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Menu * Books * About * Forums * Podcast * Newsletter * RSS * Twitter * Mastodon * Medium * Tumblr Pluralistic: Return to work and dying on the job (27 Sep 2024) [27Sep2024] Today's links * Return to office and dying on the job: Denise Prudhomme was dead at her Wells Fargo desk, unnoticed for four days. * Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. * This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 * Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. * Recent appearances: Where I've been. * Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. * Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. * Colophon: All the rest. --------------------------------------------------------------------- A medieval drawing of a horrible torture chamber in which men are being tormented by various diabolical machines. On the wall hangs a poster reading 'LATE AGAIN! Dependable workers are on the job.' Through the window peers an impatient man in a sixties vintage executive suit, clutching a sheaf of papers and scowling at his watch. Behind him is the nighttime Manhattan skyline. Return to office and dying on the job (permalink) Denise Prudhomme's bosses at Wells Fargo insisted that the in-person camaraderie of their offices warranted a mandatory return-to-office policy, but when she died at her desk in her Tempe, AZ office, no one noticed for four days. That was in August. Now, Wells Fargo United has published a statement on her death, one that vibrates with anger at the callously selective surveillance that Wells Fargo inflicts on its workforce: https://www.reddit.com/r/WellsFargoUnited/comments/1fnp9fa/ please_print_and_take_to_your_managersite_leader/ The union points out that Wells Fargo workers are subjected to continuous, fine-grained on-the-job surveillance from a variety of bossware tools that count their keystrokes and create tables of the distancess their mice cross each day: https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware Wells Fargo's message to its workforce is, "You can't be trusted," a policy that Wells Fargo doubled down on with its Return to Office mandate. Return to Office is often pitched as a chance to improve teamwork, communication, and human connection with your co-workers, and there's no arguing with the idea that spending some time in person with people can help improve working relationships (I attended a week-long, all-hands, staff retreat for EFF earlier this month and it was fantastic, primarily due to its in-person nature). But our bosses don't want us back in the office because they enjoy our company, nor because they're so excited about having hired such a swell bunch of folks and can't wait to see how we all get along together. As John Quiggin writes, the biggest reason to force us back to the office is to get a bunch of us to quit: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/26/ in-their-plaintive-call-for-a-return-to-the-office-ceos-reveal-how-little-they-are-needed As one of Musk's toadies put it in a private message before the Twitter takeover, "Sharpen your blades boys. 2 day a week Office requirement = 20% voluntary departures": https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/elon-musk-texts-discovery-twitter/ The other reason to spy on us is because they don't trust us. Remember all the panic about "quiet quitting" and "no one wants to work"? Bosses' hypothesis was that eking out a bare minimum living on from a couple of small-dollar covid stimulus checks was preferable to working for them for a full paycheck. Every accusation is a a confession. When your boss tells you that he thinks that you can't be trusted to do a good job without total, constant surveillance, he's really saying, "I only bother to do my CEO job when I'm afraid of getting fired': https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/# fear-is-their-mind-killer As Wells Fargo United notes, Wells Fargo employees like Denise Prudhomme are spied on from the moment they set foot in the building until the moment they clock out (and sometimes the spying continues when you're off the clock): Wells Fargo monitors our every move and keystroke using remote, electronic technologies--purportedly to evaluate our productivity--and will fire us if we are caught not making enough keystrokes on our computers. The Arizona Republic coverage notes further that Prudhomme had to log her comings and goings from the Wells Fargo offices with a badge, so Wells Fargo could see that Prudhomme had entered the premises four days before, but hadn't left: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe-breaking/2024/09/23/ wells-fargo-employees-union-responds-death-tempe-woman/75352015007/ Wells Fargo has mandated in-person working, even when that means crossing a state line to be closer to the office. They've created "hub cities" where workers are supposed to turn up. This may sound convivial, but Prudhomme was the only member of her team working out of the Tempe hub, so she was being asked to leave her home, travel long distances, and spend her days in a distant corner of the building where no one ventured for periods of (at least) four days at a time. Bosses are so convinced that they themselves would goof off if they could that they fixate on forcing employees to spend their days in the office, no matter what the cost. Back in March 2020, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge - then the highest-paid CEO in America - instituted a policy that every back office staffer had to work in person at his call centers. This was the most deadly phase of the pandemic, there was no PPE to speak of, we didn't understand transmission very well, and vaccines didn't exist yet. Charter is a telecommunications company and it was booming as workers across America upgraded their broadband so they could work from home, and the CEO's response was to ban remote work. His customer service centers were superspreading charnel houses: https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/18/diy-tp/#sociopathy That Wells Fargo would leave a dead employee at her desk for four days is par for the course for the third-largest commercial bank in America. This is Wells Fargo, remember, the company that forced its low-level bank staff to open two million fake accounts in order to steal from their customers and defraud their shareholders, then fired and blackballed staff who complained: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/26/495454165/ ex-wells-fargo-employees-sue-allege-they-were-punished-for-not-breaking-law The executive who ran that swindle got a $125 million bonus: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/ wells-fargo-ceos-teflon-don-act-backfires-at-senate-hearing-i-take-full-responsibility-means-anything-but.html And the CEO got $200 million: https://money.cnn.com/2016/09/21/investing/ wells-fargo-fired-workers-retaliation-fake-accounts/index.html It's not like Wells Fargo treats its workers badly but does well by everyone else. Remember, those fake accounts existed as part of a fraud on the company's investors. The company went on to steal $76m from its customers on currency conversions. They also foreclosed on customers who were up to date on their mortgages, seizing and selling off all their possessions. They argued that when bosses pressured tellers into forging customers on fraudulent account-opening paperwork, that those customers had lost their right to sue, since the fraudulent paperwork had a binding arbitration clause. When they finally agreed to pay restitution to their victims, they made the payments opt-in, ensuring that most of the millions of people they stole from would never get their money back. They stole millions with fraudulent "home warranties." They stole millions from small businesses with fake credit-card fees. They defrauded 800,000 customers through an insurance scam, and stole 25,000 customers' cars with illegal repos. They led the pre-2008 pack on mis-selling deceptive mortgages that blew up and triggered the foreclosure epidemic. They loaned vast sums to Trump, who slashed their taxes, and then they fired 26.000 workers and did a $40.6B stock buyback. They stole 525 homes from mortgage borrowers and blamed it on a "computer glitch": https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/29/jubilance/#too-big-to-jail Given all this, two things are obvious: first, if anyone is going to be monitored for crimes, fraud and scams, it should be Wells Fargo, not its workers. Second, Wells Fargo's surveillance system exists solely to terrorize workers, not to help them. As Wells Fargo United writes: We demand improved safety precautions that are not punitive or cause further stress for employees. The solution is not more monitoring, but ensuring that we are all connected to a supportive work environment instead of warehoused away in a back office. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey look at this (permalink) [heylookatt] * Fight Health Insurance https://www.fighthealthinsurance.com/ * A Deutsche Telekom Shakedown: Will Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp slow to a crawl in Germany as DT tries to get paid twice, and will German regulators have the courage to stop DT's bullying? https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/09/ a-deutsche-telekom-shakedown-will-instagram-facebook-whatsapp-slow-to-a-crawl / * Comrades! Verso Needs Your Support for Radical Publishing https:/ /www.kickstarter.com/projects/versobooks/ comrades-verso-needs-your-support-for-radical-publishing --------------------------------------------------------------------- A Wayback Machine banner. This day in history (permalink) #20yrsago HOWTO make a legal P2P system https://web.archive.org/web/ 20041009210429/https://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/p2p_copyright_wp.php #15yrsago Google Book Search and privacy for students https:// web.archive.org/web/20091002014504/http://freeculture.org/blog/2009/ 09/24/gbs-and-students-eff-privacy/ #10yrsago Fed whistleblower secretly recorded 46 hours of regulatory capture inside Goldman Sachs https://www.thisamericanlife.org/536/ the-secret-recordings-of-carmen-segarra #5yrsago Annalee Newitz's "Future of Another Timeline": like Handmaid's Tale meets Hitchhiker's Guide https://memex.craphound.com/ 2019/09/27/ annalee-newitzs-future-of-another-timeline-like-handmaids-tale-meets-hitchhikers-guide / #5yrsago Do Not Erase: Jessica Wynne's beautiful photos of mathematicians' chalkboards https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/ science/mathematicians-blackboard-photographs-jessica-wynne.html #5yrsago Across America, the average worker can't afford the median home https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ there-are-precious-few-places-in-america-where-the-average-worker-can-afford-a-median-priced-home-2019-09-26 #5yrsago Amazon wants to draft model facial recognition legislation https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/9/25/20884427/ jeff-bezos-amazon-facial-recognition-draft-legislation-regulation-rekognition #5yrsago Doordash's breach is different https://techcrunch.com/2019/ 09/26/doordash-data-breach/ #5yrsago Report from Defcon's Voting Village reveals ongoing dismal state of US electronic voting machines https://media.defcon.org/DEF CON 27/voting-village-report-defcon27.pdf #1yrago Intuit: "Our fraud fights racism" https://pluralistic.net/ 2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers --------------------------------------------------------------------- Upcoming appearances (permalink) A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, holding a mic. * Was There Ever an Old, Good Internet? David Graeber Institute (Remote), Oct 3 https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ tZUsduuprjgpG9C4SAenCK4jOsawnkxDrY_-#/registration * "Come distruggere il capitalismo della sorveglianza" (Pisa/ Remote), Oct 12 https://www.internetfestival.it/programma/ come-distruggere-il-capitalismo-della-sorveglianza/ * SOSS Fusion (Atlanta), Oct 22 https://sossfusion2024.sched.com/speaker/cory_doctorow.1qm5qfgn * TusCon (Tucson), Nov 8-10 https://tusconscificon.com/ * International Cooperative Alliance (New Delhi), Nov 24 https://icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/pages/Programme --------------------------------------------------------------------- A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast. Recent appearances (permalink) * Rethink: Is the internet getting worse? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022z9r * Annie's Book Stop Of Worcester https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYM3WOPOMC0 * DEF CON 32 - Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8 --------------------------------------------------------------------- A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers.. Latest books (permalink) * The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 ( the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies ( https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/ Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/). * "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 ( http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/ Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/) * "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http:// seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup ( https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245). * "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https:// forbiddenplanet.com/ 385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/. * "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https:// chokepointcapitalism.com * "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/ Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html * "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/ how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk= f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https:// www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/ Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html) * "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/ 9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https:// www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/ July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html * "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https:// us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/ Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/. --------------------------------------------------------------------- A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo. Upcoming books (permalink) * Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025 * Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025 --------------------------------------------------------------------- [colophonim] Colophon (permalink) Today's top sources: Boing Boing (https://boingboing.net). Currently writing: * Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Today's progress: 0 words (54547 words total) (took the day off following morning eye surgery because I couldn't see well enough to write and I had a fentanyl/benzo sedation hangover). * A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING * Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025 Latest podcast: Anti-cheat, gamers, and the Crowdstrike disaster https://craphound.com/news/2024/09/15/ anti-cheat-gamers-and-the-crowdstrike-disaster/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- [by] This work - excluding any serialized fiction - is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. 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[bdd2b]Author Cory DoctorowPosted on September 27, 2024September 27, 2024Categories UncategorizedTags arizona, bossware, Denise Prudhomme, disciplinary technology, jason calicanis, remote work, return to work , sharpen-your-blades-boys, surveillance, tempe, wells fargo Join the Discussion at ChinWag Post navigation Previous Previous post: Pluralistic: When prophecy fails, election polling edition (26 Sep 2024) Next Next post: Pluralistic: Sandra Newman's "Julia" (28 Sep 2024) Archives * September 2024 * August 2024 * July 2024 * June 2024 * May 2024 * April 2024 * March 2024 * February 2024 * January 2024 * December 2023 * November 2023 * October 2023 * September 2023 * August 2023 * July 2023 * June 2023 * May 2023 * April 2023 * March 2023 * February 2023 * January 2023 * December 2022 * November 2022 * October 2022 * September 2022 * August 2022 * July 2022 * June 2022 * May 2022 * April 2022 * March 2022 * February 2022 * January 2022 * December 2021 * November 2021 * October 2021 * September 2021 * August 2021 * July 2021 * June 2021 * May 2021 * April 2021 * March 2021 * February 2021 * January 2021 * December 2020 * November 2020 * October 2020 * September 2020 * August 2020 * July 2020 * June 2020 * May 2020 * April 2020 * March 2020 * February 2020 Categories * Medium * Uncategorized Meta * Log in * Entries feed * Comments feed * WordPress.org Previous editions * Pluralistic: Sandra Newman's "Julia" (28 Sep 2024) * Pluralistic: Return to work and dying on the job (27 Sep 2024) * Pluralistic: When prophecy fails, election polling edition (26 Sep 2024) * Pluralistic: Academic economists get big payouts when they help monopolists beat antitrust (25 Sep 2024) * Pluralistic: Margaret Killjoy's "The Sapling Cage" (24 Sep 2024) 49501796801_4247c0309f_k Search for: [ ] Search READ CAREFULLY By reading this website, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. 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