I wrote about Thomas Bradley, who signed up for a hotel shift via Instawork, a temp-job app. When he arrived to work, he saw he was being used as a strikebreaker. He joined the picket line, the app suspended him, and now the workers are striking over it. jacobin.com/2023/07/southe…
This story has it all: predominantly Latino
@UNITEHERE11 members at the Laguna Cliffs hotel striking in solidarity with workers, many of them black, who were enlisted as strikebreakers, in the first strike against what I'm personally calling "Uber for strikebreaking."
Bradley told me he has been trying to get a good hotel job for more than two decades but it has never worked out. When he arrived at Laguna Cliffs, he was homeless, living in his car (which was repossessed last week). Spoiler: there is good news. He started a union job this week.
The Laguna Cliffs workers are furious about the use of black workers to try to break their strike, as well as the use of apps to quickly recruit such workers. They noted that while these hotels say they can't find qualified black workers, once a strike began, they found plenty.
Btw, the housekeeper I spoke to? The union alleges she was punched in the head by a hotel guest during the strike, with no consequences for them. Meanwhile, the issues that led to the *original* strike--insufficient wages, employer opposition to housing solutions--remain.
As for algorithmic management which automatically penalizes workers engaging in protected activity, the NLRB's Abruzzo warned of that danger in a memo last year. It's possible Bradley could become the test case for the board to establish a standard on these problems.
As for Bradley, when we spoke, he was finishing orientation for his new union job. He has also been organizing Instawork users, convincing them to overcome the clear chilling effect the app has on them and refuse to scab. He's also trying to help them get union jobs like he did.
Thanks for reading and thanks especially to Bradley and Pineda. I have finally left LA but, unsurprisingly, there will be many more Southern California stories in the near future.
Oh also! My piece cites @AASchapiro's article on this situation--as far as I saw, he was the first to cover it at length-but just in case: context.news/digital-rights…
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