Google extends software support for Pixel 8 phones to a full seven years

Google has committed to providing seven full years of software support for it's Pixel 8 phones, the company announced Wednesday during its Made by Google event. That might not be all that exciting to shoppers, at least compared to new hardware or OS features, but it puts Google well ahead of the competition — and may ultimately be a boon for both consumers and the environment.

Previously, Google's policy on updates to support its phones was five years (at least for the Pixel 6 and later), which in itself was nothing to scoff at. Not only will an extra two years potentially save consumers from shelling out for a brand new handset, but it may save some aging Pixels from ending up in a landfill quite as quickly. An estimated five billion phones were tossed in the trash in 2022 alone, potentially leading to toxic chemicals leeching into groundwater, among other associated hazards. It's impossible to say how many consumers will take full advantage of the increased shelf life of their Pixels, either because they're itching for a new-and-better model, or because (like most smartphones these days) repairability still leaves something to be desired.

Regardless, Google is obviously stepping in the right direction, and hopefully putting pressure on some of its competitors too. Apple has not made a hard commitment to lengthening its software support, but its phones typically see five to six years of updates. On the Android side of things, support can be significantly more grim: an exhaustive list of manufacturer update policies by Android Authority revealed that most brands only offer about two years of support, with many refusing to commit to any length of time, period. One of the few exceptions is Samsung, which in February of 2022 announced it would provide four generations of Android updates and five years of security patches to many of its models.

Follow all of the news live from Google’s 2023 Pixel event right here.

Correction, October 4, 2023, 3:09 PM ET: This post has been update to specify that while the prior phones retain the five-year support timeline, the new seven-year commitment is applicable only to the Pixel 8 series. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-extends-software-support-for-pixel-phones-to-a-full-seven-years-143043262.html?src=rss

Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio 2 has a 13th-gen Intel CPU and RTX 40 series GPU options

During its annual fall event on Thursday, Microsoft announced the (previously leaked) sequel to the Surface Laptop Studio, and it appears to come with plenty of much-needed improvements. 

For starters, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 will offer twice the CPU and GPU power of its predecessor, thanks to Intel 13th-gen i7 H class processors and NVIDIA RTX 4050 or 4060 GPUs. Those GPU options are geared toward speed and gaming, but can be traded for RTX 2000 Adas for those doing intensive graphical rendering work. During a demo of the machine during the event, Microsoft made a point of showing it smoking the M2 Max MacBook Pro in Blender. 

The Surface Laptop Studio 2 can also be loaded with up to 2TB of storage and 64GB of RAM. It will sport an adaptive touch-enabled trackpad, and come packed in with the Surface Slim Pen 2. The touchscreen will still clock in at 14.4 inches, with a 120Hz refresh rate, Dolby IQ and HDR. And, yeah, the screen tilts forward. Because of course it does. As for battery life, Microsoft is claiming the Surface Laptop Studio 2 will get up to 18 hours of runtime on a charge.

Notably, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 will also feature a neural processing unit, which can power AI effects — seemingly the first Intel NPU in a windows laptop . And just for good measure, it'll host a USB-A port, two slots for USB-C and a microSD card reader. 

The Surface Laptop Studio 2 will be available for customers on October 3, and starts at $1,999. 

Follow all of the news live from Microsoft’s 2023 Surface event right here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-surface-laptop-studio-2-has-a-13th-gen-intel-cpu-and-rtx-40-series-gpu-options-152547778.html?src=rss

Amazon debuts the $120 Bluetooth-enabled Fire TV Soundbar

During its annual fall event on Wednesday, Amazon unveiled a slate of devices and software updates to the Fire TV line. Brand new to the lineage is the Fire TV Soundbar. The soundbar is Bluetooth enabled and "simple to set up and compatible with all Fire TV streaming products and TVs," according to Daniel Rausch, Amazon's VP of Alexa and Fire TV, who was presenting on stage at the event. The soundbar is available starting today for $120.

Rausch also announced a minor refresh of the ubiquitous Fire TV line of streaming sticks. The new 4K Max, which is now nearly two years old, received a 0.2GHz bump in processing power and an upgrade from WiFi 6 to WiFi 6E. There's some other niceties as well, including support for HDR, HDR10+, Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. The new Fire TV 4K Max is up for pre-order now for $60, and will begin shipping to customers on September 27th. The standard model of 4K Fire TV Stick also gets a bump in processing power, 4K support and WiFi 6. Pre-orders for that also start today (though Amazon has not yet confirmed a ship date), and it'll run a slightly cheaper $50. Purchases of new Fire sticks and TVs will now also come with six free months of the MGM+ streaming service. 

Given the focus on AI and large language models (LLM) throughout Amazon's hardware presentation, it was a foregone conclusion some aspect of those buzzy product categories would be finagled into the Fire lineup. Forthcoming improvements to the Alexa voice search feature will draw from Amazon's LLM (as well as data on IMDB, which Amazon bought in 1998) to supposedly understand nuanced questions about what to watch, and supply relevant recommendations. These recommendations will also, according to Rausch's demo of the feature, be personalized to individual user profiles. The new voice search functionality will arrive via an over-the-air update later this year.

Follow all of the news live from Amazon’s 2023 Devices event right here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-debuts-a-120-bluetooth-enabled-fire-tv-soundbar-161905007.html?src=rss

CNET’s new guidelines for AI journalism met with union pushback

Nearly seven months after it began publishing machine-generated stories without disclosing their true authorship (or lack thereof) to readers, CNET has finally, publicly changed its policy on the use of AI in its journalistic endeavors. In short, stories written by its in-house artificial intelligence — which it calls Responsible AI Machine Partner (RAMP) — are no more, but the specter of AI in its newsroom is far from exorcised. 

The site indicates, however, that there are still two broad categories of pursuits where RAMP will be deployed. The first, which it calls "Organizing large amounts of information" provides an example that seems more authorial than that umbrella descriptor lets on. "RAMP will help us sort things like pricing and availability data and present it in ways that tailor information to certain audiences. Without an AI assist, this volume of work wouldn’t be possible." 

The other ("Speeding up certain research and administrative portions of our workflow.") is more troubling. "CNET editors could use AI to help automate some portions of our work so we can focus on the parts that add the most unique value," the guidelines state."RAMP may also generate content such as explanatory material (based on trusted sources) that a human could fact-check and edit. [emphasis ours]" You'd be forgiven if that sounds nearly identical to what got CNET into trouble in the first place.

The venerable tech site first posted an innocuously titled explainer ("What Is a Credit Card Charge-Off?") on November 11, 2022, under the byline "CNET Money Staff" with no further explanation as to its provenance, and continued posting dozens more small finance stories under that byline through mid-January. It was around that time that Futurismdiscovered two important details: CNET Money Staff stories were AI-generated, and much of that work was wildly inaccurate. CNET issued corrections on over half of those stories and had, by all appearances, stopped using these sorts of tools in response to the deserved criticisms they created.

In the interim, the remaining CNET staff publicly announced their intention to unionize with the Writer's Guide of America, East. Among the more typical areas of concern for a shrinking newsroom during these trying times in the media industry (retention, severance, editorial independence, et cetera), the bargaining unit also specifically pushed back against the site's intention to keep deploying AI. 

Based on the union's response on Twitter, the guidelines fall well short of the kinds of protections CNET's workers were hoping for. "Before the tool rolls out, our union looks forward to negotiating," they wrote. "How & what data is retrieved; a regular role in testing/reevaluating tool; right to opt out & remove bylines; a voice to ensure editorial integrity.

Granted, CNET claims it will never deploy RAMP to write full stories, though it also denies it ever did so. However, the new guidelines leave the door open for that possibility, as well as the eventuality that it uses AI to generate images or videos, promising only that where "text that originated from our AI tool, we’ll include that information in a disclosure." CNET's apparent bullishness on AI (and its staff's wariness) also arrive against a backdrop of news organizations broadly looking to survive the technology's potential ill-effects. The New York Times and other media groups began preliminary talks this week to discuss AI's role in disinformation and plagiarism, as well as how to ensure fair compensation when authorship becomes murky.

The prior CNET Money Staff articles have since been updated to reflect the new editorial guidelines. Each is credited to a human staff member who has rewritten the story and also lists the name of the overseeing editor. Each is now appended with the following note at the bottom "Editors’ note: An earlier version of this article was assisted by an AI engine. This version has been substantially updated by a staff writer."

This sort of basic disclosure is neither difficult nor unusual. Including the provenance of information has been one of the core tenants of journalism since well before AI became advanced enough to get a credit on the masthead, and The Associated Press has been including such disclosures in its cut-and-paste-level financial beat stories for the better part of a decade. On the one hand much of the embarrassment around CNET's gaffe could have been avoided if it had simply warned readers where the text of these stories had come from at the outset. But the larger concern remains that, unlike AP's use of these tools, CNET seems poised to allow RAMP more freedom to do more substantive work, the bounds of which are not meaningfully changed by these guidelines.

Correction, June 6th, 2023, 11:47am ET: An earlier version of this story inaccurately described how the altered stories previously written by CNET Money Staff appeared on page. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cnets-new-guidelines-for-ai-journalism-met-with-union-pushback-152311269.html?src=rss

CNET’s new guidelines for AI journalism met with union pushback

Nearly seven months after it began publishing machine-generated stories without disclosing their true authorship (or lack thereof) to readers, CNET has finally, publicly changed its policy on the use of AI in its journalistic endeavors. In short, stories written by its in-house artificial intelligence — which it calls Responsible AI Machine Partner (RAMP) — are no more, but the specter of AI in its newsroom is far from exorcised. 

The site indicates, however, that there are still two broad categories of pursuits where RAMP will be deployed. The first, which it calls "Organizing large amounts of information" provides an example that seems more authorial than that umbrella descriptor lets on. "RAMP will help us sort things like pricing and availability data and present it in ways that tailor information to certain audiences. Without an AI assist, this volume of work wouldn’t be possible." 

The other ("Speeding up certain research and administrative portions of our workflow.") is more troubling. "CNET editors could use AI to help automate some portions of our work so we can focus on the parts that add the most unique value," the guidelines state."RAMP may also generate content such as explanatory material (based on trusted sources) that a human could fact-check and edit. [emphasis ours]" You'd be forgiven if that sounds nearly identical to what got CNET into trouble in the first place.

The venerable tech site first posted an innocuously titled explainer ("What Is a Credit Card Charge-Off?") on November 11, 2022, under the byline "CNET Money Staff" with no further explanation as to its provenance, and continued posting dozens more small finance stories under that byline through mid-January. It was around that time that Futurismdiscovered two important details: CNET Money Staff stories were AI-generated, and much of that work was wildly inaccurate. CNET issued corrections on over half of those stories and had, by all appearances, stopped using these sorts of tools in response to the deserved criticisms they created.

In the interim, the remaining CNET staff publicly announced their intention to unionize with the Writer's Guide of America, East. Among the more typical areas of concern for a shrinking newsroom during these trying times in the media industry (retention, severance, editorial independence, et cetera), the bargaining unit also specifically pushed back against the site's intention to keep deploying AI. 

Based on the union's response on Twitter, the guidelines fall well short of the kinds of protections CNET's workers were hoping for. "Before the tool rolls out, our union looks forward to negotiating," they wrote. "How & what data is retrieved; a regular role in testing/reevaluating tool; right to opt out & remove bylines; a voice to ensure editorial integrity.

Granted, CNET claims it will never deploy RAMP to write full stories, though it also denies it ever did so. However, the new guidelines leave the door open for that possibility, as well as the eventuality that it uses AI to generate images or videos, promising only that where "text that originated from our AI tool, we’ll include that information in a disclosure." CNET's apparent bullishness on AI (and its staff's wariness) also arrive against a backdrop of news organizations broadly looking to survive the technology's potential ill-effects. The New York Times and other media groups began preliminary talks this week to discuss AI's role in disinformation and plagiarism, as well as how to ensure fair compensation when authorship becomes murky.

The prior CNET Money Staff articles have since been updated to reflect the new editorial guidelines. Each is credited to a human staff member who has rewritten the story and also lists the name of the overseeing editor. Each is now appended with the following note at the bottom "Editors’ note: An earlier version of this article was assisted by an AI engine. This version has been substantially updated by a staff writer."

This sort of basic disclosure is neither difficult nor unusual. Including the provenance of information has been one of the core tenants of journalism since well before AI became advanced enough to get a credit on the masthead, and The Associated Press has been including such disclosures in its cut-and-paste-level financial beat stories for the better part of a decade. On the one hand much of the embarrassment around CNET's gaffe could have been avoided if it had simply warned readers where the text of these stories had come from at the outset. But the larger concern remains that, unlike AP's use of these tools, CNET seems poised to allow RAMP more freedom to do more substantive work, the bounds of which are not meaningfully changed by these guidelines.

Correction, June 6th, 2023, 11:47am ET: An earlier version of this story inaccurately described how the altered stories previously written by CNET Money Staff appeared on page. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cnets-new-guidelines-for-ai-journalism-met-with-union-pushback-152311269.html?src=rss

Apple refreshes the Mac Pro with its new M2 Ultra chip

Apple confirmed at its WWDC conference today that its largest and most powerful desktop will be receiving a few upgrades, including the M2 Ultra chip. While it's been through several aesthetic variations over the years, including the maligned "trashcan" model, the new Mac Pro will look identical to its cheese grater-like predecessor from 2019.

Other lines of Mac products have moved away from using third-party silicon, and now the hulking Mac Pro joins them. Its former Intel Xeon W setup has been replaced with the aforementioned M2 Ultra. Apple claims its in-house chip can operate up to three times faster than the prior Intel models. As was rumored though, the decision to develop a specialized M2 Extreme chip was shelved due to cost and technical difficulty. The Mac Pro will now come stocked with a 24-core CPU and up to a 76-core GPU. It support up to 192GB of memory, and seven Afterburner cards. That combined power, the company claims, can play back 22 8K ProRes video files or ingest up to 24 4K camera feeds "and encode them to ProRes in real time."

Additionally, the new Mac Pro will come with seven PCIe expansion slots, eight Thunderbolt 4 ports, support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, two 10Gb ethernet ports, three USB-A ports and two HDMI ports that will be able to output 8k resolution at up to 240Hz. There's a headphone jack too, just for good measure.

Once again though, the Mac Pro will cost a small fortune: $6,999 to start, while the upper bounds of a fully decked-out Pro remain unknown. That is an unfathomable and likely prohibitive sum for most customers, but considering the prior model was just $1,000 cheaper and nearly everything else on earth seems to cost a lot more since 2019, it could be worse.

The Mac Pro can be ordered today, and will become available starting on June 13.

Developing...

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-refreshes-the-mac-pro-with-its-new-m2-ultra-chip-173145016.html?src=rss

After layoffs and an AI scandal, CNET’s staff is unionizing

CNET, the venerable tech site which began publication nearly 30 years ago, has become the latest digital media company whose staff have chosen to band together and demand more. The CNET Media Worker's Union (CMWU) today sent a letter to Red Ventures, the private equity concern which purchased CNET in 2020, seeking recognition of a bargaining unit of nearly 100 workers including editors, writers, and video producers. According to CMWU, a supermajority of those in the unit signed union authorization cards.

Like the overwhelming majority of other organized digital publications, the workers who make up CMWU are responding in large part to an increasingly hostile financial climate in the industry. CNET has not been spared the same tumult that has led to the shuttering of Buzzfeed News and VICE's decision to file for bankruptcy: the company went through three brutal rounds of layoffs over recent months, the most recent of which stripped approximately a dozen staffers from the masthead. "We lost a lot of really great reporters," Laura Michelle Davis, an editor with CNET and organizing committee member, told Engadget.

According to Davis, that sense of uncertainty led to a number of voluntary departures, but also to the surviving staff choosing to organize. Despite those cuts, according to the union's statement sent to management today, staff have continue to be "subjected to ongoing restructuring, cost-cutting austerity measures, shifting job roles and promotion freezes." 

CMWU has also organized around what it feels is a "blurring of editorial and monetization strategies" and a lack of transparency around, among other things, the use of artificial intelligence. While it was apparently not a key factor in beginning the union drive, CNET was the subject of a fairly public scandal recently, when it was revealed by Futurism, both to the public at large and allegedly to the staff itself, that the site had begun publishing content written by AI without any form of authorship disclosure. Over half of those machine-generated stories were eventually appended with corrections for factual errors, and CNET later issued something like an apology.  

The unit is represented by the Writer's Guild of America, East, which has helped organize sites including Vox, HuffPost, and The Onion. Screenwriters from the union's sister organization, the Writer's Guild of America, have now been on strike for two weeks over a variety of disputes with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, among which also has been the use of AI in content production. (Disclosure: I was a member of the WGA-E and served on the bargaining committee for Gizmodo Media Group during my tenure there.)

While the contours of whatever contract CMWU may eventually bargain with Red Ventures are still to be decided, the bargaining unit will be looking to substantially similar wins in digital media as a guide. We've reached out to Red Ventures for comment and will update if we hear back. CMWU's organizing statement follows below: 

"CNET has been a trusted authority for original reporting, helpful explainers and honest advice for nearly 30 years. We – writers, editors, video producers, designers and other content creators – are committed to CNET’s future as a reputable source for tech reviews, news and commerce. That’s why an overwhelming majority of us have formed the CNET Media Workers Union, affiliated with the Writers Guild of America, East. We are confident that our collective efforts will allow us to better serve our audience and make a more collaborative workplace.

"The digital media landscape is transforming rapidly. In this time of instability, our diverse content teams need industry-standard job protections, fair compensation, editorial independence and a voice in the decision-making process, especially as automated technology threatens our jobs and reputations. A union will help us adapt to new business strategies while establishing high journalistic standards and practices. 

"Since Red Ventures acquired CNET in fall 2020, CNET media workers have been subjected to ongoing restructuring, cost-cutting austerity measures, shifting job roles and promotion freezes. In the past year, three major rounds of layoffs have deeply impacted our reporting and our teams. Red Ventures cut senior editorial positions, eliminated the Roadshow cars section, drastically slashed our video team, gutted our news division and shut down science and culture coverage. These unilateral overhauls created low morale and unease, resulting in a wave of resignations and talent attrition. We face a lack of transparency and accountability from management around performance evaluations, sponsored content and plans for artificial intelligence. We are concerned about the blurring of editorial and monetization strategies.

"By unionizing, we’re joining our peers at other digital media sites who have won security and benefits through negotiating unit-wide contracts. We feel that a union is the only way to guarantee job protections, defend editorial integrity and ensure standard cost-of-living raises as well as fair severance packages. A union would give us a voice on new AI and marketing initiatives and allow us to safeguard our workloads, bylines and careers. We look forward to bringing together our largely remote and siloed teams in this effort.

"We are a passionate and loyal community of hard workers, and our rights should be enshrined and respected. We ask Red Ventures to recognize our union in a timely manner so we can begin the contract negotiation process."

CNET Media Workers Union

Organizing within tech? I'd like to hear about it. Tip me at avery@engadget.com or message me on Signal at 646.983.9846

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/after-layoffs-and-an-ai-scandal-cnets-staff-are-unionizing-161508890.html?src=rss

Google Search’s new Perspectives tab will highlight forum and social media posts

Search is, a quarter-century since its launch, arguably still Google's most impactful and familiar creation — a way in this day and age to sort through the chafe of unsourced nonsense on Twitter or Facebook and hopefully finding vetted, trusted information quickly. With that context it mind, Google announced an absolutely puzzling new feature today for its flagship product at its I/O 2023 keynote: the Perspectives tab. 

Perspectives, according to the company, is a means to "exclusively see long- and short-form videos, images and written posts that people have shared on discussion boards, Q&A sites and social media platforms." In addition to the Perspectives tab, a carousel of the same results "may" appear in some search results — a standalone module graphically resembling the Top Stories module. 

In its announcement, Google mentioned the Perspectives initiative is happening in tandem with its quest to "transform" search through AI. What role AI will play in sourcing content for Perspectives is still unknown, but automating content selection and providing a sheen of authenticity to it has had its hiccups for Google in the past. The Popular On Twitter module has surfaced misinformation about breaking news events like mass shootings in the past, and it's nearly certain Perspectives will hit many of the same snags. Google was also among the tech companies grilled by Congress in 2021 over its role in the spread of fake news, an issue which again, Perspectives seems poised to exacerbate.  

This shift toward potentially dubious sources seems to not simply be the result of trawling forums and tweets for a new glut of hits for search results, but a considered strategy away from legacy sources of information. The company claims Perspectives will coincide with changes in "how we rank results in Search overall, with a greater focus on content with unique expertise and experience." Has anyone at Google been on a forum or social media website? Unique expertise is almost universally in short supply. 

Perspectives launches "in the coming weeks." 

Follow all of the news from Google I/O 2023 right here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-searchs-new-perspectives-tab-will-highlight-forum-and-social-media-posts-175209372.html?src=rss

The year organized labor finally took root in big tech

Blessedly 2022, a year that by most people's estimation will be remembered as lousy, will soon be in the rear view mirror of history. Hallelujah, life goes on.

There are any number of reasons to give a failing grade to The Year That Was: Inflation and the still-looming threat of another global recession, critical legislative losses on abortion and trans rights, yet another new covid variant, having to pay attention to Elon Musk — take your pick. But, in the realm of labor, there's at least one reason to feel hopeful. 2022 was the year unions won elections to represent workers at two of the world's biggest tech companies, with a third likely on the way.

Workers at an Apple Store in Towson, Maryland made history in June, becoming the first 110 unionized members of the tech giant's approximately 160,000 person workforce. They chose to be represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, but the Baltimore-area staffers are far from alone. Retail workers at a store in Oklahoma City became the second unionized faction within Apple in October — backed by the Communications Workers of America — while another in Glasgow, Scotland — joining GMB — became the third in November.

Many other Apple Store locations have been agitating for better conditions as well, a non-exhaustive list of which includes two stores in New York City, one in St. Louis, and one in Atlanta. Some of these have stalled or been frustrated by the usual union-busting tactics, like an alleged policy created by management in New York's World Trade Center location to curtail organizing. The company's anti-union tactics in Atlanta have since been deemed illegal by the National Labor Relations Board. And of course, Apple reportedly hasn't given up on undermining already unionized locations. Workers at that same Towson store claim the company is withholding new benefits seemingly in retaliation.

Amazon workers in Staten Island have likewise become the first to organize one of the company's warehouses — and not with an established union, either. Amazon Labor Union (ALU), a grassroots effort which officially established itself last April, secured a win against tremendous odds, less than a year after forming. Those odds, incidentally, included retaliatory firings of leaders, using police to intimidate and arrest organizers and an (unsuccessful) attempt to overturn the unionization vote. Amazon has previously illegally interfered with a union election and reportedly retains the services of operatives from the infamous Pinkerton agency to spy on workers and labor groups. The company's new CEO, Andy Jassy, recently violated labor laws in several interviews by openly stating his employees would be “better off without a union.” This is all to say ALU had a tremendous uphill climb and, incredibly, managed to pull it off.

As with Apple though, what we're talking about is a first step. The company has not bargained a contract yet with workers from ALU, and will likely forestall and undermine that process as much as possible, whether by legal or illegal means.

ALU's organizing efforts have branched out but have so far not found the same success. A warehouse in upstate New York voted overwhelmingly against unionization. However, management had put up digital banners at the same location ahead of its organizing drive instructing workers specifically not to sign union cards, again in apparent contravention of labor law. ALU withdrew a union petition to organize a warehouse in California in October, but has remained open to refiling. Apart from ALU, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters claimed last December that organizing Amazon facilities would be a top priority — seemingly it has focused those efforts on an Amazon Air hub in San Bernardino, where workers have walked out in August and October. The surrounding area — California's inland empire — is believed to be home to the highest density of Amazon facilities in the company's logistics network.

Microsoft, too, received an early Christmas present in the form of quality assurance testers at its subsidiary ZeniMax Media announcing their intention to unionize with the Communications Workers of America. While that election has not yet taken place, Microsoft's president Brad Smith penned a lengthy screed earlier this year supposedly espousing the company's openness to union representation within its ranks. To many (this author especially) Brad's words were hot air intended to assuage regulators who are weighing whether to allow the company to merge with games giant Activision-Blizzard. Incidentally if that deal goes through, Microsoft will be home to three bargaining units: this past year QA testers at Raven Software and Blizzard Albany successfully joined the CWA in May and December, respectively, becoming the first workers not only at Activision but at any major games publisher to do so.

Necessarily a huge number of other labor actions in the tech space have been left out of this recollection, but for the most part they fit the pattern above: lower-paid workers at wildly profitable companies whose wages have not even remotely kept up with inflation. Adding insult to injury, tech companies, broadly, did extremely well during the pandemic while these same frontline workers risked their health and safety. Then this year, once economic forecasts became gloomier, many were swept up in downsizing decisions. It's perfectly logical Amazon warehouse workers, games testers at Microsoft and Activision, support staff at Meta, cafeteria workers with Alphabet and Waymo, janitors at Twitter and retail associates at Apple, Google Fiber and Verizon would be unhappy with their work arrangements. It's the same reason rail workers, nurses and Starbucks baristas have been agitating, and the same reason approval for unions is the highest it's been since 1965. Things aren't working. The hand they've been dealt is unwinnable. And though an imperfect tool, unions are one of the few ways workers can attempt to renegotiate the terms.

Unfortunately, labor law in the US leaves much to be desired. Companies have incredible power to delay bargaining, wearing down their own workforces by attrition while cooking up excuses to fire, lay off or manage out organizing leaders. Even after the hurdle of winning a union election, according to Bloomberg Law, the mean negotiation time to secure a contract is over 13 months — and many take significantly longer. The penalties for breaking labor law are so minimal, especially for companies of Big Tech's size, as to be non-existent. Whether this groundswell of organizing continues to grow in the coming year remains in every way an open question, depending at least in part on economic realities. With layoffs continuing to ravage not just frontline workers but higher-wage tech jobs, there's reasons enough to suspect it might.

The year organized labor finally took root in big tech

Blessedly 2022, a year that by most people's estimation will be remembered as lousy, will soon be in the rear view mirror of history. Hallelujah, life goes on.

There are any number of reasons to give a failing grade to The Year That Was: Inflation and the still-looming threat of another global recession, critical legislative losses on abortion and trans rights, yet another new covid variant, having to pay attention to Elon Musk — take your pick. But, in the realm of labor, there's at least one reason to feel hopeful. 2022 was the year unions won elections to represent workers at two of the world's biggest tech companies, with a third likely on the way.

Workers at an Apple Store in Towson, Maryland made history in June, becoming the first 110 unionized members of the tech giant's approximately 160,000 person workforce. They chose to be represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, but the Baltimore-area staffers are far from alone. Retail workers at a store in Oklahoma City became the second unionized faction within Apple in October — backed by the Communications Workers of America — while another in Glasgow, Scotland — joining GMB — became the third in November.

Many other Apple Store locations have been agitating for better conditions as well, a non-exhaustive list of which includes two stores in New York City, one in St. Louis, and one in Atlanta. Some of these have stalled or been frustrated by the usual union-busting tactics, like an alleged policy created by management in New York's World Trade Center location to curtail organizing. The company's anti-union tactics in Atlanta have since been deemed illegal by the National Labor Relations Board. And of course, Apple reportedly hasn't given up on undermining already unionized locations. Workers at that same Towson store claim the company is withholding new benefits seemingly in retaliation.

Amazon workers in Staten Island have likewise become the first to organize one of the company's warehouses — and not with an established union, either. Amazon Labor Union (ALU), a grassroots effort which officially established itself last April, secured a win against tremendous odds, less than a year after forming. Those odds, incidentally, included retaliatory firings of leaders, using police to intimidate and arrest organizers and an (unsuccessful) attempt to overturn the unionization vote. Amazon has previously illegally interfered with a union election and reportedly retains the services of operatives from the infamous Pinkerton agency to spy on workers and labor groups. The company's new CEO, Andy Jassy, recently violated labor laws in several interviews by openly stating his employees would be “better off without a union.” This is all to say ALU had a tremendous uphill climb and, incredibly, managed to pull it off.

As with Apple though, what we're talking about is a first step. The company has not bargained a contract yet with workers from ALU, and will likely forestall and undermine that process as much as possible, whether by legal or illegal means.

ALU's organizing efforts have branched out but have so far not found the same success. A warehouse in upstate New York voted overwhelmingly against unionization. However, management had put up digital banners at the same location ahead of its organizing drive instructing workers specifically not to sign union cards, again in apparent contravention of labor law. ALU withdrew a union petition to organize a warehouse in California in October, but has remained open to refiling. Apart from ALU, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters claimed last December that organizing Amazon facilities would be a top priority — seemingly it has focused those efforts on an Amazon Air hub in San Bernardino, where workers have walked out in August and October. The surrounding area — California's inland empire — is believed to be home to the highest density of Amazon facilities in the company's logistics network.

Microsoft, too, received an early Christmas present in the form of quality assurance testers at its subsidiary ZeniMax Media announcing their intention to unionize with the Communications Workers of America. While that election has not yet taken place, Microsoft's president Brad Smith penned a lengthy screed earlier this year supposedly espousing the company's openness to union representation within its ranks. To many (this author especially) Brad's words were hot air intended to assuage regulators who are weighing whether to allow the company to merge with games giant Activision-Blizzard. Incidentally if that deal goes through, Microsoft will be home to three bargaining units: this past year QA testers at Raven Software and Blizzard Albany successfully joined the CWA in May and December, respectively, becoming the first workers not only at Activision but at any major games publisher to do so.

Necessarily a huge number of other labor actions in the tech space have been left out of this recollection, but for the most part they fit the pattern above: lower-paid workers at wildly profitable companies whose wages have not even remotely kept up with inflation. Adding insult to injury, tech companies, broadly, did extremely well during the pandemic while these same frontline workers risked their health and safety. Then this year, once economic forecasts became gloomier, many were swept up in downsizing decisions. It's perfectly logical Amazon warehouse workers, games testers at Microsoft and Activision, support staff at Meta, cafeteria workers with Alphabet and Waymo, janitors at Twitter and retail associates at Apple, Google Fiber and Verizon would be unhappy with their work arrangements. It's the same reason rail workers, nurses and Starbucks baristas have been agitating, and the same reason approval for unions is the highest it's been since 1965. Things aren't working. The hand they've been dealt is unwinnable. And though an imperfect tool, unions are one of the few ways workers can attempt to renegotiate the terms.

Unfortunately, labor law in the US leaves much to be desired. Companies have incredible power to delay bargaining, wearing down their own workforces by attrition while cooking up excuses to fire, lay off or manage out organizing leaders. Even after the hurdle of winning a union election, according to Bloomberg Law, the mean negotiation time to secure a contract is over 13 months — and many take significantly longer. The penalties for breaking labor law are so minimal, especially for companies of Big Tech's size, as to be non-existent. Whether this groundswell of organizing continues to grow in the coming year remains in every way an open question, depending at least in part on economic realities. With layoffs continuing to ravage not just frontline workers but higher-wage tech jobs, there's reasons enough to suspect it might.