September 2021 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Revealed: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers across dozens of countries | Google | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Sept. 10, 2021

Sept. 10, 2021

Do no evil... tomorrow. <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/10/google-underpaid-workers…> Google has been illegally underpaying thousands of temporary workers in dozens of countries and delayed correcting the pay rates for more than two years as it attempted to cover up the problem, the Guardian can reveal. Google executives have been aware since at least May 2019 that the company was failing to comply with local laws in the UK, Europe and Asia that mandate temporary workers be paid equal rates to full-time employees performing similar work, internal Google documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian show. But rather than immediately correct the errors, the company dragged its feet for more than two years, the documents show, citing concern about the increased cost to departments that rely heavily on temporary workers, potential exposure to legal claims, and fear of negative press attention. Google executives and attorneys at one point pursued a plan to come into compliance slowly and at the least possible cost to itself, despite acknowledging that such a move was not “the correct outcome from a compliance perspective” and could place the staffing companies it contracts with “in a difficult position, legally and ethically”. Google admitted the failures and said it would conduct an investigation after being contacted by the Guardian. “While the team hasn’t increased the comparator rate benchmarks for some years, actual pay rates for temporary staff have increased numerous times in that period,” said Spyro Karetsos, Google’s chief compliance officer, in a statement. “Most temporary staff are paid significantly more than the comparator rates. “Nevertheless, it’s clear that this process has not been handled consistent with the high standards to which we hold ourselves as a company. We’re doing a thorough review, and we’re committed to identifying and addressing any pay discrepancies that the team has not already addressed. “And we’ll be conducting a review of our compliance practices in this area. In short, we’re going to figure out what went wrong here, why it happened, and we’re going to make it right.” A whistleblower represented by Whistleblower Aid has filed a complaint about the alleged violations with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. While international labor law is not under the purview of the SEC, the complaint alleges that Google’s failure to disclose the pay parity liabilities, which it estimates could amount to $100m, constitute material misstatements in its quarterly financial reports, a violation of US securities law. “The disclosure makes it clear that Google hasn’t just broken labor laws around the world, but has misled investors about major legal and financial liabilities,” said John Tye, founder and chief disclosure officer of Whistleblower Aid. “The lawful, anonymous whistleblower disclosure is a critical step toward ensuring that Google is held to account. We urge the SEC to bring an enforcement action against Google, and protect the rights of investors to receive complete and accurate information.” The issue stems from Google’s extensive reliance on what it calls its “extended workforce”, as well as the plethora of local laws that govern how such workers must be treated in the dozens of countries where Google operates. Google maintains a workforce of more than 100,000 temps, vendors and contractors who are not directly employed by the company, but who perform work on its behalf, on tasks ranging from food service and security to coding and data analysis. The vast majority of these workers are “vendors” who work on long-term projects that are wholly managed by the vendor company, such as content moderation, and have little interaction with Google employees. But at any given time, Google also employs thousands of temporary workers. While they are paid by staffing agencies, temps report directly to Google managers. The departments that rely most heavily on temporary workers include recruiting, marketing, and Waymo, Google’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary. Globally, Google spends about $800m annually on temporary workers. The use of contingent workers is common in the tech industry, but Google’s reliance on a “shadow workforce” that outnumbers its direct employee base has long drawn criticism from the company’s own employees, as well as politicians and labor unions. More than 30 countries, including the UK, the EU member states, India, and Taiwan, have enacted “pay parity” or “equal treatment” laws that require temporary workers to be treated equally to full time employees (FTEs) who perform the same or similar work, according to Google’s internal guidance on the laws. The US, where the majority of Google’s temps are based, does not have any such protections. In general, these laws require equivalent treatment of temps and FTEs when it comes to pay, hours, breaks, vacation, holidays, and certain perks. In the UK, pay parity is required after a 12-week qualifying period, for example, while in Ireland it is mandated from the first day of work. Some countries also mandate equivalency for benefits and bonuses. The staffing agency and the hirer – in this case, Google – share the responsibility for ensuring equitable treatment, but it is the hirer’s responsibility to provide the agency accurate data about the pay rates. In 2012 and 2013, Google undertook an exercise to map all its temporary roles in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) with the comparable Google full-time roles, according to the internal memo. The exercise produced “comparator” rates that Google then provided to the staffing agencies that recruit and employ its temporary staff. The company performed a similar exercise for temp roles in APAC (Asia Pacific) in 2017. Since those exercises were carried out, compensation for full-time Google employees has increased substantially. The median total compensation rose more than 38%, from $197,274 to $273,493, between 2017 and 2020, according to SEC filings. But the comparator rates were never updated. “Ideally this would be done annually,” reads the internal Google memo on the issue, which acknowledges that it is Google’s obligation to keep the information up to date. By 15 May 2019, the problem was known to Adrienne Crowther, the executive responsible for Google’s extended workforce team (xWS), her comments on the internal memo show. “Yikes! This seems WAY too old,” she wrote in response to the “2012-2013” date of the comparator data. “Agreed,” responded Alan Barry, a compliance manager for Google’s extended workforce team. Barry went on to suggest that xWS “refresh” the data as part of a larger project working on ensuring accurate mapping between temporary and full-time positions. Scale of the problem Given the very high turnover rate of temporary workers, the number of workers affected by Google’s failure could be in the tens of thousands. One document shows that, as of 16 February 2021, Google had 1,030 temporary workers in countries with pay parity laws, the largest numbers in the UK (343), India (222), Ireland (207) and Germany (59). That document – an audit of countries with pay parity laws performed for Google by Deloitte – highlighted another problem with the company’s legal compliance. Deloitte reported that pay-parity laws had been enacted in 16 countries where Google was employing more than 350 temporary workers without providing equal treatment rates, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Switzerland and Taiwan. Google’s underpayments to its temporary workers are substantial. One internal analysis estimated that Google’s expenses for 1,200 temps in EMEA and APAC regions would need to increase by $17.3m to comply with pay parity laws, of which $12.65m would go to the temporary workers in increased wages and bonuses. (An additional $4.4m in costs would be the result of the estimated 35% markup that staffing agencies charge.) But that analysis was based on a proposal to correct the rates for new hires only, without providing raises and back pay to existing and previous temp workers for the time they worked at the incorrect rates, suggesting that the total amount of lost wages to current and past workers is significantly higher. Individual temps were paid between 12% and 50% less than they should have been, according to an internal memo also from February 2021. Another document showed that temporary workers in Google’s human resources department in the UK were paid between £4.10 and £8.25 less per hour than they should have been, with some temps earning £14.17 instead of £18.27 and others earning £21.56 instead of £29.80. Google’s delay in addressing the rates could hurt former temporary workers’ ability to seek redress. Under the UK’s Agency Worker Regulations 2010, temps can appeal to an Employment Tribunal if they believe their rights have been breached, but they must do so within three months. In Ireland, appeals to the Rights Commissioner are supposed to be made within six months. “These agency workers have been the victims of wage theft,” said Matthew Creagh, an employment rights policy officer for the Trades Union Council, who criticized the UK’s lack of a state regulator to enforce worker protections. “How will they be compensated? Often the discussion veers towards punishing employers, which is good, but getting the agency workers their money is overlooked.” Internal debate Though executives in Google’s xWS department were aware by May 2019 that the company was failing to comply with the law and underpaying workers, the company did not move quickly to correct the rates and provide back wages to those who were owed them. Instead, it spent at least two years continuing to pay out-of-date rates while it debated internally how to come back into legal compliance without admitting what had happened, documents and emails show. Leaders of the xWS team appeared keenly aware that admitting the problem would damage its reputation within Google by causing headaches for departments whose budgets would be effected, as well as with the staffing agencies that are liable for providing pay parity. They also expressed interest in preventing existing and former temp workers from knowing they had been underpaid, in order to prevent claims for back pay. By October 2020, xWS executives, including Crowther and Deepak Negi, another director, and Google’s employment counsels for EMEA and APAC had signed off on a plan to correct the rates, emails and documents show. The company would pursue a “natural correction” of the temp rates, whereby new joiners started at correct rates while existing temps remained at the lower rates, rather than an “immediate correction”, whereby all temps had their rates adjusted to the correct levels. The plan had received support from executives and attorneys due to “the current low risk of a parity claim, the ability to correct rates and not make a great deal of noise, and the ability to correct rates without immediate substantial financial impact to [Google’s departments],” an xWS operations manager promoting it wrote in an email. Some xWS staffers appear to have pushed back on the proposal, noting that it would result in groups of temps performing similar work earning significantly different wages. Some also worried that the staffing agencies, who are responsible for complying with pay parity laws, might ask questions about the changed rates, or even object. But in an extraordinary December 2020 email, Barry, the attorney responsible for compliance in xWS, endorsed the “natural correction” despite acknowledging that it was insufficient. “We know that the impacted workers are not on the correct 2020 rates, nor were they in 2019,” he wrote. “So, strictly speaking, from the point that we put ourselves on notice as to the correct comparator rate, it should apply to both the incumbents as well as the new joiners. To do otherwise may place our staffing partners in a difficult position, legally and ethically.” “In my view, while [an immediate correction] does appear to be the correct outcome from a compliance perspective, I recognise the barriers to this,” Barry wrote. “The cost is significant and it would give rise to a flurry of noise/frustration on the part of the [Google departments] who have not accounted for the changed cost. I’m also not keen to invite the charge that we’ve allowed this situation to persist for so long that the correction required is significant … I am leaning towards favouring [the natural correction] – but with careful thought and consideration needed as to how we communicate it to the [staffing agencies].” By February 2021, Barry and others were considering a third option beyond the “natural” and “immediate” corrections: applying the new rates to new joiners and existing temps and backdating the increases for the existing temps to their start date. (None of the options included providing back pay to temps who had been underpaid but no longer worked for Google.) The memo suggests that Barry and the xWS team’s concerns remained primarily reputational. It includes guidance from Google’s employment lawyers that “the threat of litigation is greater than the prospect of actual litigation” since actual litigation would require temps to know that they were being underpaid, and by how much. “If and when they become aware they will seek recompense but will want to avoid litigation. Strategy should therefore be driven by an assessment of the internal PR/reputational risk and the risk of pay disparity becoming known within our temps population.” Nevertheless, Barry argued that despite the “significant” financial cost and potential for criticism of xWS from Google and staffing agencies, he now believed that this third option was the best course. “In my view – better to opt to for option three in a controlled fashion now, than in an uncontrolled fashion later,” he wrote.

1 0

ICT day 22 settembre a Torino Intelligenza Artificiale: sviluppo economia e sostenibilità"
by Mauro Alovisio Sept. 10, 2021

Sept. 10, 2021

Gent.me/mi segnalo l'Ict Day ad oggetto: "*Intelligenza Artificiale , sviluppo economia e sostenibilità"* che si svolgerà a Torino m*ercoledì 22 settembre 2021 *a Torino presso CTE Next L'evento a cura del Club di dirigenti di Informatica prevede le relazioni di Ministri, professori, esperti e imprenditori e sarà trasmesso on line in diretta. L'evento è gratuito ed è patrocininato da diversi enti fra cui università degli Studi di Torino, Unione Industriale, Csi, Torino Wireless e diverse associazioni fra cui il Centro Studi di Informatica Giuridica di Ivrea Torino. Per iscrizioni: https://www.clubdi.org/it-day-2021/ Cordiali saluti Mauro Alovisio Se non leggi correttamente questo messaggio, clicca qui <http://wchhbjb.emctrack.com/viewonline/@f*025j2F7ib38j2f2S1*3=0*81f9f1e7b7f…> . <http://www.clubdi.org/it-day-2019/> [image: Insert Alt text here] <https://www.clubdi.org/it-day-2021/> *Torna ITDAY!* mercoledì *22 settembre 2021* *AI: Sviluppo, Economia, Sostenibilità* *scenari di un futuro migliore* *Club Dirigenti Informatica * dell'Unione Industriale di Torino ti invita ad un full day *digital community event .* Potrai sviluppare *networking * con tutti i partecipanti presenti sulla piattaforma e *partecipare attivamente* alle sessioni tematiche su *Intelligenza Artificiale* e #Cybersecurity #Data economy #Digitalskills #Formazione #Etica #Infrastrutture #Sviluppo sostenibile #Impatto sociale tutti i temi su cui dovremo *riflettere *per affrontare la *transizione digitale* che ci porta nel *futuro*! Programma e Relatori <https://www.clubdi.org/it-day-2021/%20> [image: Insert Alt text here] <http://www.clubdi.org/it-day-2021>

1 0

Leaning Toward 2050
by Giuseppe Attardi Sept. 9, 2021

Sept. 9, 2021

Segnalo questo evento, il 12 settembre, sul tema: Leaning Toward 2050 https://www.tedxlungarnomediceo.com <https://www.tedxlungarnomediceo.com/> in cui farò un intervento dal titolo: Distopia o Utopia: l’Intelligneza Artificiale nel 2050 I biglietti sono esauriti ma l’evento verrà trasmesso in streaming su: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpEEKiTRZgE Aproveche — Beppe

1 0

Tecnologia, capitalismo e/o democrazia: la lezione di Luciano Gallino
by VETRO' ANTONIO Sept. 9, 2021

Sept. 9, 2021

https://www.economiaepolitica.it/il-pensiero-economico/tecnologia-capitalis… Un articolo pubblicato online quasi un anno fa ma che ho scoperto solo ora, e che mi sembra di potenziale interesse per la lista. E’ scritto dal Prof. Lelio Demichelis, che ripercorre il volume postumo di Luciano Gallino “Tecnologia e Democrazia” e prova a continuarne il pensiero nella direzione di una maggiore partecipazione alle decisioni sullo sviluppo della tecnologia, che necessiterebbero -secondo l’autore- maggiore conoscenza diffusa e non solo competenze, e una riflessione collettiva sui fini, per contrastare la palese irresponsabilità (anche nel senso di non-“accountability”) della grande impresa tecnologica moderna (soprattutto digitale). Riporto qui i paragrafi conclusivi dello scritto di Demichelis. "Ed è quindi questa razionalità strumentale/calcolante-industriale ad essere anti/a-democratica in sé e per sé. Oltre ad essere razionalmente irrazionale. Cercare una democratizzazione della tecnica è forse impossibile anche se comunque necessaria (si resterebbe però nel positivismo/pragmatismo del problem solving ex post), ma prima (ex ante) occorre uscire antropologicamente non tanto dal tecno-capitalismo quanto da questa razionalità strumentale/calcolante-industriale totalitaria e nichilistica in termini sociali e ambientali; occorre abbandonare cioè un pensiero solo calcolante recuperando invece e soprattutto un pensiero meditativo e un’etica della responsabilità alla Jonas– richiamata anche da Gallino – come forma e norma dell’agire in vista di fini che siano umani".

1 0

Revealed: LAPD officers told to collect social media data on every civilian they stop | Los Angeles | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Sept. 9, 2021

Sept. 9, 2021

<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/08/revealed-los-angeles-police…> The Los Angeles police department (LAPD) has directed its officers to collect the social media information of every civilian they interview, including individuals who are not arrested or accused of a crime, according to records shared with the Guardian. A lawsuit charges that the Rodeo Drive task force has been stopping and arresting Black people without cause. Copies of the “field interview cards” that police complete when they question civilians reveal that LAPD officers are instructed to record a civilian’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media accounts, alongside basic biographical information. An internal memo further shows that the police chief, Michel Moore, told employees that it was critical to collect the data for use in “investigations, arrests, and prosecutions”, and warned that supervisors would review cards to ensure they were complete. The documents, which were obtained by the not-for-profit organization the Brennan Center for Justice, have raised concerns about civil liberties and the potential for mass surveillance of civilians without justification. “There are real dangers about police having all of this social media identifying information at their fingertips,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, a deputy director at the Brennan Center, noting that the information was probably stored in a database that could be used for a wide range of purposes. The Brennan Center conducted a review of 40 other police agencies in the US and was unable to find another department that required social media collection on interview cards (though many have not publicly disclosed copies of the cards). The organization also obtained records about the LAPD’s social media surveillance technologies, which have raised questions about the monitoring of activist groups including Black Lives Matter. [...]

1 0

Bosses turn to ‘tattleware’ to keep tabs on employees working from home | Technology | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Sept. 8, 2021

Sept. 8, 2021

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/05/covid-coronavirus-work-home… [...] Every minute or so, the program would capture a live photo of David and his workmates via their company laptop webcams. The ever-changing headshots were splayed across the wall of a digital conference waiting room that everyone on the team could see. Clicking on a colleague’s face would unilaterally pull them into a video call. If you were lucky enough to catch someone goofing off or picking their nose, you could forward the offending image to a team chat via Sneek’s integration with the messaging platform Slack. I signed up to manage their digital marketing, not to livestream my living room According to the Sneek co-founder Del Currie, the software is meant to replicate the office. “We know lots of people will find it an invasion of privacy, we 100% get that, and it’s not the solution for those folks,” Currie says. “But there’s also lots of teams out there who are good friends and want to stay connected when they’re working together.” For David, though, Sneek was a dealbreaker. He quit after less than three weeks on the job. “I signed up to manage their digital marketing,” he tells me, “not to livestream my living room.” Little did he realize that his experience was part of a wide-scale boom in worker surveillance– and one that’s poised to become a standard feature of life on the job. Remote surveillance software like Sneek, also known as “tattleware” or “bossware”, represented something of a niche market pre-Covid. But that all changed in March 2020, as employers scrambled to pull together work-from-home policies out of thin air. In April last year, Google queries for “remote monitoring” were up 212% year-on-year; by April this year, they’d continued to surge by another 243%. One of the major players in the industry, ActivTrak, reports that during March 2020 alone, the firm scaled up from 50 client companies to 800. Over the course of the pandemic, the company has maintained that growth, today boasting 9,000 customers – or, as it claims, more than 250,000 individual users. Time Doctor, Teramind, and Hubstaff – which, together with ActivTrak, make up the bulk of the market – have all seen similar growth from prospective customers. I want this pandemic to end – yet I secretly pine for another lockdown Read more These software programs give bosses a mix of options for monitoring workers’ online activity and assessing their productivity: from screenshotting employees’ screens to logging their keystrokes and tracking their browsing. But in the fast-growing bossware market, each platform potentially brings something new to the table. There’s FlexiSpy, which offers call-tapping; Spytech, which is known for mobile device access; and NetVizor, which has a remote takeover feature. Tattleware platforms are hardly the sole culprits of expanded workplace surveillance. Employers are reportedly drawing on in-house IT departments to monitor emails for flagged phrases at an increased rate compared with before the pandemic. By receiving alerts when certain employees are discussing “recruiter” or “salary”, for example, management hopes to know when employees are looking to up sticks for greener pastures. Big-name tech companies have also dipped their toes into the spy game, with varying degrees of success. In April 2020, Zoom quickly backtracked on a short-lived “attention tracking” setting, which alerted a call host when a participant was focused away from the meeting for more than 30 seconds. And in December, Microsoft bowed to tech experts’ outcry over the release of a “productivity score” feature for its 365 suite, which rated individuals on criteria that included email use and network connectivity; the tool no longer identifies users by name. Despite controversy, tattleware and remote monitoring are not going away any time soon, even as employees shift back to in-house and hybrid work models. The statistics seem to bear out that we are inured to the idea of some layer of surveillance in our work lives. Photograph: Hayley Blackledge/Alamy Stock Photo “There’s no real sign of this trend slowing down,” says Juan Carloz, a digital researcher and privacy advocate with the University of Melbourne. “No sign of legislative change in any jurisdiction I can name, and no sign of pushback from employees, even when they’re aware of it happening.” ‘Many are all too content to let it slide’ Whether all of this amounts to corporate snooping, or just plain accountability, depends largely on which side of the fence you sit on. White-collar workers around the world have long taken it for granted that their emails are monitored on the job; warehouses, offices, and shops, meanwhile, are regularly monitored by CCTV. The statistics seem to bear out that we are inured to the idea of some layer of surveillance built into our professional lives. In a recent survey, nearly three-quarters of workers said their productivity wouldn’t be affected even if they knew their employer was monitoring them. And while the jury’s still out on whether there’s any benefit to remote monitoring, Elizabeth Lyons, an associate professor of management at the University of California San Diego, is willing to play devil’s advocate. “A study we conducted found people doing data collection work out of the office were more productive when they were made aware they were being monitored, compared to their colleagues who weren’t told they were being tracked,” says Lyons. Surveillance even increased worker satisfaction, she adds, noting that remote employees appreciate signals that their performance is integral to the organization. Yet Lyons acknowledges that when monitoring becomes overbearing, employee morale will take a hit. “In other studies we’ve looked at, the workers were essentially saying, ‘If the manager is going to watch everything I do, then I’m not going to do anything above and beyond what they expect of me,’” says Lyons. Then there’s the question of privacy. Carloz, the digital researcher, is concerned that the boom in tattleware has tipped the scales too heavily in favor of the employer. “Prior to the pandemic, the line between work and play was [clearer] – surveillance, in other words, stopped at the door,” says Carloz. But the rise of tattleware changes the game. If an employee uses a spy-enabled, work-sponsored computer outside of hours, their employer could easily access their personal data, down to internet banking passwords and Facebook messages. Carloz concedes that most employers are probably not interested in collecting their workers’ personal information. They want to know what websites employees are on, and what tasks they’re dividing their time on, during the workday. However, if a boss does feel like snooping around off-hours, Carloz points out, there are “essentially no legal protections afforded to [those employees] in most western nations”. “But since, rightly or wrongly, [surveillance software] is being framed as a trade-off for remote work, many are all too content to let it slide,” says Carloz. Which brings us back to David. In the weeks after boldly departing his first post-college job, the young digital marketer secured a post with a new, Sneek-free firm. He says he’s much happier for it. “But one of the first things they asked me to do was sign up for Hubstaff,” he laughs.

1 0

Can the EU Digital Services Act contest the power of Big Tech’s algorithms? - EDRi
by Diego.Latella Sept. 8, 2021

Sept. 8, 2021

Interessa? Can the EU Digital Services Act contest the power of Big Tech’s algorithms? https://edri.org/our-work/can-the-eu-digital-services-act-contest-the-power… D -- Dott. Diego Latella - Senior Researcher CNR/ISTI, Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy (http:www.isti.cnr.it) FM&&T Lab. (http://fmt.isti.cnr.it) CNR/GI-STS (http://gists.pi.cnr.it) https://www.isti.cnr.it/People/D.Latella - ph: +390506212982, mob: +39 348 8283101, fax: +390506212040 ===================

1 0

The European Center for Digital Competitiveness publishes the Digital Riser Report 2021
by don Luca Peyron Sept. 8, 2021

Sept. 8, 2021

Numeri sempre utili per fare valutazioni serie buona lettura dl https://digital-competitiveness.eu/digitalriser/ -- _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

1 0

Aisa premia le migliori tesi sulla scienza aperta
by Maria Chiara Pievatolo Sept. 8, 2021

Sept. 8, 2021

Salve. I dettagli sul bando, che riguarda le tesi discusse nel 2019, nel 2020 e nella prima parte del 2021, sono visibili qui: https://aisa.sp.unipi.it/premio-per-tesi-sulla-scienza-aperta-bando-2021/ Grazie per l'attenzione, MCP -- Maria Chiara Pievatolo Dipartimento di Scienze politiche Università di Pisa Via Serafini 3 56126 Pisa (Italy) +39 050 2212479 https://btfp.sp.unipi.it https://twitter.com/@MCPievatolo https://people.unipi.it/mariachiara_pievatolo/

1 0

With A.I., business leaders must prioritize safety over speed
by don Luca Peyron Sept. 7, 2021

Sept. 7, 2021

Considerazioni interessanti Buona lettura dl https://fortune.com/2021/09/03/artificial-intelligence-business-benefits-sa… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

1 0