Amanda Reilly

AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge "Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."

"In writing this article, I realized that I could endlessly tie much of our reporting on attacks on civil society and human knowledge to the force multiplier that is AI and the AI maximalist political and economic project." www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

NZ workers more likely to die than in Australia or UK, new research shows New Zealand workers are more likely to die than in Australia or the United Kingdom, new research shows.

#nzpol

Uber loses Supreme Court appeal over drivers' employment status The Supreme Court has unanimously voted in favour of the drivers.

Good.

Now if only Van Velden would stop attempting to overturn these judgments!

The idea that you should be able to avoid your obligations under employment law by simply saying someone is a contractor (regardless of the actual nature of the relationship) makes a mockery of the law.

Govt must respect Supreme Court ruling and abandon pro-Uber bill - NZCTU The NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi is calling on the Prime Minister to respect the ruling of the Supreme Court and abandon Brooke van Velden’s Employment Relations Bill. The Bill would enshrine in law the abi...

#nzpol HUGE VICTORY FOR WORKERS:
The Supreme Court has ruled in favour of Uber Drivers and their unions, saying that they are employees not contractors. Now the NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi is calling on the Government to respect this ruling and uphold the rights of platform and gig economy workers:

Attention people interested in New Zealand employment law- the Supreme Court is releasing its decision on the UBER case on Monday 17 November

www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/assets/6-Goi...

A First Look at Labor’s AI Values: An analysis of recent statements about technology by unions and other worker organizations A first look at labor’s vision of what the future of AI and digital technologies should look like.

In the Inequality.org op-ed, researchers Mishal Khan and Kung Feng lift up four core themes that emerged from their analysis of recent AI principles and statements released by unions and other worker organizations. laborcenter.berkeley.edu/a-first-look...

For more on this see the early access NZJER article "Beyond the binary: time for a broader approach to employment status"https://ojs.aut.ac.nz/nzjer/forthcoming/view/index Lynne Coker, Annick Masselot, and Bernard Walker published on this earlier this year.

I note the Minister says you can either be a contractor or an employee but you can't be both. That's why a lot of the rest of the civilised world is moving beyond that binary and looking at more specific and targeted ways to address the exploitation in platform work.

John Campbell: Is Uber's low-pay model the future of work in NZ? Will ACT minister Brooke van Velden's proposed Employment Relations Amendment Bill see more and more Kiwi workers toil for low pay with zero holiday and sick leave?

John Campbell asks is Uber's low pay model the future of work in New Zealand? I'd say, at the rate we are going, yes. More and more people are going to be employed by platforms and it's not clear those platforms will even be in New Zealand. www.1news.co.nz/2025/11/08/j...

Meta - FB, Insta, WhatsApp - will read your DMs and AI chats, rolling out from Dec Meta will soon be able to read users conversations via its AI function which cannot be turned off - if data protection laws don't stop them

Real-time End-to-end Surveillance.

It is beyond upsetting to me how after a tragedy of the magnitude of Pike River the government is weakening our occupational health and safety law. Anna Osbourne and Sonya Rockhouse are asking for signatures to their open letter to the government about this.

www.together.org.nz/stand_with_pik

I think the banner of democratisation is a fig leaf to what's really going on which is the dehumanisation, disciplining and disempowerment of ordinary people. Bad tech make us lonely, makes us stupid and makes us scared.

Worker Surveillance and Wage Theft How algorithmic management and workplace surveillance allows corporations to steal wages, intensify poor working conditions, and evade responsibility.

Read more about the project at our website: www.dair-institute.org/projects/dri...

Amazon is Building a Surveillance Empire on the Backs of Delivery Drivers. A new report from the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) exposes the dark underbelly of technology-driven workplace surveillance.” Above the text is an old school television with an antenna featuring a surveillance snapshot from a camera inside of an Amazon delivery van. The Amazon logo is upside down and is a frown. Around the television are disembodied eyes and ears.

🚨NEW🚨 from DAIR:

Today we are releasing "Driven Down", a new report on how workplace technology enables Amazon to steal wages, hide labor,
intensify poor working conditions, and evade responsibility.

Read the full report here: drive.google.com/file/d/1yBxy...

This seems like it must be a breach of good faith under the ERA (s32) and they should be subject to a penalty.

I think the Public Service Commission has breached good faith here see s32 (iii) of the Employment Relations Act

ie. "the union and the employer—

(iii)must not undermine or do anything that is likely to undermine the bargaining or the authority of the other in the bargaining"

What?! That is amazing. Congratulations!

Gruelling, low-paid human work behind generative AI curtain For a generative artificial intelligence system to learn how to write an autopsy report, human workers must sort and annotate thousands of crime scene images.

This is an upsetting article about the underpaid and exploited hidden human labour in the AI supply chain

www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/art...

The Reading List 10 high-impact reads and watches. Some old, some new. Delivered with no fluff or frills, and in no particular order.

Andrew Lensen and I have developed a fortnightly newsletter called The Reading List

It does exactly what it says on the tin: ten good, interesting or challenging things we've read, watched or listened to in the last fortnight. Did I mention its totally free.

open.substack.com/pub/lensenmc...

The “Privacy” Trap Corporations are rolling out new technologies that may technically comply with data privacy laws, but actually create more ways to control and exploit workers. This brief offers concrete principles fo...

New Policy Brief by Data & Society "The Privacy Trap: How “Privacy-Preserving AI Techniques” Mask the New Worker Surveillance and Datafication"

datasociety.net/library/the-...

Artificial Intelligence: Workers' unions must shape deployment and regulation The ITUC has released a new report on the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on working people, with a clear call for trade unions to be fully involved in shaping how AI is deployed and regulated...

New report from the ITCU ituc-csi.org/Artificial-I... on why workers' unions must shape the deployment and regulation of artificial intelligence.

noyb win: Microsoft 365 Education tracks school children Favorable decision by the Austrian DSB: Microsoft Education 365 may not track school kids and Microsoft is ordered to provide full access to kids' data.

The Austrian Data Protection Authority ("DSB") issued a decision finding that Microsoft 365 Education illegally tracks school children and uses student data for Microsoft's own purposes. noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-...

Me too. I haven't been a practicing Catholic for decades but I remember growing up in apartheid South Africa & reading the names of the activists who had been detained without trial and there were lots of Catholic religious on the list. It felt like we were the good guys.

The advantages of unionization are obvious, so why don’t more workers join unions?

Employer-led union suppression strategies are a key explanatory factor.

theconversation.com/the-advantag...

#canlab

Dark Patterns, Deceptive Design, and the Law This book provides essential insights on dark patterns and AI-powered deceptive design for anyone who wants to understand and challenge the pervasive influence…

Dark Patterns, Deceptive Design and the Law. "This is going on my TBR list. "It explains how laws fail to address deceptive design practices and explores the implications for privacy, autonomy and consumer protection in the digital age" www.bloomsbury.com/uk/dark-patt...

So it's not just in New Zealand this happens...

How the Holidays Act overhaul will change sick leave rights and how time off is paid Explainer: The sweeping changes planned for the complex way full and part-time workers get paid for holiday and sick leave, by Alice Peacock.

I'm cautiously optimistic proposed changes to the Holidays Act are sensible.
newsroom.co.nz/2025/09/24/h...
But in Australia casual employees get 25% casual loading on top of their base rate to compensate for insecurity & absence of paid sick leave & annual leave- so there is room for improvement.

Uber drivers to strike over alleged unfair pay rates Uber says they are engaging with the drivers to understand their concerns

Uber drivers are going to strike on 13 September due to unfair pay rates, cleaning fee reimbursements policies excessive working hours and lack of representation and transparency in Uber's policies.

I hope Uber listens.

www.hcamag.com/nz/specialis...

US tech companies enabled the surveillance and detention of hundreds of thousands in China U.S. technology firms such as IBM, Dell and Cisco largely designed and built China’s surveillance state, an AP investigation finds. The tech companies deny wrongdoing.

“Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known”

apnews.com/article/chin...

Media Release: Research reveals need to crack down on Tech Giants' tax avoidance Research commissioned by Tax Justice Aotearoa and the Better Taxes for a Better Future campaign, shows that some of the richest multi-national technology corporations are paying very little tax.

Research shows that some of the richest multi-national technology corporations - like Facebook and Amazon - are paying very little tax on the money they are making in New Zealand
www.tjanz.org/big_tech_med...