As Amazon union vote starts, AFL-CIO’s tech think tank considers future of labor

It’s a big day for the AFL-CIO. Not only is it providing guidance to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which is organizing the Amazon warehouse workers. It also recently launched a think tank, the Technology Institute, partly meant to help workers at tech behemoths like Amazon organize.

Other tech companies are waging similar battles. Microsoft workers protested the company’s lucrative military contract. And Google is facing a unionization effort by hundreds of its own employees…

To help do that, the Technology Institute is working with academic partners, including the Block Center for Technology and Society at Carnegie Mellon University, to build tech tools to help workers organize. (Shuler wouldn’t elaborate on specific tools, noting the lengths companies have gone to surveil and stymie unionization efforts.)
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