Lmst

Amazon blamed AI for layoffs, then hired cheap H1-B workers, senators allege https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/amazon-blamed-ai-for-layoffs-then-hired-cheap-h1-b-workers-senators-allege/ #uspoli #JeffBezos #Oligarchy #AI #H1B #WorkersWages #CheapLabour #unemployment

Day 19 💲

“Everyone should be paid a #FairWage for the #work they complete and it is time for the major parties to commit to this meaningful change for people with disability.

#People with #disability are being overlooked and left behind in the major party policy promises this election campaign.

… The answer to getting more people with disability into work is not to allow #CheapLabour, it’s to ensure we are funding #employment services that actually work, which allow people with disability to connect with work they find #meaningful and also gives them the opportunity to build their capacity to perform those roles.” — #DavidPocock

$3 an hour.

#AusPol / #Independent / #LNP / #Liberal / #Nationals / #Labor <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/apr/17/australia-election-2025-live-peter-dutton-anthony-albanese-coalition-labor-income-tax-cost-of-living-leaders-debate-ntwnfb?page=with%3Ablock-68001d5c8f08bcf9ff48311e#block-68001d5c8f08bcf9ff48311e>

@tknarr @lauren

To me, the whole "H1-B is for when you simply cannot find a qualified citizen/green-card candidate" problem could be solved with what seems to me to be a missing requirement.

If you "can't find" a matching candidate, clearly you've already tried recruiting with generous compensation etc. So if you're forced to go outside the national labour pool, it should obviously be that anyone you hire on an H1-B is right at the top of your compensation, right?

i.e. hire an H1-B engineer, they had better be the highest-paid (or tied for highest) engineer in the company.

If you enforce that, the cheap-labour abuse just goes away...

But of course, every complex problem has a simple, easy to understand wrong answer, so maybe I'm missing something.

#scam #abuse #visa #employer #labour #labor #CheapLabour #CheapLabor #cheap #H1B

TheCathyWilcox
@cathywilcox
@smh @theage cartoon.

#Gaza #Ceasefire #COP28 #immigration #cheaplabour #privateschools

Domestic employee of former Indian high commissioner forced to work every day for 17.5 hours and paid just $9 per day #slavery #australia #cheaplabour #exploitation

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-05/former-indian-high-commissioner-compensate-domestic-employee/103066848

Got an email about how universities are tackling food insecurity. I naively thought they were starting new food programs/initiatives for grad and undergraduate students, but that was not the case. They're just trying to develop lab grown meat. #FoodInsecurity #CheapLabour #academia

Care crisis: Why migrant labour and AI won’t solve our problems | openDemocracy
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/emily-kenway-care-crisis-failing-bots-migrant-labour-work/

#CareCrisis
#CheapLabour
#AI
#Carers
#Disability
#UnpaidCarers
#Migrants
#MigrantWorkers

"Postdoctoral researchers earn an average of $47,500 a year — a little more than half of the average annual salary for university graduates. Moreover, postdocs face constant upheaval, because they typically have to move to a new role every few years. Some researchers spend a decade or longer jumping from one short-term contract to the next."
#JobInsecurity #ContractWork #CheapLabour #academia #government

The U.S. Is Choosing Child Labor Over More Immigration
#ChildLabor
#ChildLabour
#Immigrants
#CheapLabour
#CheapLabor

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/labor-shortages-child-labor-migrants.html

“The obscenity of the system is made possible by the dramatically diminished bargaining power of #labour. Weak labour is #CheapLabour. More lucratively, the world’s #workers can increasingly be mobilised according to #employers’ precise needs, so not a penny is wasted. The purpose is to transform the #HumanWorker into a machine that can be switched off when not in use (although at least machines are tended with maintenance). In 2020, #Amazon’s UK sales soared by half to £19.4bn. In 2021, an investigation in Britain found that the company was bypassing its own #employment #standards by hiring thousands of zero-hours workers through #agencies.” — #NesrineMalik

Zero-hour workers.

#corporate / #economics <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/23/system-rigged-inequality-pandemic-despair-super-rich>

With oligarch funding (& corporate capture) and having emerged as advocates of cheap #Labour they've moved so far right they deserve their new brand name 'The #CheapLabour' Party should be trending.
In all honesty I can't understand how any #TradeUnion remains affiliated.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/08/labour-refusing-to-promise-repeal-of-tory-anti-strike-laws?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

"No return to #FOM"?
Is that #UKLabour's DREAM offer?

Will I have to vote Labour, yet again, without sharing its vision, just because it's my only option to get the bloody #Tories OUT?

I want an end to #cheaplabour. And I want everybody to stop thinking of the EU as a source of that.

I want to #RejoinEU BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE WE BELONG.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/nov/22/keir-starmer-vows-to-wean-business-off-cheap-labour

@bogoeskiv
I'm so glad someone's addressing this.

If #Qatar brings #labourExploitation to the fore worldwide, maybe the #Brexit voices in the #UK that only miss the #EU as a source of #cheaplabour will shut up. They are a betrayal of our struggle to #Rejoin and of our best aspirations for the development of the EU.

@schestowitz
Hmm.

The author of the article is suggesting just another #technofix, while screaming #ecofash.

#MichaelMoore's film is correct to talk about #populationGrowth.

We need to have this discussion.

Since the start of the year there's been about 30 million #unwantedBirths. A true injustice *still* being perpetrated by wealthy zealots who just want more #consumers and #cheapWorkers.

#cheapLabour #philippines #lithium #southAmerica #california #somalia #teenPregnancy #population

Favourite quote of the past week(s):

"They said #Bitcoin was too volatile..."

#pumpAndDump #stockMarket #wallStreet #ponziScheme #superannuation #pensionFunds #passiveInvesting #passiveInvestment #forcedInvestment #smsf #moneyPrinting #tooBigTooExist #ignorance #techUnicorns #siliconValley #sillyconValley #google #uber #facebook #facebookCoin #libraCoin #boeing #airTravel #coronavirus #factoryFarming #justInTime #manufacturing #globalism #supplychains #labourExploitation #cheapLabour

The extremely #weathly in #Australia and #boomers think everything is hunky-dory.

But ask the youth, or those cast aside by #automation, #offshoring and #cheapLabour and the results are very different.

Interestingly 54% of #Australians think there is a problem with #tooManyPeople coming to Australia - 27% despair over the numbers.

Is it time the the #media took this issue seriously?

www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-08/annabel-crabb-australia-talks-what-australians-worry-about/11579644

Les étudiants du Québec manifestent pour des stages rémunérés

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1137139/etudiants-manifestent-stages-remuneres-quebec

#éducation #stages #cheaplabour #équitable #Québec

« La compensation financière du fameux « stage 4 » en éducation est un bon début, mais dans bien d’autres domaines, le « cheap labour » demeure un passage obligé du parcours collégial et universitaire. Trop d’étudiantes et d’étudiants, déjà aux prises avec une situation précaire, sont mis au pied du mur par le laissez-faire du gouvernement. »

https://quebecsolidaire.net/nouvelle/mouvement-de-greve-pour-la-remuneration-des-stages-le-gouvernement-doit-sasseoir-avec-les-etudiantes-et-les-etudiants-gabriel-nadeau-dubois

#éducation #stages #cheaplabour #équitable #Québec

150 Years after the 13th Amendment

After the United States civil war, in 1865 the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution were approved by Congress and ratified.

What seems so natural, so obvious and simple was not so simple in the New World. it took a long time before the majority was willing to accept it was wrong in every sense.

13th Amendment of the nited States Constitution. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

But lots of pioneers who came from Europe and liked those cheap labour-forces did not want to have those “monkies” like they were often called, being part of their normal co-habitats.

Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad looking at an album of photographs. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

President Abraham Lincoln (1861–1865) had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, based on congressional acts, which gave the president authority to confiscate rebel property and forbid the military from returning slaves of rebels to their owners. Being liberated from their masters those Negroes started to create their own free businesses. Only addressing the rebelling southern states the proclamation did not resolve the issue of slavery for the nation as a whole. It was thought the Thirteenth Amendment (the first of the three so-called “Civil War Amendments“) would bring a solution for all coloured people, prohibiting slavery throughout the country. To extend the rights of citizenship to all people regardless of race or colour the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were added.

Congress enacted a number of statutes to enforce the provisions of the Civil War Amendments, but by the end of the nineteenth century, most of those statutes had been overturned by the courts, repealed, or nullified by subsequent legislation.

Segregation of the races in schools, public accommodations, public transportation, and various other aspects of public life, was honoured for a long time after the amendment was written.

It has taken many man years before that all persons could have full and equal enjoyment of public inns, parks, theatres, and other places of amusement, regardless of race or colour. Even today, anno 2015, we see that in the United states there are still many states or regions where the white people are not so happy with those with a darker skin. In several regions it is still more difficult for a coloured man to find work than for a white man.

1904 caricature of “White” and “Jim Crow” rail cars by John T. McCutcheon. Despite Jim Crow’s legal pretense that the races be “separate but equal” under the law, non-whites were given inferior facilities and treatment {John McCutheon. The Mysterious Stranger and Other Cartoons by John T. McCutcheon, New York, McClure, Phillips & Co. 1905.}

The Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 by an 8–1 vote, holding that Congress had exceeded its authority to enforce the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court held that private discrimination against African Americans did not violate the Thirteenth Amendment’s ban on slavery. Following this decision, several northern and western states began enacting their own bans on discrimination in public places. But many other states did the opposite: they began codifying racial segregation and discrimination in laws that became known as the Jim Crow laws. Enacted after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued in force until 1965.

Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Potter Stewart (1915–1985)

Justice Potter Stewart, writing for the majority, turned to the Thirteenth Amendment and observed that it was adopted to remove the “badges of slavery” and that it gave Congress power to effect that removal. Stewart wrote:

Congress has the power under the Thirteenth Amendment rationally to determine what are the badges and the incidents of slavery, and the authority to translate that determination into effective legislation…. [W]hen racial discrimination herds men into ghettos and makes their ability to buy property turn on the color of their skin, then it too is a relic of slavery.

Normally this 13° amendment also enables Congress to pass laws against sex trafficking and other modern forms of slavery, but the sex trafficking is still a very flourishing business, though some part may come under threat when Donald Trump shall be able to get a firm wall between the Mexican border with increased controls.

“At the bus station in Durham, North Carolina.” May 1940, Jack Delano. Deutsch: “An der Bushaltestelle, Durham, North Carolina.”, Mai 1940, Jack Delano. Français : “A la gare routière, Durham, Caroline du Nord.”, Mai 1940, Jack Delano. Español: “En la estación de autobuses, Durham, Carolina del Norte.”, Mayo de 1940, Jack Delano. Italiano: “Alla fermata dell’autobus, Durham, Carolina del Nord.” Maggio del 1940, Jack Delano. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was a long overdue step in the long road the Americans continue to walk in their efforts to address and uproot the systemic injustices embedded into their society. Still today we can see there too many people being forced to terrible inhuman conditions.

Having politicians speaking arrogantly about other coloured and other cultured people makes it that other Americans do not see any harm in using those people as cheap labour and treating them as scum. This week in Europe we once more got to see and hear how a man with lots of money could point his finger to those whom he considered to be cullings and scourings which were just there to be used outside the United states of America to produce cheap products for the American White supremacy.

In the Republican primary the material or essence of those amendments from 150 years ago are at large.

In Europe many people, like me, were afraid the first black president of America would have been put in the grave soon. It worked out differently, for the good. Though lots of good ideas were retained by the republicans, America may be proud of the work Barack Obama still could establish with all that counteraction.

Standing in the United States Capitol today, President Obama reflected on the history of the progress which was made in the United States of America — hard-fought, hard-won, incomplete, but always possible.

Watch his remarks here about the century and a half of freedom and about the stealing of men, women and children from their homelands, separating husbands from wives and parents from children:

*

As many made clear at the time of its ratification, the 13th Amendment was not a final step, but rather the first step in making real the promise that all men are created equal. Read the letter that Annie Davis, an enslaved woman living in Maryland, wrote to President Lincoln asking if she was free after he had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. He never replied, but the answer was no. It would take an amendment to Maryland’s constitution — and the 13th Amendment — to ensure that she and all enslaved people in the U.S. were free in the eyes of the law.

“President Lincoln understood that if we were ever to fully realize that founding promise, it meant not just signing an Emancipation Proclamation, not just winning a war. It meant making the most powerful collective statement we can in our democracy — etching our values into our Constitution.”

The 13th Amendment: 150 Years Later, President Obama Reflects on the Abolition of Slavery 9 December 2015

“We would do a disservice to those warriors of justice — Tubman and Douglass, and Lincoln and King — were we to deny that the scars of our nation’s original sin are still with us today. We condemn ourselves to shackles once more if we fail to answer those who wonder if they’re truly equals in their communities, or in their justice systems, or in a job interview. We betray the efforts of the past if we fail to push back against bigotry in all its forms.”

“For however slow, however incomplete, however harshly, loudly, rudely challenged at each point along our journey, in America, we can create the change that we seek.

“All it requires is that our generation be willing to do what those who came before us have done: to rise above the cynicism and rise above the fear, to hold fast to our values, to see ourselves in each other, to cherish dignity and opportunity not just for our own children but for somebody else’s child. To remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others — regardless of what they look like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice…

“That is our choice. Today we affirm hope.”

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Preceding

Coming closer to the end of 2015 and the end for Donald Trump as presidential candidate

Vatican against Opponents of immigration

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Additional reading

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Further related articles

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How SCOTUS perverted the “equal protection” clause of Sec. 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. (siriuscoffee.com)
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