Rainbow-colored fly species named after RuPaul


Drag culture's far-reaching influence on society was affirmed on Wednesday, when Australian entomologists announced they have named a fly species after RuPaul -- the titan of drag queens.

© BBC/RuPaul's Drag Race UK/Bryan Lessard/CSIRO Opaluma rupaul was named in tribute to the the fiercest drag queen of them all, RuPaul.

By Hannah Ryan, CNN 

The soldier fly, whose Latin name is Opaluma rupaul, is adorned with bold rainbow colors and is bound to catch the attention of anyone that comes across it -- much like the drag icon herself.

Bryan Lessard -- also known as "Bry the Fly Guy" in scientific circles -- of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), is responsible for naming the species and he says there were myriad reasons why he chose the moniker.

"I'd been watching a lot of 'RuPaul's Drag Race' when I was examining the specimen under the microscope, so it was on my mind!" Lessard told CNN. "And I really wanted to give this group of flies a memorable name because it needs the attention -- the first specimen of this RuPaul fly was collected over a hundred years ago and sat neglected in a museum collection until someone with the knowledge of that group came along to name and document them."

Many of the 13 new soldier flies Lessard named are from areas affected by Australia's devastating 2019-2020 bushfires -- which is part of the reason he wanted to give at least one of them a name no one would forget.

"These species would have burnt and no one would have cared if I hadn't given them a name," Lessard said.

The RuPaul fly is just one of 150 new species to be named by CSIRO recently -- and it isn't the only one to be named after a pop culture figure.

The organization has also named three newly discovered, rare beetles after characters from Pokémon -- the Japanese anime series that spawned an entire franchise of video games, toys and trading cards. The beetles are named Binburrum articuno, Binburrum moltres and Binburrum zapdos after three rare Pokémon: Articuno, Moltres and Zapdos.

And, 10 years ago, Lessard bestowed the name of another giant of popular culture upon another fly. He named the Scaptia beyonceae fly after the "Queen Bee" herself -- Beyoncé -- in a move that he said was deemed in "poor taste" by some more traditional entomologists but which led to an increase in interest in the species.

Lessard says part of the reason why the CSIRO is giving attention-grabbing names to insect species is to encourage greater interest amongst the public in invertebrates and to highlight the important role they play in biodiversity.

"Usually, it's the cute and cuddly koalas that get all the attention when it comes to conservation efforts," Lessard explained. "And the invertebrates are ignored -- despite the fact they're the essential workers of the ecosystem that pollinate native flowers and agricultural crops that are grown to give us food. If we didn't have that service from invertebrates, the world would be a terrible place."

Beyond inspiring greater interest in invertebrates and encouraging the next generation of entomologists and scientists to seek out new species, Lessard also hopes that naming the soldier fly after an LGBTQ+ icon like RuPaul will let young LGBTQ+ people know that there are other gay scientists out there and that there is a place for them in the world of science.

"As a gay scientist, it took me a long time to feel comfortable in my own skin in a very traditional field of science -- in entomology," Lessard said. "I think it's really important for the next generation of LGBTQ+ scientists to know that they're being represented in the workplace, as we give the names of legends in the community to memorable species."

© Bryan Lessard/CSIRO Opaluma rupaul is difficult to miss, thanks to its sparkling appearance

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© Bryan Lessard/CSIRO Opaluma rupaul is characterized by its iridescent colors.

Covid lockdown in Vietnam could keep coffee prices 'relatively high' through 2022

Yen Nee Lee 11 hrs ago

Coffee prices could stay "relatively high" through 2022 due to constrained supply from major producers Brazil, Vietnam and Colombia, said Fitch Solutions.

 
Brazil waves of frost and drought that damaged many of its crops, while restrictions to fight Covid-19 in Vietnam caused coffee exports to fall.

Vietnam, the world's second-largest coffee exporter, is battling its worst Covid outbreak since the start of the pandemic.

© Provided by CNBC Pots of coffee bean are seen at a coffee shop in Hanoi, Vietnam on August 15, 2012. Vietnam is one of the world's top coffee producers and exporters.

Vietnam's Covid-19 lockdown has constrained the global supply of coffee — and coffee prices could remain "relatively high" through 2022, said Fitch Solutions.

The Southeast Asian country is the world's second-largest coffee exporter. The country is battling its worst Covid outbreak since the start of the pandemic, and a lockdown in its exporting hub Ho Chi Minh City has affected overseas shipments of coffee and other goods.

In August, Vietnamese coffee exports fell 8.7% from July to 111,697 tonnes, Reuters reported, citing customs data. Between January and August, Vietnam exported 1.1 million tonnes of coffee — 6.4% lower than a year ago, but coffee export revenue rose 2% to around $2 billion, said the news agency.

The fall in Vietnam's exports and production slumps in other top producers have boosted global coffee prices. Benchmark arabica coffee futures have jumped by around 45.8% this year, while robusta futures have surged 52.2%, according to Refinitiv data.

© Provided by CNBC

Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer, experienced waves of frost and drought that damaged its crops. Bad weather also affected Colombia's harvest, and the emergence of the "mu" coronavirus variant in the country could lead to prolonged restrictions and labor shortages that worsen production, Fitch Solutions said in a report last week.

"At the same time, we think that demand, at least in Europe and the US, will pick up in the coming months as the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions should enable coffee shops to re-open," it added.

The consultancy raised its 2021 forecast for the average price of arabica coffee from $1.35 per pound to $1.60 per pound. It also revised upward its projection for 2022 from $1.25 per pound to $1.50 per pound.

Covid in Vietnam

Vietnam — which shares a border with China — reported only 1,465 Covid cases and 35 deaths last year, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. But the country's cumulative cases exploded to more than 635,000 as of Tuesday, with over 15,900 deaths, the data showed.

Like many of its Southeast Asian neighbors, Vietnam is struggling to contain the highly infectious Covid delta variant. Only 5.7% of Vietnam's population has been fully vaccinated, official statistics compiled by Our World in Data showed.

Authorities on Monday announced a two-week extension of restrictions in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's business hub and Covid outbreak epicenter, Reuters reported.

Vietnam plays an important role in the global manufacturing supply chain. Movement curbs and factory closures to fight Covid have hit the country's manufacturing production and exports — affecting global supplies of goods from coffee to clothing and semiconductors.

Major sports apparel makers Nike, Under Armour and Lululemon; as well as chipmaker Samsung Electronics are among global companies that have faced disruptions in Vietnam.

Outlook for coffee

Covid restrictions could soon be progressively lifted, so disruptions to Vietnam's coffee exports are likely short-lived, said Fitch Solutions.

Brazil's coffee production should also bounce back "fairly quickly," provided adverse weather doesn't return, added the consultancy.

That means global coffee supply could start to rebound in the 2022/2023 season, with average annual price for arabica declining to $1.20 per pound in 2023, projected Fitch Solutions.

"Ongoing government support schemes will support production in many key Latin American and Asian producers, including Colombia and Vietnam," said Fitch Solutions.

"At the same time, growth in consumption seems to be peaking in many of the major key consumers, such as the EU-27 and Japan."

Hundreds of land defenders were killed in 2020, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg

At least 227 land and environment defenders were killed in 2020, making it the deadliest year on record — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, according to a report released by international NGO Global Witness this week.

That is more than four people killed per week and likely an undercount, the group stated. The report identifies several high-level findings, including that nearly three out of four killings were in the Americas, and a third of all lethal attacks were against Indigenous peoples. Colombia was named the deadliest with 65 deaths, while Mexico and the Philippines were ranked second and third, respectively, with 30 and 29.

Canadian animal rights activist Regan Russell, who was hit by a transport truck while protesting outside a slaughterhouse in Burlington, Ont., is the only person outside the Global South to be included in the death toll. The driver was reportedly charged with careless driving.

“It might feel morbid to record and analyze each death of a land and environmental defender. But it’s important to understand what connects these seemingly disparate cases — the water defenders murdered in northern Mexico to the South African grandmother shot dead outside her home seemingly for rejecting the expansion of a nearby coal mine,” the report reads.

“It may sound simplistic, but it’s a fact worth considering — the process of climate breakdown is violent, and it manifests not just in violence against the natural world, but against people as well.”

The report says the violence, like the climate crisis itself, has three “core truths”: its impacts are unequal, business is responsible, and governments cause and fail to stop it.

MiningWatch Canada’s Jamie Kneen says only focusing on deaths can hide a lot of harm.

“They can be intimidated, attacked, anything short of being killed and they don't make the list,” he said.

“When you look at pipeline protests, or Grassy Narrows, or any number of places, the weakness of looking at how many people got killed as an indication of how bad things are shows up… Lots of lives can be destroyed without anyone getting shot.”

Jen Moore, associate fellow at the Washington-headquartered Institute for Policy Studies, says Canadians should be concerned about increasing violence around the world, in part because Canadian mining companies play a disproportionately large role in the global mining system.

“You've got over 1,000 mining companies that list on Canadian stock exchanges –– far more than any other stock exchange in the world –– because of the ease at which they can get financing,” she said.

A study from the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project, published in 2016 and updated in 2017, found 28 Canadian companies linked to violence in Latin America between 2000 and 2015. The report identified 44 deaths, 30 of which it considered “targeted,” as well as 406 injuries, 90 per cent of which occurred during protests. That study also found more mining companies active in Latin America are based out of Canada than any other, at 41 per cent.

“The mining industry has a very close friend in the Canadian state, and has ease of access to capital in Canada, which I think is what has given rise to such a disproportionate role for Canada in the globalized mining industry,” said Moore.

Moore said Canadian mining companies are effectively exporting a model of resource extraction developed at home.

“There is a real neo-colonial face to mining activities in the Global South, and I think Indigenous peoples and affected communities are the first to identify that,” she said.

Canadian firm Tahoe Resources was sued in a British Columbia court by seven Guatemalans who claimed they were shot in 2013 by private security forces while protesting the Escobal silver mine. Escobal is now owned by Vancouver-based Pan American Silver, which bought Tahoe in 2019 and inherited its legal battles. Pan American settled but the terms remain confidential. The company now calls the silver mine a “catalyst” for growing shareholder value in an investor presentation.

A Xinka land defender named Julio David Gonzalez Arango, who was protesting the Escobal silver mine, was nearly shot to death in Guatemala in January.

“Julio David Gonzalez Arango was shot and wounded in his home by armed assailants. In the following days, Juan Eduardo Donis, Pablo Adolfo Valenzuela Lima, and Edwin Alexander Reynoso Bran, members of the peaceful resistance, received death threats,” reads a letter signed by Moore, alongside representatives from MiningWatch Canada, Earthworks, and others, sent to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

“Then, on Feb. 7, Xinka leader and Xinka Parliament employee Luis Fernando Garcia Monroy was threatened by a supporter of the mine near his home. Finally, in April, armed individuals fired three shots at the home of two Xinka representatives involved in the consultation process.”

Pan American says it condemns the violence, and that its human rights policy “specifically commits to respect and not interfere with anyone who (acts) to promote or protect human rights through peaceful and lawful means.”

The president of the Shuar Arutam people, Josefina Tunki, says she has faced death threats for opposition to Vancouver-based Solaris Resources, which is trying to develop a major copper mine in Ecuador.

A letter dated Aug. 26 sent to Canadian Ambassador to Ecuador Sylvie Bédard, with 137 organizations signed on, says the Shuar Arutam people are concerned with “corporate abuses,” including “community division, intimidation, and death threats against our president.”

The letter calls on Canada to condemn the alleged threat, and outline steps that will prevent future threats, among other actions.

"As this matter is under judicial review, we are not in a position to comment specifically on it at this time," said Lama Khodr, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada.

“It's not a bad apples kind of thing, it's actually fairly consistent and much too widespread for comfort,” said Kneen of Canadian mining companies.

Solaris Resources did not return multiple requests for comment.

John Woodside, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

Opioid poisoning response now part of Red Cross First Aid, CPR training

The Canadian Red Cross (CRC) has added training to identify and respond to opioid poisoning in all its first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) programs in Canada, it announced last week. This is part of a series of measures funded by Health Canada’s Substance Use and Addictions Program (SUAP) to help reduce opioid-related deaths by increasing access to response training and a life-saving medication that buys those affected enough time for medical attention.

“All of the courses for the last five plus years have had at least one slide about opioid poisoning,” said Alie Thompson of Manitoulin Training Solutions (MTS). MTS offers a variety of first aid and CPR training courses as a Canadian Red Cross Training Partner.

For several months there has been a whole chapter about opiate poisoning and naloxone in every first aid and CPR course that Red Cross offers. “It’s an important topic and it’s a very matter of fact topic,” she said. “It exists. It’s out there. It’s happening. But I find a lot of people are receptive to the training.”

The course talks about what an opiate is and what it does in the body, Ms. Thompson said. “We identify it as a central nervous system depressant and say, ‘here are some of the symptoms you’ll be looking for.’ ‘Here’s what you do if someone is still responding and they’re breathing,’ and ‘here’s what you should do if they’re not breathing.’ Then we talk about the kit and explain how to administer naloxone.”

Between January 2016 and December 2020 there were more than 21,000 apparent opioid toxicity deaths in Canada, with 97 percent happening by accident. The crisis has worsened since the onset of COVID-19 with 6,214 deaths recorded in 2020 alone.

“Research suggests the crisis is hitting smaller communities the hardest,” stated Conrad Sauvé, president and CEO of the CRC. “In fact, analysis from the Canadian Institute for Health Information found communities of 50,000 to 99,000 people had rates of opioid-related hospitalizations more than twice that of cities with populations over 500,000.”

CRC will receive $7.9 million over the next three years from SUAP to work in parallel with St. John Ambulance to deliver opioid poisoning education and response training through multiple platforms and to develop and maintain a system to provide Canadians with ready access to naloxone, a medication that temporarily reverses some of the life-threatening effects of opioid poisoning.

“I’m a huge supporter of the (naloxone) kit,” Ms. Thompson said. “Go to the pharmacy. Go to public health. They’re free. They don’t track you. You don’t have to say your name. It can be as anonymous as you want.” She said that while she uses a fake naloxone nasal spray kit in her courses, she always tells people to have the pharmacist or public health walk them through how to use it in case it’s slightly different. “Most of them are the same, and they’re moving to the nasal spray because it’s the easiest to use, with less risk and no needles, but it could be a year from training that they decide they want a harm reduction kit and it could be a little different.” People should also make sure that when they get a kit, they are comfortable with using it, she added.

There is also a standalone opiate awareness program offered for groups or organizations. There is no first aid component to it, Ms. Thompson said. “It’s literally just a talk about opiate awareness, opioid poisoning, that kind of thing.” She hasn’t done any standalone training on the Island yet, partly because it’s already offered within every first aid or CPR course, but also because it’s fairly new. There would be a minimum of seats to cover costs but other than that, any business, organization or community group could contact MTS to set one up.

Red Cross will add self-directed online opioid poisoning response training to its offerings in 2022 with the platform also allowing for the ordering of naloxone kits. Altogether, CRC expects to provide the training to 1.5 million Canadians over the next three years, “while helping millions more to better understand the risks, stigmas, misconceptions and vulnerabilities of opioid misuse,” according to the statement.

To register for Red Cross first aid and CPR courses including opioid poisoning response training, visit myrc.redcross.ca or manitoulintrainingsolutions.ca for a list of courses provided on Manitoulin Island and surrounding areas, with available dates.

Lori Thompson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Manitoulin Expositor

UN urges moratorium on use of AI that imperils human rights

By JAMEY KEATEN and MATT O'BRIEN, 

Associated Press 1 day ago

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. human rights chief is calling for a moratorium on the use of artificial intelligence technology that poses a serious risk to human rights, including face-scanning systems that track people in public spaces.

© Provided by Associated Press FILE - In this Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020 file photo Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaks during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The U.N. human rights chief is calling for a moratorium on the use of artificial intelligence technology that poses a serious risk to human rights, including face-scanning systems that track people in public spaces. Michelle Bachelet also says countries should expressly ban AI applications that don’t comply with international human rights law. Applications that should be prohibited include government “social scoring” systems which judge people based on their behavior and certain AI-based tools that categorize people by ethnicity or gender.(Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP, file)

Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, also said Wednesday that countries should expressly ban AI applications which don’t comply with international human rights law.

Applications that should be prohibited include government “social scoring” systems that judge people based on their behavior and certain AI-based tools that categorize people into clusters such as by ethnicity or gender.

AI-based technologies can be a force for good but they can also “have negative, even catastrophic, effects if they are used without sufficient regard to how they affect people’s human rights,” Bachelet said in a statement.

Her comments came along with a new U.N. report that examines how countries and businesses have rushed into applying AI systems that affect people’s lives and livelihoods without setting up proper safeguards to prevent discrimination and other harms.

“This is not about not having AI,” Peggy Hicks, the rights office’s director of thematic engagement, told journalists as she presented the report in Geneva. “It’s about recognizing that if AI is going to be used in these human rights — very critical — function areas, that it’s got to be done the right way. And we simply haven’t yet put in place a framework that ensures that happens.”

Bachelet didn't call for an outright ban of facial recognition technology, but said governments should halt the scanning of people's features in real time until they can show the technology is accurate, won't discriminate and meets certain privacy and data protection standards.

While countries weren't mentioned by name in the report, China has been among the countries that have rolled out facial recognition technology — particularly for surveillance in the western region of Xinjiang, where many of its minority Uyghers live. The key authors of the report said naming specific countries wasn't part of their mandate and doing so could even be counterproductive.

“In the Chinese context, as in other contexts, we are concerned about transparency and discriminatory applications that addresses particular communities," said Hicks.

She cited several court cases in the United States and Australia where artificial intelligence had been wrongly applied..

The report also voices wariness about tools that try to deduce people's emotional and mental states by analyzing their facial expressions or body movements, saying such technology is susceptible to bias, misinterpretations and lacks scientific basis.

“The use of emotion recognition systems by public authorities, for instance for singling out individuals for police stops or arrests or to assess the veracity of statements during interrogations, risks undermining human rights, such as the rights to privacy, to liberty and to a fair trial,” the report says.

The report’s recommendations echo the thinking of many political leaders in Western democracies, who hope to tap into AI's economic and societal potential while addressing growing concerns about the reliability of tools that can track and profile individuals and make recommendations about who gets access to jobs, loans and educational opportunities.

European regulators have already taken steps to rein in the riskiest AI applications. Proposed regulations outlined by European Union officials this year would ban some uses of AI, such as real-time scanning of facial features, and tightly control others that could threaten people's safety or rights.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration has voiced similar concerns, though it hasn't yet outlined a detailed approach to curtailing them. A newly formed group called the Trade and Technology Council, jointly led by American and European officials, has sought to collaborate on developing shared rules for AI and other tech policy.

Efforts to limit the riskiest uses of AI have been backed by Microsoft and other U.S. tech giants that hope to guide the rules affecting the technology. Microsoft has worked with and provided funding to the U.N. rights office to help improve its use of technology, but funding for the report came through the rights office's regular budget, Hicks said.

Western countries have been at the forefront of expressing concerns about the discriminatory use of AI.

“If you think about the ways that AI could be used in a discriminatory fashion, or to further strengthen discriminatory tendencies, it is pretty scary," said U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo during a virtual conference in June. “We have to make sure we don’t let that happen.”

She was speaking with Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s executive vice president for the digital age, who suggested some AI uses should be off-limits completely in “democracies like ours.” She cited social scoring, which can close off someone’s privileges in society, and the “broad, blanket use of remote biometric identification in public space.”

———-

O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

The latest chapter in a 100-year study says AI’s promises and perils are getting real

A newly published report on the state of artificial intelligence says the field has reached a turning point where attention must be paid to the everyday applications of AI technology — and to the ways in which that technology are being abused.

© Provided by Geekwire The AI100 project is designed to track trends in artificial intelligence over the course of a century. (Image Courtesy of AI100 / Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence)

Alan Boyle 

The report, titled “Gathering Strength, Gathering Storms,” was issued today as part of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, or AI100, which is envisioned as a century-long effort to track progress in AI and guide its future development .

AI100 was initiated by Eric Horvitz, Microsoft’s chief scientific officer, and hosted by the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. The project is funded by a gift from Horvitz, a Stanford alumnus, and his wife, Mary.

The project’s first report, published in 2016, downplayed concerns that AI would lead to a Terminator-style rise of the machines and warned that fear and suspicion about AI would impede efforts to ensure the safety and reliability of AI technologies. At the same time, it acknowledged that the effects of AI and automation could lead to social disruption.

This year’s update, prepared by a standing committee in collaboration with a panel of 17 researchers and experts, says AI’s effects are increasingly touching people’s lives in settings that range from movie recommendations and voice assistants to autonomous driving and automated medical diagnoses.

“In the past five years, AI has made the leap from something that mostly happens in research labs or other highly controlled settings to something that’s out in society affecting people’s lives,” Brown University computer scientist Michael Littman, who chaired the report panel, said in a news release.

“That’s really exciting, because this technology is doing some amazing things that we could only dream about five or ten years ago,” Littman added. “But at the same time the field is coming to grips with the societal impact of this technology, and I think the next frontier is thinking about ways we can get the benefits from AI while minimizing the risks.”

Those risks include deep-fake images and videos that are used to spread misinformation or harm people’s reputations; online bots that are used to manipulate public opinion; algorithmic bias that infects AI with all-too-human prejudices; and pattern recognition systems that can invade personal privacy by piecing together data from multiple sources.

The report says computer scientists must work more closely with experts in the social sciences, the legal system and law enforcement to reduce those risks.

One of the benefits of conducting a century-long study is that each report along the way builds on the previous report, said AI100 standing committee chair Peter Stone, who’s a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin as well as executive director of Sony AI America.

“The 2021 report is critical to this longitudinal aspect of AI100 in that it links closely with the 2016 report by commenting on what’s changed in the intervening five years,” he said. “It also provides a wonderful template for future study panels to emulate by answering a set of questions that we expect future study panels to re-evaluate at five-year intervals.”

Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, hailed the AI100 update in an email to GeekWire.

“The report represents a substantial amount of work and insight by top experts both inside and outside of the field,” said Etzioni, who was on the study panel for the 2016 report but played no role in the update. “It eschews sensationalism in favor of measured and scholarly obligations. I think the report is correct about the prospect for human-AI collaboration, the need for AI literacy, and the essential role of a strong non-commercial perspective from academia and non-profits.”

Etzioni’s only quibble was over the report’s claim that so far, AI’s economic significance has been “comparatively small — particularly relative to expectations.”

“I do think that the report may understate AI’s economic impact, because AI is often a component technology in products made by Apple, Amazon, Google and other major companies,” he said.

WAGE THEFT

Google faces calls to compensate thousands of underpaid temp workers after 'massive moral failing' uncovered

mcoulter@businessinsider.com (Martin Coulter) 

© Provided by Business Insider Google's logo seen at its Mountain View campus. 

Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Google faces calls to compensate thousands of temporary workers it has historically underpaid.

More than 140 Google employees signed a petition calling the situation a 'massive moral failing.'

Google said it was committed to undertaking a 'thorough review' of the situation.

Google employees are calling on the tech giant to compensate thousands of its temporary workers, after reports that the company had illegally underpaid them.

On Friday, The New York Times and The Guardian reported Google had violated pay-parity laws in several countries, particularly in Europe and Asia, where companies are required to pay equitable wages to full-time and temporary workers who perform similar workplace duties, a rule that does not exist in the US.

Google's compliance department were reported to have discovered the mistake in May 2019, but chose not to immediately compensate the underpaid temporary staff, and instead only corrected rates for new employees in the hopes of avoiding legal, financial, and reputational damage.

Google's temporary and contract workers reportedly outnumber its force of full-time employees, creating a "shadow workforce" that has attempted unionizing in recent years to fight for fair wages and benefits, Insider's Katie Canales reported.

The company employs around 6,000 TVCs (temps, vendors, and contractors) around the world, many of whom, The Guardian, are based in the UK, Ireland, India, Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Poland - all of which enforce local pay-parity laws.

By Wednesday night, more than 140 Google employees had signed a petition calling on the company to pay these TVCs (temps, vendors, and contractors) "the full wages they are legally entitled to and have earned," and called on the company to consider paying US temp workers similar rates, irrespective of legislation.

The petition was organized by Alphabet Workers' Union, a pressure group formed in January. The petition states the relative cost of compensating TVCs would be "an insignificant amount considering Google's trillion dollar valuation," and that leadership had "decided to prioritize avoiding negative press over improving wages and thus, quality of life, for thousands of their workers."

"For much of Google's workforce, 'Don't be evil' is a smokescreen," it continues.

"It's a way to reap the financial rewards of unquestioning public faith, by assuring investors, users and government entities that Google is trustworthy and friendly - while successfully underpaying and mistreating the majority of their workers."

Shortly after the story broke on Friday, Google's chief compliance officer Spyros Karetsos wrote in a blog post that the pay-parity process had "not been handled consistent with the high standards to which we hold ourselves as a company."

Karetsos said the company was undergoing a "thorough review" of the situation, and that it was "committed to identifying and addressing any pay discrepancies that the team has not already addressed."

Insider approached Google for comment.

Amazon reaches agreement with trade unions in Italy



MILAN (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc has struck a deal with Italian trade unions promising to engage with them more in the running of operations in the country.

© Reuters/Remo Casilli FILE PHOTO: Flags flutter outside a distribution centre, during a strike at Amazon's logistics operations in Itally

The framework agreement, seen by Reuters, comes shortly after news that a group of Canadian workers are seeking to unionize as Amazon continues to manage discontent among some workers at its warehouses.

The world's largest online retailer has long discouraged staff from organising and staved off a high-profile attempt to form a union in the United States this year.

But globally, it continues to face challenges such as warehouse closures that unions in France pushed for during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a protocol signed on Wednesday, Amazon Italia agreed to consult with trade unions on issues like new openings, job training and industrial relations with authorities.

"An important agreement ... and recognition of the role of the unions, marking something new, at a world level, in relations with the e-commerce giant," said the head of the CGIL union Maurizio Landini.

Earlier this year Amazon workers in Italy staged a strike over demands on delivery drivers in the pandemic in the first such action by Amazon's logistics operation in the country.

That protest came after a surge in Amazon's e-commerce business triggered by the health emergency.

Amazon, which has invested more than 6 billion euros ($7 billion) in Italy in the last 10 years and created 12,500 full-time jobs, said the agreement was proof of its commitment to engaging with unions.

"We believe relations built on these grounds will encourage our investment strategy in the country," it said.

($1 = 0.8470 euros)

(Reporting by Stephen Jewkes and Elvira Pollina; Editing by Mark Potter)

Salaries expected to rise, but real wages of workers could edge down after inflation


Wages are expected to go up in Canada next year, but workers may not feel the difference if salary gains are eroded by rising inflation, according to a new survey and data released Wednesday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

A LifeWorks survey on the salary plans of Canadian employers showed a projected average annual pay increase of 2.5 per cent for 2022.

When excluding organizations that are planning salary freezes, the poll found average salaries are expected to rise 2.7 per cent next year — the highest in half a decade.

But that salary bump could fall short of Canada's steadily rising inflation rate, leaving workers with less buying power overall.

Statistics Canada said the consumer price index for August rose 4.1 per cent compared with a year ago — the largest year-over-year inflation increase since March 2003.

If inflation continues to increase in the coming months, the situation could leave workers unable to afford as many goods and services.

"When we look historically, salary increases have always been above inflation, so there’s a net gain," said Anand Parsan, partner and national practice leader of compensation consulting for LifeWorks.

"But now inflation is outstripping increases in salary."

Still, the survey found salaries are set to increase at the fastest pace recorded in five years.

"Organizations are scrambling to find and attract talent so they're forced to increase salaries," Parsan said.

"But organizations have to balance that with their ability to pay and what's going to happen with the economy."

The Bank of Canada has played down inflation concerns, noting that the factors pushing up inflation like pandemic-related supply bottlenecks are expected to be transitory.

Sherry Cooper, chief economist of Dominion Lending Centres, said it's premature to raise the alarm about inflation outpacing salaries.

"Much of this is wait and see, and the jury is still out because we're not sure yet if inflation pressures are temporary," she said, noting that some higher prices reflect a return to normal after prices dropped in 2020 at the outset of the pandemic.

Cooper added that the Delta variant continues to have a significant impact on the economy.

"It's all still highly uncertain," she said. "Businesses can't afford to push up wages if demand is going to begin to slow."

Meanwhile, another poll suggests the top priority of some employees may not be a pay raise.

A survey by payroll and HR management firm ADP Canada found work-life balance outweighs salary as top perk for Canadian workers.

When asked to compare their current priorities to those before the pandemic, the poll conducted with Maru Public Opinion found 31 per cent of working respondents said a job that respects work-life balance is more important to them now.

That compared to only 20 per cent who felt salary had become more important.

The survey also found nine out of 10 remote workers polled hope to continue working remotely some or all days of the week, citing work-life balance as the most important factor.

Meanwhile, the LifeWorks survey found the highest wage increases are expected in the wholesale trade industry, where average salaries excluding freezes are expected to climb 3.1 per cent.

The construction, accommodation and food services, and information technology sectors are projected to see wage increases of three per cent.

LifeWorks' 39th annual salary projection survey included responses from 829 organizations across Canada polled in July and August.

The online survey by ADP Canada and Maru Public Opinion included responses from 3,032 randomly selected Canadian adults between Sept. 1 and Sept. 3.

According to the polling industry's generally accepted standards, online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 15, 2021.

Brett Bundale, The Canadian Press

Harris, Yellen make a personal case for fixing child care

The U.S. Treasury Department issued a report Wednesday that detailed the high price and low wages for child care, a problem that makes it harder for parents to work and one that the Biden administration aims to fix with its budget proposal.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen presented the findings in remarks that drew on personal experiences. Harris recalled spending weekdays with Regina Shelton, who ran a childcare center from her home while the vice president's mother was in the lab researching breast cancer.

“She became a second mother to my sister and me,” Harris said. “My mother often said that, but for Miss Shelton, she would not have been able to do the work that she did.”

Yellen recalled posting a classified advertisement for a babysitter when she was returning to work 40 years ago as an economics professor after having given birth. Yellen and her husband, the economist George Akerlof, decided to pay wages above the market rate in order to receive better care.

“It’s a completely rational reason to pay someone more, especially if the job is some of the most intimate work there is, which is caring for children,” Yellen said. “Our hypothesis proved correct, at least in our own home.”

But Yellen emphasized that her experience is far from normal in the United States. The Treasury report draws attention to a troubling paradox in child care: It costs families too much money, yet the sector's workers receive chronically low pay that undermines the quality of care.

“Child care is a textbook case of a broken market,” Yellen said.

An average family with just one child under 5 would need to devote 13% of their income for child care. That's more than an average family spends on food and the report concludes that it's an unaffordable sum.

Child care workers earn an average of $24,230. More than 15% of the industry's workers live below the poverty line in 41 states and half need public assistance. As a result, the sector has high levels of turnover with 26% to 40% leaving their job each year. Nor is their much room to give among child care centers that tend to operate on profits of 1% or less.

The result is stressed parents, lower levels of women holding jobs and widening levels of inequality.

The Biden administration says it can resolve these problems through a substantial increase in investment in young children. It would cap child care expenses at 7% of a family's income. Universal pre-school for 3 and 4-year-olds would be provided. Families with children under 13 could receive dependent care tax credits of $4,000 per child or $8,000 for two or more children.

The government would also fund child care centers to ensure workers can receive a living wage.

Another key element would be the expanded child tax credit, which is providing families with children under the age of 6 with $300 a month per child and $250 monthly for older children.

But some lawmakers are hesitant to provide the comparatively robust benefits being proposed by the administration.

The president's plan would remove work requirements for families receiving the child tax credit, something that West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a key Democratic vote for passage, opposes.

“Tax credits are based around people that have tax liabilities," Manchin told a reporter for Insider, a news outlet. “I’m even willing to go as long as they have a W-2 and showing they’re working.”

Josh Boak, The Associated Press

Meet the Port of Los Angeles' dock workers who make over $100,000 working with some of the world's largest robots

gkay@businessinsider.com (Grace Kay)

© Associated Press Associated Press

The 7,000 dockers represented through the ILWU at Port LA are some of the highest paid blue-collar workers.

They receive nearly three times as much money as the average dockworker due to the nature of their job.

Christopher Mims breaks down how packages arrive at your door within a matter of days in his new book, "Arriving Today."

Dock workers at the Port of Los Angeles have one of the highest-paying blue-collar jobs in the US.

The over 7,000 longshoremen represented through the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) that work at the Southern California port are paid over $100,000 a year and receive free health insurance and full pensions, according to a new book from The Wall Street Journal's Christopher Mims. In the book, "Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door - Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy," Mims breaks down how goods travel from Asia to the US.

The workers receive nearly three times as much money as the average dock worker in the US, according to data from Glassdoor which lists the average salary as $36,710 a year. But, Mims contextualizes the workers' high pay within the scope of the ILWU's strength, as well as the skill and danger associated with the job.

"The longshoremen in TracPac's cranes are real-life examples of the science fiction staples of pilots in giant mechanized suits, except that instead of battling city-destroying Kaiju, they rise each morning to cooperate with equally tremendous seaborne giants transporting consumer goods from one continent to another," Mims writes.

Longshoremen represent a crucial part of the complicated dance that makes up the global supply chain. The ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach are responsible for about half of US imports. In Los Angeles, the dockworkers work in one of the most heavily automated ports in the world. As of 2020, a third of the port is fully automated.

Longshoremen work alongside massive robots to unload and reload boats, including a terminal called the TracPac that is nearly fully automated with three-story-high robot cranes that move containers within the port. Mims points out that some workers are in close proximity to the hulking robots that could crush a human in an instant, opening them up to serious risks of death or injury.

Port LA has 28 massive crane robots called "autostrads" and is home to the largest robot in the world by dimension.

"They accelerate quickly but move slowly, topping out at a speed barely above a brisk walk. They're tall and gangly, like marionettes," Mims writes about the all-electric robots that roll silently on rubber tires in the TracPac. "In their group behavior - in the way they literally swarm the containers deposited for them on the quay - they seem like ants, or more accurately, like robots imbued with ant-like logic."

Members of the ILWU have been able to receive higher wages than most blue-collar workers due to the crucial role they play in the economy by maintaining the flow of goods in and out of the US. While the port's automation has drastically cut down on the number of human workers at the ports, the ones that remain have become increasingly valuable. They are part of a process that takes as little as 24 hours to fully unload a ship.

Mims pointed to instances when worker strikes threatened to derail the US economy, including in 2002 when President George W. Busch interceded to halt strikes at 29 West Coast ports.

While workers represented by the ILWU have been able to negotiate for higher wages, it doesn't reflect the pay of the hourly workers who are called onto the job when the ports need extra workers. These workers do not receive benefits and have a starting pay of about $25 per hour, according to Mims.

Longshoremen are some of many workers that help keep the supply chain flowing. Today, these workers are more important than ever as massive supply-chain snags threaten to disrupt the global economy. In the Port of Los Angeles, longshoremen face a record backlog of ships.