Native American kids are at the center of a high-stakes SCOTUS case

Mike Bebernes
·Senior Editor
Mon, November 14, 2022 
“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.





What’s happening

The Supreme Court heard arguments last week in a case challenging laws surrounding the care of Native American children that, depending on the ruling, could fundamentally alter the foundations of tribal sovereignty that have been in place for more than two centuries.

The case, Brackeen v. Haaland, centers around the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a law passed in 1978 in response to the alarming rate at which Native children were being taken from their homes, often to be placed in non-Native families. Under the ICWA, state authorities handling child custody cases involving Native children are required to place them in another Native American home whenever possible, preferably with members of their family or within their own tribe.

Three white families, with the backing of a handful of conservative states, have filed a lawsuit claiming that the ICWA puts the interests of tribes ahead of those of children and violates constitutional protections against race-based discrimination. Hundreds of Native American tribes from across the country have asked the court to reject the challenge, arguing that the word Indian in the law refers to the unique political status of tribe members — not their race.

For more than 200 years, U.S. law has considered Indigenous tribes to be distinct governments with the power to make and enforce their own laws. Because of this distinction, the 574 federally recognized Indian tribes in the United States have the right to run their own health services and criminal justice systems, set gaming laws, determine land rights practices and carry out a long list of other functions independent of the state and federal governments.
Why there’s debate

Plaintiffs challenging the ICWA say that tribes’ distinct status, though appropriate in many circumstances, goes too far when it’s applied to child custody cases. In their view, prioritizing Native families for adoption means children end up being taken away from the foster parents who have cared for them for years — often to be placed in homes that are less able to protect their welfare. Others argue that tribal identity should be just one factor that’s considered when the authorities are weighing the best interest of a child, not one that supersedes all others.

Opponents of this view say the ICWA is a critical means of protecting tribes from efforts to erode their sovereignty and culture. They point to a long history of campaigns designed to dilute, or even eliminate, Indigenous peoples — often by removing children from tribal communities. Some experts say the ICWA should be considered the “gold standard” of child welfare policies and make the case that custody decisions involving all children should also weigh familial and cultural considerations.

The most fervent opposition, though, comes from tribes and legal experts who see the case as a means of eroding tribal sovereignty more generally. They argue that if the court rules that Indian is a racial designation, every single law built on the principle that it's actually a political status would be under threat. That could mean tribes could lose their ability to govern themselves on a whole range of issues or, in the most extreme scenario, lose their right to self-governance altogether.
What’s next

Legal experts say disagreement among the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices make it difficult to predict how much, if at all, the court might roll back the ICWA. A final ruling is expected sometime next summer.

A total of 10 states have passed their own versions of the ICWA, and more could follow suit if the federal statute is knocked down.
Perspectives

Native tribes have every right to protect their cultures

“Too many children have been taken from the beautiful living cultures that are indigenous to this land. We thrive on seeing our heritage, seeing ourselves reflected in genetic mirrors, and so we have to ask: Whose interest is served by cutting a child off from their roots?” — Michele Kriegman, Slate

The law puts the interests of tribes over the interests of children

“The ICWA has insinuated into law a ‘separate but equal’ test regarding Native American children in jeopardy. It demotes ‘the best interests of the child’ from the top priority; it makes a child’s relationship with a tribe supremely important. The nation has abundant reasons to regret its mistreatment of Native Americans, and the ICWA was perhaps motivated by an impulse to show respect for Indigenous cultures. But the cost, in broken bodies and broken constitutional principles, has been exorbitant.” — George Will, Washington Post

The ICWA protects Native children from the harms that previous generations endured

“The United States has used generations of Native children as the tip of the spear in attacking tribal sovereignty. For the failed policies of their country, those children suffered unspeakable harm. Will the Supreme Court show that our country can learn from our past? Or, while we are still recovering the bodies of previous generations of Native children, will we betray the next?” — Rebecca Nagle, Atlantic

Many supporters of the lawsuit care more about chipping away at Native rights than the welfare of children

“Just as they did throughout the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, conservative groups and Christian organizations are funneling huge sums of money to dismantle ICWA in the 21st century, striking at the very heart of tribal sovereignty: the right to raise and educate each nation’s children and determine futures without colonial interference on the lands to which they belong and control.” — Nathan Tanner, Indian Country Today

The ICWA’s outdated restrictions causes harm to Native children and the families that want to adopt them

“This does have to do with some kind of horrible history with regards to how Native children were handled in the past. But now in our kind of more modern times, this situation has become one in which there really are a lot of decisions that are being made solely on the basis of race in ways that are excluding some Americans from their ability to adopt.” — Kim Strassel, Wall Street Journal

All child welfare laws should follow the model set up by the ICWA

“ICWA has long been considered the gold standard for child welfare, with good reason. It aligns with what is increasingly recognized as best practice in all situations: Whenever possible, keep children with family members if they cannot stay with their parents. The law has rightly been hailed by national child welfare experts as a high-water mark of sensible governance.” — Donna Butts, The Hill

A slimmed-down version of the law could reach the appropriate balance between tribal rights and child welfare

“A more narrowly tailored law, focusing on protecting Indian parents who affirm their Indian identity from having their child's fate determined by non-Indian courts to the detriment of their Indian heritage, might well be constitutional. This law is not.” — David Bernstein, Reason

Every single law regarding the government’s relationship with tribes could be under threat

“It would put at risk every treaty, every property and political right and every power that Indian nations possess today. All of a sudden, lands would be owned by ‘a race of Indian people,’ not a tribal government. Your borders, your police laws, everything on the reservation would be in question. I’m not being hyperbolic. I am afraid of this case.” — Robert Miller, Indian law expert, to New York Times

More than anything, the case represents a challenge to Native tribes’ basic right to exist

“At its heart … the ultimate questions it raises for the justices are fairly straightforward. Do Native tribes have the sovereign right to exist and to keep existing? Can Congress pass laws to help ensure that they do? If the answers seem easy, then so will the result.” — Matt Ford, New Republic

Is there a topic you’d like to see covered in “The 360”? Send your suggestions to the360@yahoonews.com.

Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Mariam Zuhaib/AP Photo

Remote undersea volcano likely erupting in Pacific Ocean

JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER
Mon, November 14, 2022 at 6:36 PM·2 min read

HONOLULU (AP) — A volcano is likely erupting deep beneath the Pacific Ocean in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, but scientists don't know for sure because it's so inaccessible.

All indications are that the Ahyi Seamount began erupting in mid-October, the U.S. Geological Survey said Monday. The Northern Marianas are about 3,800 miles (6,115 kilometers) west of Honolulu.

Scientists are looking to see if the activity is shallow earthquakes or if material exploded from the crater, said Matt Haney, a USGS research geophysicist. Scientists are checking satellite data to see if there's discolored water, which could suggest material is coming out of the volcano, he said.

“There’s nothing right now that suggests that this eruption will intensify and become a large eruption,” Haney said.

Still, mariners would want to avoid the immediate area, he said.

Activity from an undersea volcanic source was picked up last month by hydroacoustic sensors some 1,400 miles away (2250 kilometers) at Wake Island.

With help from the the Laboratoire de Geophysique in Tahiti and data from seismic stations in Guam and Japan, scientists analyzed the signals to determine the source of the activity was likely Ahyi Seamount, the USGS said in a statement.

Activity has been declining in recent days, the statement said.

Ahyi seamount is a large conical submarine volcano. Its highest point is 259 feet (79 meters) below the surface of the ocean. It’s located about 11 miles (18 kilometers) southeast of the island of Farallon de Pajaros, also known as Uracas.

“There are no local monitoring stations near Ahyi Seamount, which limits our ability to detect and characterize volcanic unrest there,” the agency said. “We will continue to monitor available remote hydrophonic, seismic, and satellite data closely.”

The seamount is part of the Mariana Volcanic Arc, which is a chain of over 60 active volcanoes stretching over 600 miles west of and parallel to the Mariana Trench, the world's deepest point.

Amazon to lay off thousands of employees -source

Mon, November 14, 2022 
By Jeffrey Dastin

(Reuters) -Amazon.com Inc is planning to lay off around 10,000 employees in corporate and technology roles beginning this week, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday, in what would amount to its biggest such reduction to date.

The cuts, earlier reported by the New York Times, would represent about 3% of Amazon's corporate staff. The exact number may vary as businesses within Amazon review their priorities, the source told Reuters.

The online retailer plans to eliminate jobs in its devices organization, which makes voice-controlled "Alexa" gadgets and home-security cameras, as well as in its human-resources and retail divisions, the person said. Amazon's time frame for informing staff remained unclear.

The source attributed the reduction to the uncertain macroeconomic environment faced by Amazon and other companies.

The news follows a wave of layoffs across the technology sector, which is wary of recession after years of rapid hiring. Just last week, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc said it would cut more than 11,000 jobs, or 13% of its workforce, to rein in costs.

Seattle-based Amazon is predicting a slowdown in sales growth for the typically lucrative holiday season.

On a call with reporters last month, Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said the company saw signs of tighter household budgets for shopping, and it continued to wrestle with high inflation and energy costs.

It since has said it would freeze incremental corporate hiring for several months.

Amazon's devices unit in some recent years has posted an annual operating loss of more than $5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. The company has weighed whether to focus on new capabilities for Alexa when some customers use the voice assistant for just a few tasks, the report said.

Company-wide, taking warehouse and transportation jobs into account, which made Amazon's headcount more than 1.5 million as of Sept. 30, the planned cuts amounted to less than 1% of the retailer's workforce.

Shares of Amazon have lost more than 40% of their value this year. They were down 1.1% at $99.67 on Monday afternoon.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in Palo Alto, Calif., and Tiyashi Datta and Nivedita Balu in BengaluruEditing by Arun Koyyur and Matthew Lewis)

How Apple Stores Went From Geek Paradise to Union Front Line

Store employees helped create some of the most valuable square footage in the US. Now they feel more like regular salespeople—so they’re unionizing.

By Josh Eidelson

Bloomberg Businessweek
November 14, 2022

An Apple Store in Chicago. 

Photographer: Evan Jenkins 

LONG READ


And, of course, there’s the Genius Bar, a help center that for most of the past two decades has felt like something of a personal concierge service fueled by a small army of friendly, helpful nerds. Genius Bar staffers have generally been trusted to solve your problems, to fix your phone if they could, to replace certain busted headphones for free. In at least one case, captured this spring in a viral TikTok, a dedicated employee taught a coding class to an audience of zero, hoping someone would show up to learn. To this day, strangers flag down off-duty Geniuses for help wherever they see Apple’s signature blue T-shirt.

Behind the scenes, though, things have changed, as interviews with dozens of Apple Store employees across nine cities make clear. Apple Inc.’s retail jobs have started to feel a lot more like, well, retail jobs.

Workers say that whereas the focus of an Apple Genius used to be to impress customers with a high level of service, they and other employees are now increasingly pressured to upsell. They’re pushed to prioritize “ownership opportunities,” the company’s euphemism for persuading people to buy new gadgets instead of repairing their old ones. They’re also evaluated based on how many customers pay for an extended warranty through the AppleCare program and how many people they deal with per hour. Some stores email workers’ stats to colleagues or post them on the wall in employee-only areas, with those of lower sellers highlighted in red.

At a store in Towson, Maryland, for example, management put up a giant laminated photo of a tree in the break room and told Genius Bar workers to add a stick-on label every time they made a sale. The labels included the customer’s name and the device’s serial number, so managers could verify them. “The tree pushed people to want to upsell,” says staffer Tyra Reeder. “You have to focus on your numbers being perfect.” While Apple has always used data to assess performance, employees say, which metrics it cares most about and the tactics it uses to boost them have changed dramatically. Kevin Gallagher, who’s spent seven years at the Towson store, says he’s seen the shift happen. “When I started with the company, it felt like the only number that they worried about was your customer service score,” he says, referring to survey results about consumers’ satisfaction. Today, “they’re looking to milk every last cent out of every square foot.”

Apple Store workers say the jobs were plum by retail standards until this transition, and for many they were dream jobs: getting paid to use their geekery for good. The money was decent (it’s now $22 an hour in the US, minimum), the benefits were strong (health insurance, pet-sitting help), and some of the perks matched the ones enjoyed by their white-collar counterparts (discounts on Apple products, occasional trips to the corporate headquarters in Cupertino). Also, Apple seemed to have a knack for hiring store managers who were relatively nice, even a little like Ted Lasso. Now, employees say, the sales pressure, exacerbated by understaffing, has made the jobs feel less Ted Lasso and more Severance. Increasingly, workers have concluded that the only way to regain the Apple experience they signed up for, and hold the company to the values it preaches, is to unionize. After the Towson store did so a few months ago, management stopped using the sales tree.

Towson Apple Store employees joined the International Association of Machinists union this past summer.
Photographer: Barbara Haddock Taylor/Getty Images

Apple is the world’s most valuable company, at roughly $2.4 trillion, and it got that way in large part by maintaining extreme control over everything in its supply chain, from its App Store to the price it pays for glue. Now it’s struggling to keep its grip on its workforce. Nowhere is that clearer than at its 272 US retail stores. It isn’t just Towson: Workers at dozens of locations have begun discussing unionization, employees say. So far, only one other store has organized, in Oklahoma City, but its employees’ complaints are consistent with those elsewhere around the US. They want more money, more co-workers and less sales pressure. “Unionizing, it really is doing exactly what I was taught at Apple, which was to push the status quo, to not expect just the bare minimum,” says Leigha Briscoe, a six-year employee in Oklahoma City.

“We remain committed, as always, to delivering the excellent Apple experience—for our customers, our team members, and the communities we serve,” the company said in a statement responding to a detailed inquiry about workers’ concerns. “Our retail and online teams connect with customers to help them get the most out of their products and ensure they receive an unparalleled level of support.” A spokesperson noted that the company doesn’t pay retail workers on commission and said it doesn’t require them to meet sales quotas.

Apple also said, “We’re proud to offer our teams exceptional benefits and strong compensation, including new family support and education programs.” The company didn’t directly address the union campaign.

Apple has, however, made its position clear to staff, including during (allegedly mandatory) meetings and in a video that retail chief Deirdre O’Brien sent to employees this spring. O’Brien told the workers that a union wouldn’t be as committed to their well-being or as quick to solve problems as Apple corporate. “I worry about what it would mean to put another organization in the middle of our relationship,” she said. Per usual for Apple, each copy of her video had the recipient’s employee number scrolling across it, meaning that if someone chose to leak the video, publishing it would expose them.

“As a technician, my heart is to fix your shit. That’s what I want to do”

No peer has anything quite like Apple Stores. They quickly overtook Tiffany & Co. stores in terms of revenue per square foot. Just as important, the Apple Store is supposed to be a vibe. Its retro-futuristic je ne sais quoi, a key element of Apple’s cultural cachet, lands somewhere between a midcentury lounge for the jet set and a Star Trek vision of a world without crass commercial impulses. (Gene Roddenberry’s future, famously, abolished money.) It’s a shop, but also a place where you hang out between appointments, grazing the internet or trying on different headphones for fun. “It’s also part temple, to go worship at the altar of the brand,” says retail consultant Paco Underhill.

The company gets much of its sheen from a sense that it doesn’t just hawk products, it offers a lifestyle. That image has largely held over the past decade, even as more than a few rivals have released good-to-great phones for less money. The recent shift comes with serious downsides, says retail pioneer Joe Pine, who co-wrote the much-cited 1999 book The Experience Economy. “The mistake that so many companies make, as I think Apple has started to do, is they commoditize themselves,” he says.

Pushing staff to work faster and upsell more is “exactly the wrong thing to do,” says Pine. “Short term it can help your sales, but customers are going to get what’s going on.”

One of the wrongest BusinessWeek headlines of all time was published in 2001: “Sorry, Steve: Here’s Why Apple Stores Won’t Work.” Back then, Macs made up only 2.8% of the US market. Our reporter argued that Jobs would be better off selling cheaper stuff, Velveeta rather than beluga caviar. (It was a different time.) But the stores proved exemplars of what’s known as experiential retail, in which companies like Sephora USA Inc. and Nike Inc. try to build brand loyalty by making retail outlets into destinations where people feel encouraged to linger. Today, Apple has about 13% of the US market for personal computers, according to researcher Gartner Inc. More important, it sells 55% of Americans their smartphones.

From the beginning, the stores played an incalculable role in building Apple’s allure. In the era of iMacs and iPods, it distinguished itself by framing its stores as casual hangs. “We would talk about how awesome our jobs were, because all we all had to do today was go and talk about the power of the Mac,” says 15-year employee Graham DeYoung, a bargaining committee member for the new union in Towson, part of the International Association of Machinists, or IAM. “The training that we had was to talk about ‘the why’ instead of ‘the how.’ … You would have an hour-and-a-half or two-hour conversation with someone. You’d test cameras.”

The Genius Bar at a Boston Apple Store.
Photo: Getty Images/MediaNews Group RM

Employees say things began to change after Tim Cook took over the company in 2011, and that the shift has intensified since he put O’Brien, who’d been running HR, in charge of the retail division in 2019. In morning meetings, managers started prioritizing the conversion of repairs into sales, spending more time shadowing employees on the floor and chiding them for failing to upsell. New gimmicks emerged, including Towson’s tree and, in Oklahoma City, a bingo game with candy as a reward for selling accessories such as the Apple Pencil stylus. High performers got shout outs in meetings; low performers got called out on spreadsheets.

“I feel like a car salesman sometimes, trying to push something that I truly do not believe is the right solution”

Fanboys made up an outsize share of Apple’s early retail staff. Now there’s less exploring and educating, more cajoling and coercion—and less time to take a breath. “It kind of killed my spirit a little bit,” says DeYoung, who once called off from work so he could drive from Los Angeles to Cupertino in hopes of spotting Jobs in the parking lot. “As a technician, my heart is to fix your shit. That’s what I want to do,” he says. “But what I’m encouraged to do is to say, ‘Well, this is what your phone is worth for a trade-in.’ ”

O’Brien didn’t provide comment for this story, but in a fall 2021 speech to students at Michigan State University, her alma mater, she said of Apple: “We feel like we’re not only focusing on doing fantastic work for our customers, but we really are working to make the world a better place.” She also told students that her motto was: “There’s no growth in the comfort zone.”

Employees say the sales pressure has been exacerbated by the heightened focus on increasingly onerous quotas for customers handled per hour and by having too few people scheduled to work a given shift. And these days, of course, very few customers are chill when their phone is on the fritz.

For investors, Apple’s approach seems to be working. Last month, the company announced record fourth-quarter revenue of $90 billion, including $71 billion of product sales, up from $52 billion for the same period three years earlier. It’s tough to know how much of that is attributable to Apple Stores, though, because the company didn’t separate out their sales from those of other sellers or online channels.

Workers say the jobs have become utterly draining, and that compensation hasn’t kept pace. The $22 hourly minimum, raised from $20 after a couple stores announced union drives, beats the $15 floor at Starbucks Corp. but represents about three-fifths of what it takes for an adult with one child in Towson’s metro area to support a household, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator. (An Apple spokesperson noted that the company provides benefits including mental health support, fertility assistance, LGBTQ+ wellness programs, telehealth and virtual care tailored specifically for Black and Latino staff.)

Apple Store culture, which emphasizes honest feedback and perpetual improvement, has changed along with the incentives. Employees say they’ve been told that they seemed angry after having a panic attack at work and to direct concerns about understaffing to co-workers who called out sick. Seven-year employee Anthony Viola, who recently left the company after his union drive stalled out, says he was repeatedly questioned about his commitment after missing a chance to upsell. Viola says that when the Financial Times published an article about workers allegedly retaliated against for dissent, a New York City store manager gathered staff for a meeting where she had them stretch their hands high in the air, then higher, to illustrate the “reserves” they should each tap to power through controversy and keep serving customers.

An Apple Store in New York.
Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Bloomberg

Around the time retail employees were growing disillusioned, cracks in Apple’s control over its workforce were emerging elsewhere. While the company has been dogged by scrutiny over more dire conditions in its international supply chain—workers for its supplier Foxconn in China began walking off the job at the end of October—high-profile labor unrest in the US is a more recent development.

Shortly before the pandemic, Apple’s US contract workers, including people working on the Maps app at an unmarked building in Sunnyvale, California that they called a “black site,” began speaking out about sparse sick days, arbitrary firings and restrictions on talking directly to Apple employees or even using the same bathrooms. (Apple has said an audit of the Sunnyvale office found it measured up to other Apple workplaces.) In the years since, Slack has helped bring formerly siloed software engineers and product managers together. Many have used the messenger platform to share experiences and circulate petitions demanding action on issues like sexual harassment, safety concerns, return-to-office pressure and the hiring of the author of a book that called women “weak.”

Several of those activists allege that Apple forced them out and have filed complaints of illegal retaliation that are pending with the National Labor Relations Board. Some also took road trips to visit the company’s retail stores, where they handed out cards with the slogan “Think Equitable” and QR codes that lead workers to union organizers’ contact info and a national chatroom on Discord.

While activism continues among the company’s software workers, many have left in search of better treatment, says Cher Scarlett, a software engineer who helped create the AppleTogether website and Discord server. “On the retail side,” she says, “they’ve been experiencing these kinds of issues for a long time, and they want them to be addressed, and they want to stay.”

A couple of years ago in Towson, a bunch of workers decided to test the boundaries of Apple’s regular requests for feedback by all proposing the same reform: Given how draining their jobs were, they wanted four-day work schedules without pay cuts, the equivalent of a 25% hourly raise. They say the response was a familiar promise that the idea was being “bubbled up” to management, after which it was never mentioned again. “It’s like writing a letter to Santa,” says three-year employee Eric Brown. “Pretty much just like an empty slot that leads to a fire pit.”

“Then we were like, ‘What can we do now?’ ” says 12-year employee William Jarboe. Shifting Covid-19 protocols frustrated workers who felt they weren’t adequately involved in decisions about their own safety. When they raised concerns or asked for hazard pay, managers scoffed or said they were lucky they didn’t get laid off. (An Apple spokesperson said the company continued to provide hourly employees pay and benefits even when the stores were closed because of the pandemic and expanded the leave it offers.) So employees started talking to an IAM organizer and over months secretly built support among colleagues. In May, once they’d signed up 65% of the store, they petitioned the NLRB for an election.

Things got ugly, Towson employees say. Managers, including many flown in from out of town, held mandatory anti-union meetings, suggesting that contract talks would cost workers pay and benefits. Managers also cited the union’s history of being racist in the 19th century as evidence that it couldn’t be trusted. In one meeting, a Black manager touched her skin and told employees, “They don’t care about us.”

Gallagher, the seven-year Towson employee, says he heard from colleagues that managers making anti-union arguments were privately bad-mouthing him as someone “nobody respects.” When he complained to a manager, they referred him to HR, which took no action. “They told me that everybody is allowed to have their opinion about this,” he says. A few weeks later, his side won the unionization election, 65 to 33.

Workers say Apple’s anti-union tactics have gotten more traction elsewhere. In Atlanta, at the first store that called for an election this spring, the Communications Workers of America withdrew its petition the week before the vote, citing the company’s conduct. Managers compared the union to thugs, according to Derrick Bowles, a Genius who now advises pro-union Apple retail workers across the country on what to expect. One talking point he heard from a manager during a discussion about unionizing: “If I have a problem with my wife, I don’t go talk to my mistress.”

The NLRB is investigating union-busting claims that the CWA filed against Apple in Atlanta and Oklahoma. In October the labor board’s general counsel issued a complaint accusing Apple of illegally coercing workers not to organize at a store in New York. (The company has denied wrongdoing.)

Pro-union Apple workers across the US say some of their colleagues have also condemned standard organizing tactics as inappropriate or divisive, such as privately rating co-workers’ likelihood to support organizing, concealing the campaign from people who seem likely to oppose it and wearing pro-union armbands to work.

Apple’s corporate headquarters in Cupertino, California.
Photographer: Jane Tyska/Getty Images

“I’ve never worked for (or even have friends that have worked for) a company that cares about their employees the way Apple does,” a New York Apple employee wrote in a letter that the company shared with Atlanta workers during the union campaign last spring. “We don’t need to PAY a 3rd party to negotiate on our behalf to a company that already has competitive pay, really great benefits and perks that make other companies envious of what we have.”

And yet the unions, so far, are gaining ground. Organizers of public campaigns are advising those who are keeping quiet while they build support on trail hikes and at sporting events. They say they’ve been making headway in large part because Apple hasn’t been living up to its stated values. “I feel like a car salesman sometimes, trying to push something that I truly do not believe is the right solution for this customer,” says Patrick Hart, an organizer who works at the Oklahoma City store. “It has unfortunately now become a game of how hard can you push.”

By the time Hart’s store filed for a union election, he and other leaders were confident they’d win. The organizing committee of more than 20 employees had already talked to enough co-workers that two-thirds of the store signed CWA union cards within five days. Michael Forsythe, another organizer there, says they’d prepared colleagues for the company’s usual arguments against unions and the barrage of one-on-one anti-union meetings with managers. Before Apple started telling employees that unionizing could mean giving up benefits they already had, he’d already asked his co-workers to consider this: If the union really wouldn’t be able to wring more money out of management, why was the company willing to burn cash bringing in so many out-of-town managers to help defeat it?

On a Sunday night in October a few days before the Oklahoma City election, Apple held an all-staff meeting during which managers lined up to talk about why they loved the company. Then a regional boss started chiding the workers, asking whether, if he could read their private Discord chats, they’d be proud of what he’d see there. Then he noted that the union activists had said frequently, in response to concerns about losing benefits as a result of unionizing, that they would never “agree to less” in contract talks than what they already had. “But you’ve already agreed to less,” he retorted. “You’ve lost the culture in this store.” He didn’t take questions.

“I felt like I was 12 again, and I got caught eating dessert out of the fridge by my stepdad,” Forsythe says. Around the same time, Apple told employees it was rolling out a suite of new benefits for all its US stores—except for Towson, because it had unionized and would need to negotiate first. The Oklahoma City workers still voted in favor of the union, 56 to 32. Pro-union workers traded hugs and decamped to a bar, where they fantasized about helping to organize the stores run by all the out-of-town managers who’d aided in the campaign against them.

Apple workers might not have organized in time to fully benefit from the tight labor market and federal friendliness that boosted similar efforts at places such as Starbucks. But the new sense of possibility among many employees won’t be easily unwound. That’s particularly true for some of Apple’s youngest staffers, who now see organizing less as a question of “why?” than one of “why not?”

A few years ago, the company seemed less ripe for employee organizing than the likes of Google, where thousands of tech workers walked off the job over its handling of harassment. But Apple had an important vulnerability: heavy reliance on service workers that it directly employed, many of whom were unhappy with their treatment and emboldened by action elsewhere. If they succeed, they could establish a labor beachhead at Apple that reinvigorates the company’s white-collar organizing, too.

The more immediate task is getting a union contract. Federal law requires companies to negotiate “in good faith” after workers vote to unionize, but it doesn’t do a whole lot to ensure that happens. The Towson and Oklahoma City workers will have more leverage if other stores organize and if they can win over colleagues who voted no. If there’s no contract deal within a year, employees could petition to vote out the fledgling union, a possibility they say Apple has brought up. Workers at other locations say the company is already telling them nothing at the Towson store has improved. It doesn’t mention the removal of the tree or that union members called in for questioning about their metrics would now have the legal right to bring a colleague as a witness.

Was all this inevitable? It’s tough to name anything that’s remained cool for two decades, let alone a retail store. In an era when the iPhone looks like a fairly mature line of business, Apple is trying to squeeze profits from every corner of its empire. And management philosophies tend to move in generational cycles, says Peter Cappelli, who runs the Wharton School’s Center for Human Resources. The more humane, holistic approach that undergirded experiential retail has drifted out of vogue in favor of a relentless push for short-term productivity, he says, adding that he prefers the experiential approach and expects it to make a comeback before long. “The next generation forgets, and then they start over,” he says.

For now, Apple employees are bracing for a holiday rush that tends to mean grueling extended hours and pressure to handle as many as four customers simultaneously. One worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his store is preparing to call a union vote, says he started thinking differently about Apple a couple weeks before Christmas last year, when he was struggling through his shift with what was soon diagnosed as Covid. While talking to a customer, he found himself wobbling back and forth, bracing himself against a nearby table. After the customer left, a manager who’d been watching reprimanded him for not pitching AppleCare. “That was the moment where I kind of realized, ‘Oh, I’m working retail,’ ” he says. “It’s still the same BS. It’s just crafted in a prettier package.”

Read next: One of Gaming’s Most Hated Execs Is Jumping Into the Metaverse

HAITI; CANADA/QUEBEC COLONY

Canada sanctions Haitian gang leader over humanitarian crisis

Mon, November 14, 2022

(Reuters) -Canada sanctioned Haitian gang leader Jimmy Chérizier on Monday, citing serious human rights abuses that are causing a humanitarian crisis, the foreign ministry said.

The actions against Cherizier, the leader of the so-called G9, an alliance of Haitian gangs, effectively freezes any assets he may hold in Canada and imposes a travel ban and arms embargo

"Canada has reason to believe this individual has engaged in acts that threaten the peace, security, and stability of Haiti and has planned, directed, or committed acts that constitute serious human rights abuses," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Haiti's gangs have expanded their power since the shocking 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, and Prime Minister Ariel Henry has faced difficulties in restoring order to the country.

The sanctions, which implement a U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution and build on earlier actions imposed by the United States and Canada, aim to stop the illegal flow of money and weapons into Haiti that help criminal gangs, the ministry said.

"These gangs and their supporters terrorize vulnerable populations in Haiti with impunity, and are precipitating a humanitarian crisis in Haiti that includes the resurgence of cholera," the Canadian foreign ministry said.

"They are committing unspeakable violence, including widespread sexual violence, against affected populations and impeding the delivery of critical services.

In September, gangs led by Cherizier blocked the entrance to the Varreux fuel terminal just outside the capital Port-au-Prince, to protest a government announcement to cut fuel subsidies.

Gasoline and diesel supplies have mostly dried up since then and Haitians also face a shortage of drinking water amid a deadly outbreak of cholera.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

Lockheed Martin loses billions in stock value amid fake Twitter accounts, tweets


A change in Twitter account verifications creates chaos for the image of major companies, including Bethesda's own Lockheed Martin.

By Donte Kirby – Staff Reporter, Washington Business Journal
Nov 14, 2022

Lockheed Martin Corp. was among the latest corporate brands to take a massive stock hit following misinformation and fake accounts on Twitter after the latter's new verification system — which allows anyone to buy a blue check mark for $8 a month — went into effect.

The Bethesda defense contractor saw its company shares drop 5.5% by close of business Friday, cutting short a steady rise in stock price for the last month. Friday's slock slide followed a tweet sent Thursday night from a fake account, @LockheedMartini, verified through the monthly $7.99 blue check offering and bearing a similar logo, that the company would halt weapon sales to countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel, pending further investigation into their human rights records. That Twitter account has since been suspended.


Lockheed (NYSE: LMT), whose official Twitter handle is @LockheedMartin, has not publicly addressed the fake tweet. We reached out to the company for comment and will update this when we hear back.

Its stock, which closed Thursday at $490.77 a share, not far from the company's 52-week high, had fallen to a closing price of $463.86 on Friday, as trading volume nearly doubled. That equated to roughly $7 billion worth of lost value, based on the company's outstanding shares listed in its most recent quarterly report released Oct. 18.

During Monday's trading, the company had earned back about 0.39% of its stock value, as shares reached $465.12 by late afternoon. It carried a $122.09 billion market cap as of then.

Direct causation or correlation with the fake tweet is hard to tell. Defense contractors have been hit with other issues that have caused its stock to dip in recent weeks — supply chain issues are real, and in the wake of the midterm elections, the Defense Department's fiscal 2023 budget is still up in the air as a Dec. 16 deadline for the current continuing resolution looms.

Lockheed, which has encountered some issues with its F-35 deliveries, was enjoying a stock bounce after disclosing stronger third-quarter earnings, with a 190% jump in net earnings to beat Wall Street expectations. That had followed a rougher second quarter, when it had fallen short of Wall Street's projections, with a 83% year-over-year drop in quarterly net earnings and 9.3% drop in quarterly revenue.

For the first nine months of this year, Lockheed generated $2.6 billion worth of sales across its main divisions to countries and entities in the Middle East, comprising about 5.5% of its total sales for that period.

Though, Lockheed was among a handful of prominent brands that fell victim to Twitter's $8 verification fiasco. A parody account with the handle @EliLillyandCo, an apparent attempt to ape pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE: LLY), sported the company logo and a blue check and tweeted that it was supplying its insulin product line for free.

Eli Lilly issued its own tweet and apology from its official account, @LillyPad, on Friday afternoon. "We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account. Our official Twitter account is @LillyPad."

By then, that company had seen its stock end the day at $352.30 per share, down 4.5% from $368.72. It saw a 2% rebound to $358.70 by late Monday afternoon.

PepsiCo, Nestle and Elon Musk’s own Tesla and SpaceX also saw shares dip amid the fake verification tweetstorm.

Musk Publicly Punishes Twitter Engineers Who Call Him Out Online



Kurt Wagner
Mon, November 14, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc. owner Elon Musk, who has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” has resorted to firing company engineers who publicly criticize him on the social-media service.

In one case, Musk announced the firing in a tweet. In another, the former employee said he was fired after he openly rebuked Musk.

Engineer Eric Frohnhoefer, who worked on Twitter’s app for the Android mobile operating system, on Sunday reposted one of Musk’s tweets with a comment, saying that Musk’s understanding of a technical part of Twitter’s app was “wrong.” Musk replied and asked Frohnhoefer to elaborate, before writing, “Twitter is super slow on Android. What have you done to fix that?”

After attempting to explain his thinking in a number of tweets, Frohnhoefer was asked by another user why he hadn’t shared his feedback with his new boss privately. The engineer, who has worked at Twitter for more than eight years, replied, “maybe he should ask questions privately. Maybe use Slack or email.”

On Monday morning, Musk wrote that Frohnhoefer had been fired. Frohnhoefer retweeted that post, and included a saluting emoji that many employees used when they were laid off earlier this month. Twitter and Frohnhoefer didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on his status.

Another engineer, Ben Leib, was also fired after calling out Musk. He retweeted the same technical post from Musk, writing, “As the former tech lead for timelines infrastructure at Twitter, I can confidently say that this man has no idea wtf he’s talking about.” Leib, who worked at Twitter for a decade, confirmed to Bloomberg that he was fired on Sunday.

Twitter has been thrown into chaos since Musk took over late last month. Many workers remain upset that Musk fired half of the company’s 7,000-plus employees, including most of the senior managers, within about a week of his $44 billion buyout.

The billionaire also rapidly changed the corporate culture. While it wasn’t previously routine for employees to challenge leadership publicly at Twitter, workers often spoke out on internal Slack channels and by email before Musk showed up, sometimes posting criticism or concerns to the entire company.

Musk’s changes have led to a lack of communication internally in terms of who is in charge and what the company’s priorities are, current and former staffers say.

The moves have also led to concerns that San Francisco-based Twitter is vulnerable to product breakdowns or technical outages. On Monday, Twitter implemented another coding freeze, halting product updates to the app, and employees weren’t given a clear reason why.

Twitter fired employees who publicly called out Elon Musk


NurPhoto via Getty Images

Mariella Moon
·Contributing Reporter
Mon, November 14, 2022 

At least three Twitter employees who survived the mass layoffs that cut the company's workforce in half have been fired after calling out their new boss on the platform. One of them is Eric Frohnhoefer, who responded to Elon Musk's tweet apologizing for Twitter being slow in many countries. "App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!" Musk wrote. Frohnhoefer responded that after six years of working on Twitter for Android, he can say that Musk's statement "is wrong."

The multi-company executive then asked him what the right number was and what has he done to fix Twitter for Android, which has been "super slow." He replied with the work his team has done for the app and listed a few reasons on why it's slow: "First it's bloated with features that get little usage. Second, we have accumulated years of tech debt as we have traded velocity and features over perf. Third, we spend a lot of time waiting for network responses."

Their exchange went on in several threads, and when one user told Frohnhoefer that he should've informed his boss privately, he replied: "Maybe he should ask questions privately. Maybe using Slack or email." After that, Musk informed everyone on Twitter that Fronhoefer had been fired.

He’s fired
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2022

The former Twitter app engineer told Forbes that he had gotten no communication from Twitter about his dismissal and that his laptop "just shut off." He added that "[n]o one trusts anyone within the company anymore," so it's been hard to function. The former Twitter employee also said that before Musk took over, "people were more open and felt that they could criticize and now that’s clearly not the case."


Another engineer named Ben Leib was also fired, Bloomberg has confirmed. Leib also responded to the same apology tweet by Musk, saying that as a former "tech lead for timelines infrastructure at Twitter," their new owner had no idea what he was talking about. And then there's Sasha Solomon, a tech lead for the company who chimed in with her own response to the same Musk tweet and who later announced that she, too, got fired.

There have been massive changes over at Twitter after Elon Musk officially purchased the company. He immediately dismissed its top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, and ordered mass layoffs that saw around 50 percent of the social network's employees lose their jobs. Twitter also launched the $8-a-month Blue subscription that provided everyone who can pay access to instant verification. Making the blue checkmark easy to obtain, however, led to the rise in impersonation and legitimate-looking fake accounts on the website.

A software engineer from India says he was fired by Meta 2 days after he moved to Canada for his job

Marielle Descalsota
Mon, November 14, 2022 


Facebook Meta sign

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A Meta employee said he was laid off two days after moving from India to Canada for work.

Meta laid off 11,000 employees, or 13% of its workforce.


Meta's Canada office previously announced it was opening up 2,500 jobs at a planned engineering hub.

A Meta employee says he was laid off from the company two days after relocating from India to Canada for work.

Himanshu V., a software engineer from India, wrote in a LinkedIn post on November 10 that he was one of the thousands of employees affected by Meta's mass layoffs.

"I relocated to Canada to join #Meta and 2 days after joining, my journey came to an end as I am impacted by the massive layoff," Himanshu, a software engineer, wrote in the post. "My heart goes out to everyone facing a difficult situation right now."

In four days, Himanshu's post has garnered over 22,000 reactions and 1,000 comments on LinkedIn. Insider was not able to independently verify Himanshu's account. Himanshu did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

On November 9, Meta announced it would be cutting more than 11,000 employees, or about 13% of its workforce.

"I view layoffs as a last resort, so we decided to rein in other sources of cost before letting teammates go," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post.

Meta employed around 1,800 people in Canada, local tech site BetaKit reported on November 9, citing Meta's LinkedIn page.

Himanshu wrote on LinkedIn that he's now looking for a job in Canada or India but has "no idea" what's next for him. He had previously worked at tech companies including GitHub and Adobe, according to his profile.

Himanshu is not the only employee suddenly laid off by Meta days after relocating from India.

Vishwajeet Jha, a former software engineer at Amazon, wrote in LinkedIn post on November 11 that he had been at Meta for three days before he was laid off.

"Really sad that this happened," Jha wrote, adding that the process of obtaining a work visa to Canada was "long."

Neelima Agarwal, a software engineer who moved from India to Canada in November, said she was laid off two days after joining the company.

In a Linkedin post on November 9, Agarwal wrote that she was heartbroken about being laid off after moving to Canada. Agarwal's post had accrued over 6,400 reactions and more than 480 comments by press time.

The mass layoffs at Meta's Canada office come eight months after the company announced plans to open a Toronto-based engineering hub that would create 2,500 jobs, per a Meta press release.

Jha, Agarwal, and Meta did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

Meta employees from offices around the world have taken to LinkedIn to write "badge posts" — departure messages with their ID cards — upon being laid off from the company, Insider previously reported.

"Officially became a casualty of the mass-layoffs at Meta this morning... but honestly, I'm not even the least bit salty," Chad Lesher, a former Meta strategy lead, wrote in a LinkedIn post on November 10.

Filing: Facebook parent Meta to cut 726 jobs in Seattle region as part of broader layoffs

Todd Bishop - Yesterday 

Meta, parent company of Facebook, Oculus, WhatsApp, and Instagram, will lay off 419 workers in Seattle and another 307 in nearby Bellevue as part of its broader cutbacks announced last week.


Inside an early Facebook office in Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo)© Provided by Geekwire

The total of 726 job cuts in the Seattle region, disclosed in a notice Monday to the Washington state Employment Security Department, represents about 9% of the company’s 8,000-person workforce in the region.

Meta’s larger cutbacks, numbering 11,000 people globally, represent about 13% of its total workforce. The company had not previously disclosed the number of workers affected by the cuts in the Seattle region.

Facebook started expanding aggressively in Seattle more than a decade ago from an engineering center across from Pike Place Market. Later rebranded as Meta, the company grew into multiple office buildings in the region, adding more with its 2014 Oculus acquisition. Less than a month ago, the company opened new offices in Bellevue’s Spring District, east of Seattle.

The cuts are part of a wave of layoffs by tech companies grappling with the tough economy. Earlier this morning, Amazon was reported to be preparing for layoffs that could total as many as 10,000 corporate and tech workers.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$T BANK
Wells Fargo Faces Huge Fine After Latest Scandal
The bank is under investigation and the outcome could hurt more than just its pocket.

DANNI BUTTON

If you're banking with the San Francisco-based mega-bank Wells Fargo (WFC) - Get Free Report, you've likely noticed that the company just can’t seem to stay out of hot water. The last few months have seen the bank's name in headlines for a lot of very no-good reasons.

Most recently, the bank came under fire from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for its use of the fast-cash bank-to-bank transfer service known as Zelle. The service was created in a partnership between several major banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America (BAC) - Get Free Report , JP Morgan Chase (JPM) - Get Free Report, and more to offer a transfer option similar to that of PayPal (PYPL) - Get Free Report.

The convenience of transfers directly between accounts was certainly a great move--but not without its cracks. According to Warren, Zelle’s structure allowed for $90 million worth of fraud and scams, and it was a particular problem with Wells Fargo.

Not long before that, Wells Fargo was called out for discriminatory practices after closing long-time accounts without warning. In the same month, a handful of Senators sent the bank a letter addressing issues of discrimination during the interview process.

Last Friday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) launched an investigation into some of the bank's practices--and it could leave the bank with very substantial hole in its pocket.

CFPB Investigates Wells Fargo

The CFPB is taking a hard look at Wells Fargo’s automobile lending, consumer-deposit accounts, and mortgage lending practices. The investigation could cost the bank more than $1 billion in settlement fees. It could also result in the CFPB levying restrictions against the bank. According to the report, Wells Fargo is in “resolution discussions” with the CFPB. No financial penalties or restrictions have been enacted at this time.

CFPB Director Rohit Chopra has spoken in the past about the need for more impactful penalties against major companies that repeatedly break the rules. And Wells Fargo’s track record doesn’t look great. In 2018, the CFPB fined the bank $1 billion for overcharging for mortgages and issues with its auto loan insurance. Two years earlier, Wells Fargo coughed up $100 million for opening fake consumer accounts to inflate quota numbers.

Ongoing Wells Fargo Investigations

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have also been looking at the bank. The probes came after a New York Times article alleged that Wells Fargo was hosting fake job interviews to bolster internal diversity requirements.

The report claims that Wells Fargo would continue to interview nonwhite and female applicants after positions had already been filled. The practice would help the company adhere to an internal policy to interview a larger number of diverse candidates.

Depending on the outcome of one or both of these investigations, Chopra and the CFPB could consider more than just financial measures to punish the bank. Chopra has suggested that these penalties include the removal of necessary operating licenses and other government privileges.

It's hard to imagine Wells Fargo taking a hit large enough to make an impact on its business. But there could also be an example made of the major company. The CFPB has plenty of repeat offenders who don't seem phased by the bureau. CFPB has taken multiple actions against Citigroup (C) - Get Free Report, JPMorgan Chase, American Express (AXP) - Get Free Report, and Discover (DFS) - Get Free Report.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

U.S. Supreme Court rejects StarKist's tuna price-fixing class action appeal

By Nate Raymond

Mon, November 14, 2022

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a bid by StarKist Co, owned by South Korea's Dongwon Industries, to avoid a lawsuit by tuna buyers accusing it of fixing prices.

The justices turned away StarKist's appeal of a lower court's decision that let three groups of tuna purchasers receive class action status to jointly sue the canned tuna company even though a large number of buyers may not have been overcharged and injured by the price fixing.

The case could have given the justices, had they decided to hear it, a chance to make it harder for consumers and other plaintiffs to receive class action status.

The Reston, Virginia-based company, which produces StarKist Tuna, had asked the Supreme Court to consider whether plaintiffs could still win class action status in cases in which some of the members of the class were not injured by a company's alleged wrongdoing.

StarKist's appeal garnered the support of business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which in a brief to the justices said "there are too many judges who, despite this court's instructions, continue to put a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of class certification."

Class action status allows a few plaintiffs to litigate on behalf of a much larger group rather than forcing individuals to litigate separately. Businesses fight to avoid cases winning class action status, which can expose them to massive potential damages and create pressure to settle.

The litigation, filed in federal court in California, followed a U.S. Justice Department investigation into a three-year conspiracy by U.S. suppliers of packaged tuna including StarKist and Bumble Bee Foods to fix prices for their products in violation of antitrust laws.

StarKist pleaded guilty, admitting to having fixed the prices of canned tuna from as early as November 2011 through at least as late as December 2013, and was sentenced in 2019 to a $100 million fine. Bumble Bee and three industry executives also pleaded guilty. Former Bumble Bee CEO Christopher Lischewski was convicted at trial and sentenced in 2020 to 40 months in prison.

Prosecutors said the scheme affected more than $600 million dollars of canned tuna sales.

Amid the investigation, a number of packaged tuna purchasers filed proposed class actions against Bumble Bee, StarKist and a third company, Chicken of the Sea, who together sold more than 80% of the packaged tuna in the United States. The plaintiffs accused the companies of violating federal and state antitrust laws through a scheme that caused them to overpay for tuna.

In 2019, a trial judge granted class action status to three separate groups of tuna buyers: direct purchasers such as national retailers and regional grocery stores; commercial food preparers; and individual consumers.

The companies appealed, saying 28% or more of direct purchasers by their analysis may not have been harmed.

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2021 decertified the three classes, saying the judge had failed to determine whether or not the number of uninjured tuna buyers was too small to justify class action status.

On further review, an 11-judge 9th Circuit panel voted 9-2 in April to break the three classes apart and declined to adopt a rule against certifying a class action even if only a trivial number of class members were harmed. StarKist appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)