NH Health officials criticize rejection of vaccine funding
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire’s rejection of federal funding for vaccine outreach and other programs will further strain the state’s hospitals and delay the administration of COVID-19 vaccines to children, health care officials said Monday.
The Republican-led Executive Council, a five-member panel that approves state contracts, rejected $27 million in federal vaccination funding this month, although a legislative committee later approved accepting $4.7 million.
Jim Potter, executive vice president of the New Hampshire Medical Society, said pediatricians “desperately need” the money to begin vaccinating children.
“You’re going to have parents who are going to be delayed months in getting their kids vaccinated,” Potter said. “This is not so much about the rights of some individuals, it’s simply denying access to care to what I would say is the majority of parents of children who want the vaccine.”
Dr. Don Caruso, CEO at Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene, said hospitals are struggling with a high volume of patients, many of whom delayed care during the pandemic and are coming in sicker. Some are cutting back on elective procedures, while intensive care patients are being moved around the state, he said, adding that staff members are exhausted and leaving the health care profession.
“What the Executive Council did was a travesty,” Caruso said.
The health officials were joined at a news conference by the state’s all-Democratic congressional delegation, who called the council’s actions misguided and dangerous.
Republican councilors argued the grant language would have required the state to comply with any “future directives” issued by the Biden administration regarding COVID-19, such as vaccine mandates, although the state attorney general said that wasn’t true.
Asked whether they could get federal waivers to remove that language, U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said the delegation did its part by securing the funds.
“We’ve already talked to the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), we’re talking to the various federal agencies, but the reality is, we’ve done our job,” Shaheen said. “Now it’s time for the governor and the Republican Executive Councilors to do their jobs and protect the health and safety of the people of this state.”
Monday, October 25, 2021
NTSB chair wants Tesla to limit where Autopilot can operate
FILE - This July 8, 2018 photo shows Tesla 2018 Model 3 sedans sit on display outside a Tesla showroom in Littleton, Colo. Tesla wants to keep secret its response to the U.S. government’s request for information in an investigation of its Autopilot partially automated driving system. The electric vehicle maker sent a partial response by a Friday deadline to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is investigating how the system detects and responds to emergency vehicles parked on highways. In a document posted on its website Monday, Oct. 25, 2021 the agency says it is reviewing the response and that Tesla has asked that its whole submission be treated as confidential business information.
FILE - This July 8, 2018 photo shows Tesla 2018 Model 3 sedans sit on display outside a Tesla showroom in Littleton, Colo. Tesla wants to keep secret its response to the U.S. government’s request for information in an investigation of its Autopilot partially automated driving system. The electric vehicle maker sent a partial response by a Friday deadline to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is investigating how the system detects and responds to emergency vehicles parked on highways. In a document posted on its website Monday, Oct. 25, 2021 the agency says it is reviewing the response and that Tesla has asked that its whole submission be treated as confidential business information.
(AP Photo/David Zalubowsi, File)
DETROIT (AP) — The head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is calling on Tesla to act on recommendations to limit where its Autopilot driver-assist system can operate and to put a system in place to make sure drivers are paying attention.
In a letter sent to Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday, Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy says the electric vehicle maker has not responded to the agency’s recommendations issued four years ago.
Homendy also says company statements that safety is the primary design requirement for Tesla are undercut by the rollout of “Full Self-Driving” software to customers who test it on public roads. The tests are being done “without first addressing the very design shortcomings” that allowed three fatal Tesla crashes that were investigated by the NTSB, she wrote.
The NTSB investigates crashes but has no regulatory authority. It can only make recommendations to automakers or other federal agencies such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Messages were left Monday seeking comment from Tesla.
“If you are serious about putting safety front and center in Tesla vehicle design, I invite you to complete action on the safety recommendations we issued to you four years ago,” Homendy wrote.
The agency, she wrote, has long advocated for multiple technologies to prevent crashes and save lives, “but it’s crucial that such technology is implemented with the safety of all road users foremost in mind.”
Homendy wrote that her agency appreciates Tesla’s cooperation as it investigates other fatal Tesla crashes in Texas and Florida.
She pointed out that the agency found that the driver in a 2016 crash in Williston, Florida, ran his car on Autopilot on roads where it wasn’t designed to operate safely. The NTSB also determined that Autopilot didn’t effectively monitor the driver to make sure he was paying attention.
Tesla has said that Autopilot and “Full Self-Driving” are driver assist systems and cannot drive themselves, despite their names. It says drivers should always pay attention and be ready to take action.
The NTSB made the recommendations in 2017 to Tesla and five other automakers. The other five responded describing what action they would take, but Tesla did not officially respond, Homendy wrote.
The letter comes as federal agencies step up pressure on Tesla over its partially automated driving systems. It comes just hours after NHTSA posted a document showing that Tesla wants to keep secret its response to the agency’s investigation of Autopilot.
The electric vehicle maker sent the agency a partial response by a Friday deadline. The agency is investigating how Autopilot detects and responds to emergency vehicles parked on highways.
In a document posted on its website Monday, the agency says it is reviewing Tesla’s response, and that Tesla has asked that its whole submission be treated as confidential business information.
Companies often ask that some information be kept confidential when they respond to the agency, but seldom does it allow entire documents to be kept secret. Much of the time the documents are heavily redacted before being placed in public files.
In August the safety agency made a detailed information request to Tesla in an 11-page letter that is part of a wide-ranging investigation into how Autopilot behaves when first responder vehicles are parked while crews deal with crashes or other hazards.
The agency wants to know how Teslas detect a crash scene, including flashing lights, road flares, reflective vests worn by responders and vehicles parked on the road.
The agency opened the investigation in August, citing 12 crashes in which Teslas on Autopilot hit parked police and fire vehicles. In the crashes under investigation, at least 17 people were hurt and one was killed.
NHTSA announced the investigation into Tesla’s driver assist systems including Autopilot and/or Traffic Aware Cruise Control after a series of collisions with emergency vehicles since 2018. The probe covers 765,000 vehicles from the 2014 through 2021 model years.
Autopilot, which can keep vehicles in their lanes and stop for obstacles in front of them, has frequently been misused by Tesla drivers.
The agency also is asking Tesla for details on how it ensures that drivers are paying attention, including instrument panel and aural warnings.
Tesla also faces another deadline from NHTSA. By Nov. 1 it has to explain why an over-the-internet software update improving Autopilot’s ability to spot emergency vehicles in low-light conditions should not be considered a recall.
Also, a NHTSA spokeswoman said Monday that the agency has asked Tesla for information about changes to “Full Self-Driving” software that is being tested on public roads by selected Tesla owners.
Musk wrote on Twitter during the weekend that Tesla was spotting “issues” with a new version of the software, so it was rolling that back to a previous version. Earlier he wrote that the new version was experiencing “regression” in left turns at traffic lights.
On Monday, Musk tweeted that the problem had been fixed and said the issue was power-saving mode interacting with the software.
Critics say the changes show Tesla is testing software on public roads without proper simulation and internal checks.
DETROIT (AP) — The head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is calling on Tesla to act on recommendations to limit where its Autopilot driver-assist system can operate and to put a system in place to make sure drivers are paying attention.
In a letter sent to Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday, Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy says the electric vehicle maker has not responded to the agency’s recommendations issued four years ago.
Homendy also says company statements that safety is the primary design requirement for Tesla are undercut by the rollout of “Full Self-Driving” software to customers who test it on public roads. The tests are being done “without first addressing the very design shortcomings” that allowed three fatal Tesla crashes that were investigated by the NTSB, she wrote.
The NTSB investigates crashes but has no regulatory authority. It can only make recommendations to automakers or other federal agencies such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Messages were left Monday seeking comment from Tesla.
“If you are serious about putting safety front and center in Tesla vehicle design, I invite you to complete action on the safety recommendations we issued to you four years ago,” Homendy wrote.
The agency, she wrote, has long advocated for multiple technologies to prevent crashes and save lives, “but it’s crucial that such technology is implemented with the safety of all road users foremost in mind.”
Homendy wrote that her agency appreciates Tesla’s cooperation as it investigates other fatal Tesla crashes in Texas and Florida.
She pointed out that the agency found that the driver in a 2016 crash in Williston, Florida, ran his car on Autopilot on roads where it wasn’t designed to operate safely. The NTSB also determined that Autopilot didn’t effectively monitor the driver to make sure he was paying attention.
Tesla has said that Autopilot and “Full Self-Driving” are driver assist systems and cannot drive themselves, despite their names. It says drivers should always pay attention and be ready to take action.
The NTSB made the recommendations in 2017 to Tesla and five other automakers. The other five responded describing what action they would take, but Tesla did not officially respond, Homendy wrote.
The letter comes as federal agencies step up pressure on Tesla over its partially automated driving systems. It comes just hours after NHTSA posted a document showing that Tesla wants to keep secret its response to the agency’s investigation of Autopilot.
The electric vehicle maker sent the agency a partial response by a Friday deadline. The agency is investigating how Autopilot detects and responds to emergency vehicles parked on highways.
In a document posted on its website Monday, the agency says it is reviewing Tesla’s response, and that Tesla has asked that its whole submission be treated as confidential business information.
Companies often ask that some information be kept confidential when they respond to the agency, but seldom does it allow entire documents to be kept secret. Much of the time the documents are heavily redacted before being placed in public files.
In August the safety agency made a detailed information request to Tesla in an 11-page letter that is part of a wide-ranging investigation into how Autopilot behaves when first responder vehicles are parked while crews deal with crashes or other hazards.
The agency wants to know how Teslas detect a crash scene, including flashing lights, road flares, reflective vests worn by responders and vehicles parked on the road.
The agency opened the investigation in August, citing 12 crashes in which Teslas on Autopilot hit parked police and fire vehicles. In the crashes under investigation, at least 17 people were hurt and one was killed.
NHTSA announced the investigation into Tesla’s driver assist systems including Autopilot and/or Traffic Aware Cruise Control after a series of collisions with emergency vehicles since 2018. The probe covers 765,000 vehicles from the 2014 through 2021 model years.
Autopilot, which can keep vehicles in their lanes and stop for obstacles in front of them, has frequently been misused by Tesla drivers.
The agency also is asking Tesla for details on how it ensures that drivers are paying attention, including instrument panel and aural warnings.
Tesla also faces another deadline from NHTSA. By Nov. 1 it has to explain why an over-the-internet software update improving Autopilot’s ability to spot emergency vehicles in low-light conditions should not be considered a recall.
Also, a NHTSA spokeswoman said Monday that the agency has asked Tesla for information about changes to “Full Self-Driving” software that is being tested on public roads by selected Tesla owners.
Musk wrote on Twitter during the weekend that Tesla was spotting “issues” with a new version of the software, so it was rolling that back to a previous version. Earlier he wrote that the new version was experiencing “regression” in left turns at traffic lights.
On Monday, Musk tweeted that the problem had been fixed and said the issue was power-saving mode interacting with the software.
Critics say the changes show Tesla is testing software on public roads without proper simulation and internal checks.
Northam: $200M wind turbine project to create 310 jobs
Two of the offshore wind turbines have been constructed off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va., Monday, June 29, 2020. Gov. Ralph Northam says a $200 million factory will create hundreds of jobs making turbine blades for offshore wind projects. Virginia-based Dominion Energy is already partnering with Spain's Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy on the $7.8 billion project, which will generate energy 27 miles off Virginia Beach. The factory at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal promises 310 jobs producing blades for this project and others across North America. The project announced Monday, Oct. 25, 2021 includes more than $80 million in investments for buildings and equipment at the terminal.
Two of the offshore wind turbines have been constructed off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va., Monday, June 29, 2020. Gov. Ralph Northam says a $200 million factory will create hundreds of jobs making turbine blades for offshore wind projects. Virginia-based Dominion Energy is already partnering with Spain's Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy on the $7.8 billion project, which will generate energy 27 miles off Virginia Beach. The factory at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal promises 310 jobs producing blades for this project and others across North America. The project announced Monday, Oct. 25, 2021 includes more than $80 million in investments for buildings and equipment at the terminal.
(AP Photo/Steve Helber, file)
PORTSMOUTH, Va. (AP) — Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy will partner with Dominion Energy on a $200 million factory making turbine blades for offshore wind projects, creating 310 jobs, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced Monday.
Virginia-based Dominion previously selected the Spanish company as its partner for its $7.8 billion energy generation project 27 miles (43 kilometers) off the coast of Virginia Beach. The Siemens Gamesa factory at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal will produce turbine blades for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project as well as other offshore wind energy generators around North America.
The factory project includes more than $80 million in investments for buildings and equipment at the terminal, where about 50 new service jobs are expected to support the effort.
“The U.S. offshore market is a critical part of our overall global strategy, with our presence in Virginia playing a crucial and central role,” Siemens Gamesa Offshore Business Unit CEO Marc Becker said in a statement.
Over the next 10 years, building and operating the offshore wind industry will be worth $109 billion to businesses in its supply chain, according to a recent report from the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind. That figure is up from the group’s $70 billion estimate just two years ago.
Coastal states are moving to enter or expand their roles in the industry and some have been vying to become supply chain hubs by planning and building onshore support sites for manufacturing wind power components.
“Virginians want renewable energy, our employers want it, and Virginia is delivering it,” Northam said in a statement. “Make no mistake: Virginia is building a new industry in renewable energy, with more new jobs to follow, and that’s good news for our country.”
In August, Northam announced that Dominion Energy would lease 72 acres of the deep-water, multi-use marine cargo terminal in Portsmouth as a staging and pre-assembly area for the foundations and turbines to be installed off Virginia Beach. The project is expected to provide enough electricity to power 660,000 homes by 2026, Dominion has said.
A two-turbine pilot project is currently operating off Virginia Beach. Federal officials announced the beginning of a review process for the project over the summer.
The Virginia Clean Economy Act sets a target for Dominion Energy to construct or purchase at least 5,200 megawatts of energy through offshore wind by 2034 and to achieve 100% carbon-free energy production by 2045.
PORTSMOUTH, Va. (AP) — Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy will partner with Dominion Energy on a $200 million factory making turbine blades for offshore wind projects, creating 310 jobs, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced Monday.
Virginia-based Dominion previously selected the Spanish company as its partner for its $7.8 billion energy generation project 27 miles (43 kilometers) off the coast of Virginia Beach. The Siemens Gamesa factory at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal will produce turbine blades for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project as well as other offshore wind energy generators around North America.
The factory project includes more than $80 million in investments for buildings and equipment at the terminal, where about 50 new service jobs are expected to support the effort.
“The U.S. offshore market is a critical part of our overall global strategy, with our presence in Virginia playing a crucial and central role,” Siemens Gamesa Offshore Business Unit CEO Marc Becker said in a statement.
Over the next 10 years, building and operating the offshore wind industry will be worth $109 billion to businesses in its supply chain, according to a recent report from the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind. That figure is up from the group’s $70 billion estimate just two years ago.
Coastal states are moving to enter or expand their roles in the industry and some have been vying to become supply chain hubs by planning and building onshore support sites for manufacturing wind power components.
“Virginians want renewable energy, our employers want it, and Virginia is delivering it,” Northam said in a statement. “Make no mistake: Virginia is building a new industry in renewable energy, with more new jobs to follow, and that’s good news for our country.”
In August, Northam announced that Dominion Energy would lease 72 acres of the deep-water, multi-use marine cargo terminal in Portsmouth as a staging and pre-assembly area for the foundations and turbines to be installed off Virginia Beach. The project is expected to provide enough electricity to power 660,000 homes by 2026, Dominion has said.
A two-turbine pilot project is currently operating off Virginia Beach. Federal officials announced the beginning of a review process for the project over the summer.
The Virginia Clean Economy Act sets a target for Dominion Energy to construct or purchase at least 5,200 megawatts of energy through offshore wind by 2034 and to achieve 100% carbon-free energy production by 2045.
Nuclear power: Are energy price hikes prompting a German rethink?
Energy prices are soaring globally, and Germany's neighbors are building new nuclear reactors. Some want to revisit the commitment to go nuclear-free.
'Nuclear energy? No thank you!' has been the rallying cry of several generations in Germany
In Germany, the stock market price for electricity has risen by around 140% since January. Experts believe energy prices are being driven up by the rocketing cost of natural gas, which has gone up 440% since the beginning of the year.
So far electricity and gas prices for households in Germany have increased only 4.7% in the first half of 2021, but many consumers fear the rise in market costs may soon be passed on to them. Germany already pays the most for electricity in Europe, with around half of the cost made up of taxes, levies, and surcharges, part of which is meant to facilitate the transition to renewable energy.
Currently about a quarter of Germany's electricity comes from coal and about another quarter from renewables, 16% from natural gas and around 11% from nuclear energy.
This December, half of Germany's remaining nuclear reactors are scheduled to be taken offline. The other half are to cease operation next year as part of the government's plan to go nuclear-free. That shift could potentially drive energy prices even higher as Germany also moves away from coal and becomes more reliant on gas in the short term while planning to move to renewables in the long term.
Three-quarters of Germans want their government to take tougher measures to combat price rises, and 31% said they would support keeping nuclear power if it would stabilize electricity prices, according to a poll by the price comparison service Verivox. The study surveyed 1,000 people aged 18 to 69 across Germany in September 2021 and was representative of the population in terms of age, gender and the German state of residence. That statistic represents an 11% increase in support for nuclear power since 2018.
Pros and cons of nuclear power
Following the September 26 national election, the center-left Social Democrats, environmentalist Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats have begun coalition negotiations to form Germany's next government. The preliminary agreements saw a commitment to build new gas power plants and to phase out coal power by 2030, but no extensions for the use of nuclear power.
On October 13, in an open letter in the German daily newspaper Die Welt, experts warned that Germany risked "carbonizing its energy system by phasing out nuclear power” and missing its 2030 climate goals. The experts believe that the loss in nuclear-produced electricity will not be able to be made up for using new renewable energy production and will instead require burning more coal and natural gas. The letter calls for the life cycles of the remaining power plants to be extended from 2030 to 2036.
The letter was initiated by British environmentalist John Law, but despite the unpopularity of such views in Germany, it has a number of German signatories. Simon Friederich, professor of the philosophy of science at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, was one of them.
"We want to expand renewables. If we have to first replace the nuclear plants that have gone with new renewables, then of course that's an unnecessary setback," he told DW.
Friederich did not always have such positive views on nuclear energy and was part of a generation that campaigned to shut down nuclear power plants. "I was raised in the 80s in a green family of anti-nuclear vicars," he said. Like many other young Germans at the time, he read Gudrun Pausewang's 1987 young-adult novel "Fall-Out," which tells the story of a Chernobyl-like disaster in Germany, and was horrified.
But when he began to study physics at university, he became more critical. After the Fukushima disaster in Japan caused Germany to speed up the phasing out of nuclear power, he was skeptical that nuclear power was worse than other commonly used alternatives, like coal. He does not argue that nuclear power is a perfect option but says it is an important measure for now because of its low carbon footprint and ability to produce large amounts of power at any time of year.
Top Green politicians — here, Jürgen Trittin and Claudia Roth — often attended antinuclear rallies
Little chance of political turnaround
But even if it is unclear how Germany will replace nuclear and coal power and meet its climate goals, it is very unlikely that Germany's political leadership would allow an even temporary extension of the lifespan of its remaining nuclear reactors. "The political price is almost infinity. Hardly any elected politician would do so. Certainly not a government that includes the Greens," Lion Hirth, professor of Energy Policy at the Hertie School of Governance, told DW. "It would look like betraying the cause. There are very few political topics that have gathered so strong a consensus over so long."
Opposing nuclear energy goes to the core of the activism that launched the Green Party in 1980 and that continues to be its rallying cry. Green Party co-chair Robert Habeck reiterated in an article in September 2020 his belief that responsibility for future generations must be the guiding principle with which to approach energy production and its consequences.
For him, that rules out nuclear energy because of the problem of nuclear waste — which can be harmful to up to a million years — and for which safe long-term storage issues have still not been resolved.
Green Party co-chair Robert Habeck feels energy policy must not threaten future generations
The Green Party was founded as part of the antinuclear movement in West Germany and was instrumental in bringing about the agreement on the nuclear phaseout as part of the governing coalition in 2002. Green politicians took part in protests in the 1970s and 1980s against the Wackersdorf reprocessing plant, the transport of nuclear waste to Gorleben and the construction of the Brokdorf nuclear power plant, protests that they see as part of Germany's social iconography.
Friederich recognizes that he is an exception for Germany, but also sees it as a debate going beyond Germany's borders. "I am not totally naive. There is no party in the coalition negotiations that has made this part of their election priorities." He believes the real issue is about the future of nuclear power in Europe and whether Germany will oppose or attempt to shape its use.
Europe divided over nuclear energy
Within the EU, France leads an influential bloc that supports nuclear energy as a means of cutting carbon emissions. Germany's neighbors — Poland and the Czech Republic — are also part of that group. All three are currently building new nuclear power plants and have pushed for the inclusion of nuclear energy in the European Union's carbon reduction plans.
In April 2020, the European Commission's scientific body, the Joint Research Centre, released a report that found that nuclear power is a safe, low-carbon energy source comparable to wind and hydropower. Those findings allow nuclear power to receive the green investment label under EU rules. "The analyses did not reveal any science-based evidence that nuclear energy does more harm to human health or to the environment than other electricity production technologies," the report said.
In response, the energy ministers of Germany, Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg and Spain signed a letter to the European Commission asking for nuclear power to be denied the special status. "Nuclear power, however, is a high-risk technology — wind energy is not. This essential difference must be taken into account," the letter said. It also stated that the report failed to account for a serious nuclear incident.
Gundremmingen in Bavaria is so proud of its nuclear plant that its coat of arms bears a golden atom
Deploring the shutdown
At the end of 2021, Germany will shut down three of the last six remaining German nuclear reactors. At the Gundremmingen facility in Bavaria, one of the units ceased operation in 2017. Now the last unit will be shut.
The plant will go from employing approximately 540 workers to 440 in the first year after closure, according to a statement provided to DW from the German multinational energy company RWE, which runs the plant. Many workers are still needed to decommission and disassemble the plant, which is planned to take over 10 years. But fewer and fewer people will be employed as time passes.
Despite an accident in 1977 that required one of the reactors to be shut down — considered the worst incident in a nuclear power plant in Germany's history — many locals continue to have a positive view of nuclear power.
"We find it really sad," Gerlinge Hutter, who runs the Zum Ochsen Inn in Gundremmingen, told DW about the closing of the plant. She expects fewer people will now come to stay, since many of their guests worked at the plant. "We also worry about the electricity prices. And we know it is still sure to be nuclear power we are getting because the countries around us are all building new reactors."
While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society, with an eye toward understanding this year’s elections and beyond. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing, to stay on top of developments as Germany enters the post-Merkel era.
Energy prices are soaring globally, and Germany's neighbors are building new nuclear reactors. Some want to revisit the commitment to go nuclear-free.
'Nuclear energy? No thank you!' has been the rallying cry of several generations in Germany
In Germany, the stock market price for electricity has risen by around 140% since January. Experts believe energy prices are being driven up by the rocketing cost of natural gas, which has gone up 440% since the beginning of the year.
So far electricity and gas prices for households in Germany have increased only 4.7% in the first half of 2021, but many consumers fear the rise in market costs may soon be passed on to them. Germany already pays the most for electricity in Europe, with around half of the cost made up of taxes, levies, and surcharges, part of which is meant to facilitate the transition to renewable energy.
Currently about a quarter of Germany's electricity comes from coal and about another quarter from renewables, 16% from natural gas and around 11% from nuclear energy.
This December, half of Germany's remaining nuclear reactors are scheduled to be taken offline. The other half are to cease operation next year as part of the government's plan to go nuclear-free. That shift could potentially drive energy prices even higher as Germany also moves away from coal and becomes more reliant on gas in the short term while planning to move to renewables in the long term.
Three-quarters of Germans want their government to take tougher measures to combat price rises, and 31% said they would support keeping nuclear power if it would stabilize electricity prices, according to a poll by the price comparison service Verivox. The study surveyed 1,000 people aged 18 to 69 across Germany in September 2021 and was representative of the population in terms of age, gender and the German state of residence. That statistic represents an 11% increase in support for nuclear power since 2018.
Watch video03:06 Germany's phaseout of nuclear power almost done
Pros and cons of nuclear power
Following the September 26 national election, the center-left Social Democrats, environmentalist Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats have begun coalition negotiations to form Germany's next government. The preliminary agreements saw a commitment to build new gas power plants and to phase out coal power by 2030, but no extensions for the use of nuclear power.
On October 13, in an open letter in the German daily newspaper Die Welt, experts warned that Germany risked "carbonizing its energy system by phasing out nuclear power” and missing its 2030 climate goals. The experts believe that the loss in nuclear-produced electricity will not be able to be made up for using new renewable energy production and will instead require burning more coal and natural gas. The letter calls for the life cycles of the remaining power plants to be extended from 2030 to 2036.
40 YEARS OF GERMAN ANTI-NUCLEAR ACTIONA movement is bornGermany’s anti nuclear movement got its start in the early 1970s, when protestors came out in force against plans for a nuclear power plant at Wyhl, close to the French border. Police were accused of using unnecessary force against the peaceful demonstrations. But the activists ultimately won, and plans for the Wyhl power station were scrapped in 1975.
The letter was initiated by British environmentalist John Law, but despite the unpopularity of such views in Germany, it has a number of German signatories. Simon Friederich, professor of the philosophy of science at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, was one of them.
"We want to expand renewables. If we have to first replace the nuclear plants that have gone with new renewables, then of course that's an unnecessary setback," he told DW.
Friederich did not always have such positive views on nuclear energy and was part of a generation that campaigned to shut down nuclear power plants. "I was raised in the 80s in a green family of anti-nuclear vicars," he said. Like many other young Germans at the time, he read Gudrun Pausewang's 1987 young-adult novel "Fall-Out," which tells the story of a Chernobyl-like disaster in Germany, and was horrified.
But when he began to study physics at university, he became more critical. After the Fukushima disaster in Japan caused Germany to speed up the phasing out of nuclear power, he was skeptical that nuclear power was worse than other commonly used alternatives, like coal. He does not argue that nuclear power is a perfect option but says it is an important measure for now because of its low carbon footprint and ability to produce large amounts of power at any time of year.
Top Green politicians — here, Jürgen Trittin and Claudia Roth — often attended antinuclear rallies
Little chance of political turnaround
But even if it is unclear how Germany will replace nuclear and coal power and meet its climate goals, it is very unlikely that Germany's political leadership would allow an even temporary extension of the lifespan of its remaining nuclear reactors. "The political price is almost infinity. Hardly any elected politician would do so. Certainly not a government that includes the Greens," Lion Hirth, professor of Energy Policy at the Hertie School of Governance, told DW. "It would look like betraying the cause. There are very few political topics that have gathered so strong a consensus over so long."
Opposing nuclear energy goes to the core of the activism that launched the Green Party in 1980 and that continues to be its rallying cry. Green Party co-chair Robert Habeck reiterated in an article in September 2020 his belief that responsibility for future generations must be the guiding principle with which to approach energy production and its consequences.
For him, that rules out nuclear energy because of the problem of nuclear waste — which can be harmful to up to a million years — and for which safe long-term storage issues have still not been resolved.
Green Party co-chair Robert Habeck feels energy policy must not threaten future generations
The Green Party was founded as part of the antinuclear movement in West Germany and was instrumental in bringing about the agreement on the nuclear phaseout as part of the governing coalition in 2002. Green politicians took part in protests in the 1970s and 1980s against the Wackersdorf reprocessing plant, the transport of nuclear waste to Gorleben and the construction of the Brokdorf nuclear power plant, protests that they see as part of Germany's social iconography.
Friederich recognizes that he is an exception for Germany, but also sees it as a debate going beyond Germany's borders. "I am not totally naive. There is no party in the coalition negotiations that has made this part of their election priorities." He believes the real issue is about the future of nuclear power in Europe and whether Germany will oppose or attempt to shape its use.
Europe divided over nuclear energy
Within the EU, France leads an influential bloc that supports nuclear energy as a means of cutting carbon emissions. Germany's neighbors — Poland and the Czech Republic — are also part of that group. All three are currently building new nuclear power plants and have pushed for the inclusion of nuclear energy in the European Union's carbon reduction plans.
In April 2020, the European Commission's scientific body, the Joint Research Centre, released a report that found that nuclear power is a safe, low-carbon energy source comparable to wind and hydropower. Those findings allow nuclear power to receive the green investment label under EU rules. "The analyses did not reveal any science-based evidence that nuclear energy does more harm to human health or to the environment than other electricity production technologies," the report said.
In response, the energy ministers of Germany, Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg and Spain signed a letter to the European Commission asking for nuclear power to be denied the special status. "Nuclear power, however, is a high-risk technology — wind energy is not. This essential difference must be taken into account," the letter said. It also stated that the report failed to account for a serious nuclear incident.
Gundremmingen in Bavaria is so proud of its nuclear plant that its coat of arms bears a golden atom
Deploring the shutdown
At the end of 2021, Germany will shut down three of the last six remaining German nuclear reactors. At the Gundremmingen facility in Bavaria, one of the units ceased operation in 2017. Now the last unit will be shut.
The plant will go from employing approximately 540 workers to 440 in the first year after closure, according to a statement provided to DW from the German multinational energy company RWE, which runs the plant. Many workers are still needed to decommission and disassemble the plant, which is planned to take over 10 years. But fewer and fewer people will be employed as time passes.
Despite an accident in 1977 that required one of the reactors to be shut down — considered the worst incident in a nuclear power plant in Germany's history — many locals continue to have a positive view of nuclear power.
"We find it really sad," Gerlinge Hutter, who runs the Zum Ochsen Inn in Gundremmingen, told DW about the closing of the plant. She expects fewer people will now come to stay, since many of their guests worked at the plant. "We also worry about the electricity prices. And we know it is still sure to be nuclear power we are getting because the countries around us are all building new reactors."
While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society, with an eye toward understanding this year’s elections and beyond. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing, to stay on top of developments as Germany enters the post-Merkel era.
Georgia nuclear reactors delayed again as costs mount
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Power Co. is pushing back the startup date for its two new nuclear reactors near Augusta, saying it’s still redoing sloppy construction work and that contractors still aren’t meeting deadlines.
The unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. now says the third reactor at Plant Vogtle won’t start generating electricity until sometime between July and September of next year. Previously the company said it would start in June at the latest. The fourth reactor won’t come online until sometime between April and June of 2023.
The delay will mean more costs for a project already estimated to exceed $27.8 billion overall. Georgia Power, which owns 46% of the project, had already estimated it would spend $9.2 billion, with another $3.2 billion in financing costs.
Besides Georgia Power, most electrical cooperatives and municipal utilities in Georgia own shares of the plants. Also obligated to buy power from Vogtle are Florida’s Jacksonville Electric Authority and some cooperatives and municipal utilities in Alabama.
Southern said Thursday that it would release a new estimate of Vogtle’s costs along with quarterly earnings next week. But the amount could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. When Georgia Power announced a delay of three to four months in July, the combined additional cost to all owners was around $1 billion. Southern recorded its entire share of the July costs as a loss to shareholders, but could still ask ratepayers to pay.
The delay could also push back when customers will begin paying a larger share of the plant’s costs. The Georgia Public Service Commission plans to vote next month on what could be a $224 million rate increase to pay for $2.1 billion in construction costs on Unit 3. What would be roughly a 3% rate increase for residential customers, or $3.78 a month on a bill of $122.73, is supposed to take effect after Unit 3 goes into commercial operation.
Some consumers have asked the five-member elected Public Service Commission to delay the Vogtle rate increase, citing two other upcoming Georgia Power rate increases.
Georgia Power’s 2.6 million customers have already paid more than $3.5 billion toward the cost of Vogtle units 3 and 4 under an arrangement that’s supposed to hold down borrowing costs. Public Service Commission staff members earlier estimated that the typical customer will have paid $854 in financing costs alone by the time the Vogtle reactors are finished.
In August, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission released the results of a special inspection that said two sets of electrical cables that are supposed to provide redundancy in Unit 3 weren’t properly separated. Earlier, Georgia Power had to repair a leak in Unit 3′s spent fuel pool.
Construction monitors have long criticized the project for sloppy workmanship and unrealistic timelines. Georgia Power’s time and cost estimates continue to converge with the later in-service dates and higher costs that monitors have projected.
The company said in stock market filing Thursday that the latest delay stems from more substandard construction work at Unit 3 that must be redone. It said contractors continue to not meet schedules for completing work. Georgia Power said it’s diverting workers from building Unit 4 to fix Unit 3′s problems.
Georgia Power said for years that Unit 3 would be in commercial operation by November 2021, but has pushed back that deadline three times since May. When approved in 2012, the estimated cost was $14 billion, with the first electricity being generated in 2016.
The company and regulators insist the plant — the first new U.S. reactors in decades — is the best source of clean and reliable energy for Georgia. Opponents have long pointed to what they say would be cheaper, better options, including natural gas or solar generation.
___
Follow Jeff Amy at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Power Co. is pushing back the startup date for its two new nuclear reactors near Augusta, saying it’s still redoing sloppy construction work and that contractors still aren’t meeting deadlines.
The unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. now says the third reactor at Plant Vogtle won’t start generating electricity until sometime between July and September of next year. Previously the company said it would start in June at the latest. The fourth reactor won’t come online until sometime between April and June of 2023.
The delay will mean more costs for a project already estimated to exceed $27.8 billion overall. Georgia Power, which owns 46% of the project, had already estimated it would spend $9.2 billion, with another $3.2 billion in financing costs.
Besides Georgia Power, most electrical cooperatives and municipal utilities in Georgia own shares of the plants. Also obligated to buy power from Vogtle are Florida’s Jacksonville Electric Authority and some cooperatives and municipal utilities in Alabama.
Southern said Thursday that it would release a new estimate of Vogtle’s costs along with quarterly earnings next week. But the amount could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. When Georgia Power announced a delay of three to four months in July, the combined additional cost to all owners was around $1 billion. Southern recorded its entire share of the July costs as a loss to shareholders, but could still ask ratepayers to pay.
The delay could also push back when customers will begin paying a larger share of the plant’s costs. The Georgia Public Service Commission plans to vote next month on what could be a $224 million rate increase to pay for $2.1 billion in construction costs on Unit 3. What would be roughly a 3% rate increase for residential customers, or $3.78 a month on a bill of $122.73, is supposed to take effect after Unit 3 goes into commercial operation.
Some consumers have asked the five-member elected Public Service Commission to delay the Vogtle rate increase, citing two other upcoming Georgia Power rate increases.
Georgia Power’s 2.6 million customers have already paid more than $3.5 billion toward the cost of Vogtle units 3 and 4 under an arrangement that’s supposed to hold down borrowing costs. Public Service Commission staff members earlier estimated that the typical customer will have paid $854 in financing costs alone by the time the Vogtle reactors are finished.
In August, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission released the results of a special inspection that said two sets of electrical cables that are supposed to provide redundancy in Unit 3 weren’t properly separated. Earlier, Georgia Power had to repair a leak in Unit 3′s spent fuel pool.
Construction monitors have long criticized the project for sloppy workmanship and unrealistic timelines. Georgia Power’s time and cost estimates continue to converge with the later in-service dates and higher costs that monitors have projected.
The company said in stock market filing Thursday that the latest delay stems from more substandard construction work at Unit 3 that must be redone. It said contractors continue to not meet schedules for completing work. Georgia Power said it’s diverting workers from building Unit 4 to fix Unit 3′s problems.
Georgia Power said for years that Unit 3 would be in commercial operation by November 2021, but has pushed back that deadline three times since May. When approved in 2012, the estimated cost was $14 billion, with the first electricity being generated in 2016.
The company and regulators insist the plant — the first new U.S. reactors in decades — is the best source of clean and reliable energy for Georgia. Opponents have long pointed to what they say would be cheaper, better options, including natural gas or solar generation.
___
Follow Jeff Amy at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.
Facebook Papers are a ‘call to arms’ over pressing need to regulate: MPs
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The Facebook Papers make clear the pressing need for governments around the world to crack down and put meaningful regulations on the social media giant, say two Canadian MPs who are part of the International Grand Committee on Disinformation.
© Provided by Global News Senior campaigner Flora Rebello Arduini adjusts an installation outside parliament in Westminster in London, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021. A 4-metre-high installation depicting Mark Zuckerberg surfing on a wave of cash was constructed outside parliament, as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen is due to testify to MPs on how the company puts profits ahead of public safety. The action comes after SumOfUs research revealed Instagram is still awash with posts promoting eating disorders, unproven diet supplements and skin-whitening products. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)That committee is preparing to hear from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen during a meeting next month in Brussels, Belgium. The two Canadian MPs spoke with Global News Monday about what they are taking away from the revelations in the Facebook Papers.
In short? The time to act is now, they say.
"It is past time for stronger platform governance and it is past time for greater accountability," said Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith.
"I think it’s a call to arms for public rules."
READ MORE: Facebook failed to stop global spread of abusive content, documents reveal
On Monday morning, 17 American news organizations began publishing a series of articles that paint a damning portrait of Facebook's internal operations with regards to how it manages and reviews content.
The articles are based on thousands of pages of internal company documents obtained by Haugen, a whistleblower who was formerly a product manager at the social media giant.
EXPLAINED: What are the Facebook Papers?
Haugen has testified before American and British regulators about how she says Facebook prioritizes profits over safety. She had said the company hides research assessing what role it plays in inciting political violence, and the records have prompted serious concerns about the extent to which its products hurt teenage users, particularly girls.
Several of the media articles about the Facebook Papers cited records showing the social media giant's employees have warned the company was failing to police abusive content, repeatedly being told it was causing harm, and that its algorithms were inciting political violence for years.
Angus says parliamentarians have ‘obligation’ to hold Facebook, other social media sites to account
Erskine-Smith said the revelations add to the urgency for government to regulate the algorithms used by social media companies seriously and force greater transparency on them.
He pointed to C-11, the Digital Charter Implementation Act, as an example of legislation the government should prioritize when Parliament resumes at the end of November.
READ MORE: Facebook whistleblower says platform amplifies online hate, extremism
NDP MP Charlie Angus said the coming session of Parliament should be one where all parties work together to crack down on social media giants like Facebook in light of the information in Facebook Papers.
“I think Canadians are expecting this Parliament to show maturity and work together," Angus told Global News. "I think Big Tech would be an area where we could all work together.”
"The Facebook papers reveal more about what we already know – that this is a massively powerful corporation that has consistently refused to take action to address the real-time harms that are happening on its platform," he continued.
"Mr. Trudeau must address this longstanding pattern of corporate negligence. This will include efforts to break up the Facebook monopoly, to institute rigorous oversight and to establish credible penalties, including criminal sanctions, for the corporate negligence at Facebook."
Erskine-Smith suggested discussions about breaking up Facebook would only be effective if done in partnership with American lawmakers.
The International Grand Committee on Disinformation was first created in 2018.
The goal of the committee is to bring together lawmakers and policymakers facing the challenge of trying to regulate the "increasing – and increasingly malignant – influence of social media platforms."
—With files from The Associated Press and Reuters.
People or profit? Facebook papers show deep conflict within
By BARBARA ORTUTAY
Facebook's language gaps weaken screening of hate, terrorism
By BARBARA ORTUTAY
October 25, 2021
Facebook the company is losing control of Facebook the product — not to mention the last shreds of its carefully crafted, decade-old image as a benevolent company just wanting to connect the world.
Thousands of pages of internal documents provided to Congress by a former employee depict an internally conflicted company where data on the harms it causes is abundant, but solutions, much less the will to act on them, are halting at best.
The crisis exposed by the documents shows how Facebook, despite its regularly avowed good intentions, appears to have slow-walked or sidelined efforts to address real harms the social network has magnified and sometimes created. They reveal numerous instances where researchers and rank-and-file workers uncovered deep-seated problems that the company then overlooked or ignored.
Final responsibility for this state of affairs rests with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who holds what one former employee described as dictatorial power over a corporation that collects data on and provides free services to roughly 3 billion people around the world.
“Ultimately, it rests with Mark and whatever his prerogative is — and it has always been to grow, to increase his power and his reach,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University communications professor who’s followed Facebook closely for years.
Zuckerberg has an ironclad hold on Facebook Inc. He holds the majority of the company’s voting shares, controls its board of directors and has increasingly surrounded himself with executives who don’t appear to question his vision.
But he has so far been unable to address stagnating user growth and shrinking engagement for Facebook the product in key areas such as the United States and Europe. Worse, the company is losing the attention of its most important demographic — teenagers and young people — with no clear path to gaining it back, its own documents reveal.
Young adults engage with Facebook far less than their older cohorts, seeing it as an “outdated network” with “irrelevant content” that provides limited value for them, according to a November 2020 internal document. It is “boring, misleading and negative,” they say.
In other words, the young see Facebook as a place for old people.
Facebook’s user base has been aging faster, on average, than the general population, the company’s researchers found. Unless Facebook can find a way to turn this around, its population will continue to get older and young people will find even fewer reasons to sign on, threatening the monthly user figures that are essential to selling ads. Facebook says its products are still widely used by teens, although it acknowledges there’s “tough competition” from TikTok, Snapchat and the like.
So it can continue to expand its reach and power, Facebook has pushed for high user growth outside the U.S. and Western Europe. But as it expanded into less familiar parts of the world, the company systematically failed to address or even anticipate the unintended consequences of signing up millions of new users without also providing staff and systems to identify and limit the spread of hate speech, misinformation and calls to violence.
In Afghanistan and Myanmar, for instance, extremist language has flourished due to a systemic lack of language support for content moderation, whether that’s human or artificial intelligence-driven. In Myanmar, it has been linked to atrocities committed against the country’s minority Rohingya Muslim population.
But Facebook appears unable to acknowledge, much less prevent, the real-world collateral damage accompanying its untrammeled growth. Those harms include shadowy algorithms that radicalize users, pervasive misinformation and extremism, facilitation of human trafficking, teen suicide and more.
Internal efforts to mitigate such problems have often been pushed aside or abandoned when solutions conflict with growth — and, by extension, profit.
Backed into a corner with hard evidence from leaked documents, the company has doubled down defending its choices rather than try to fix its problems.
“We do not and we have not prioritized engagement over safety,” Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management, told The Associated Press this month following congressional testimony from whistleblower and former Facebook employee Frances Haugen. In the days since Haugen’s testimony and appearance on “60 Minutes” — during which Zuckerberg posted a video of himself sailing with his wife Priscilla Chan — Facebook has tried to discredit Haugen by repeatedly pointing out that she didn’t directly work on many of the problems she revealed.
Full Coverage: The Facebook Papers
“A curated selection out of millions of documents at Facebook can in no way be used to draw fair conclusions about us,” Facebook tweeted from its public relations “newsroom” account earlier this month, following the company’s discovery that a group of news organizations was working on stories about the internal documents.
“At the heart of these stories is a premise which is false. Yes, we’re a business and we make profit, but the idea that we do so at the expense of people’s safety or wellbeing misunderstands where our own commercial interests lie,” Facebook said in a prepared statement Friday. “The truth is we’ve invested $13 billion and have over 40,000 people to do one job: keep people safe on Facebook.”
Statements like these are the latest sign that Facebook has gotten into what Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook data scientist, described as a “siege mentality” at the company. Zhang last year accused the social network of ignoring fake accounts used to undermine foreign elections. With more whistleblowers — notably Haugen — coming forward, it’s only gotten worse.
“Facebook has been going through a bit of an authoritarian narrative spiral, where it becomes less responsive to employee criticism, to internal dissent and in some cases cracks down upon it,” said Zhang, who was fired from Facebook in the fall of 2020. “And this leads to more internal dissent.”
“I have seen many colleagues that are extremely frustrated and angry, while at the same time, feeling powerless and (disheartened) about the current situation,” one employee, whose name was redacted, wrote on an internal message board after Facebook decided last year to leave up incendiary posts by former President Donald Trump that suggested Minneapolis protesters could be shot. “My view is, if you want to fix Facebook, do it within.”
This story is based in part on disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by Haugen’s legal counsel. The redacted versions received by Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press.
They detail painstakingly collected data on problems as wide-ranging as the trafficking of domestic workers in the Middle East, an over-correction in crackdowns on Arabic content that critics say muzzles free speech while hate speech and abuse flourish, and rampant anti-vaccine misinformation that researchers found could have been easily tamped down with subtle changes in how users view posts on their feed.
The company insists it “does not conduct research and then systematically and willfully ignore it if the findings are inconvenient for the company.” This claim, Facebook said in a statement, can “only be made by cherry-picking selective quotes from individual pieces of leaked material in a way that presents complex and nuanced issues as if there is only ever one right answer.”
Haugen, who testified before the Senate this month that Facebook’s products “harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy,” said the company should declare “moral bankruptcy” if it is to move forward from all this.
At this stage, that seems unlikely. There is a deep-seated conflict between profit and people within Facebook — and the company does not appear to be ready to give up on its narrative that it’s good for the world even as it regularly makes decisions intended to maximize growth.
“Facebook did regular surveys of its employees — what percentage of employees believe that Facebook is making the world a better place,” Zhang recalled.
“It was around 70 percent when I joined. It was around 50 percent when I left,” said Zhang, who was at the company for more than two years before she was fired in the fall of 2020.
Facebook has not said where the number stands today.
See full coverage of the “The Facebook Papers” here: https://apnews.com/hub/the-facebook-papers
Facebook the company is losing control of Facebook the product — not to mention the last shreds of its carefully crafted, decade-old image as a benevolent company just wanting to connect the world.
Thousands of pages of internal documents provided to Congress by a former employee depict an internally conflicted company where data on the harms it causes is abundant, but solutions, much less the will to act on them, are halting at best.
The crisis exposed by the documents shows how Facebook, despite its regularly avowed good intentions, appears to have slow-walked or sidelined efforts to address real harms the social network has magnified and sometimes created. They reveal numerous instances where researchers and rank-and-file workers uncovered deep-seated problems that the company then overlooked or ignored.
Final responsibility for this state of affairs rests with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who holds what one former employee described as dictatorial power over a corporation that collects data on and provides free services to roughly 3 billion people around the world.
“Ultimately, it rests with Mark and whatever his prerogative is — and it has always been to grow, to increase his power and his reach,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University communications professor who’s followed Facebook closely for years.
Zuckerberg has an ironclad hold on Facebook Inc. He holds the majority of the company’s voting shares, controls its board of directors and has increasingly surrounded himself with executives who don’t appear to question his vision.
But he has so far been unable to address stagnating user growth and shrinking engagement for Facebook the product in key areas such as the United States and Europe. Worse, the company is losing the attention of its most important demographic — teenagers and young people — with no clear path to gaining it back, its own documents reveal.
Young adults engage with Facebook far less than their older cohorts, seeing it as an “outdated network” with “irrelevant content” that provides limited value for them, according to a November 2020 internal document. It is “boring, misleading and negative,” they say.
In other words, the young see Facebook as a place for old people.
Facebook’s user base has been aging faster, on average, than the general population, the company’s researchers found. Unless Facebook can find a way to turn this around, its population will continue to get older and young people will find even fewer reasons to sign on, threatening the monthly user figures that are essential to selling ads. Facebook says its products are still widely used by teens, although it acknowledges there’s “tough competition” from TikTok, Snapchat and the like.
So it can continue to expand its reach and power, Facebook has pushed for high user growth outside the U.S. and Western Europe. But as it expanded into less familiar parts of the world, the company systematically failed to address or even anticipate the unintended consequences of signing up millions of new users without also providing staff and systems to identify and limit the spread of hate speech, misinformation and calls to violence.
In Afghanistan and Myanmar, for instance, extremist language has flourished due to a systemic lack of language support for content moderation, whether that’s human or artificial intelligence-driven. In Myanmar, it has been linked to atrocities committed against the country’s minority Rohingya Muslim population.
But Facebook appears unable to acknowledge, much less prevent, the real-world collateral damage accompanying its untrammeled growth. Those harms include shadowy algorithms that radicalize users, pervasive misinformation and extremism, facilitation of human trafficking, teen suicide and more.
Internal efforts to mitigate such problems have often been pushed aside or abandoned when solutions conflict with growth — and, by extension, profit.
Backed into a corner with hard evidence from leaked documents, the company has doubled down defending its choices rather than try to fix its problems.
“We do not and we have not prioritized engagement over safety,” Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management, told The Associated Press this month following congressional testimony from whistleblower and former Facebook employee Frances Haugen. In the days since Haugen’s testimony and appearance on “60 Minutes” — during which Zuckerberg posted a video of himself sailing with his wife Priscilla Chan — Facebook has tried to discredit Haugen by repeatedly pointing out that she didn’t directly work on many of the problems she revealed.
Full Coverage: The Facebook Papers
“A curated selection out of millions of documents at Facebook can in no way be used to draw fair conclusions about us,” Facebook tweeted from its public relations “newsroom” account earlier this month, following the company’s discovery that a group of news organizations was working on stories about the internal documents.
“At the heart of these stories is a premise which is false. Yes, we’re a business and we make profit, but the idea that we do so at the expense of people’s safety or wellbeing misunderstands where our own commercial interests lie,” Facebook said in a prepared statement Friday. “The truth is we’ve invested $13 billion and have over 40,000 people to do one job: keep people safe on Facebook.”
Statements like these are the latest sign that Facebook has gotten into what Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook data scientist, described as a “siege mentality” at the company. Zhang last year accused the social network of ignoring fake accounts used to undermine foreign elections. With more whistleblowers — notably Haugen — coming forward, it’s only gotten worse.
“Facebook has been going through a bit of an authoritarian narrative spiral, where it becomes less responsive to employee criticism, to internal dissent and in some cases cracks down upon it,” said Zhang, who was fired from Facebook in the fall of 2020. “And this leads to more internal dissent.”
“I have seen many colleagues that are extremely frustrated and angry, while at the same time, feeling powerless and (disheartened) about the current situation,” one employee, whose name was redacted, wrote on an internal message board after Facebook decided last year to leave up incendiary posts by former President Donald Trump that suggested Minneapolis protesters could be shot. “My view is, if you want to fix Facebook, do it within.”
This story is based in part on disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by Haugen’s legal counsel. The redacted versions received by Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press.
They detail painstakingly collected data on problems as wide-ranging as the trafficking of domestic workers in the Middle East, an over-correction in crackdowns on Arabic content that critics say muzzles free speech while hate speech and abuse flourish, and rampant anti-vaccine misinformation that researchers found could have been easily tamped down with subtle changes in how users view posts on their feed.
The company insists it “does not conduct research and then systematically and willfully ignore it if the findings are inconvenient for the company.” This claim, Facebook said in a statement, can “only be made by cherry-picking selective quotes from individual pieces of leaked material in a way that presents complex and nuanced issues as if there is only ever one right answer.”
Haugen, who testified before the Senate this month that Facebook’s products “harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy,” said the company should declare “moral bankruptcy” if it is to move forward from all this.
At this stage, that seems unlikely. There is a deep-seated conflict between profit and people within Facebook — and the company does not appear to be ready to give up on its narrative that it’s good for the world even as it regularly makes decisions intended to maximize growth.
“Facebook did regular surveys of its employees — what percentage of employees believe that Facebook is making the world a better place,” Zhang recalled.
“It was around 70 percent when I joined. It was around 50 percent when I left,” said Zhang, who was at the company for more than two years before she was fired in the fall of 2020.
Facebook has not said where the number stands today.
See full coverage of the “The Facebook Papers” here: https://apnews.com/hub/the-facebook-papers
Facebook profits rise amid revelations from leaked documents
LONDON — Amid fallout from the Facebook Papers documents supporting claims that the social network has valued financial success over user safety, Facebook on Monday reported higher profit for the latest quarter.
LONDON — Amid fallout from the Facebook Papers documents supporting claims that the social network has valued financial success over user safety, Facebook on Monday reported higher profit for the latest quarter.
© Provided by The Canadian Press
The company's latest show of financial strength followed an avalanche of reports on the Facebook Papers — a vast trove of redacted internal documents obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press — as well as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s Monday testimony to British lawmakers.
Facebook said its net income grew 17% in the July-September period to $9.19 billion, buoyed by strong advertising revenue. That’s up from $7.85 billion a year earlier. Revenue grew 35% to $29.01 billion. The results exceeded analyst expectations for Facebook's results.
The company's shares rose 2.5% in after-hours trading after closing up 1% for the day.
“For now, the revenue picture for Facebook looks as good as can be expected,” said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson. But she predicted more revelations and described the findings so far as “unsettling and stomach-churning.”
CEO Mark Zuckerberg made only a brief mention of what he called the “recent debate around our company." Largely repeating statements he made after Haugen's Oct. 5 testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, he insisted that he welcomes “good faith criticism” but considers the current storm a “coordinated effort” to paint a “false picture" of the company based on leaked documents.
“It makes a good soundbite to say that we don’t solve these impossible tradeoffs because we’re just focused on making money, but the reality is these questions are not primarily about our business, but about balancing difficult social values," Zuckerberg said.
Haugen, meanwhile, told a British parliamentary committee Monday that the social media giant stokes online hate and extremism, fails to protect children from harmful content and lacks any incentive to fix the problems, providing momentum for efforts by European governments working on stricter regulation of tech companies.
While her testimony echoed much of what she told the U.S. Senate this month, her in-person appearance drew intense interest from a British parliamentary committee that is much further along in drawing up legislation to rein in the power of social media companies.
Haugen told the committee of United Kingdom lawmakers that Facebook Groups amplifies online hate, saying algorithms that prioritize engagement take people with mainstream interests and push them to the extremes. The former Facebook data scientist said the company could add moderators to prevent groups over a certain size from being used to spread extremist views.
“Unquestionably, it’s making hate worse,” she said.
Haugen said she was “shocked" to hear that Facebook wants to double down on what Zuckerberg calls “the metaverse,” the company’s plan for an immersive online world it believes will be the next big internet trend.
"They’re gonna hire 10,000 engineers in Europe to work on the metaverse,” Haugen said. “I was like, ‘Wow, do you know what we could have done with safety if we had 10,000 more engineers?’” she said.
Facebook says it wants regulation for tech companies and was glad the U.K. was leading the way.
“While we have rules against harmful content and publish regular transparency reports, we agree we need regulation for the whole industry so that businesses like ours aren’t making these decisions on our own," Facebook said Monday.
It pointed to investing $13 billion (9.4 billion pounds) on safety and security since 2016 and asserted that it’s “almost halved” the amount of hate speech over the last three quarters.
Haugen accused Facebook-owned Instagram of failing to keep children under 13 — the minimum user age — from opening accounts, saying it wasn’t doing enough to protect kids from content that, for example, makes them feel bad about their bodies.
“Facebook’s own research describes it as an addict’s narrative. Kids say, ‘This makes me unhappy, I feel like I don’t have the ability to control my usage of it, and I feel like if I left, I’d be ostracized,‘” she said.
The company last month delayed plans for a kids’ version of Instagram, geared toward those under 13, in order to address concerns about the vulnerability of younger users.
Pressed on whether she believes Facebook is fundamentally evil, Haugen demurred and said, “I can’t see into the hearts of men.” Facebook is not evil, but negligent, she suggested.
It was Haugen's second appearance before lawmakers after she testified in the U.S. about the danger she says the company poses, from harming children to inciting political violence and fueling misinformation. Haugen cited internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in Facebook’s civic integrity unit.
The documents, which Haugen provided to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, allege Facebook prioritized profits over safety and hid its own research from investors and the public. Some stories based on the files have already been published, exposing internal turmoil after Facebook was blindsided by the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot and how it dithered over curbing divisive content in India. More is to come.
Representatives from Facebook and other social media companies plan to speak to the British committee Thursday.
Haugen is scheduled to meet next month with European Union officials in Brussels, where the bloc's executive commission is updating its digital rulebook to better protect internet users by holding online companies more responsible for illegal or dangerous content.
Under the U.K. rules, expected to take effect next year, Silicon Valley giants face an ultimate penalty of up to 10% of their global revenue for any violations. The EU is proposing a similar penalty.
___
See full coverage of the “Facebook Papers” here: https://apnews.com/hub/the-facebook-papers
___
Associated Press writer Marcy Gordon in Washington contributed to this report.
Barbara Ortutay And Kelvin Chan, The Associated Press
The company's latest show of financial strength followed an avalanche of reports on the Facebook Papers — a vast trove of redacted internal documents obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press — as well as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s Monday testimony to British lawmakers.
Facebook said its net income grew 17% in the July-September period to $9.19 billion, buoyed by strong advertising revenue. That’s up from $7.85 billion a year earlier. Revenue grew 35% to $29.01 billion. The results exceeded analyst expectations for Facebook's results.
The company's shares rose 2.5% in after-hours trading after closing up 1% for the day.
“For now, the revenue picture for Facebook looks as good as can be expected,” said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson. But she predicted more revelations and described the findings so far as “unsettling and stomach-churning.”
CEO Mark Zuckerberg made only a brief mention of what he called the “recent debate around our company." Largely repeating statements he made after Haugen's Oct. 5 testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, he insisted that he welcomes “good faith criticism” but considers the current storm a “coordinated effort” to paint a “false picture" of the company based on leaked documents.
“It makes a good soundbite to say that we don’t solve these impossible tradeoffs because we’re just focused on making money, but the reality is these questions are not primarily about our business, but about balancing difficult social values," Zuckerberg said.
Haugen, meanwhile, told a British parliamentary committee Monday that the social media giant stokes online hate and extremism, fails to protect children from harmful content and lacks any incentive to fix the problems, providing momentum for efforts by European governments working on stricter regulation of tech companies.
While her testimony echoed much of what she told the U.S. Senate this month, her in-person appearance drew intense interest from a British parliamentary committee that is much further along in drawing up legislation to rein in the power of social media companies.
Haugen told the committee of United Kingdom lawmakers that Facebook Groups amplifies online hate, saying algorithms that prioritize engagement take people with mainstream interests and push them to the extremes. The former Facebook data scientist said the company could add moderators to prevent groups over a certain size from being used to spread extremist views.
“Unquestionably, it’s making hate worse,” she said.
Haugen said she was “shocked" to hear that Facebook wants to double down on what Zuckerberg calls “the metaverse,” the company’s plan for an immersive online world it believes will be the next big internet trend.
"They’re gonna hire 10,000 engineers in Europe to work on the metaverse,” Haugen said. “I was like, ‘Wow, do you know what we could have done with safety if we had 10,000 more engineers?’” she said.
Facebook says it wants regulation for tech companies and was glad the U.K. was leading the way.
“While we have rules against harmful content and publish regular transparency reports, we agree we need regulation for the whole industry so that businesses like ours aren’t making these decisions on our own," Facebook said Monday.
It pointed to investing $13 billion (9.4 billion pounds) on safety and security since 2016 and asserted that it’s “almost halved” the amount of hate speech over the last three quarters.
Haugen accused Facebook-owned Instagram of failing to keep children under 13 — the minimum user age — from opening accounts, saying it wasn’t doing enough to protect kids from content that, for example, makes them feel bad about their bodies.
“Facebook’s own research describes it as an addict’s narrative. Kids say, ‘This makes me unhappy, I feel like I don’t have the ability to control my usage of it, and I feel like if I left, I’d be ostracized,‘” she said.
The company last month delayed plans for a kids’ version of Instagram, geared toward those under 13, in order to address concerns about the vulnerability of younger users.
Pressed on whether she believes Facebook is fundamentally evil, Haugen demurred and said, “I can’t see into the hearts of men.” Facebook is not evil, but negligent, she suggested.
It was Haugen's second appearance before lawmakers after she testified in the U.S. about the danger she says the company poses, from harming children to inciting political violence and fueling misinformation. Haugen cited internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in Facebook’s civic integrity unit.
The documents, which Haugen provided to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, allege Facebook prioritized profits over safety and hid its own research from investors and the public. Some stories based on the files have already been published, exposing internal turmoil after Facebook was blindsided by the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot and how it dithered over curbing divisive content in India. More is to come.
Representatives from Facebook and other social media companies plan to speak to the British committee Thursday.
Haugen is scheduled to meet next month with European Union officials in Brussels, where the bloc's executive commission is updating its digital rulebook to better protect internet users by holding online companies more responsible for illegal or dangerous content.
Under the U.K. rules, expected to take effect next year, Silicon Valley giants face an ultimate penalty of up to 10% of their global revenue for any violations. The EU is proposing a similar penalty.
___
See full coverage of the “Facebook Papers” here: https://apnews.com/hub/the-facebook-papers
___
Associated Press writer Marcy Gordon in Washington contributed to this report.
Barbara Ortutay And Kelvin Chan, The Associated Press
Whistleblower tells British panel Facebook algorithm geared for 'bad' users
"Facebook has been unwilling to accept even little slivers of profit being sacrificed for safety," former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen said Monday.
Former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen arrives for a Senate commerce committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on October 5.
"Facebook has been unwilling to accept even little slivers of profit being sacrificed for safety," former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen said Monday.
Former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen arrives for a Senate commerce committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on October 5.
Pool Photo by Drew Angerer/UPI | License Photo
Oct. 25 (UPI) -- In her second appearance before a national legislative body in less than a month, whistleblower Frances Haugen told British lawmakers Monday that Facebook is "unquestionably" stoking levels of hatred and addiction through its social platform.
Three weeks after detailing her experience in the U.S. Congress, the former Facebook data scientist told the British parliamentary Online Safety Bill committee in London that the company is "making hate worse" because tapping into anger among users online is the simplest way to grow its audience.
Further, she said that Facebook algorithms actually work to send users to pages with more extreme content.
"Bad actors have an incentive to play the algorithm," she said in her testimony Monday. "The current system is biased toward bad actors, and people who push people to the extremes."
Haugen said that efforts at Facebook to shield users from harmful or hateful content aren't working mainly due to institutional biases that prioritize revenue growth.
"Facebook has been unwilling to accept even little slivers of profit being sacrificed for safety," she said.
Haugen was invited to testify before the British panel to lend expertise to proposed legislation that aims to rein in the power of social media companies and crack down on harmful content in Britain.
The landmark legislation also aims to punish social companies if they fail to safeguard users online.
Haugen went public last month with criticism that said Facebook profits from stoking political divisions and spreading disinformation, and has long known that the platform is potentially harmful to younger users.
Haugen first detailed her experience on 60 Minutes early this month and later testified before the U.S. Senate commerce committee.
She told Parliament Monday that Facebook's Instagram platform is "more dangerous than other forms of social media," as it creates risks of addiction and self-harm for teen and child users.
Instagram, she said, "is about social comparison and about bodies", which feeds addictive behavior in unhappy children who "can't control their use of the app, but feel like they cannot stop using it."
It may not be possible to adapt Instagram's algorithms to make it sufficiently safe for children, she warned.
Last month, Facebook announced that it was pausing the launch of Instagram Kids, a child-specific version of the photo-sharing app, to evaluate concerns about the effect of social platforms on children.
Haugen's testimony Monday came a week after the stabbing death of British lawmaker David Amess, whose killing led to calls for more scrutiny for Britain's online safety bill and additional criticism of online behaviors
Labor Party leader Keir Starmer demanded that the owners of digital platforms be criminally sanctioned for failing to shut down extremism.
Before Monday's hearing, Haugen said that she never saw Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg give any indication that he cared to protect users from potential harm.
"Right now, Mark is unaccountable," she said, according to The Guardian. "He has all the control. He has no oversight, and he has not demonstrated that he is willing to govern the company at the level that is necessary for public safety."
Facebook's independent oversight board said last week that it invited Haugen to appear in the coming weeks, and has been invited to speak before the European Parliament's consumer protection committee on Nov. 8 for a session focused on updating European Internet regulations.
Oct. 25 (UPI) -- In her second appearance before a national legislative body in less than a month, whistleblower Frances Haugen told British lawmakers Monday that Facebook is "unquestionably" stoking levels of hatred and addiction through its social platform.
Three weeks after detailing her experience in the U.S. Congress, the former Facebook data scientist told the British parliamentary Online Safety Bill committee in London that the company is "making hate worse" because tapping into anger among users online is the simplest way to grow its audience.
Further, she said that Facebook algorithms actually work to send users to pages with more extreme content.
"Bad actors have an incentive to play the algorithm," she said in her testimony Monday. "The current system is biased toward bad actors, and people who push people to the extremes."
Haugen said that efforts at Facebook to shield users from harmful or hateful content aren't working mainly due to institutional biases that prioritize revenue growth.
"Facebook has been unwilling to accept even little slivers of profit being sacrificed for safety," she said.
Haugen was invited to testify before the British panel to lend expertise to proposed legislation that aims to rein in the power of social media companies and crack down on harmful content in Britain.
The landmark legislation also aims to punish social companies if they fail to safeguard users online.
Haugen went public last month with criticism that said Facebook profits from stoking political divisions and spreading disinformation, and has long known that the platform is potentially harmful to younger users.
Haugen first detailed her experience on 60 Minutes early this month and later testified before the U.S. Senate commerce committee.
She told Parliament Monday that Facebook's Instagram platform is "more dangerous than other forms of social media," as it creates risks of addiction and self-harm for teen and child users.
Instagram, she said, "is about social comparison and about bodies", which feeds addictive behavior in unhappy children who "can't control their use of the app, but feel like they cannot stop using it."
It may not be possible to adapt Instagram's algorithms to make it sufficiently safe for children, she warned.
Last month, Facebook announced that it was pausing the launch of Instagram Kids, a child-specific version of the photo-sharing app, to evaluate concerns about the effect of social platforms on children.
Haugen's testimony Monday came a week after the stabbing death of British lawmaker David Amess, whose killing led to calls for more scrutiny for Britain's online safety bill and additional criticism of online behaviors
Labor Party leader Keir Starmer demanded that the owners of digital platforms be criminally sanctioned for failing to shut down extremism.
Before Monday's hearing, Haugen said that she never saw Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg give any indication that he cared to protect users from potential harm.
"Right now, Mark is unaccountable," she said, according to The Guardian. "He has all the control. He has no oversight, and he has not demonstrated that he is willing to govern the company at the level that is necessary for public safety."
Facebook's independent oversight board said last week that it invited Haugen to appear in the coming weeks, and has been invited to speak before the European Parliament's consumer protection committee on Nov. 8 for a session focused on updating European Internet regulations.
Union vote at Amazon’s NY warehouse big step closer
By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN
Organizers deliver "Authorization of Rresentation" forms to the National Labor Relations Board in New York, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021. Union organizers have delivered more than 2,000 signatures to federal labor officials in a bid to unionize workers at Amazon's distribution center in New York's Staten Island. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NEW YORK (AP) — The National Labor Relations Board said there was sufficient interest to form a union at an Amazon distribution center in New York, after union organizers on Monday delivered hundreds of signatures to the agency — a key step in authorizing a vote that could establish the first union at the nation’s largest online retailer.
This is the second unionizing attempt in the past year at Amazon. Workers in Alabama resoundingly defeated an effort earlier this year, but organizers there are asking federal officials for a do-over.
Organizers delivered more than 2,000 signed union-support cards to the NLRB’s Brooklyn office after launching the effort in April. The specific number of signatures was not immediately available.
“This is a small victory,” said Christian Smalls, a former employee of the retail giant who now leads the fledgling Amazon Labor Union, adding, “We know the fight has just started.”
As part of its petition to hold a union vote, organizers must have submitted signatures from at least 30% from the roughly 5,500 employees who the union says work at four adjoining Amazon facilities that it seeks to represent under collective bargaining.
Monday’s development puts the company on notice that the NLRB has determined that union organizers have met the minimum threshold for Amazon to formally acknowledge and to respond to the union-organizing petition. That means the company must post notices on its premises that the union is seeking to become the bargaining representative for thousands of Amazon workers on Staten Island.
The company could have several avenues to challenge the effort, including contesting the number of employees that union organizers used to calculate the minimum signatures they needed.
“We’re skeptical that a sufficient number of legitimate employee signatures has been secured to warrant an election,” Amazon’s spokesperson, Kelly Nantel, said in a statement.
“If there is an election, we want the voice of our employees to be heard and look forward to it. Our focus remains on listening directly to our employees and continuously improving on their behalf,” Nantel said.
While a vote is not yet certain, organizers hailed the formal filing of their petition as an important step to forming a union.
“This was the easy part,” Smalls said of the signature gathering. “Convincing at least 50% of the workers to vote yes is the hard part.”
Smalls says he was fired last year after organizing a walkout to protest working conditions, although Amazon said he repeatedly violated company policies.
NLRB staff members started counting the cards soon after they were delivered, and union organizers were confident that they had met the minimum necessary. They had planned a rally outside the Staten Island distribution center Monday evening.
Following the count, the NLRB ordered Amazon to provide a roster of employees who would be covered by the proposed union and set November 15 as the start of hearings on the union-organizing petition.
If an election is held, the NLRB said it will conduct voting by secret ballot. Smalls proposed that the election be held on March 30, the day he was fired.
If organizers in New York succeed, it could launch other union drives across the company’s vast empire, which includes more than 100 fulfillment centers and nearly 1 million employees across the United States.
Amazon employees have complained about long work hours, insufficient breaks and safety, with Smalls and others likening working conditions to modern-day sweatshops. The employee turnover rate has also been a cause of concern.
The union efforts on Staten Island come as Amazon is on a hiring binge. It announced in September it wants to hire 125,000 delivery and warehouse workers and is paying new recruits an average of $18 an hour in a tight job market. That’s in addition to the 150,000 seasonal workers it plans to bring on for the holidays.
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union had led the effort to form a union at the Alabama facility that was defeated in April.
A hearing officer for the NLRB found in August that Amazon potentially interfered with the Alabama election. And the RWDSU is now waiting for a decision from an NLRB regional director to see whether the hearing officer’s guidance will be sanctioned. But even with a second election, labor experts say a union victory there is a long shot.
The New York City organizing drive is taking place without the support of a national union.
By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN
Organizers deliver "Authorization of Rresentation" forms to the National Labor Relations Board in New York, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021. Union organizers have delivered more than 2,000 signatures to federal labor officials in a bid to unionize workers at Amazon's distribution center in New York's Staten Island. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NEW YORK (AP) — The National Labor Relations Board said there was sufficient interest to form a union at an Amazon distribution center in New York, after union organizers on Monday delivered hundreds of signatures to the agency — a key step in authorizing a vote that could establish the first union at the nation’s largest online retailer.
This is the second unionizing attempt in the past year at Amazon. Workers in Alabama resoundingly defeated an effort earlier this year, but organizers there are asking federal officials for a do-over.
Organizers delivered more than 2,000 signed union-support cards to the NLRB’s Brooklyn office after launching the effort in April. The specific number of signatures was not immediately available.
“This is a small victory,” said Christian Smalls, a former employee of the retail giant who now leads the fledgling Amazon Labor Union, adding, “We know the fight has just started.”
As part of its petition to hold a union vote, organizers must have submitted signatures from at least 30% from the roughly 5,500 employees who the union says work at four adjoining Amazon facilities that it seeks to represent under collective bargaining.
Monday’s development puts the company on notice that the NLRB has determined that union organizers have met the minimum threshold for Amazon to formally acknowledge and to respond to the union-organizing petition. That means the company must post notices on its premises that the union is seeking to become the bargaining representative for thousands of Amazon workers on Staten Island.
The company could have several avenues to challenge the effort, including contesting the number of employees that union organizers used to calculate the minimum signatures they needed.
“We’re skeptical that a sufficient number of legitimate employee signatures has been secured to warrant an election,” Amazon’s spokesperson, Kelly Nantel, said in a statement.
“If there is an election, we want the voice of our employees to be heard and look forward to it. Our focus remains on listening directly to our employees and continuously improving on their behalf,” Nantel said.
While a vote is not yet certain, organizers hailed the formal filing of their petition as an important step to forming a union.
“This was the easy part,” Smalls said of the signature gathering. “Convincing at least 50% of the workers to vote yes is the hard part.”
Smalls says he was fired last year after organizing a walkout to protest working conditions, although Amazon said he repeatedly violated company policies.
NLRB staff members started counting the cards soon after they were delivered, and union organizers were confident that they had met the minimum necessary. They had planned a rally outside the Staten Island distribution center Monday evening.
Following the count, the NLRB ordered Amazon to provide a roster of employees who would be covered by the proposed union and set November 15 as the start of hearings on the union-organizing petition.
If an election is held, the NLRB said it will conduct voting by secret ballot. Smalls proposed that the election be held on March 30, the day he was fired.
If organizers in New York succeed, it could launch other union drives across the company’s vast empire, which includes more than 100 fulfillment centers and nearly 1 million employees across the United States.
Amazon employees have complained about long work hours, insufficient breaks and safety, with Smalls and others likening working conditions to modern-day sweatshops. The employee turnover rate has also been a cause of concern.
The union efforts on Staten Island come as Amazon is on a hiring binge. It announced in September it wants to hire 125,000 delivery and warehouse workers and is paying new recruits an average of $18 an hour in a tight job market. That’s in addition to the 150,000 seasonal workers it plans to bring on for the holidays.
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union had led the effort to form a union at the Alabama facility that was defeated in April.
A hearing officer for the NLRB found in August that Amazon potentially interfered with the Alabama election. And the RWDSU is now waiting for a decision from an NLRB regional director to see whether the hearing officer’s guidance will be sanctioned. But even with a second election, labor experts say a union victory there is a long shot.
The New York City organizing drive is taking place without the support of a national union.
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