ZIONIST AGRESSION AGAINST LEBANON

Lebanon says Israeli GPS jamming confounding ground, air traffic

By AFP
July 2, 2024

Whacky location data on apps have caused confusion in Lebanon, as fears have grown of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah - Copyright AFP JOSEPH EID
Laure Al Khoury

Uber driver Hussein Khalil was battling traffic in Beirut when he found himself in the Gaza Strip — according to his online map, anyway — as location jamming blamed on Israel disrupts life in Lebanon.

“We’ve been dealing with this problem a lot for around five months,” said Khalil, 36.

“Sometimes we can’t work at all,” the disgruntled driver told AFP on Beirut’s chaotic, car-choked streets.

“Of course, we are losing money.”

For months, whacky location data on apps have caused confusion in Lebanon, where the Hezbollah militant group has been engaged in cross-border clashes with Israel.

The near-daily exchanges started after Hamas, Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally, launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, triggering the ongoing war in Gaza.

In March, Beirut lodged a complaint with the United Nations about “attacks by Israel on Lebanese sovereignty in the form of jamming the airspace around” the Beirut airport.

Khalil showed AFP screenshots of apps displaying his locations not only in the Gazan city of Rafah — around 300 kilometres (185 miles) away — but also in east Lebanon near the Syrian border, when he was actually in Beirut.

With online maps loopy, Khalil said “one passenger phoned me and asked, ‘Are you in Baalbek?'” referring to a city in east Lebanon.

“I told her: ‘No, I’ll be at your location (in Beirut) in two minutes’.”

Numerous residents have reported their online map location as appearing at Beirut airport while they were actually elsewhere in the capital.

Since Hamas’s October 7 attack, Israel has taken measures to disrupt Global Positioning System (GPS) functionality for the group and other opponents.



– Drones, guided missiles –



The Israeli army said in October that it disrupted GPS “in a proactive manner for various operational needs”.

It warned of “various and temporary effects on location-based applications”.

Specialist site gpsjam.org, which compiles geolocation signal disruption data based on aircraft data reports, reported a low level of disruption around Gaza on October 7.

But the next day, disturbances increased around the Palestinian territory and also along the border between Israel and Lebanon.

On June 28, the level of interference showing on the site was high above Lebanon and parts of Syria, Jordan and Israel.

An AFP journalist in Jerusalem said her location appeared as if she was in Cairo, Egypt’s capital about 400 kilometres away.

The interference has at times extended to European Union member Cyprus, some 200 kilometres from Lebanon, where AFP journalists have reported their GPS location appearing at Beirut airport instead of on the island.

“Israel is using GPS jamming to disrupt or interfere with Hezbollah’s communications,” said Freddy Khoueiry, global security analyst for the Middle East and North Africa at risk intelligence company RANE.

It is “also using GPS spoofing… to send false GPS signals, aimed at disrupting and hindering drones’ and precision-guided missiles’ abilities to function or hit their targets,” he added.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has “a large arsenal” of such GPS-assisted weapons, he noted.

The cross-border exchanges have killed more than 490 people in Lebanon — mostly fighters — according to an AFP tally, with 26 people killed in northern Israel, according to authorities there.

Fears have grown of all-out conflict between the foes that last went to war in 2006.



– ‘Compass and paper map’ –



Asked about GPS jamming in northern Israel, where Hezbollah has concentrated its attacks, a spokesperson for Israel’s defence ministry told AFP’s Jerusalem office that “currently, we are unable to discuss operational matters”.

Lebanon’s civil aviation chief Fadi El-Hassan said that since March, the body has asked pilots flying in or out of Beirut to “rely on ground navigation equipment and not on GPS signals due to the ongoing interference in the region”.

Ground navigation equipment is typically used as a back-up system.

Hassan expressed frustration that “in this technological age, a pilot who wants to land at our airport cannot use GPS due to Israeli enemy interference”.

Lebanon is ensuring “the maintenance of ground navigation equipment at all times in order to provide the necessary signals for pilots to land safely,” he said.

Avedis Seropian, a licenced pilot, said he had stopped using GPS in recent months.

“We got used to the situation. I don’t rely on (GPS) at all… I fly relying on a compass and paper map,” he told AFP.

But he said not having GPS, even as a fallback, was disconcerting.

When geolocation data is wrong and visibility is poor, “you can suddenly find yourself in a state of panic”, he said.

“That could lead to an accident or a disaster.”

Israel prepares for possible war with Hezbollah as Hamas conflict drags on

LEBANON HAS THE RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE 

Hamas has been weakened but could recover, concerned officials admit.

ByMatt Gutman
July 2, 2024

IDF orders more evacuations from southern Gaza
More than 250,000 civilians have been ordered to evacuate the southern city of Khan Younis as operations continue


TEL AVIV -- The Israeli military is preparing a phased pullout from Gaza and quietly pressing the government to broker a truce with Hamas as quickly as possible, as the military works to clear the decks ahead of what officials say could be a withering war with the powerful Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah.

One Israeli official said today that if the barometer is destroying Hamas’s pre-war capabilities – which included clearly designated battalions with sophisticated coordination and communications – and removing Hamas from as Gaza's government, then Israel has already achieved that.

Multiple Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have signaled that Israel will begin to draw down forces in Gaza as it enters into what it has called "Phase C" of its war, with a significantly reduced number of troops focusing on what one official described as “fighting Hamas hotspots and hunting high-value targets.”

Another Israeli official conceded to ABC News that “Hamas still has a large influence over what’s taking place in Gaza – that’s the main thing. We need to try to create an alternative.”


Black smoke billows following an Israeli air strike that targeted a house in the southern Lebanese villag...Show more
Rabih Daher/AFP via Getty Images

Israel’s own status map, which depicts the fighting condition of all of Hamas’ 24 pre-war battalions, designates one of the battalions in Rafah as green, which means operational, and another as orange, which is semi-operational.


Hamas' continued influence in Gaza has not fully mitigated lawlessness there. with European and Israeli officials warning for months that the Gaza Strip could turn into “Mogadishu on the Mediterranean,” a reference to the decades of internecine fighting and instability in Somalia’s capital.

In high-level meetings in Washington last week, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed potential "day after" plans for Gaza, according to four U.S. and Israeli officials who spoke to ABC News.

One of the plans would comprise an international "board of directors" that U.S. officials are likening to a steering committee of nations that would include the UAE, Egypt, and possibly Jordan. Morocco would send peacekeepers to Gaza, with the U.S. somehow providing general oversight and command and control. The response from Arab states to the proposal has been lukewarm, a senior official with direct knowledge of the situation told ABC News.

MORE: What is Hezbollah? Lebanon's militant group has long been one of Israel's biggest foes

The "board of directors" would be coupled with a new a "bottom up" force that the U.S. would train and that would include contingents from the Palestinian Authority to lend it legitimacy, though not so many Palestinian contingents that Netanyahu, who has publicly dismissed any Palestinian Authority role in a future Gaza, would reject the plan, a senior Israeli official told ABC News.


An Israeli flag flies from a pole as behind smoke plumes rise from a fire in a field after rockets launched
Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images

The training of the Palestinian force in Gaza would be supervised by U.S. Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel, United States Security Coordinator of the Israel-Palestinian Authority who is based in Jerusalem. These units would begin to operate in small enclaves in Gaza.


Officials said it remains doubtful that these kinds of alternatives could be stood up quickly, which would potentially leave Hamas to control the power vacuum in Gaza. But a group of top Israeli officials interviewed this week said crushing an already debilitated Hamas, currently capable only of small-scale attacks on Israel, should be sidelined in favor of countering Hezbollah, which poses an existential threat to the state.

MORE: Israel is 'closer to war' with Hezbollah than ever, senior Israeli official says

To that end, the officials said, Israel should muster forces and conserve ammunition for an impending confrontation with Hezbollah, which has boasted of tens of thousands of Iranian-trained fighters, many of them seasoned from fighting in Syria’s civil war, and further thousands of missiles and rockets that could well overwhelm Israel’s air defenses.

The Israeli officials said Israel has sufficient offensive munitions for a war with Hezbollah, but could use more from the U.S.

Hezbollah said it began its cross-border war with Israel on Oct. 8, following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, out of solidarity with the Palestinians. Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Kassem, told the Associated Press Tuesday, "If there is a cease-fire in Gaza, we will stop without any discussion.”


An Israeli army main battle tank moves along an area near the border with the Gaza Strip and southern
Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

But Hezbollah also has signaled that it wouldn't agree to the U.S.-brokered deal until Israel ends the war in Gaza. The Israeli sources told ABC News that Hamas was stalling on committing to terms on the internationally brokered cease-fire knowing that a potential war with Hezbollah would significantly weaken Israel.

MORE: US sends USS Wasp assault ship and Marines to eastern Mediterranean

The larger issue is that regardless of the approach, it will take time, which is working against the process, U.S. and Israeli officials say, but is working in favor of Hamas. Multiple, multi-day operations in which Israel has reentered areas it cleared months ago and where Hamas has since regrouped have shown that the terrorist group has slowly and quietly reasserted itself in Gaza.

“Hamas has a large influence over what’s taking place in Gaza and that’s the main reason we need to try to create an alternative,” an Israeli official told ABC News. "You even see that over the effort Hamas has taken to control the looting of aid convoys."

Right now, Hamas has a head start, and it’s unclear whether an international force can be deployed, or a suitable local force can be trained, before it regains a potentially indomitable level of local control.

 

Canada is a force in AI research. So why can't we commercialize it?

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press

It has impressive research bench strength. It has billions of federal dollars for the taking. It's kind of a nice place to live. 

But when it comes to turning knowledge of artificial intelligence into companies, products and investment, Canada is lagging behind — and, some experts argue, actively shooting itself in the foot.

Why give up all that brain power to Silicon Valley? 

That was a major line of questioning as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke recently with tech journalists on a niche New York Times podcast. 

"We're proud of Canada's early role in developing AI," Trudeau said on Hard Fork, noting that many breakthroughs have happened because Canadian scientists are well-funded.

In 2017, Canada became the first country to have a national AI strategy. It launched a second phase five years later, allocating $443 million to connect research capacity with programs aimed at enabling commercialization. 

This year's federal budget included an additional $2.4-billion investment in AI. And the government has boasted that Canada has 10 per cent of "the world's top-tier AI researchers, the second most in the world."

Among them are two so-called godfathers of AI. 

But Ottawa is "fighting to make sure we keep our skin in the game," Trudeau told the podcast hosts. 

He made the pitch, saying Canada has many of the ingredients it needs: among other things, clean energy, a good quality of life for workers and government programs to encourage the sector. 

In spite of that, Canada hasn't always been "great at commercializing," Trudeau conceded.

More than that, Canadians have "fallen far behind," argued Benjamin Bergen, president of the Council of Canadian Innovators, which represents the tech sector. 

The government spent "a tremendous amount on the talent side of the equation," he said recently, but not on converting it "into building companies."

Bergen said the government has "institutionalized the transfer of our AI intellectual property to foreign firms."

The government's 2022 strategy update promised that the country's three AI institutes are "helping to translate research in artificial intelligence into commercial applications and growing the capacity of businesses to adopt these new technologies."

But Bergen argued an AI strategy focused on commercialization must start with Canada owning its own IP. "You cannot commercialize what you don't own."

Intellectual property lawyer Jim Hinton has been trying to quantify that problem.

And the numbers show "a train wreck I've been watching happen in slow motion," he said.

About three-quarters of patents produced by researchers who work for Toronto's Vector Institute and Montreal's Mila leave the country, and most of these are in the hands of Big Tech, Hinton's research has found. 

Another 18 per cent of the 244 patents he tracked — 198 from Vector and 46 from Mila — are now owned by North American academic institutions.

Just seven per cent are held in the Canadian private sector. 

Of the foreign-owned patents, the largest number, 65, went to Uber, while 35 landed with the Walt Disney Company. Nvidia, which recently displaced Microsoft as the world's most valuable company, got 34. 

IBM ended up with 15 and Google with 12. A handful of the patents were co-owned.

Foreign companies benefit from Canada’s public funding, Hinton argued, and there are "no guardrails put on the ability for these foreign companies to basically pillage Canada's really good AI invention." 

Researchers can work at the AI institutes and foreign tech companies at the same time, Hinton said, charging that this is what allows the tech giants to take advantage.

The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, which co-ordinates the government’s AI strategy, pushed back strongly on that assertion. 

Executive director Elissa Strome said a "small number of our researchers" have part-time employment in the private sector.

"Those private-sector organizations own the rights to the IP that is generated by those researchers," she said, but only when they're on the clock for those companies.

Strome said it's long-standing practice in Canadian research "that there are relationships around contract research with industry," and "a really strong firewall" is in place between IP generated via public funds at the AI institutes and that which is generated through private funds. 

She said Hinton's statistic on patents was inaccurate, but did not provide data to refute his findings.

She also argued that patents are not a good measure of commercialization, and "it’s the people that we're training in the AI ecosystem that actually hold the greatest value in AI, not patents."

When it comes to sponsorship agreements at Toronto's Vector, any IP created at the institute "belongs to Vector," a spokesperson said, adding it is not the primary employer for most of its researchers.

If academics don't have an opportunity to work for companies, they're more likely to leave altogether, Montreal's Mila said in a statement. It said the three institutes have turned around a "massive brain drain in AI in Canada" that existed prior to 2017.

The multi-billion-dollar investment in this year's budget seeks to further protect against that brain drain by beefing up Canadian infrastructure and computing power. 

The envelope includes a "relatively small" amount of money to help Canadian companies scale up, noted Paul Samson, president of the Centre for International Governance Innovation. 

Overall, the government is "doing the right thing" by ensuring that's part of the equation, he said. 

But people in the tech sector are skeptical. Bergen said companies were given little time to provide input.

"The government already had a top-down strategy that it wanted to implement … and didn't really care what CEOs and leaders of domestic firms were actually needing in order to be successful," he said. 

Nicole Janssen, co-CEO of AI company AltaML, raised the concern that the Canadian government might end up simply throwing money at American firms to move north. 

"What I'm trying to figure out is how the government thinks they're going to spend $2 billion on building computers without just handing that $2 billion to Microsoft," Janssen said.

The budget said the money would go towards both access to computational power and developing AI infrastructure that is Canadian-owned and located in Canada. 

A spokesperson for Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said more details would be provided in the coming weeks. 

Companies like Microsoft and Nvidia are already looking to Canada as a place to build computing infrastructure, Janssen said, due to factors like climate and relative political stability.

"We don't need to do anything to attract them."

A better approach, Janssen said, would see the government helping Canadian firms adopt AI more quickly — a gap her company has been trying to help fill. 

It takes AltaML an average of 18 months to start building an AI product in Canada, she said, compared to four months in the United States.

"We definitely do not have the ecosystem of companies that you would expect for the amount of talent that we have," she said.

There's real clout at Canada's AI institutes, with veterans Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton heading up Mila and Vector, respectively. 

They and other elite researchers have "attracted students from all over the world to come study under them," said Janssen, and that's a big advantage for Canada, especially if it wants, as Trudeau said on the podcast, to lead in developing a more democratic AI. 

The prime minister said one of his biggest preoccupations is maximizing "the chance that it actually leads to better outcomes and better lives for everyone" instead of only benefiting those "with the deepest pockets."

Canada could be a leader in responsible AI, Janssen said.

"That is a title that is up for grabs," she said. "And no one has grabbed it yet."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 26, 2024.

Massachusetts Uber, Lyft drivers win $32.50 wage in AG labor violations settlement

Uber and Lyft drivers have won a minimum pay rate of $32.50 per hour in Massachusetts. Uber will pay $148 million and Lyft will pay $27 million to settle labor law violation charges.

 File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | 

June 28 (UPI) -- Uber and Lyft drivers have won a minimum pay rate of $32.50 per hour in an action brought by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. It includes a $175 million payment from the app ride companies to settle labor law violation claims.

"For years, these companies have underpaid their drivers and denied them basic benefits. Today's agreement holds Uber and Lyft accountable, and provides their drivers, for the very first time in Massachusetts, guaranteed minimum pay, paid sick leave, occupational accident insurance, and health care stipends," Cambell said in a statement

Uber will pay $148 million and Lyft will pay $27 million, according to Cambell's office.

She said most of that amount will be distributed as restitution to current and former drivers "who were underpaid by the companies."

Related

Uber, Lyft threaten to leave Minneapolis after veto of minimum wage bill overridden
Labor Dept. rule restores requirements to classify workers as independent contractors
New York announces $328 million settlement with Uber, Lyft over driver wage theft

An Uber statement said, "In resolving a longstanding lawsuit in Massachusetts, we have reached an agreement with Attorney General Andrea Campbell that gives drivers access to new protections and benefits, including the nation's first portable health insurance benefit fund, while preserving their ability to work independently."

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey commended Campbell for her successful labor rights violations lawsuit.

"Our lawsuit against Uber and Lyft was always about fairness for drivers," Healey said in a statement. "I congratulate Attorney General Campbell and her team for securing this settlement that delivers historic wages and benefits to right the wrongs of the past and ensure drivers are paid fairly going forward."

Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Chrissy Lynch echoed the praise.

"This settlement includes a comprehensive package of strong wages, benefits and protections for the drivers that these corporations have been exploiting for years. We deeply appreciate AG Campbell's hard work holding these corporations rightfully accountable to Massachusetts employment laws," Lynch said.

The settlement with Uber and Lyft provide a range of labor protections and benefits for workers who drive for the companies.

They include a health insurance benefit, guaranteed paid sick leave and requirements to provide drivers with more detailed pay information as well as protections against the companies discriminating against drivers on race. religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

The settlement prevents the companies from retaliating against drivers who filed complaints with the Attorney General's office or have sought payment or benefits under the settlement.

HIP HOP CULTURE IN PARIS

Break-dancers seek to elevate sport at Paris Olympics


 Breaker Victor "B-Boy Victor" Montalvo will represent Team USA at Paris 2024.

 Photo by Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA-EFE

June 28 (UPI) -- Team USA's first Olympic breaking team is gratified to be a part of the sport's Olympic debut at Paris 2024, but pioneers and officials from the American-birthed dance form remain vexed about its snub from LA 2028.

Sunny "B-Girl Sunny" Choi and Victor "B-Boy Victor" Montalvo were the first Americans to qualify for the historic U.S. breaking team. Jeffrey "B-Boy Jeffro" Louis and Logan "B-Girl Logistx" Edra earned Team USA's remaining spots last weekend in Budapest.

"It's interesting," Louis recently told the Team USA website. "A lot of breakers feel we've got to keep the hip-hop, keep it underground.

"The problem with doing that," he said, "is that you can't shine a lot on the sport by keeping it in the dark."

The young dancers are eager to bring breaking to new heights, but those who built it, starting from Bronx neighborhood parties in the 1970s, feel discouraged about its future after it was left off the program for 2028.

"For me, it's like a slap in the face to the art form and to a hip-hop culture, when you look at the French picking breaking [for Paris 2024], but the country where breaking originated turned its back on it," breaking legend Richard "Crazy Legs" Colón told UPI.

Colón, 58, is widely recognized as one of the best breakers ever. The Bronx native is an original member of the Rock Steady Crew -- a dance group that toured the world -- and has consistently been profiled by media outlets and even performed in movies, including Flashdance. He also mentors, teaches and facilitates events to further promote young breakers.




Although Colón said that he would "be gutted" to perform at the Olympics while knowing that the United States rejected breaking's placement in the 2028 Summer Games, he also said legendary breakers shouldn't "trample on the futures" of younger Olympians.

Tony "Mr. Wave" Wesley, another pioneer of the dance form, said breaking's inclusion in Paris is "unimaginable."

"It was unimaginable that it would go this far," Wesley told Good Morning America. "It helped us clear our minds. It helped us gain positive thoughts and work real hard at something that we weren't used to working hard at.

"So, for it to move all the way until the Olympics, all the way into this platform, to be recognized globally, it is a feat."

Dance federations from around the world expressed disappointment when breaking was snubbed from the 2028 Summer Games, and they are focused having it included in 2032 in Brisbane, Australia.

In October, World DanceSport Federation president Shawn Tay cited anticipated success in Paris as part of that effort.




"We worked relentlessly over many months to present a powerful and passionate proposal that detailed all the many advantages breaking as a dance sport discipline brings to the Olympic Movement and Olympic Games," Tay said.

"Ensuring the success of breaking's Olympic debut at Paris 2024 is therefore on the forefront of the WDSF agenda."

Thirty-two dancers will compete -- 16 men and 16 women -- at the Summer Games. Team USA, Japan, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy and several South American countries are expected to be top contenders for Olympic glory.

Who to watch

B-Boy Phil Wizard of Canada, B-Boy Shigekix of Japan and B-Boy Dany of France join B-Boy Victor and B-Boy Jeffro among the top expected men's contenders in Paris.

B-Girl Ami of Japan, B-Girl 671 of China, B-Girl Nicka of Lithuania and B-Girl Anti of Italy are among the top women's breakers headed to Paris.

Excitement and spontaneity are intrinsic in breaking, as dancers aren't told the music to which they will perform. They frequently use top rock -- stand-up moves -- and freeze -- when they pause in positions like on their heads and hands -- amid acrobatic routines.

Olympic judges will calculate 60% of the dancers' scores based on performativity and creativity. The other 40% will be based on technique, personality, variety and musicality.

Showstoppers often flow from down rock -- floor moves -- which include spins, footwork, power moves, and transitions. Breakers will spin their bodies while on their hands, elbows, back, shoulders and heads.

Breaking power moves include the Colón-created windmill, head spins and the air flare, which involves circular body rotations while upside down and shifting balance on either arm.

Breakers train for competition in a variety of ways, based on performance strengths, using yoga, weight lifting, and more to maximize power, explosion and flexibility, and to avoid injuries.

Dr. Anatolia Vick-Kregel, the assistant director of fitness and wellness at Rice University, said a good core foundation and strength training routine, conditioning and mobility are vital to avoid injuries.

"That should be across the board, but especially for all breakers, it is vital to have a strong core, which is more than just your abs," Vick-Kregel said.

Breakers should be "doing exercises that that train each aspect of the core, and then given how much they're also on their on their wrists, and doing so much with their upper body, doing a lot of shoulder stability things," she said.

"Really, you want to train those stabilizer muscles, as well, to make sure they are extremely strong and can hold you through these explosive movements."

Vick-Kregel said wrist injuries are the most common ones for breakers, but any moves that put a lot of weight on the head likely involve the most potential for danger.




Breaking battles generally include two or three throw downs -- one-on-one matchups -- leading to the final. The final often features three or five throw downs.

While style and rhythm are uber prevalent during breaking performances, the risk and raw athleticism it takes to compete should keep eyes glued to Olympic coverage.

"You feel our energy," Choi told TIME. "You feel the excitement, you feel the happiness or the anger or whatever emotion that the dancer is expressing in that moment. It's so visceral and raw. I don't think you get that anywhere else."

Waabi CEO aims to launch driverless trucks 'faster and safer than everybody else'

Jordan Fleguel, BNN Bloomberg

The founder and CEO of Toronto-based autonomous driving startup Waabi says her company is on the verge of launching driverless freight trucks that could revolutionize North American supply chains.

Raquel Urtasun told BNN Bloomberg’s Jon Erlichman at the Collision technology conference in Toronto on Wednesday that she started Waabi in 2021 with the goal of introducing cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology to the physical world.

“When I built Waabi it was really about building this next-generation technology that would enable us to go so much faster and safer than everybody else,” Urtasun said.

Urtasun, a University of Toronto professor and the former chief scientist of Uber’s self-driving unit, is widely considered a world leader in AI and machine learning research, and she’s won over some high-profile investors since Waabi’s founding.

The company announced on Tuesday that it raised US$200 million in Series B funding from backers including Nvidia Corp., Uber Technologies Inc. and Volvo AB.

Urtasun said that Nvidia’s Chief Executive Jensen Huang has taken a personal interest in Waabi, and has been a supporter of her AI research for more than a decade.

In a statement released by Waabi on Tuesday, Huang said he’s “excited to support Raquel’s vision through our investment in Waabi, which is powered by Nvidia technology.”

“I have championed Raquel’s pioneering work in AI for more than a decade. Her tenacity to solve the impossible is an inspiration.”

Waabi intends to use the investment to grow its commercial operations and expand its team in Canada and the U.S., the statement said. The company recently opened a trucking terminal in Texas and expects to officially launch a fleet of driverless trucks as soon as next year.

Capital-efficient approach

Urtasun said that while Waabi’s second round of financing was one of the largest in Canadian history, it’s a relatively small amount of invested capital compared to the company’s major U.S. competitors.

She said this is partly due to Waabi’s approach, which is more capital-efficient than other large companies that are developing autonomous driving tech, like Tesla or Alphabet Inc. through its Waymo subsidiary.

Rather than sending a fleet of vehicles on public roads for training purposes, Waabi uses a digital simulator to design and test different scenarios in order to teach its AI system how to react to real-world challenges.

The company said in the statement that this keeps costs down and gives its self-driving system “human-like reasoning, enabling it to generalize to any situation that might happen on the road, including those it has never seen before.”

Despite the recent fundraising success, Urtasun said that it makes sense for Waabi to remain a private company for the time being, but kept the idea of going public on the table.

“What is definite I can say is that there’s a lot of interest for Waabi potentially being public one day,” she said. “We will see when is the right time and if there is a right time.”

Waabi raises US$200 million to deploy driverless trucks by 2025

Tuhin Kar, Bloomberg News   

Jun 18, 2024

Autonomous driving startup Waabi Innovation Inc. has raised US$200 million from investors including Uber Technologies Inc., Nvidia Corp. and Volvo AB’s venture wing to support its deployment of driverless trucks as soon as 2025.

Toronto-based Waabi will use the investment to grow its commercial operations and expand its team in Canada and the U.S., where it recently opened a trucking terminal in Texas, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Founded in 2021, it’s one of a handful of autonomous trucking startups, including Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, whose Via unit specializes in freight, as well as Aurora Innovation, Gatik AI, and TuSimple Holdings Inc.

Unlike Waymo and other self-driving rivals including Tesla Inc., Waabi’s approach does not rely on the capital- and compute-intensive operation of a fleet of vehicles driving for millions of miles on public roads for training purposes. Instead, it uses a digital simulator to design and test different scenarios to teach its AI system how to handle different real-world challenges.

This approach keeps costs down and gives its AI system “human-like reasoning, enabling it to generalize to any situation that might happen on the road, including those it has never seen before,” the company said in the statement. 

Khosla Ventures led the oversubscribed funding round with Uber, with contributions from Porsche Automobil Holding SE and Ingka Investments among others. The round brings Waabi’s total funding to about $280 million.

Will the Revolution Be Funded?

Organizers and researchers Zac Chapman and Nairuti Shastry examine how movements can build power by working within, without, and against philanthropy.'

By Zac Chapman, Nairuti Shastry 

June 15, 2024

Source: The Forge


Image credit: Big Door Brigade



In April 2022, grassroots organization Mijente unveiled a political framework in which it advocated for a threefold strategy of working within, without, and against the state to achieve its political goals. This framing was inspired by a movement group in Chile, the Movimiento de Pobladores en Lucha.

We propose a similar path: building strategic alignment across groups working within, without, and against philanthropy. We aim to share the historical and present-day value of diverse approaches to fundraising that include but are in no way limited to philanthropic investment. Moreover, we seek to show how aligning work within, without, and against philanthropy can catalyze power building on the Left.
New Gilded Age

This April marked twenty years since INCITE!’s landmark conference, “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,” shifted the conversation about how the Left organizes and funds our movements. The conference and eponymous anthology published in 2007 put forth incisive critiques of how the “nonprofit industrial complex”—largely due to its pernicious relationship with philanthropy—professionalizes, derails, and cools off dissent that would otherwise go toward mass movement building.

INCITE!’s own experience was informed by a 2004 incident in which the Ford Foundation retracted a $100,000 grant after catching wind of a letter the group had written in support of Palestinian liberation. Two decades later, censorship continues, and funders remain largely silent about the escalating genocide and collective punishment wrought on the Palestinian people.

The past two decades have marked the rise of a “new gilded age” of capitalist accumulation. Foundations currently hoard upward of $1.5 trillion. Moreover, movement organizations on both the Left and Right increasingly rely on this capital to advance their work, no matter how frustrating the funding process may be. In March 2024, the New Economy Coalition (an organization with whom we both work) hosted “Will the Revolution Be Funded?,” an event marking the launch of a new Solidarity Economy Funding Library. When asked to share a word or a phrase participants might use to describe what resourcing has looked like for their communities at large, the chat flooded with hundreds of comments: keywords included “gaslighting,” “exploitative,” “scarce,” and “soul theft and spirit murder.”

Foundations gave away an estimated $105.21 billion in 2022—a 2.5 percent increase from the previous year—so why does it still feel like there is not enough?
Thrice-Stolen Wealth

As Justice Funders note in their Just Transition Investment Framework, foundations “[contribute] over 13 times [more] to extractive global stock markets” than to grants through their portfolio assets. Ruth Wilson Gilmore refers to philanthropic wealth as “twice stolen,” but it could really be viewed as thrice stolen: the $1.5 trillion in current US philanthropic assets are not just (1) stolen from wage laborers and (2) warehoused outside of the realm of taxation but are also (3) actively invested every day into ensuring this same extractive cycle continues.

Where do we go from here? While INCITE!’s conference, anthology, and very phrase “nonprofit industrial complex” conjure images of burning one’s problematic nonprofit to the ground, the introduction to the book’s 2009 edition makes it clear that “the more important question [is] not whether one should ever get nonprofit status, but what is the most strategic way to use nonprofits so they support movements rather than being thought of as [the] movement.”

When we live in a world where nonprofits have largely become the movement, we need to explore better ways—beyond philanthropy—of building power.
Organizing Without

Tiny (lisa) gray-garcia is a lot of things—“that houseless momma, that houseless daughter,” “a poverty scholar…[who rocks her] jailhouse attire”—and unabashedly so. As cofounder of POOR Magazine and PeopleSkool, she is invested in work that uplifts the voices of the poor and unhoused. The Homefulness Project in East Oakland is a manifestation of that work, a co-housing project funded by what tiny calls “the bank of community reparations,” an interracial and interclass community fund.

Self-funding for unmet community and movement needs, although difficult and time-consuming, is at the heart of organizing without philanthropy. The historical record is replete with other examples of how self-funding our movements can itself serve as prefigurative power building. One of the Black Panther Party’s most profitable funding streams funding stream came from its book publications, a point that compelled researcher Andrew Fearnley to write that “the Panthers’ books were not just accounts of their activism, but examples of it.”

Another example comes from the radically simple technology of member dues, which union members have put toward worker power building for decades. Recently, the United Auto Workers (UAW) announced a $40 million investment of dues toward organizing workers in the nonunion auto sector. This mark of renewed labor militancy came just weeks after UAW’s president, Shawn Fain, plans for a 2028 general strike.

Mutual aid groups like the Sylvia Rivera Law Project also organize without philanthropy: In 2013, it released a report describing how sliding-scale dues structures build “members’ investment in the work,” limit potential philanthropic co-optation, and nurture leadership. And new outfits like the Resource Organizing Project are building off of this wisdom by training cohorts of movement organizations to build out grassroots donor bases while reconstructing fundraising to be a “form of organizing, power building, and healing.”

All of this draws on the long legacy of community savings pools and other forms of solidarity funding to meet immediate needs across historically colonized and oppressed communities, precluding the need for external monetary support.

Beyond self-funding, organizing without philanthropy includes fortifying alternative financing efforts—like community lending, community development financial institutions (CDFIs), social movement investing, regulation crowdfunding, and more—so there is no longer a hyper-reliance on philanthropic capital.

The work of both PODER Emma and the Drivers Cooperative is a testament to this effort, serving as powerful prefigurations of what solidarity economies can look like if we truly leverage a plurality of non-extractive financing options. In the words of Seed Commons (a cooperatively governed network of loan funds that moves millions of dollars into worker-owned businesses each year): “Non-extraction is defined simply as the returns to the lender not ever exceeding the wealth created by the borrower.” Non-extractive financing—as opposed to traditional financing—places emphasis on the social impact and community success of the investment alongside (and, at times, over) financial return.

Alan Ramirez is a community organizer who hails from western North Carolina and works as a cooperative developer with PODER Emma. For years, PODER Emma has worked to preserve the homes and livelihoods of Asheville’s increasingly gentrifying immigrant neighborhoods—and it’s done so by relying on non-extractive lending capital for sustainable land and housing projects in the city’s Emma neighborhood. Alan’s care for workers in the South is palpable, even over Zoom. When asked, at the conclusion of our event, what they would want wealth holders (read: hoarders) to know, they looked unflinchingly into the camera and said, “We got us.”

Erik Forman is one of those people who is so gracious and humble that you wouldn’t believe that his Drivers Cooperative, a worker-owned alternative to Uber, made headlines in the New York Times. As Erik explains it, the Drivers Cooperative started in 2019 as 25 drivers in a classroom and grew to 2,500 drivers and 40,000 users by August 2021. Largely funded through non-extractive investments, a membership drive with 2,500 members, and regulation crowdfunding, the cooperative is a hallmark example of building without philanthropy.

As Alan and Erik secure resourcing outside the current paradigm of reliance on philanthropic dollars, they not only demonstrate what fundraising looks like in a post-philanthropic world but also showcase a new form of community-controlled enterprise that is not hoarding the wealth that creates philanthropic surplus in the first place.
Organizing Within

There have been some improvements in the realm of philanthropy in recent years, most notably in the rise of more movement–anchored funders and radical philanthropy-serving organizations (PSOs). It’s also important to note recent strides in democratic practices such as participatory grantmaking, giving circles, and worker self-directed governance. Much of these advancements have largely been the result of the burgeoning field of funder organizing, which looks at certain groups of funders as a base that can and should be organized to support redistributive and reparative work.

But it would be a misunderstanding to view funder organizing as merely “moving the money.” “Money is a governance tool. We’re trying to figure out how to govern, and we need to build out our infrastructure,” said Michael Brennan, project coordinator of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, on a recent call. Brennan sees the notion that money is something finite “to be moved” as limiting our organizing horizons. Transactionally viewing funders as ATMs to rage against also absolves them of their wider political responsibility for shifting power.

Bridget Brehen, director of resource mobilization for Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, recently told us that we must organize alongside the organizers and allies that have strategically deployed into philanthropy, as well as organizing funders to see themselves “as political actors with the potential to become conscious organizers.” In the same breath, she shared that the ecosystem model of transformative organizing presents unique challenges in its application to philanthropy. As Brehen put it, “Poor and working-class people are the base and primary drivers of transformation. Who is the ‘base’ we are organizing in philanthropy, given the class character is vastly different?”

Additionally, there are so many different sectors within philanthropy itself (e.g., foundations, PSOs, and donor advisors). A continuous question remains: How do we further organize the multifarious bases of philanthropy in alignment both with grassroots groups and with each other?

Writing in Dissent last year, Working Families Party organizer Nina Luo made a compelling case for bringing funders “into live campaigns where they can experience what it’s like to struggle together.” Luo calls for a militant comradeship with funders who “practice organizing skills, build deep relationships of trust, see directly how money sustains or kills work, and develop the political discipline that comes from making complex decisions with real consequences.” Such a process outlines one way in which we can organize funders into alignment with grassroots movements.

One limitation of Luo’s piece is what amounts to a dismissal of projects that go beyond seizing and wielding state power. Limiting the funding ecosystem to policy and electoral wins harms the very forms of prefigurative power building that make those wins meaningful. Building housing justice won’t just come from passing TOPA (tenant opportunity to purchase) laws and electing more members of the Squad. It’s also going to derive from resourcing the tenants’ rights groups and community land trusts that make laws like TOPA worth fighting for. It’s going to derive from resourcing communities willing to take risky direct actions that shape a narrative exposing how violent rentier capitalists truly are. And it’s going to derive from resourcing movement-anchored lawyers like those at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, who are developing new legal structures of what housing under community control can look like.

While funder organizing entails philanthropy grappling with the paradoxical role of working to provide capital to those from whom wealth has been intergenerationally stolen, it also entails opening the risky terrain of engaging with (some) funders as solidaristic political actors who can become organizers.
Organizing Against

While organizing with funders is a crucial component of leftist power building, it’s severely limited by one blatant fact: on a structural level, we’re not going to convince the owning class to work against their class interests. And yet there has been a glaring asymmetry between the number of groups organizing within philanthropy (as evidenced by the proliferation of the industry of philanthropic-serving organizations) and the number of those attempting to wield both state and people power to fight back against big philanthropy as a permissible phenomenon in the first place.

This has not always been the case. In 1915, institutional philanthropy, still in its nascent stage, was put on trial in the form of a congressional investigation. The proceedings included testimonies by people across the political spectrum speaking out against institutional philanthropy as a deeply anti-democratic phenomenon. The commission concluded that foundations “are so grave a menace [that] it would be desirable to recommend their abolition.”

Today Congress remains largely silent on philanthropy’s unchecked power. The 1969 Tax Reform Act was the last meaningful federal policy reigning in the power of foundations. Even a milquetoast piece of legislation calling for a mandatory 15-year payout of donor-advised fund assets has stalled in Congress. However, several advocates are still working toward leveraging policy-level interventions to make the landscape untenable for big philanthropy. The Institute for Policy Studies’ 2022 Gilded Giving report, for example, calls for a constellation of non-reformist reforms that would completely overhaul philanthropy as we know it.
Aligning Our Strategies

The current political moment is awash with resourcing strategies, from resurgent dues-based labor organizing, increased mutual aid activity, and funder organizing to frontline groups using financial tools to put community assets under community control. Many initiatives are already oscillating among within, without, and against strategies. It Takes Roots, for example, organizes funders to advocate for policies that curtail the power of philanthropy itself. The organization with whom we work, New Economy Coalition, is funded by institutional philanthropy, grassroots donors, and mandatory member dues.

Mijente’s threefold political framework is powerful precisely because it allows for cross-coalitional experiments in power building that wouldn’t otherwise take place. These experiments are happening at this very moment in the form of solidarity between organized labor and worker cooperatives. As Brennan reflected to us, “One of the reasons unions and cooperatives should work together is that cooperatives can help shape the ceiling of what is possible in an industry, and unions can help raise the floor toward that.”

Despite this proliferation of diverse funding strategies, there continues to be a lack of alignment. To us, after having worked in this field for nearly a decade, one thing is certain: The current economic system operates on one thousand coordinated fronts. In order to supplant it, we must work on ten thousand.

This kind of alignment necessitates going beyond reductionist arguments for moral purity (even Vladimir Lenin avidly courted wealthy donors and was an unlikely champion of professionalized paid organizers, as Chicago-based organizer and researcher Jasson Perez recently unearthed). It requires us to hold philanthropy and funders to account culturally, materially, and legislatively. It compels us to imagine and build out a rigorous federation of anti-capitalist financial tools and tactics. And it demands that we organize together to make this work, in the words of Toni Cade Bambara, irresistible.

ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers. DONATE



Zac Chapman is an organizer and researcher based in western Massachusetts. He is the Resource Mobilization Director at the New Economy Coalition, a steering committee member of Massachusetts Solidarity Economy Network, and board member of LittleSis. tiktok: @applzeed

Amazon Workers Affiliate With The Teamsters, Next Up Electing Top Officers

The affiliation agreement charters a new local known as Amazon Labor Union No. 1, International Brotherhood of Teamsters (ALU-IBT Local 1), for the five boroughs of New York City.

By Luis Feliz León

June 22, 2024

Source: The Real News Network


Photo: Jim West / jimwestphoto.com



Amazon Labor Union members voted June 17 to affiliate with the Teamsters.

Workers cast 878 ballots at JFK8 Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island, N.Y. The tally broke down to 829 votes in favor of the affiliation and 14 against it; 10 ballots were spoiled.

Total turnout was 11 percent out of 8,000 workers. However, workers estimate the workforce has dipped to between 5,000 and 6,000 workers during the off-peak season.

A Teamsters statement said the union will now “represent the roughly 5,500 Amazon warehouse workers.” Turnout works out to 16 percent based on that number.

“On behalf of the Amazon Labor Union, I’m proud of our members choosing a path to victory. We’re now stronger than ever before,” said ALU President Chris Smalls in a statement.

“Having the support of 1.3 million Teamsters to take on Amazon gives us tremendous worker power and the opportunities to demand better conditions for our members and, most importantly, to secure a contract at JFK8.”

The affiliation agreement charters a new local known as Amazon Labor Union No. 1, International Brotherhood of Teamsters (ALU-IBT Local 1), for the five boroughs of New York City. That may signal that Amazon workers will not be integrated into existing locals with other Teamster crafts.

“Together, with hard work, courage, and conviction, the Teamsters and ALU will fight fearlessly to ensure Amazon workers secure the good jobs and safe working conditions they deserve in a union contract,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.

The ALU is the fledgling independent union that sent shock waves through the labor movement two years ago when it won a landmark election to organize 8,000 workers at Amazon fulfillment center JFK8 on Staten Island.

The union’s current leadership and the reform caucus both backed the affiliation and had met together with O’Brien and other Teamster officials in Washington, D.C., on May 20, after weeks of conversations about what an affiliation would involve.

“The ratification vote by our members is a historic moment—and it sends a powerful reminder to Amazon that we’re not giving up in our years-long campaign for respect, better wages, and safe jobs,” said Connor Spence of the ALU Democratic Reform Caucus. Spence is running for president of the local and was one of the key organizers of union drive at JFK8.

“Affiliating with the Teamsters and chartering a strong, autonomous local union signals a new chapter for so many working people and for this industry.”
NEW ELECTION

Amazon workers will soon vote on their union leadership. The mail-in ballots go out June 27 with a return deadline of July 18. The American Arbitration Association is running the vote.

The affiliation agreement says the Teamsters “will provide resources to effectuate an internal election for ALU-IBT Local 1 in a manner so that potential officers may reach, with equal access, as many eligible members in JKF8 as possible.”

The internal election became possible only after the reform caucus sued the union last year for violating the ALU’s constitution because it “refused to hold officer elections which should have been scheduled no later than March 2023.”

The ALU was supposed to hold elections within 60 days after the National Labor Relations Board certified the union. But before the NLRB certification, the union’s leadership presented a new constitution to the membership, changing the timeframe for officer elections to after the union ratified a contract with Amazon.

The reform caucus asked a Brooklyn court to compel union leaders to hold an election. The court did so.

THE MAIN SLATES

Current and former members of the ALU executive board are running on the slate ALU-Ma-at, on a platform of truth, justice, and harmony—the qualities of the ancient Egyptian goddess Ma’at.

Leaders said the slate’s main focus is to get a contract. Claudia Ashterman is running for president, Tyrone Mitchell for vice president, Rina Cummings for recording secretary, and Arlene Kingston for secretary-treasurer.

The ALU-Ma-at slate is backed by Smalls, Derrick Palmer, Gerald Bryson, and Jordan Flowers—the founders of the Congress of Essential Workers that later formed the ALU.

The Amazon Labor Union Democratic Reform Caucus slate includes Spence for president, Brima Sylla for vice president, Kathleen Cole for secretary-treasurer, and Sultana Hossain for recording secretary.

This slate is proposing major reforms to the union: creating a system of stewards, allowing members to vote on and approve budgets, hiring an external firm to conduct financial audits quarterly, and expanding the executive board from the current four officers to 20 to 30 JFK8 workers.

A third slate known as Workers First! is led by Michelle Valentin Nieves, a former ALU executive board member and a key leader in the union. It is made up of current JFK8 workers. Some of the people running on the other slates have been terminated, pending the results of unfair labor practice charges.

Ashterman and Kingston were key leaders in the successful union drive at JFK8. They mobilized Black Caribbean workers and helped build a culture of support by cooking West Indian staples like jerk chicken and curry goat. “To bring people together, people in the Caribbean cook,” said Ashterman, who has four years at Amazon.

The union was certified in January 2023. But Amazon has been pulling all the stops to challenge the election through the courts. Two and a half years later, it’s still refusing to bargain—and donations have dried up.

Amazon spent more than $3 million on anti-union consultants last year. The Teamsters told the ALU, according to the New York Times, that it has committed $8 million to support organizing at Amazon, including tapping the union’s strike fund of $300 million to aid in efforts to organize workers at the logistics behemoth.

“We didn’t know it would take so long to get a contract,” Ashterman said. “We depended on funds from whoever donated. That’s exhausted.”

Ashterman is known as a fighter inside the warehouse. “I had to fight Amazon tooth and nail for this walker,” she said. In 2020 she demanded that Amazon allow her to sit while she stuffed boxes. After multiple abdominal surgeries, she argued that with the high pace of work she could risk a fall without proper accommodations. Eventually the company agreed.
STEWARDS NETWORK

Hossain, running on the reform slate, said June 12 that she was voting yes on the affiliation—the Teamsters resources could help.

“But I do believe that organizing needs to happen bottom-up,” Hossain said. “It’s about the rank and file coming together and demanding more for themselves. And that is how we plan on organizing a national coalition.”

Reform caucus leaders say they’ve built a stronger organizational structure inside the warehouse than the official union has—including an informal steward structure and job actions like marching on the boss. The current ALU leaders have adopted a grievance handling process overseen by Rina Cummings who was paid to fulfill the role until the union ran out of funding. But the approach was more service-oriented, including helping workers apply for unemployment benefits.

Cummings shared the example of a worker who Amazon alleged had stolen a co-worker’s Uber Eats order. Because stealing was against company policy, Amazon denied the worker unemployment benefits.

That stands in stark contrast to the class struggle orientation of the ALU reform caucus.

While leafleting outside the warehouse entrance in June ahead of the Teamster affiliation vote, a handful of workers marched on Amazon management to deliver a petition demanding Juneteenth as a paid holiday, part of a petition coordinated across Amazon facilities in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Jessica Marrero is one of the workers who has been supported by this stewards network. She credits Cole, another candidate on the reform slate, with walking her into HR and getting her reinstated. She had been fired for job abandonment after an injury.

“My hand got caught in the conveyor belt,” she said. “I ended up tripping over a bunch of boxes causing a sprain in my hands and in my wrist, and it caused a contusion between my fingers. They yell at you about safety, but they don’t do anything about safety in there.”

Since its blockbuster win in 2022, ALU’s efforts to make inroads at other Amazon facilities have gone down in defeat. The union has also faltered in efforts to bring Amazon to the bargaining table.

These organizing failures gave rise to the caucus, which won the right to hold democratic elections for the union’s top spots.

As the ALU struggled to advance further at Amazon, workers at the air cargo hub KCVG in Northern Kentucky, who had begun a card drive with ALU, voted in April to affiliate with the Teamsters. The tug and ramp workers at a nearby DHL facility had joined the Teamsters and won a lucrative first contract in January.

The Teamsters launched an Amazon Division last year to bring together various organizing efforts under one big tent. Teamster activists and staff have been involved over the past three years in supporting Amazon workers in building organizing committees in key metro regions across the country.

Amazon Teamsters have extended picket lines to other Amazon facilities, after delivery drivers organized in Palmdale, California, last April. These 84 workers were nominally employed by a contractor, Battle-Tested Strategies—one of 2,500 “delivery service partners” that carry out package deliveries while Amazon retains full control. Amazon illegally terminated their contract.

Since then, more independent groups organizing at Amazon have worked with the Teamsters, hoping the union can help them.

PERMATEMPS

Eligible voters in the ALU-IBT leadership election will include all current employees who are not seasonal workers.

That’s a sore point as Amazon has leaned into hiring more permatemps. Amazon organizers estimate a third of the warehouse is made of permatemps known as white badge holders. Permanent employees wear blue badges. Organizers say permatemps can’t hold those positions for more than eleven months, but Amazon promotes people into permanent positions arbitrarily.

Ray Bowie started working at JFK8 seven months ago and he said people in his same recruitment class have moved to blue badges while he hasn’t, in spite of asking HR about moving to a permanent role.

Amazon warehouses across the tri-state area, including the sortation center LDJ5 across the street from the JFK8 warehouse, are running a petition demanding conversion to permanent status after 30 days of employment.

Even though Bowie can’t vote in the officer election, he supports the union, citing a case involving his god-brother’s wrongful termination for job abandonment when security cameras showed him being wheeled out of the warehouse and put into an ambulance.

“Even one of his supervisors went to the hospital to visit him the next day, and he wound up getting fired because he couldn’t come to work because he hurt his leg,” said Bowie.

The worker found out he was terminated via an email. While hospitalized, he didn’t check his phone. “When he returned to work, he just tried to scan his badge to come in and it didn’t work.”

Like dozens of workers at the facility, the slog to get a contract hasn’t diminished their support for a union because their lives are replete with stories of how Amazon forces them to work long days to the point of injury and limits their time off, including to go to the restroom.

“Now I understand the amount of work that they expect us to do and the pay it just doesn’t add up,” said Bowie. “I mean, they really want you to be robots in there.”

As he said those words, I pointed to the hoodie he was wearing spelling out in bold white letters against navy blue: “JFK8 World Class-Talent Machine!”

 

How Donald Trump Worked to Destroy America’s Labor Unions

by Lawrence Wittner / June 17th, 2024

Although Donald Trump has been eager to garner support from American labor unions for his re- election campaign, there are lots of reasons he’s not going to get it.  Chief among them is his record in sabotaging the nation’s labor movement.

During his decades as a wealthy businessman, Trump clashed with unions repeatedly.  And, upon becoming President, he appointed people much like himself―from corporate backgrounds and hostile toward workers―to head key government agencies and departments.  Naturally, an avalanche of anti-union policies followed.

Under Trump, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)―the federal agency enforcing the nation’s fundamental labor law, the National Labor Relations Act―led the charge.  Instead of following the intent of the 1935 legislation, which was to guarantee the right of workers to union representation, the Trump NLRB widened the basis for denying that right.  According to the NLRB, the nearly two million Uber and Lyft drivers, as well as other workers in the gig economy, were not really workers, but independent contractors and, as such, not entitled to a union.  The NLRB also proposed depriving graduate teaching assistants and other student employees at private universities of the right to organize unions and collectively bargain.

When it came to the reduced number of workers still eligible to form a union, the Trump NLRB adopted new rules making it more difficult for them to win the employee elections necessary for union representation.  The NLRB hindered union activists’ ability to organize workers during non-working hours and, also, allowed employers to gerrymander bargaining units.  In March 2020, the Trump NLRB used the excuse of the Covid-19 pandemic to suspend all union representation elections and, thereafter, allowed mail ballot elections only if the employer agreed to them.

Unlike their Trump-appointed managers, many NLRB employees, as career civil servants, resented the agency’s shift toward anti-union policies and sought to enforce what labor rights remained under the National Labor Relations Act.  But the new management undermined their ability to protect workers’ rights by refusing to fill vacancies, thereby hollowing out the agency.  As a result, the number of NLRB staff members dropped by nearly 20 percent.

Major federal departments moved in the same anti-union direction.  Trump’s Department of Education scrapped collective bargaining with the American Federation of Government Employees and unilaterally imposed a contract curtailing the union rights of the department’s 3,900 workers.  Trump’s Department of Labor removed requirements that employers disclose their use of “union-busting” law firms (a practice in 75 percent of union representation elections at an estimated annual cost of $340 million).  And the Department of Justice, in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Janus case, delivered what was expected to be a devastating blow to public sector unions.

Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 was the culmination of lengthy efforts by big business and reactionary forces to cripple unions representing teachers, firefighters, and other public servants by slashing their source of income: union dues.  In the past, the courts had ruled that, even if a public worker chose not to join the union, the worker, in lieu of union dues, would still have to pay “fair share fees” to cover the costs of collective bargaining and administration of the union contract.  In the Janus case, though, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, prohibited public sector unions from charging fees to nonmembers for representation.  In this fashion, the narrow Court majority (including all three of Donald Trump’s appointees) established a significant financial incentive for millions of workers to stop paying union dues and become “free riders,” securing union benefits without paying for them.  To widespread surprise, though, union-represented workers simply stuck with their unions and went on paying union dues, thereby foiling this Trump administration gambit.

In addition to relying on his appointees, Trump took direct action as president to undermine American unions.  Kicking off Labor Day in 2018, he denounced the nation’s top labor leader, Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, stating that Trumka’s policies explained “why unions are doing so poorly.”  In 2020, after the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act―billed by the AFL-CIO as “the most significant worker empowerment legislation since the Great Depression”―Trump blocked the legislation from moving any further by threatening to veto it.

Trump’s disdain for the American labor movement continued in the years after he left office.  In August 2023, attacking the newly-elected, dynamic leaders of the United Auto Workers (UAW), he told UAW members that “you shouldn’t pay those [union] dues because they’re selling you to hell.  Don’t listen to these union people who get paid a lot of money.”  That October, he insisted:  “The auto workers are being sold down the river by their leadership.”  In fact, though, that November, UAW president Shawn Fain and his team led one of the most impressive nationwide strikes of modern times, securing wage raises for auto workers of at least 25 percent, as well as boosting retirement contributions and other benefits.

Not surprisingly, the UAW doesn’t have much respect for Donald Trump.  In January 2024, the 400,000-member union endorsed Joe Biden for re-election, with Fain remarking that Biden “stood with the American worker,” while “Trump has a history of serving himself and standing for the billionaire class.”  These remarks echoed Fain’s comments of a few days before, when he called Trump “a scab” who “stands against everything we stand for as a union.”

The AFL-CIO, which unites most of America’s unions, delivered a similar appraisal in a press release (“Donald Trump’s Catastrophic and Devastating Anti-Labor Track Record”) the preceding September.  “Trump spent four years in office weakening unions and working people,” it maintained.  “We can’t afford another four years of Trump’s corporate agenda to … destroy our unions.”

If Trump expects significant union support this November, it’s merely another of his many illusions.

Lawrence S. Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press). Read other articles by Lawrence, or visit Lawrence's website.