected in an unfair election, hand picked by his predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who is notorious for the suppression of free speech, torture, etc.
This is a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day:
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said he’ll write off bad loans held by a sixth of the central Asian country’s population, while signaling a sharp change in policy to end costly state bailouts of private banks.
The loan-forgiveness program is Tokayev’s first major policy announcement since he was elected president on June 9 in a choreographed transfer of power that began when longtime leader Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down as head of state in March. His victory was met with rare and widespread protests.
Bank bailouts are also a sensitive issue in Kazakhstan, which has been mired in a decade-long crisis in which the government has pumped at least $18 billion into lenders to keep the sector from collapsing under the weight of bad debts. The central bank is conducting a review of asset quality, prompting speculation that a new round of bailouts may be in the works.
………While the debt-relief initiative may help lenders, the total cost is likely to come in at “a bit less than $1 billion,” according to Tokayev. More than 3 million Kazakhs in the energy-rich country of 18 million will get help to escape debts averaging 300,000 tenge ($790), he said. It is aimed at “people who find themselves in very difficult living circumstances,” he said.
About 4,000 people were detained by police during a rare outburst of protests against what activists said was a lack of real choice in the recent vote, which Tokayev won easily with 71% support. Leader-for-life Nazarbayev, 78, handed the presidency to Tokayev in March, who called the early election “to remove any uncertainty.” International observers criticized the conduct of the vote.
The math is pretty simple: $18 billion did not solve the problem, versus less than $1 billion to write down personal debt, and let the banks and the banksters burn.
Works for me.
About f%$#ing time. It’s bad enough that the current Democratic Party consults make elections more expensive because they get a percentage of the media buys, but they also suck at what they do:
Two alums of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) 2016 presidential campaign have launched a consulting firm to help progressive candidates win elections and to stick a thumb in the eye of the Democratic Party establishment.
MVMT Communications is the brainchild of Karthik Ganapathy, who previously served as battleground states communications director for Sanders, and Mike Casca, the rapid response director on Sanders’ campaign.
“The sort of calcification around the Democratic Party’s agenda has been driven a lot by the consultant class,” Casca, who went on to serve as communications director for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, told The Daily Beast. “We have a party that is driven by a core of strategists that run a lot of their business on corporate clients and it affects everyone’s thinking.”
The launch of MVMT Communications comes as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has said it will not grant contracts to consultants who work with candidates who are running primary challenges against sitting incumbents. Though Ganapathy and Casca didn’t say they created their firm in response to that decision, it is clear that their impetus for doing so was, in part, to try to rally in support of those candidates challenging entrenched incumbents.
Let’s hope that they are more competent than the current lot.
When you “buy” a Prime Membership, you are selling yourself to them:
Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant may be useful, but the privacy concerns aren’t going away anytime soon.Now, in a fresh turn of events, the retail giant has confirmed that it keeps transcripts and voice recordings indefinitely, and only removes them if they’re manually deleted by users.
………
Privacy in the Internet of Things space has already been a hot topic. Earlier this April, Bloomberg published a piece about how thousands of Amazon employees listen to voice recordings captured in Echo speakers, transcribing and annotating them to improve the Alexa digital assistant that powers the smart speakers.
Then in May, the retail behemoth came under further scrutiny for its data collection practices after CNET reported that Alexa assistant not only keeps your voice recordings, but also keeps a record of your voice transcriptions for improving its AI algorithms, with no option to delete them.
………
Amazon’s response points out that even developers of Alexa skills can keep a record of every transaction or routinely scheduled activity a user makes with an Echo device. “When a customer interacts with an Alexa skill, that skill developer may also retain records of the interaction,” the company wrote in its response.
………
But the lack of clarity surrounding its data collection and retention policies has revived debates over the sometimes conflicting goals of convenience and privacy. And Coons isn’t exactly satisfied with Amazon‘s reply.
“Amazon‘s response leaves open the possibility that transcripts of user voice interactions with Alexa are not deleted from all of Amazon‘s servers, even after a user has deleted a recording of his or her voice,” he said in a statement. “What’s more, the extent to which this data is shared with third parties, and how those third parties use and control that information, is still unclear.”
I believe the technical term for this sort of business and technical practice is, “Dystopian.”
Wayne LaPierre decided to go hard-line, going after the grieving parents, and then, LaPierre spent over $70,000 of NRA money on a vacation in the Bahamas.
That is unbelievably cold:
Twenty young children had just been gunned down by a semiautomatic rifle in their classrooms in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, and inside the hardened bunker of the National Rifle Association, rattled officials were wrestling with rare feelings of self-doubt.
In the past, the gun rights organization had responded to mass shootings with unapologetic, high-profile attacks on any attempt to restrict firearms. But several senior NRA officials — laid low by images of sobbing parents planning their children’s funerals rather than tucking presents under Christmas trees — thought the organization should take a less confrontational approach this time, according to multiple people familiar with the internal debate.
Over the objections of some top officials, however, NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre struck a defiant posture. In fiery public appearances crafted by Ackerman McQueen, the organization’s longtime advertising firm , LaPierre announced that the group would create a model program to train armed security guards who could protect schools from shooters, saying that was the only measure that would keep children safe.
Then LaPierre and his wife left for the Bahamas, a trip they billed through Ackerman McQueen — and was ultimately paid for by the nonprofit organization. Their post-Christmas flights to and from Eleuthera, known for its pink beaches, cost the NRA nearly $70,000, according to internal documents and people familiar with the trip.
………
New details about how the NRA handled the tumultuous moment show how Sandy Hook —one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history — divided the leadership of the powerful gun rights organization. The episode also showcased the symbiotic relationship between LaPierre and Ackerman McQueen, an alliance that defined the NRA for more than three decades, several former officials said.
During that period, the bills for LaPierre’s wardrobe and his private jet travel flowed through the Oklahoma-based ad firm, recently revealed internal documents show, a practice that critics say shrouded the nature of the costs from some NRA leaders and members. At the same time, Ackerman McQueen collected tens of millions of dollars in consulting fees and kept a tight grip on the NRA’s aggressive messaging, according to documents and people familiar with the dynamics.
Who cares about dead children when you have a movement to loot, huh?
There are a lot of repulsive people in the world, but Wayne LaPierre is in a whole new class of contemptible.
My guess is that they are really upset because it makes it much tougher for ISPs to collect data to resell to advertisers.
I call hypocrisy for their accusation that Mozilla is an, ‘internet villain’ for using DNS-over-HTTPS:
An industry group of internet service providers has branded Firefox browser maker Mozilla an “internet villain” for supporting a DNS security standard.
The U.K.’s Internet Services Providers’ Association (ISPA), the trade group for U.K. internet service providers, nominated the browser maker for its proposed effort to roll out the security feature, which they say will allow users to “bypass UK filtering obligations and parental controls, undermining internet safety standards in the UK.”
Mozilla said late last year it was planning to test DNS-over-HTTPS to a small number of users.
Whenever you visit a website — even if it’s HTTPS enabled — the DNS query that converts the web address into an IP address that computers can read is usually unencrypted. The security standard is implemented at the app level, making Mozilla the first browser to use DNS-over-HTTPS. By encrypting the DNS query it also protects the DNS request against man-in-the-middle attacks, which allow attackers to hijack the request and point victims to a malicious page instead.
DNS-over-HTTPS also improves performance, making DNS queries — and the overall browsing experience — faster.
………
The ISPA’s nomination quickly drew ire from the security community. Amid a backlash on social media, the ISPA doubled down on its position. “Bringing in DNS-over-HTTPS by default would be harmful for online safety, cybersecurity and consumer choice,” but said it encourages “further debate.”
One internet provider, Andrews & Arnold, donated £2,940 — around $3,670 — to Mozilla in support of the nonprofit. “The amount was chosen because that is what our fee for ISPA membership would have been, were we a member,” said a tweet from the company.
Mozilla spokesperson Justin O’Kelly told TechCrunch: “We’re surprised and disappointed that an industry association for ISPs decided to misrepresent an improvement to decades old internet infrastructure.”
“Despite claims to the contrary, a more private DNS would not prevent the use of content filtering or parental controls in the UK. DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) would offer real security benefits to UK citizens. Our goal is to build a more secure internet, and we continue to have a serious, constructive conversation with credible stakeholders in the UK about how to do that,” he said.
F%$# the ISPA.
They did things like posting bigoted memes and jokes about shooting immigrants.
It was a blockbuster when ProPublica revealed this a week ago, and management was shocked, and promised a thorough investigation.
Well, in news that surprise no one, Customs and Border Protection knew about this for years, and never did anything about it.
When you consider the scope of the Facebook group, particularly when juxtaposed to the gratuitous brutality of the organization, this is not a surprise:
Customs and Border Protection officials have been aware for up to three years that a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents was posting offensive messages — far longer than previously reported.
Border Patrol leadership knew about photos posted to the group as far back as 2016, when agents reported them, according to a current Homeland Security official. The images — several of which were provided to POLITICO — show agents engaging in conduct that includes simulating sex acts and taking selfies while defecating. A former DHS official said he was aware of the Facebook group during the past year.
Neither official knew of any serious punishment ever leveled at members of the Facebook group.
ProPublica reported Monday that comments in the “I’m 10-15” Facebook group posted as recently as last week mocked the death of a 16-year-old detained Guatemalan migrant, made bigoted remarks about throwing a burrito at two Latina congresswomen, and posted obscene and misogynistic illustrations of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). The group’s name refers to the code used to signal “aliens in custody.”
………
But screen shots provided to POLITICO and interviews with the two DHS officials indicate that the agency wasn’t blindsided by ProPublica’s report. Staffers in CBP’s public affairs office monitored the Facebook group over the past year “as a source of intelligence” to see “what people are talking about,” according to the former DHS official.
“We were not talking about ‘10-15’ as a liability or an asset or as an item of concern,” the former official said.
………
The DHS inspector general’s office — the department’s internal watchdog — has launched an investigation into the recent Facebook posts, officials said Tuesday.
Nearly half of DHS was in this group.
Anyone who was in this group should have their clearances pulled until it can be shown that there has been no wrongdoing.
Well, now he has created a unit dedicated to investigating wrongful convictions and police misconduct.
I hope that this includes a review of McCulloch and his lieutenants before the statute of limitations expires as well.
I guarantee that you will find prosecutors have knowing submitted false testimony, because that’s what McCulloch did in the Michael Brown case:
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who was elected last year on a radical reform platform, has taken a huge new step in that direction, establishing a unit to tackle wrongful conditions and abuse by the police.
The Conviction and Incident Review Unit, whose staff will report directly to Bell, will review past convictions where defendants claimed innocence as well as investigate police shootings and allegations of police misconduct.
………
For Bell — a former public defender, municipal judge, court prosecutor, and son of a cop — the inspiration came from those efforts as well as his personal experiences. “I’ve been practicing for 18 years,” he said in an interview with The Intercept, “and so I knew that there’s things that needed to be done differently.”
Bell campaigned on using data-driven research to reform the criminal justice system, including establishing an independent unit to review past convictions, a process that his predecessor Bob McCulloch did not have a system for. McCulloch had a reputation for being uncomfortably close with law enforcement, and the community’s distrust of him was only exacerbated following Officer Darren Wilson’s fatal August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Against the wishes of the community, protesters, and activists — including the NAACP — McCulloch declined to appoint a special prosecutor in the case of Brown’s murder. The community channeled anger with the handling of Brown’s case into organizing power that propelled Bell to victory.
………
The unit’s independence is crucial, said Nina Morrison, senior litigation counsel at the Innocence Project; she has represented numerous clients who have become exonerated, thanks in part to the work of conviction integrity units.
It’s not enough to exonerate those who are innocent, you also need to prosecute people who break the law to close cases.
But the government of Kiev plans to appeal:
A court in Ukraine issued an injunction against the naming of two streets in Kiev after nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
The district administrative court of Kiev ordered the municipality to undo the 2016 renaming of two main streets for Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych on Tuesday.
But Mayor Vitaly Klitschko on Wednesday wrote on Facebook that the city will appeal the ruling, the Regnum news agency reported. In the meantime, the streets in question will be renamed Moscow Avenue and another will be named for Nikolai Vatutin, a Soviet general who was killed in 1944 by soldiers from Shukhevych’s Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA.
Bandera and Shukhevych were two of Ukraine’s several Nazi collaborators. Some were SS volunteers and mass murdered Jews and Poles, and are now celebrated as anti-communist heroes in Ukraine and by its government.
Several collaborators? More like tens of thousands, and now the Ukraine is glorifying them.
Yes, this sort of crap does effect my view of the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine.
Grilled steaks, chicken for the kids, and fireworks. (Watching, not setting them off myself)
Kind of Norman Rockwell, I guess.
A 16 year raped a drunk 16 year old girl, filmed it, and shared the film.
The judge at his trial said that he deserved leniency because he came from a good family.
This sort of crap is getting really old:
The 16-year-old girl was visibly intoxicated, her speech slurred, when a drunk 16-year-old boy sexually assaulted her in a dark basement during an alcohol-fueled pajama party in New Jersey, prosecutors said.
The boy filmed himself penetrating her from behind, her torso exposed, her head hanging down, prosecutors said. He later shared the cellphone video among friends, investigators said, and sent a text that said, “When your first time having sex was rape.”
But a family court judge said it wasn’t rape. Instead, he wondered aloud if it was sexual assault, defining rape as something reserved for an attack at gunpoint by strangers.
He also said the young man came from a good family, attended an excellent school, had terrific grades and was an Eagle scout. Prosecutors, the judge said, should have explained to the girl and her family that pressing charges would destroy the boy’s life.
So he denied prosecutors’ motion to try the 16-year-old as an adult. “He is clearly a candidate for not just college but probably for a good college,” Judge James Troiano of Superior Court said last year in a two-hour decision while sitting in Monmouth County.
Now the judge has been sharply rebuked by an appeals court in a scathing 14-page ruling that warned the judge against showing bias toward privileged teenagers.
………
In recent years, judges across the country have come under fire for the way they have handled sexual abuse cases. One of the most notorious was in 2016, when a judge in California sentenced a Stanford University student to six months in jail after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. After an intense public backlash, California voters recalled the judge.
………
The judge in Monmouth County, Mr. Troiano, was scolded by the appellate court, according to the panel’s decision. “That the juvenile came from a good family and had good test scores we assume would not condemn the juveniles who do not come from good families and do not have good test scores from withstanding waiver application,” the panel wrote in its decision.
………
Family court cases are typically closed to the public, but the judges’ comments surfaced in June when the appeals court decisions were made public, joining a series of contentious sexual assault cases that have ignited outrage over a legal system that advocates for victims say is warped by bias and privilege.
………
In September 2017, the Monmouth County prosecutor’s office recommended that the case be tried in adult criminal court in part because the boy’s actions were “sophisticated and predatory.”
………
The appellate decision criticized the judge, writing that rather than focusing on whether prosecutors met the necessary standards for a waiver, “the judge decided the case for himself.”
………
In 2004, Judge Troiano imposed a gag order to prohibit people in a courtroom from discussing the high-profile case of two Montclair High School football players accused of sexually assaulting a schoolmate. The charges were eventually dropped.
Think about all the times that this does not get press, and some self-entitled rich kid gets off while some black kid gets tried as an adult for having a joint in his pocket.
Sometimes our society makes me sick.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine) should resign from Congress so he can spend more time with his lawyers.
Heh.
Microsoft is shutting down its DRM servers for its ebooks, which means that anyone who ever bought a book from them will no longer be able to read them.
Cory Doctorow warned us about this, as he strongly notes:
“The books will stop working”: That’s the substance of the reminder that Microsoft sent to customers for their ebook store, reminding them that, as announced in April, the company is getting out of the ebook business because it wasn’t profitable enough for them, and when they do, they’re going to shut off their DRM servers, which will make the books stop working.
Almost exactly fifteen years ago, I gave an influential, widely cited talk at Microsoft Research where I predicted this exact outcome. I don’t feel good about the fact that I got it right. This is a f%$#ing travesty.
(%$# mine)
Do not tolerate DRM in your media.
Mad Magazine is shutting down:
I just heard from a friend of mine who is in a Facebook group with a MAD writer that, after the next two issues, MAD will no longer be publishing original material. Instead, it’ll publish reprinted material until it’s subscription responsibilities are fulfilled and then the magazine will cease publication.
An alternate report has it just becoming reprints of old material, which is pretty much the same thing.
This is what happens when publications get bought up by large media conglomerates.
Since the US Military has established a base on the continent for Africa Command, violence and terrorism has exploded on the continent:
Since U.S. Africa Command began operations in 2008, the number of U.S. military personnel on the African continent has jumped 170 percent, from 2,600 to 7,000. The number of military missions, activities, programs, and exercises there has risen 1,900 percent, from 172 to 3,500. Drone strikes have soared and the number of commandos deployed has increased exponentially along with the size and scope of AFRICOM’s constellation of bases.
The U.S. military has recently conducted 36 named operations and activities in Africa, more than any other region of the world, including the Greater Middle East. Troops scattered across Africa regularly advise, train, and partner with local forces; gather intelligence; conduct surveillance; and carry out airstrikes and ground raids focused on “countering violent extremists on the African continent.”
………
There are now roughly 24 “active militant Islamist groups” operating on the continent, up from just five in 2010, the analysis found. Today, 13 African countries face attacks from these groups — a 160 percent increase over that same time span. In fact, the number of “violent events” across the continent has jumped 960 percent, from 288 in 2009 to 3,050 in 2018, according to the Africa Center’s analysis.
While a variety of factors have likely contributed to the rise in violence, some experts say that the overlap between the command’s existence and growing unrest is not a coincidence.
“The sharp increase in terrorist incidents in Africa underscores the fact that the Pentagon’s overly militarized approach to the problem has been a dismal failure,” said William Hartung, the director of the arms and security project at the Center for International Policy. “If anything, attempting to eradicate terrorism by force may be exacerbating the problem, provoking a terrorist backlash and serving as a recruiting tool for extremist groups.”
It’s not a failure, it’s just that the US military is not in it to succeed. Their goal is to generate sortees, theater ribbons, promotions, and a justification for an ever increasing budgets.
Bleeding hearts will call this a failure, but there are military careers to be made here, baby.
Seriously, this has got to be the most wastefully run empire ever.
So, count me as dubious of the honesty of the FBI when its for response to an FOIA request on its files on the notorious Nazi website Stormfront was, “Oops, I lost everything,”particularly when their response, which were just reprints of a previous request, took 2½ years to provide:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in response to a Freedom of Information Act request that it had lost many of its files on the neo-Nazi website Stormfront, MuckRock reported.
Journalist Emma Best filed a FOIA request more than two years ago for the FBI’s information on Stormfront, at one point the most prominent white supremacist website. After years of back-and-forth, the bureau finally responded with just 104 pages. The organization acknowledged that there were likely more files, but that they couldn’t locate them.
Best requested rolling release, which meant that the papers that she did receive, which had already been processed for another request, should have taken 2½ weeks, not 2½ years.
Additionally, she requested that a search be made at field offices that was not done.
You can see the (maddening) exchanges with the FBI over this here.
Do I believe that the FBI slow-walked this request? Yes.
Do I believe that the FBI is actively supporting white supremacists? No.
Do I believe that the FBI is concerned that some of its agents, contractors, or paid informants might be actively supporting white supremacists, and a review of the records might reveal that? Yes.
In any case, it’s a profoundly troubling development.
Don’t make Bernie Sanders angry, you wouldn’t like it when he’s angry:
Rather unsurprisingly, the headline comes from Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, which always does a good job on headlines.
Uber and Lyft have already lost the suit and are now required to treat their employees as, well, employees, and there a bill was passed further extending this, but the SEIU is allying itself with the Gypsy cab companies to roll back these protections.
I guess that they think that getting some dues trumps the rights of workers that they are pretending to represent.
California’s labor movement recently seemed on the verge of a new era for worker rights. A state court ruled that workers in the gig economy should have many of the protections of employment, like a minimum wage and overtime pay. And the State Assembly passed a bill codifying that ruling and adding more protections.
But any celebration was premature. Behind the scenes, a few large unions had been meeting with the giants of the ride-hailing industry, Uber and Lyft, to discuss a way to exempt drivers from full employment protections, according to union and industry officials. The talks have created deep rancor within the labor ranks and set unions against one another.
Exempting Uber and Lyft from classifying drivers as employees would provide huge savings in labor costs and allow the companies to avert what could be an existential threat to their business.
In return, Uber and Lyft — which currently classify drivers as contractors — have publicly proposed to recognize a labor organization that would represent drivers’ interests on certain issues. The companies have also discussed providing drivers with benefits like retirement saving and paid time off and setting certain pay standards.
At a meeting of union officials within the last two weeks, the executive director of the California council of the Service Employees International Union, one of the unions in discussions with Uber and Lyft, put forth a proposal along these lines, according to two people who attended the meeting.
But on a conference call on Friday with the executive director, Alma Hernández, and several S.E.I.U. officials in California, one of the union’s national leaders, Heather Conroy, appeared to reject the idea, according to a person on the call. Ms. Conroy said the union supported full employee status, including the California bill that would enshrine it.
The change in the S.E.I.U.’s apparent openness to exploring less than full employment status comes amid considerable opposition to the idea both inside and outside the union. One local in California, the United Healthcare Workers West, has threatened to oppose such a proposal publicly, according to the union’s president, Dave Regan.
In mid-June, Héctor Figueroa, the head of a large S.E.I.U. local in New York, wrote of a similar proposal, “Collective bargaining without a minimum wage, which is what this would be, means that we are forced to bargain for what should already be rightfully ours.” Mr. Figueroa also criticized the companies’ attempt at negotiating a “back-room deal” in California.
David Huerta, the president of the United Service Workers West, an S.E.I.U. local in California, said in a statement, “Neither Alma nor S.E.I.U. have ever pushed forward anything that would take away employee status for gig workers or advocate for independent contractor status for any gig worker.” Mr. Huerta said he has attended internal and external meetings about gig workers with Ms. Hernández.
………
“We won a court case that gave workers rights,” said Cesar Diaz, the political and legislative director for the State Building and Construction Trades Council. “To cut some kind of deal that takes away rights, that is not what labor unions are about.” Mr. Diaz said that any move to include exemptions in the legislation could open the door to denying full employment protections to workers in other sectors.
In its 2018 decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that workers should be considered employees if they perform a task that’s part of the “usual course” of a company’s business. Most legal experts concluded that driving was central to Uber’s business and that drivers must be considered employees under the ruling, said Veena Dubal, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.
This May, the state’s Assembly passed a bill that would extend the ruling in certain respects and limit it in others. The court ruling applied mainly to minimum wage and overtime laws, while the legislation, Assembly Bill 5, would apply to all aspects of employment, including unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation and paid sick days. At the same time, the bill exempted certain high-paying professions from the Supreme Court ruling, such as doctors and real estate agents.
………
In July, the State Senate will hold hearings on the measure. Legislators working with Uber and Lyft could attach an exemption for drivers or write separate legislation to do so.
Despite the S.E.I.U.’s insistence that it supports the bill and full employment status for drivers, the union appears willing to continue negotiating with Uber and Lyft. It has created what it calls a “national bargaining committee to provide national leadership on the negotiations” with the companies, according to an email dated June 21 from Ms. Conroy, an executive vice president of the union, that was reviewed by The New York Times.
………
To fight their legislative battle in California, Uber and Lyft have resorted to a longstanding tactic: trying to mobilize drivers. Uber sent one message to drivers through its app saying that “unless the California Legislature takes action to modernize the law, you could lose your ability to work with multiple apps and control when and where you choose to drive with Uber,” then urged drivers to sign a petition. Uber said tens of thousands of drivers signed.
But it’s not clear how effective the tactic will be in an era of rising driver frustration over pay and arbitrary treatment, as well as regular driver protests.
………
Nicole Moore, a member of the organizing committee for Rideshare Drivers United, a driver group, said many drivers were upset by the efforts of Uber and Lyft to enlist them in fighting against employment status.
“I have never seen so many angry messages about ‘How dare they say I should advocate against my own rights?’” Ms. Moore said.
Nicole Moore is right.
This behavior is so abusive, self-destructive, short-sighted, and corrupt that you would think that the union executives are members of management, or a part of a venture capital firm..