Posts Tagged: contract

Amazon to pay $1.9 million to settle claims of human rights abuses of contract workers

Amazon will pay out $ 1.9 million to more than 700 migrant workers to settle claims of human rights abuses following exploitative labor contracts, as reported by CNBC. The impacted laborers were working at two of the company’s warehouses in Saudi Arabia.

Amazon acknowledged the issue in a blog post, saying it hired a third-party labor rights expert to investigate warehouse conditions. The organization found numerous violations of Amazon’s supply chain standards, including “substandard living accommodations, contract and wage irregularities and delays in the resolution of worker complaints.”

This follows an Amnesty International report from last October that detailed various alleged human rights abuses experience by those contracted to work in Amazon facilities in the region, and noted that many of the impacted laborers were “highly likely to be victims of human trafficking.” The report also suggested that Amazon was aware of the high risk for labor abuse when operating in Saudi Arabia but still “failed to take sufficient action to prevent such abuses.”

Simultaneous reports by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism offered detailed accounts of the conditions that these laborers allegedly suffered under, according to NBC News. The investigations found that workers had to pay illegal recruitment fees of up to $ 2,040 to get hired. This forced the migrant workers, many of whom were from Nepal, to take out loans with high interest rates.

Investigators also learned that these workers were living in squalid conditions, with one laborer saying he was living “in a crowded room with seven other men, jammed with bunk beds infested with bed bugs.” The water was said to be salty and undrinkable. Amnesty International echoed these findings, saying that the accommodations were “lacking even the most basic facilities.”

The combination of the exorbitant hiring fees, along with the associated loans, amounted to “human trafficking for the purpose of labor exploitation as defined by international law and standards,” Amnesty alleged in its report. 

Amazon has stated that it has “remediated the most serious concerns” involving the two Saudi warehouses, including an upgrade to housing accommodations. “Our goal is for all of our vendors to have management systems in place that ensure safe and healthy working conditions; this includes responsible recruitment practices,” the company wrote.

It’s worth noting that though that $ 1.9 million number seems high, it breaks down to around $ 2,700 per employee. Amazon made $ 576 billion in 2023, which comes out to more than $ 1.5 billion each day.

Amazon doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to labor. It’s regularly accused of breaking labor laws, particularly at its many product warehouses. The company is also rabidly anti-union, as many of these complaints involve attempts to stop workers from unionizing. Amazon faces multiple ongoing federal probes into its safety practices, and it has been fined by federal safety regulators for exposing warehouse workers to unnecessary risks.

However, the company remains defiant in its efforts to chip away at worker’s rights. Amazon recently filed a legal document that claims the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is unconstitutional, joining Elon Musk’s SpaceX and grocery giant Trader Joe’s. The NLRB is an independent arm of the federal government that enforces US labor law and has been operating since 1935.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-to-pay-19-million-to-settle-claims-of-human-rights-abuses-of-contract-workers-192237377.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Baldur’s Gate III localization studio apologizes for omitting contract workers from credits

A studio that handled Baldur’s Gate III translations has apologized after outsourced workers were omitted from the game’s credits. "We take full responsibility for this omission of our freelancers' names and apologize for the effects that it had," Altagram Group founder and CEO Marie Amigues said in a statement. "We would like to thank Larian for allowing us to quickly fix that error and update the credits section. The names of the Brazilian Portuguese translators will be included in an upcoming patch to the game."

Although the credits did not feature the translators Altagram worked with, they included the names of the company's executives and department leads. Contractors who translated Baldur’s Gate III into languages other than Brazilian Portuguese were credited, though different companies handled those localizations.

Baldur’s Gate III developer and publisher Larian Studios said Altagram was to blame for the oversight. It asked the company to rectify the situation, and it seems Altagram swiftly obliged.

Unfortunately, outsourced workers who contribute to games are not always fully credited for their work. That can impact their future prospects, as it makes it slightly more difficult to prove to potential employers that they worked on a given game.

Crediting workers may not be a concern for some localization studios in the coming years, though. We'll surely see certain developers attempting to use artificial intelligence to translate games into different languages in the hopes of reducing costs. However, localization is skilled work that requires people who can not just mechanically translate text from one language to another, but can take into account factors like idiomatic quirks and cultural references that may not make sense to a certain audience.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/baldurs-gate-iii-localization-studio-apologizes-for-omitting-contract-workers-from-credits-195936678.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Google pursues Pentagon cloud contract in spite of past employee concerns

Three years after its involvement with the military’s controversial Project Maven program led to employee strife within its walls, Google reportedly hopes to once again work with the Pentagon. According to The New York Times, the company is “aggressively” pursuing the Defense Department’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability cloud contract. A Google spokesperson confirmed to Engadget it was pursuing a bid.

Announced at the start of July, the program is a replacement for the military’s cancelled $ 10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure initiative. With JEDI, the Pentagon had planned to modernize its IT infrastructure with help from Microsoft. However, the contract stalled after Amazon challenged it in court, in part over allegations former President Donald Trump had interfered with the evaluation process.

Unlike JEDI, JWCC is a multi-vendor contract that will see the military eventually working with more than one company. When the Pentagon announced the program, it said it would collect proposals from both Amazon and Microsoft. At the time, it said they were the two vendors best suited to meet its needs, but noted it was also open to working with other companies. Google did not bid on JEDI in part because of what happened with Project Maven.

The program, with help from Google, saw the military use machine learning to interpret drone footage. When the company confirmed its involvement in Maven, it said its technology was involved in “non-offensive uses only,” and that it was flagging material for “human review.” Outrage within the company quickly grew. Approximately 4,000 employees petitioned Google CEO Sundar Pichai to pull the company out of the project. Some workers even left Google over the episode. In the aftermath of the protest, the company did not renew its contract with the Pentagon.

It also established a set of ethical principles to guide its military AI work. Those guidelines prohibit the company from using machine learning in relation to “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.” When Google established the principles, Pichai reportedly told workers his hope was they would stand “the test of time.”

In spite of those guidelines, Google is pursuing the JWCC contract. According to The Times, the company has “raced” to prepare a proposal to present to Pentagon officials on why it should be involved in the project. The contract is reportedly a priority for the company, with the outlet reporting that Google pulled employees off other assignments to work on its bid. 

“We strongly believe a multi-cloud strategy offers the department the best solution today and in the future,” a spokesperson for the company said. “We are firmly committed to serving our public sector customers, including the DoD, Department of Energy, NIH, and many other government agencies, and we will evaluate any future bid opportunities accordingly."

Google will reportedly find out if it qualifies to make a bid sometime in the next few weeks. The question then becomes if the contract is compatible with its AI guidelines, and what effect that will have on its employees. Those principles leave room for it to work with the military on projects that involve things like cybersecurity, and it already has contracts in place to help the Defense Department with pilot training and Navy ship maintenance

If it obtains the contract, Engadget has learned the company anticipates it could help the Defense Department with cloud services like hosting, storage and networking, in addition to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Specifically, the Pentagon could use Google's data analytics capabilities to predict and monitor forces like climate change and the current pandemic. Any custom AI work the job involves will need to be vetted through the company's guidelines. It also expects it could work with the Pentagon on more prosaic issues like security, employee travel and finance. 

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Comcast gigabit Internet users will have to sign a three-year contract to avoid data cap

Comcast has rolled out gigabit Internet in Atlanta, GA to compete with Google Fiber, but you’ll pay double the price if you don’t want to sign a three-year contract, and your speed will also be throttled at 300GB.

The post Comcast gigabit Internet users will have to sign a three-year contract to avoid data cap appeared first on Digital Trends.

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