Tag: Startups

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is pushing a number of legislative bodies to offer more protections and benefits for gig workers during COVID-19 pandemic. As gig workers are still out delivering food to people and providing rides, supervisors are asking the SF Office of Labor Standards Enforcement to establish enforcement procedures in compliance with Assembly Bill 5, which outlines what types of workers can be legally classified as independent contractors.

This resolution, which Gig Workers Rising and We Drive Progress advocated for the board of supervisors to adopt, comes after Gig Workers Rising urged California lawmakers to enforce AB 5. Earlier this month, Gig Workers Rising sent a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials asking them to step in and protect workers during this pandemic.

“These companies have been putting drivers and passengers at risk during the coronavirus era and long before,” rideshare driver and Gig Workers Rising member Edan Alva said on a press call today. “These large corporations are preying on the most vulnerable populations.”

He added that drivers often work paycheck to paycheck and therefore have no ability to save money.

“Without health insurance and sick days, we are left with the impossible choice when we get sick,” Alva said. “Drive sick and put ourselves and passengers at risk or stay at home and lose the roof over our heads, our car and our livelihood.”

The supervisors are also asking for both SF City Attorney Dennis Herrera and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to seek injunctive relief to prevent misclassification of workers as they seek paid sick leave and unemployment insurance.

Additionally, the board of supervisors wants the Department of Public Health to implement minimum health and safety guidelines for ride-hail drivers and delivery workers. Lastly, they want California Labor Secretary Julie Su to offer guidance around accessing benefits for gig workers during this time.

The supervisors outline how, without help, gig workers “face many uncertainties, including housing and food insecurity, no access to health care, exposure to COVID-19 without safety training, sanitation and protective equipment…” Meanwhile, gig economy companies “continue to flout our state and city laws, leaving their misclassified employees without access to unemployment insurance, paid sick leave, medical benefits, workers’ compensation, and other crucial benefits…,” the resolution states.

On a press call today, Supervisor Gordon Mar said denying workers their rights during a public health crisis is “immoral.” Fellow Supervisor Matt Haney added that it’s critical every measure is taken to protect public health.

“Many of us are being told to have your food delivered, have your food dropped off,” Haney said on the press call. “Having workers at these companies is actually becoming essential for us to operate during this time, but at the same time we are not treating these folks fairly…we are putting them in even more marginalized and vulnerable positions economically.”

In many ways, Haney said, gig workers are performing emergency response jobs during this crisis — delivering food to people who can’t go out to the store or driving people from point A to point B.

It’s not that companies like Uber, DoorDash and Instacart have done nothing. Some have offered up to two weeks’ worth of sick leave, for example. But it’s that they’re not doing enough.

Source: Tech Crunch

They’re doing construction in my apartment building right now. I live on the first floor and can hear the distinct sound of jackhammering on concrete coming from the basement below. There’s also the sound of a generator and a far higher-pitched drilling noise. It’s all happening with the perfect combination of frequency and randomness completely designed to drive this work-from-homer completely nuts.

Honestly, I’m generally not a headphones-at-home guy, unless it’s a meeting or a podcast. But being under house arrest with heavy machinery is really wearing on me, and providing an unexpectedly ideal scenario for trying out Sennheiser’s latest fully wireless earbuds.

The landscape has changed considerably since the audio company announced the original Momentum True Wireless models in summer of 2018. Honestly, the speed with which the category has taken off in recent years seems pretty remarkable, both in terms of quality and user adoption.

One key thing that hasn’t changed with the arrival of the True Wireless 2 is Sennheiser’s pricing. For many or most, the earbuds are still prohibitively expensive at $300 a pair (compared to the $230 Sony 1000XM3 or the $240 AirPods Pro). For the majority of folks, the pricing is already going to be a deal breaker. It’s a shame, honestly, because there’s a lot to like.

The presentation is great. I mean, look at that fabric-covered case. It’s certainly on the bulky side, compared to a number of cases, but it’s quite handsome. The earbuds themselves are nothing to sneeze at. They’re also surprisingly comfortable. They don’t have added support like the Powerbeats Pro, but unlike the Sony models, they’re not heavy enough to cause ear strain. As for how they stay in place while exercising — I’m going to have to get back to you on that.

Like the Sony headphones, the sound is really excellent on the True Wireless 2. In fact, it’s among the best and most balanced audio I’ve experienced on a pair of fully wireless earbuds — as one would expect from Sennheiser. Thankfully, the active noise canceling is also quite excellent, accessible with a triple tap on the right ear bud, while a double will toggle Transparent mode, for added ambient sound.

The tapping controls feel a bit convoluted on first use, but you’ll get the hang of it fairly quickly. The biggest complaint I have thus far (beyond pricing) is the spottiness of the wireless connectivity. The Momentums start to lose signal when I walk from my living room to my kitchen. That’s about 30 feet — a distance a majority of other headphones I’ve tried out have had little to no issue with. Not the end of the world for most users, but I’d hope for a more consistent experience at that lofty price point. 

Source: Tech Crunch

Amazon never tires of explaining how great it is to work at one of its warehouses, but as usual the actual employees tell a different story. This particular group of Chicago workers was fed up with the company failing to provide paid time off or vacation it promised to part-time workers. They organized; Amazon resisted — and at last, the coronavirus acted as tiebreaker.

It’s an interesting first-hand story from workers being exploited by a business and working to change that —  I say exploited not because the work is hard and the pay low, though that’s true too, but because they had to fight to get basic considerations and resources from a company claiming to value their health and welfare.

The group is not a union, but it’s the seed from which unions sprang long ago: workers with a common grievance acting in unison to force management to come to the table. Originally the group formed to make a petition for access to clean water to drink. You read that right! After complaining individually to no effect, they got 150 people to sign the petition, presented it and soon there were pallets of bottled water available and new water stations being installed.

From this we learned that we get the changes we need by getting organized and taking action together. Since there was still plenty of bullshit to address, we met up again and after some brainstorming decided to name ourselves DCH1 Amazonians United. There’s no union or nonprofit backing us up, it’s just us workers, full of dignity, trying to make ends meet. When we found out that Amazon was denying us the PTO we were supposed to have, we were ready to do something about it.

Amazon promised in writing that workers putting in more than 20 hours would accrue PTO and vacation time, but that simply wasn’t happening. Somehow, the people at the warehouse were a special class of employee that worked more than 20 hours and didn’t accrue PTO and vacation. One way or another something had to change.

After pulling together 251 signatures to a petition demanding PTO and a meeting with their regional manager, they presented it on three separate occasions so each shift could hear management’s response. One manager accepted the petition, another refused to take it. The site lead started isolating workers, telling them they could meet one on one but not as a group with the regional manager. This is labor organization shutdown 101, by the way.

The group heard that a similar group to theirs in Sacramento had walked out, and clearly management did too, as they began acting nervous about collective action. There was an international meeting of Amazon workers to compare notes and techniques.

Then the coronavirus hit, and across multiple Amazon labor groups petitions were passed demanding protective measures against infection, increased hazard pay and childcare subsidies, and that the company cease withholding sick leave.

In the middle of these growing efforts, Amazon decided to grant PTO to all workers above 20 hours.

Image Credits: DHC1 Amazonians United

In a statement to TechCrunch, the company said that it “has implemented a broad suite of new benefits changes for employees in our operations and logistics network throughout this unprecedented pandemic event,” and that this decision was not due to the agitations of Amazonians United or any other single group. Indeed, it sounds like groups all over the world had to combine and protest these policies together in order for Amazon to take notice. I asked why the PTO was not being given in the first place and have yet to hear back.

The Chicago group was far from alone in its plight, but it took organization and communication for them to find the courage and means to make the changes necessary. Here’s hoping the 100,000 workers Amazon plans to hire benefit from the work of their peers.

Source: Tech Crunch

Last week, popular music platform Bandcamp announced that it would be waiving its revenue shares from all sales for 24 hours, starting Friday morning. The move was an effort to help boost income for the innumerable artists who have been struggling to make ends meet as live performances have been canceled for the foreseeable future for artists all over the world.

Things went well.

Friday turned out to be the biggest day for sales in the platform’s 11-year history. Artists raised $4.3 million in music and merchandise sales over the 24-hour period. That comes out to more than 15x Bandcamp’s normal numbers on a Friday — or, as the site puts, it 11 items per second over the course of the day. In all, some 800,000 items were sold, versus the standard 47,000.

In addition to Bandcamp waiving its fees, dozens of labels, including Anti-, Fat Possum, Merge, Polyvinyl, Saddle Creek and Sub Pop, gave up 100% of their revenues to artists on Friday.

It’s a nice little bit of news for creatives, many of whom are already struggling to adapt to an ever-changing online economy. Still, it’s hard to say what the future looks like with so many artists stuck at home indefinitely.

Source: Tech Crunch

Amazon is going to be working with a new research initiative backed in part by the Gates Foundation that will distribute at-home coronavirus assessment kits, and then deliver the collected samples to FDA-approved test facilities. Amazon Care, the health arm formed by Amazon initially for internal employee care, will be handling the delivery of the kits, as well as transportation of collected samples to the test labs, as first reported by CNBC.

While the FDA updated its guidance just a few days ago to specifically exclude at-home testing from the Emergency Use Authorization that is in place to enable broadened private lab testing of potential COVID-19 cases, the arrangement with the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN) and Amazon Care bypasses use of the traditional mail or package delivery network. The Amazon Care drivers who are doing the test kit drop-offs and deliveries are specifically trained in proper handling of sensitive medical materials, and the SCAN project is for a limited research endeavor undertaken in order to help “understand how coronavirus is spreading in the Greater Seattle area.”

Availability of kits will be limited, but will include the kind of swab testing that is being conducted at drive-through testing facilities in the U.S. Should a sample test positive for COVID-19, the person who provided the sample to SCAN will be contacted by a healthcare worker for next steps, including advice on how to seek treatment and prevent transmission.

SCAN is the result of a partnership by Seattle & King County’s Public Health department, as well as a team of hospitals and health organizations that created the Seattle Flu Study, a similar project meant to study the spread of the traditional seasonal flu within the community. The research and data modeling work done for that study have been adapted to the study of COVID-19, and the flu study has been put on hold while researchers focus on the pandemic instead.

Source: Tech Crunch

San Francisco-based Instacart today announced it will bring on 300,000 shoppers for its grocery delivery platform over the next three months. The move is meant to manage an uptick in demand due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. 

The platform lets users shop from home from well-known grocery stores like Costco, Safeway, Kroger and more. Once an order is submitted, a designated grocery shopper will pick up the items and deliver it.

Once relying on the lazy shoppers among us, Instacart is now seeing an uptick in volume of orders as delivery becomes a safer option amid the novel coronavirus disease. All of a sudden, social distancing means fewer trips to the grocery stores, which means more reliance on delivery platforms like Instacart. 

In a release, Instacart noted that it operates in more than 5,500 cities and will bring on shoppers from across the country. In California, Instacart will bring on 54,000 new shoppers. In New York, the company will bring on 27,000 new shoppers. Other states like Illinois, Ohio, Georgia and New Jersey will also get thousands of new shoppers. 

The new shoppers will be offered sick pay, and it will distribute cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer to them, as well.

Grocery stores, for now, remain open across the country, even in states under lockdown. Grocers are deemed an essential business, and Instacart is helping goods get into the hands of people who can’t take the chance to leave their home.

Update: Instacart reached out to clarify that it is hiring 300,000 full-service workers, not full-time workers. The article has been updated to reflect that change.

Source: Tech Crunch

Earlier this month, the FCC issued a new measure aimed at easing some of the burdens on consumers as COVID-19 continues to have an increasingly profound impact on nearly every aspect of life.

Most or all major internet and wireless providers in the U.S. signed up for the pledge, agreeing to take actions like waiving late fees and not terminating service. Now specific plans are starting to emerge from carriers, aimed at helping cash-strapped consumers until this pandemic blows over.

T-Mobile this morning announced the launch of a $15/month Metro plan — at half the cost of its current lowest-price plan. The pricing will be in place for the next 60 days, including unlimited talk and 2GB of data. The company is also tossing in a free eight-inch tablet (with rebate, plus fine print) and will be adjusting other data plans for the next two months.

At the same time, Verizon (TC’s parent company) announced that it will be adding 15GB of 4G data to current consumer and small business plans, in an effort to help customers use their handsets as mobile hotspots as needed. The company will also be taking $20 off select FiOS plans and waving router rental fees for 60 days.

Like the other carriers, AT&T noted in a message to TechCrunch that it will not terminate service over inability to pay. It will also be waiving late fees, along with domestic overcharges for data, voice and text, retroactive to March 13.

Sprint, meanwhile, will provide for 60 days unlimited data to customers with metered plans, starting March 18, along with 20GB of free mobile hotspot data.

Source: Tech Crunch