Technology News

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is settling with two former tech workers who accused the retail giant of illegally firing them last year for speaking out against the company.

The former employees, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, publicly criticized the company and pushed Amazon to better protect warehouse workers from COVID-19. They also wanted Amazon to do more to reduce its impact on climate change.

Cunningham and Costa said the settlement means Amazon will have to pay them lost wages wages and put up notices saying the company can’t fire workers for organizing and exercising their rights.

“This is a win for protecting workers rights, and shows that we were right to stand up for each other, for justice, and for our world,” Cunningham and Costa said in a statement.

In settling, Amazon also avoids a potentially lengthy hearing before the National Labor Relations Board. Amazon said in a statement Thursday that it welcomes “the resolution of this matter.”

The former employees, who were user-experience designers at Amazon in Seattle, were the two most prominent voices among a group of workers who wanted the company to take more steps to combat climate change and stop doing business with oil and gas companies. They held protests and spoke to the media about their concerns.

Last year, as COVID-19 spread in the U.S., Cunningham and Costa planned a call between Amazon warehouse and office workers to talk about unsafe conditions in the online shopping giant’s warehouses, where people worked throughout the pandemic to pack and ship online orders. Before the call could happen, Amazon fired both women.

At the time Amazon said it fired them for violating internal policies, not because they talked publicly about working conditions or sustainability.

Shortly after, an Amazon executive quit in protest, saying he couldn’t stand by as whistleblowers were silenced.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Ford’s blockbuster announcement this week that it would build four sprawling new factories in Kentucky and Tennessee by 2025 and hire nearly 11,000 workers raised a big unanswered question: Just how good will those jobs be?

No one — not Ford, not the United Auto Workers union, not the future job holders themselves — yet knows how much the workers will be paid or whether they will vote for union membership.

Three of the plants, to be built with Ford’s South Korean corporate partner, SK Innovation, would produce batteries for 1 million electric vehicles annually. A fourth would make the next generation of electric F-Series pickup trucks, a version of America’s top-selling vehicle.

The new factories represent an $11.4 billion bet by Ford on a vision for the future in which tens of millions of drivers will shift from pollution-belching internal combustion engines to electric vehicles that emit nothing from the tailpipe.

The stakes are high for Ford’s employees as well as for the UAW, which is counting on ensuring union membership at battery factories to replace jobs that will be lost should the transition to electric vehicles happen as Ford and others envision. Union workers generally are paid, on average, 20% more than their nonunion counterparts, typically receive more generous benefits and wield a larger voice on safety and other workplace rules at their factories.

On Monday, when Ford’s plans were announced, CEO Jim Farley stopped short of publicly supporting the UAW, saying only that union representation at the plants would be decided by the workers themselves. In Kentucky and Tennessee, states in which unions have often been shunned by workers and opposed by political leaders, representation by the UAW is far from assured.

On Wednesday, Ford said it expected to continue a “strong, mutually beneficial” relationship with the UAW.

“We respect the UAW’s efforts to organize future hourly workers at the new facilities coming to Tennessee and Kentucky,” Ford and SK said in statements.

By stopping short of offering explicit support for union membership at its new plants, experts say, Ford may be trying to appease politicians who have been vocal opponents of union organizing. Political leaders in both states still have to approve money for worker training and other incentives to Ford, said Dan Cornfield, who teaches sociology and political science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and the company wouldn’t want to jeopardize that support.

“The company is in between its union partners and its state government partners in this,” Cornfield said. “So they probably are not speaking out about unionization one way or the other because they don’t want to antagonize their longstanding partners.”

Not to mention rankle President Joe Biden, who has frequently promoted an industry-wide transition to electric vehicles as a vital way to counter climate change and create “good-paying union jobs.”

A letter attached to Ford’s national contract with the UAW pledges that the company will remain neutral when the union tries to organize any new factories. It will agree to “card check” sign-up efforts, which let unions recruit workers to sign cards saying they want to be represented. Once 51% of workers sign on, the plant becomes union.

Generally, that’s the union’s favored way of organizing plants. But in Southern states, card check doesn’t mean automatic union factories. Kentucky and Tennessee have “right-to-work” laws, which bar companies from signing deals that force workers to pay union dues.

In Tennessee, in particular, political leaders, including Republican Gov. Bill Lee, have fought the UAW, which lost recent factory-wide organizing votes at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. In opposing the UAW, Lee argued that union membership would make it harder for the state to recruit other manufacturers.

“It is more difficult to attract companies into states that have a high level of organized union activity,” Lee said ahead of a 2019 vote at VW. “For that reason, I think that Volkswagen remaining a merit shop facility is beneficial to the economy of Tennessee.”

Difficult as it is, union organizing in the South is not impossible. The UAW already represents nearly 16,000 hourly workers at two Ford plants in Louisville and at a General Motors complex in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

UAW President Ray Curry, who attended the Tennessee ceremony this week, said he didn’t think Ford had chosen sites in Stanton, Tennessee, and Glendale, Kentucky, to avoid the UAW. He expressed optimism about organizing the new factories.

“We’ve got a long-term working relationship with Ford,” Curry said. “It’s just a great opportunity to continue in that relationship.”

Todd Dunn, president of the UAW local office in Louisville, sounded hopeful, too. He said he regarded the remarks this week by Ford’s CEO Farley as cautionary in a politically charged environment.

“I think that might be them saying, ‘Hey, in a right-to-work state, we’re going to make sure they (workers) have their choice.’ “

The union, Dunn said, will campaign on a promise to seek better wages and benefits, health and safety advocacy and a greater voice for workers.

The new Ford site in Stanton, Tennessee, lies in rural Haywood County, about 50 miles east of Memphis, one of only a few counties in the state that voted for Biden in the 2020 election. That bodes well for union organization, Vanderbilt’s Cornfield said. Unions historically have succeeded in the South, he said, when they organize branch operations of companies from the North that already are unionized.

“On the other hand,” Cornfield noted, “the Southern political climate in terms of government tends to be Republican and opposed to unionization.”

Tennessee’s “right to work” law has existed for more than seven decades. Republican state lawmakers have already established a question for the 2022 ballot asking voters whether that law should be enshrined in the Tennessee Constitution, further complicating the conversation for Ford.

So far, Republican U.S. Sens. Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn haven’t publicly opposed a union at the Ford facilities, which are still years away from opening. But both stressed the state’s right-to-work law, with Hagerty saying he hopes future workers who will decide whether to unionize “will be mindful of the pro-business, pro-competition and pro-worker policies of Tennessee.”

The Ford plants could raise the standard of living in Haywood County and those surrounding it. Workers at union auto assembly plants earn an average of around $32 an hour, compared with the national average auto manufacturing wage of $25. But in Tennessee, Cornfield said, auto manufacturing workers are paid an average of only $19 an hour,

Auto companies generally want to pay less at plants that make parts, such as batteries, rather than assemble vehicles. But the UAW will seek assembly-plant wages at those facilities.

It may be easier for the union to organize in Kentucky, a solidly red state but one with a Democratic governor who supports the UAW. Glendale is about 50 miles south of Louisville, a union stronghold that includes the only unionized teachers in the state, said Kenneth Troske, an economics professor at the University of Kentucky.

The state has some history with unions in coal mining and auto production and only recently, in 2017, did it pass a “right to work” law.

But it has voted solidly Republican of late. And a huge Toyota factory in the center part of the state has remained nonunion.

“We used to be a pretty strongly pro-union state,” Troske said. “That certainly has changed. We are Republican. We are as red as red gets now.”

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Krisher reported from Detroit and Schreiner from Louisville, Kentucky. AP writer Adrian Sainz contributed from Stanton, Tennessee.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators fired a barrage of criticism Thursday at a Facebook executive over the social-networking giant’s handling of internal research on how its Instagram photo-sharing platform can harm teens.

The lawmakers accused Facebook of concealing the negative findings about Instagram and demanded a commitment from the company to make changes.

During testimony before a Senate Commerce subcommittee, Antigone Davis, Facebook’s head of global safety, defended Instagram’s efforts to protect young people using its platform. She disputed the way a recent newspaper story describes what the research shows.

“We care deeply about the safety and security of the people on our platform,” Davis said. “We take the issue very seriously. … We have put in place multiple protections to create safe and age-appropriate experiences for people between the ages of 13 and 17.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the subcommittee chairman, wasn’t convinced.

“I don’t understand how you can deny that Instagram is exploiting young users for its own profit,” he told Davis.

The panel is examining Facebook’s use of information from its own researchers that could indicate potential harm for some of its young users, especially girls, while it publicly downplayed the negative impacts. For some of the Instagram-devoted teens, the peer pressure generated by the visually focused app led to mental-health and body-image problems, and in some cases, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts, the research showed.

The revelations in a report by The Wall Street Journal, based on internal research leaked by a whistleblower at Facebook, have set off a wave of anger from lawmakers, critics of Big Tech, child-development experts and parents.

Comparisons to the tobacco industry’s coverups of cigarettes’ harmful effects abounded in a session that united senators of both parties in criticism of the giant social network and Instagram, the photo-sharing juggernaut valued at around $100 billion that Facebook has owned since 2012.

Said Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass.: “Instagram is that first childhood cigarette meant to get teens hooked early. Facebook is just like Big Tobacco, pushing a product they know is harmful to the health of young people.”

The episode is quickly burgeoning into a scandal for Facebook approaching the level of the Cambridge Analytica debacle. Revelations in 2018 that the data mining firm had gathered details on as many as 87 million Facebook users without their permission similarly led to a public-relations offensive by Facebook and congressional hearings.

“It’s abundantly clear that Facebook views the events of the last two weeks purely as a PR problem, and that the issues raised by the leaked research haven’t led to any soul-searching or commitment to change,” said Josh Golin, executive director of the children’s online watchdog group Fairplay. The group, formerly known as the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, doesn’t take money from Facebook or companies, unlike the nonprofits Facebook tends to bring in for expert advice on its products.

Facebook’s public response to the outcry over Instagram was to put on hold its work on a kids’ version of Instagram, which the company says is meant mainly for tweens aged 10 to 12. On Monday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a blog post that the company will use its time out “to work with parents, experts and policymakers to demonstrate the value and need for this product.”

Already in July, Facebook said it was working with parents, experts and policymakers when it introduced safety measures for teens on its main Instagram platform. In fact, the company has been working with experts and other advisers for another product aimed at children — its Messenger Kids app that launched in late 2017.

Pressed by senators, Davis wouldn’t say how long the pause would last. “I don’t have a specific date but I do have a commitment” that Facebook executives will consult with parents, policymakers and experts, she said. “We want to get this right.”

Blumenthal and Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, the panel’s senior Republican, also plan to take testimony next week from a Facebook whistleblower, believed to be the person who leaked the Instagram research documents to the Journal. An interview with the whistleblower is set to air on CBS’ “60 Minutes” program Sunday.

Davis, a one-time middle school teacher and aide in the Maryland attorney general’s office, insisted that the research on Instagram’s impact on young people “is not a bombshell.”

“This research is a bombshell,” Blumenthal countered. “It is powerful, gripping, riveting evidence that Facebook knows of the harmful effects of its site on children, and that it has concealed those facts and findings.”

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The research documents released Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal: https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teen-girls-body-image-and-social-comparison-on-instagram.pdf

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Ortutay reported from Oakland, California. Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

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Follow Marcy Gordon at https://twitter.com/mgordonap

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This story has been corrected to show that Fairplay is a children’s online watchdog group, not a children’s online advertising group.

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Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest electronics maker, has a deal to buy a huge auto assembly plant in Ohio from startup electric truck maker Lordstown Motors, the companies announced Thursday.

The agreement stands to give Taiwan-based Foxconn, best known for making Apple iPhones, an entry into the growing electric vehicle market, a move it has been looking at for months.

It also brings much-needed funding to struggling Lordstown Motors, which has been under increasing scrutiny over its lack of orders and said last month that it couldn’t guarantee that it will last through the year.

The two companies announced a nonbinding agreement to negotiate a deal under which Lordstown would sell the former General Motors plant in Ohio near Youngstown, excluding some assets, for $230 million.

Foxconn will also buy about $50 million of Lordstown Motors’ stock, which rose more than 8% in Thursday’s regular-session trading but is still down 60% for the year. It rose another 7% after hours.

Foxconn in March said it was considering making electric vehicles in either Mexico or at its highly anticipated Wisconsin plant, which was first announced in 2017 and has since been scaled back.

Company Chairman Young Liu said at the time that Foxconn wants to take 10% of the market share of electric vehicles by making entire vehicles or components.

Then in May, Foxconn and Stellantis, the world’s 4th-largest automaker formed by the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Peugeot, announced they’re developing a jointly operated automotive supplier focusing on technology to make vehicles more connected.

The agreement with Lordstown gives Foxconn a sprawling manufacturing site where GM built cars for more than 50 years before closing the plant in 2019. At its peak, the factory was home to roughly 10,000 workers.

Lordstown promised to revive the plant after acquiring it in 2019 and had planned to begin production of its marquee Endurance pickup truck in September. Its investors include GM, which took a 5% stake.

But Lordstown has struggled to raise money, gone through management shakeups and faced increasing scrutiny from federal regulators.

The fledging automaker’s top two executives stepped down in June amid doubts over the number of orders placed for the Endurance. In July, the company acknowledged receiving two subpoenas from federal regulators and also that prosecutors in New York have opened an investigation into the company.

The Securities and Exchange Commission asked in a pair of subpoenas for documents related to the company’s merger with DiamondPeak, a special purpose acquisition company.

After the company acknowledged that it had no firm orders for its vehicles, it said that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York was “investigating these matters.”

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CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The former Australian prime minister who signed the now-cancelled French submarine deal questioned whether Australia could safely maintain a fleet powered by U.S. nuclear technology.

Malcolm Turnbull made the 90 billion Australian dollar ($66 billion) deal in 2016 with French majority state-owned Naval Group in 2016 to build 12 conventional diesel-electric submarines.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who replaced Turnbull in a power struggle within Australia’s conservative government in 2018, canceled the deal this month as part of an alliance with the United States and Britain that will deliver an Australian fleet of at least eight nuclear-powered submarines.

Morrison explained that the “game changer” was that next-generation nuclear-powered submarines will use reactors that do not need refueling during the 35-year life of the boat.

Turnbull told the National Press Club on Wednesday that he had been advised by the Australia’s Defense Department as recently as 2018 that an Australian nuclear-powered fleet was not an option without local nuclear facilities.

Morrison’s advice that Australia could become the first country to operate a nuclear-powered fleet without a civil nuclear industry or nuclear expertise was “very different” to Defense Department advice three years ago, Turnbull said.

“It sounds too good to be true,” Turnbull said.

“Is it credible to have a hands-off, plug-and-play nuclear reactor filled with weapons-grade uranium and not inspect it for 35 years?” he asked.

Turnbull said a nuclear-powered fleet maintained by another country was not an option for Australia.

“If you can’t maintain your own ships, you are not in full control of them,” Turnbull said.

France has accused the United States and Australia of betrayal over the canceled contract and the replacement trilateral alliance negotiated in secret.

France briefly recalled its ambassador from Washington in protest but there is no word of when a French ambassador might return to Australia.

Turnbull, who describes himself as a personal friend of French President Emmanuel Macron, said Morrison should have discussed with the French Australia’s concerns that conventional submarines would not meet its evolving security needs.

“This is an appalling episode in Australia’s international affairs and the consequences of it will endure to our disadvantage for a very long time,” Turnbull said.

Former Prime Ministers Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd, who led the center-left Labor Party, have also been vocal critics of the nuclear deal.

Atomic energy is a fraught issue in Australia, which has a single reactor in Sydney that makes nuclear isotopes for medical use.

Nuclear power generation is banned and Australia refuses to export uranium to countries that would put it to military uses including nuclear propulsion.

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