P E O P L E R E D E F I N I N G
WORK
Being “Essential”: Giving Us the Upper Hand?
Delivery, grocery, and warehouse workers have been declared “essential” players in the US economy, exempting them from stay-at-home orders in many parts of the country. But while demand for their services have surged, workers are expressing growing...
Coronavirus and the Gig Economy
A protester holds a sign at an Amazon building during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in the Staten Island borough of New York City, March 30, 2020. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters) A pandemic hasn’t completely suspended the operation of economics in the...
Unemployment Benefits for Gig and Self-employed Stalled
Self-employed and gig workers may have to wait a little longer than other jobless Americans to get their unemployment benefits. The new coronavirus relief law significantly expanded the financial assistance it gives to out-of-work Americans, partly...
AI vs Your Career
Jill Watson has been a teaching assistant (TA) at the Georgia Institute of Technology for five years now, helping students day and night with all manner of course-related inquiries. But for all the hard work she has done, she still can't qualify for outstanding TA of...
AI Uncovers Outrageous Employee Expense Reports
Guns and bullets. Bulletproof vests. Nail salon excursions, jewelry and hangover kits. These are among the expenses employees bill to their companies, according to AppZen, a provider of financial software. You’ve got to hand it to them, employees are certainly...
Robots Make Burgers for $3/hour with No Breaks
In a test kitchen in a corner building in downtown Pasadena, Flippy the robot grabbed a fryer basket full of chicken fingers, plunged it into hot oil — its sensors told it exactly how hot — then lifted, drained and dumped maximally tender tenders into a waiting...
Activist Gig Workers Nonprofit to Support Fellow Workers
Vanessa Bain, a well-known gig worker-activist, has teamed up with fellow gig worker-activist Sarah Clarke (pseudonym) to form the Gig Workers Collective. It’s early days for the organization, which is a pending 501(c)(3) organization, but its ambitions are big. “We...
The future of work looks like staying out of the office
t's 2020: we finally live in the future! Or at least a future—one where broadband Internet connections and portable, reasonably high-powered computing tools are pervasive and widely accessible, even if they aren't yet universal. Millions of workers,...
