Once again (but likely only fleetingly) the plight of crews on abandoned, uninsured, failing ships has hit the news.

Here is both a BBC news story about the plight of seafarers on this rusty hulks, where they have been abandoned, often having received no pay, and unable to either leave the ship or get home... and the piece I wrote for @NWBylines exploring this issue 18 months agp.

#shipping #workers

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cddg885344do

https://northwestbylines.co.uk/author/chrismay/

Something I came to realize years ago when I got to know some of the people working at Twitter, there are still good, principled people working at (at least some of) the Big Tech companies who still believe in the original stated ideals, and pushing for them from within.

Worker solidarity! ✊

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/business/google-employees-protest.html?unlocked_article_code=1.KVA.O6DE.gZMz2081kyab&smid=url-share

#news #USNews #USPol #ICE #workers #WorkersRights #solidarity #google

Once again (but likely only fleetingly) the plight of crews on abandoned, uninsured, failing ships has hit the news.

Here is both a BBC news story about the plight of seafarers on this rusty hulks, where they have been abandoned, often having received no pay, and unable to either leave the ship or get home... and the piece I wrote for @NWBylines exploring this issue 18 months agp.

#shipping #workers

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cddg885344do

https://northwestbylines.co.uk/author/chrismay/

Q. how much of the pressure from senior managers to bring workers back to the office more often (if not for the entire working week) is generational?

Are senior managers jealous of the 'freedoms' gained by younger staff working from home, never extended to them on their way up (when they were 'shackled' to a desk)?

If so, we may see the pressure on workers to be in the office ease as mangers retire?

#WorkingFromHome #workers
h/t FT

📣 New Podcast! "8 February 1840: NZ eight hour day" on @Spreaker #history #new #workers #zealand
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/8-february-1840-nz-eight-hour-day--69728377

Something I came to realize years ago when I got to know some of the people working at Twitter, there are still good, principled people working at (at least some of) the Big Tech companies who still believe in the original stated ideals, and pushing for them from within.

Worker solidarity! ✊

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/business/google-employees-protest.html?unlocked_article_code=1.KVA.O6DE.gZMz2081kyab&smid=url-share

#news #USNews #USPol #ICE #workers #WorkersRights #solidarity #google

📣 New Podcast! "7 February 1919: No Beer No Work movement" on @Spreaker #beer #history #workers
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/7-february-1919-no-beer-no-work-movement--69728400

"It’s one thing when a taxi is replaced by an Uber or a Lyft. It’s another thing when the jobs just go completely overseas."

https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/waymos-controlled-workers-philippines

#news #technology #TechNews #AI #waymo #automation #labor #workers

To counter the rise of AI, is the answer 'friction-maxing'? - making the inconvenient valuable - from calling in-person meetings, to reading books (rather than summaries), by preferring exercise classes (to the Peleton in the front room) and so on...

The rise of AI has spurred a cottage industry in predicting the sort of jobs that will survive based on issues of proximity & physical-personal service.

Friction-maxing applies that logic to our everyday lives as well.

#AI #workers
h/t FT

To counter the rise of AI, is the answer 'friction-maxing'? - making the inconvenient valuable - from calling in-person meetings, to reading books (rather than summaries), by preferring exercise classes (to the Peleton in the front room) and so on...

The rise of AI has spurred a cottage industry in predicting the sort of jobs that will survive based on issues of proximity & physical-personal service.

Friction-maxing applies that logic to our everyday lives as well.

#AI #workers
h/t FT

In 1992, Cicih Sukaesih led fellow Indonesian factory workers in a strike, part of a movement that led Nike to create its first code of conduct.

She's proud of the example she set. But she described her work as incomplete, as problems remain, including chronically low wages.
https://www.propublica.org/article/nike-factory-workers-rights-indonesia-advocate?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

#News #Nike #Indonesia #Labor #Union #Strike #Workers #Advocacy #HumanRights

@pluralistic > Disenshittification Nation (29 Jan 2026):

Like all the best Americans, I am a Canadian, and while I have lived abroad for more than two decades, I flatter myself that I am still steeped in our folkways, and so as is traditional at events like this, I would like to begin by apologising... I'm sorry... I'm really sorry... I know that at a tech event, you expect to hear from a speaker who will come up and tell you how to lose hundreds of billions of dollars building data-centres for the money-losingest technology in human history, a technology so wildly defective that we've had to come up with new, exotic words to describe its defects, like "hallucination." A technology that will never recoup the capex already firehosed on – let alone the trillions committed to it – and whose only possible path to glory is to somehow get so good that it makes millions of people unemployed... But don't worry: you can't make the word-guessing program into a "superintelligence" by shoveling more words into it...

#artificialTechnology #enshittification #disenshittification #counterdisruption #datacenters #workers #laborNews #tech #techNews #dmca #techHistory

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/29/post-american-canada/#ottawa

@pluralistic > Disenshittification Nation (29 Jan 2026):

Like all the best Americans, I am a Canadian, and while I have lived abroad for more than two decades, I flatter myself that I am still steeped in our folkways, and so as is traditional at events like this, I would like to begin by apologising... I'm sorry... I'm really sorry... I know that at a tech event, you expect to hear from a speaker who will come up and tell you how to lose hundreds of billions of dollars building data-centres for the money-losingest technology in human history, a technology so wildly defective that we've had to come up with new, exotic words to describe its defects, like "hallucination." A technology that will never recoup the capex already firehosed on – let alone the trillions committed to it – and whose only possible path to glory is to somehow get so good that it makes millions of people unemployed... But don't worry: you can't make the word-guessing program into a "superintelligence" by shoveling more words into it...

#artificialTechnology #enshittification #disenshittification #counterdisruption #datacenters #workers #laborNews #tech #techNews #dmca #techHistory

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/29/post-american-canada/#ottawa

Apparently, the Labour Govt. is having discussions about whether a universal basic income for those sectors whose employment prospects are most degraded by AI might be a strategic priority;

of course that's not UBI but sectoral support, and like in-work benefits would actually just be another subsidy to the employers.

So while it looks like a worker-friendly policy in the end it would just be more corporate welfare (if its only applied to some sectors).

#CorporateWelfare #AI #workers
h/t FT

Apparently, the Labour Govt. is having discussions about whether a universal basic income for those sectors whose employment prospects are most degraded by AI might be a strategic priority;

of course that's not UBI but sectoral support, and like in-work benefits would actually just be another subsidy to the employers.

So while it looks like a worker-friendly policy in the end it would just be more corporate welfare (if its only applied to some sectors).

#CorporateWelfare #AI #workers
h/t FT

Universities 2:

As Mark Tupper points out (on LinkedIn), the staff retention crisis in UK universities (compounding issues noted in my previous post) is not a well-being or a staff management issue, its more structural;

cuts to staffing have intensified the teaching demands (both in hours & the range of subjects - often outside the specialisms - they're being required to teach) while also expanding administration, leading to a dysfunctional churn of academic staff

#universities #workers

Universities 2:

As Mark Tupper points out (on LinkedIn), the staff retention crisis in UK universities (compounding issues noted in my previous post) is not a well-being or a staff management issue, its more structural;

cuts to staffing have intensified the teaching demands (both in hours & the range of subjects - often outside the specialisms - they're being required to teach) while also expanding administration, leading to a dysfunctional churn of academic staff

#universities #workers

📣 New Podcast! "22 January 1826: Acjachemen Nation strike" on @Spreaker #history #indigenous #workers
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/22-january-1826-acjachemen-nation-strike--69414708