#gig economy New York

[indembminsk]

Exploring the Latest Money-Making Trends in New York for 2024

New York City, known as the financial and cultural hub of the world, is constantly on the cusp of the latest and greatest money-making trends. The year 2024 has seen several new opportunities for entrepreneurs, freelancers, and investors, all looking to capitalize on the fast-paced economic environment. Here’s a glimpse into some of the most lucrative trends that are shaping the city’s financial…

[reasonsforhope]

Across New York City, delivery drivers are a ubiquitous sight: congregating outside big restaurant chains waiting to collect orders, zooming through the city streets with orders in tow. “The most chaotic time for deliveries is easily during lunch time,” says Elijah Williams, who delivers food for both Uber and DoorDash. “I’ve had up to four orders at one time.” 

Mayor Eric Adams recently announced a major change that will deeply impact busy workers like Williams: app-based delivery workers will be paid $17.96 an hour starting July 12th — and nearly $20 an hour by 2025 — marking the nation’s first minimum pay for such workers.

“Our delivery workers have consistently delivered for us — now, we are delivering for them,” he said. “They should not be delivering food to your household, if they can’t put food on the plate in their household.”

The Background

Mayor Adams made the announcement at City Hall, surrounded by delivery workers as well as members of the nonprofit organizations, Workers Justice Project (WJP) and Los Deliveristas Unidos.

Ligia Guallpa, executive director of WJP, expressed her excitement and gratitude.

“This first of its kind minimum pay rate will uplift working and immigrant families,” said [Ligia Guallpa of Workers Justice Project (WJP)] alongside Gustavo Ajche of Los Deliveristas Unidos. “[It will] ensure that workers who keep New Yorkers fed, are able to keep also their families fed too.”

WJP was founded in 2010, and coordinates numerous worker-led programs, including Los Deliveristas Unidos, that aim to improve conditions for low-wage immigrant workers across the five boroughs.

The Details

The current minimum wage in New York is $15 an hour. On average, service workers are paid $7.09 an hour, excluding tips. The new wage is in keeping with a law passed by the City Council in 2021, which requires the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to set a standard minimum rate for delivery workers.

App-based delivery workers are classified as “independent contractors,” which means they’re not entitled to the standard minimum wage that applies to salaried employees’ pay. Instead, delivery workers who work for the big food delivery services, like Uber Eats and Relay, are entitled to just $2.13 an hour before tips — a so-called “tipped sub-minimum wage.”

Research has shown that getting rid of tipped sub-minimum wages benefits not just the workers getting the raise, but the economy as a whole. A 2021 analysis found that states without a tipped sub-minimum wage saw 29 percent growth in their leisure and hospitality sectors, compared to just six percent in states that used the federal tipped sub-minimum wage of $2.13.

...For many of the workers who face hostile roads and unpredictable weather conditions to get New Yorkers their ordered goods, this is a life-changing development.

“This is my full-time job. I get up every day and do this,” says delivery driver Justin Martinez outside the Chick-Fil-A in Washington Heights. 

Martinez, 30, is originally from the Dominican Republic. His commitment to completing deliveries, he explains, is fueled by his love for his family.

“This is my way to contribute. I go out, 9, 10 hours a day, do deliveries, and then I can come home,” he says. Martinez first started driving for Uber in 2019 before transitioning to delivering food for Uber Eats and other apps in 2021. He’s excited for the pay wage increase: “Maybe now, I only [have to] go out for 6 hours.”

-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, June 30, 2023

[davestone13-blog]

Judge Delays Rollout of Delivery Worker Minimum Wage Law

Claudia Irizarry Aponte, The City This article was originally published on Jul 7 5:16pm EDT by THE CITY Three food-delivery-app companies are challenging NYC’s minimum wage for their employees. | Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY The Roosevelt Island Daily News A planned pay increase for tens of thousands of delivery workers hit a roadblock Friday, after a Manhattan judge stalled the rollout of a…

[commiegoth]

Hiii friends I just wanted to take the time to recommend some recent comedy tv I've been enjoying recently! I feel like I hardly see anyone ever talk about these shows, so if any of these sound interesting to you, please check them out!

Killing It: This show is an insanely good satire of class and capitalism in modern America I can't praise it enough! After being denied a loan and losing his job, Craig (played by Craig Robinson) teams up with Uber driver Jillian (played by Claudia O'Doherty) to kill invasive pythons in the Everglades to make enough prize money to start his own business. Season two sees the pair try to run a saw palmetto berry farm as bosses on the swampland their prize money bought. It covers everything from the gig economy to social media influencers to companies that buy peoples' debts to the myth of the self-made man itself. It's even got Tim Heidecker!

This Fool: Another excellent satire, This Fool centers around Julio (played by Chris Estrada), a self-pitying pushover who works at a non-profit helping ex-felons get back on their feet. When his cousin Luis (played by Frankie Quinones) is released from prison, Julio's desires to be seen as a good person are put into conflict with his existing biases. I'll be honest the pilot does not do a great job of setting up what makes the show so great, but if you get past all the "isn't it funny these tough guys are doing soft shit" jokes in the first ep, it has a ton of great character-driven comedy! This show shares a writing team (sans Estrada) with the show Corporate, which I also love, so check that out too if you haven't!

Kevin Can F**k Himself: A kinda high-concept show about what the archetypal sitcom wife goes through outside of the multi-camera setup. Allison (played by Annie Murphy) is sick of her husband Kevin's pranks and schemes, and decides the only way to escape is to kill Kevin and make it look like an accident. This show actually ended last year, but I'm genuinely surprised this doesn't seem that well known on tumblr because the metatextual commentary and experiments with format (and yuri slowburn) are all things people on here seem to love. It's only 16 episodes check it out!!

How To With John Wilson: This show has probably seen the most critical praise of all these so you may already know about it but it's honestly incredible. Each episode follows John Wilson as he delivers meandering commentary vaguely related to the topic of each episode (eg. "How To Make Small Talk"), laid over footage he has taken of the streets of New York City. He interviews people he finds on the internet, and reflects on the human condition. It's silly, sad, gross, and beautiful all at once! Recommended for fans of Nathan Fielder and Joe Pera.

[brostateexam]

Something has gone wrong with work. On this, everyone seems to agree. Less clear is the precise nature of the problem, let alone who or what is to blame. For some time we’ve been told that we’re in the midst of a Great Resignation. Workers are quitting their jobs en masse, repudiating not just their bosses but ambition itself—even the very idea of work. Last year, as resignation rates appeared to plateau, the cause célèbre shifted to “quiet quitting.” This theory holds that what truly distinguishes the present crisis is a more metaphorical sort of resignation: a withdrawal of effort, the sort of thing that is called “work-to-rule” when undertaken by a union. This supposed rebellion against extortion has served as fodder for familiar right-wing complaints about entitlement. The most optimistic commentators on the left, however, have assimilated these hypothetical phenomena into a vision of revitalized working-class self-activity. The AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler has boasted of “labor’s great resurgence.” Even the New York Times, in its own milquetoast fashion, has acknowledged the prospect that, “after decades of declining union membership, organized labor may be on the verge of a resurgence in the U.S.”

There is evidence for all and none of these accounts. Despite declining in 2022, the overall rates of resignation remain higher than at any point in the twenty-first century before the pandemic. But such numbers conceal striking differences across sectors. Statistically speaking, the Great Resignation has been confined almost entirely to the low-wage service industries. Rates of quitting among the so-called laptop class budged only slightly after the initial recession following COVID-19 and now sit at or below pre-pandemic levels. But aggregate employment in the sectors at the heart of the Great Resignation has been growing at a solid clip for years. There’s been a particular acceleration in the gig economy—self-employment increased about 20 percent in the first two years of the pandemic. The quitting phenomenon is real, in other words, but it manifests more frequently in canvassing for better deals than in a radical refusal to work altogether. As its icon we should not imagine a Charles Foster Kane type who realizes, at the summit of his professional climb, that all is vanity, but rather a taxi driver switching fleets a few times in search of better pay and conditions before deciding to drive for Uber.

The evidence for quiet quitting—a concept popularized by a viral TikTok video—is considerably more qualitative, to put it kindly. The best numbers on the subject come from the biannual Gallup study of employee engagement. The data suggests that, since 2019, engagement has indeed declined while active disengagement has risen—but very modestly, and not to historically unusual levels. Unlike resignation, however, the disengagement trend seems to be just as pronounced, perhaps even uniquely pronounced, among white-collar workers. Gallup reports that “managers, among others, experienced the greatest drop” in engagement.

[michaelgruberfan]

Gruber talks with some students for MLive! (X) Published Nov. 25, 2011

"Michael Gruber, star of Western Michigan University's 'Late Night Broadway,' shares talents and tips with students"

Article below the cut:

In a cabaret setting at the Williams Theatre, graduating seniors in the WMU theater program will present the routines they hope will get them gigs at future auditions. Then, Gruber will do a set of standards and lesser-known songs — a few touching ballads, but most of them humorous — about love: “Falling out of love, falling into love, how love confuses us, tortures us; it’s contagious, it’s something that human beings seek out.”

One can almost replace “love” in that sentence with “a job,” except jobs aren’t very contagious these days. Gruber will teach a bit about falling into a job when he coaches the seniors the week before the show.

“I’ll impart what I’ve learned over the 23 years of my career, give back something that great directors and teachers have taught me,” he said from his home in Minneapolis, Minn.

To Broadway and back

Gruber was on Broadway in the original company of “Miss Saigon,” “Kiss Me Kate,” “Cats” and “A Chorus Line,” and has done regional theater around the country. He moved from New York to the Midwest and changed his career course to do more writing, teaching and smaller theater work that he finds rewarding.

“There are so many paths” to a career in performing arts, he said. “There really is no formula. A lot of it is luck, a lot of it is timing, a lot of it is your contacts. If the door is closed in one area, figure out how to be crea-tive in getting around it or finding a new way in.”

Theater has been struggling in the recession, he said. The movie industry stays strong, with its wider audience base, he said, “but I think theater, because it’s more expensive. ... We’re the first ones to get hit when the economy is bad,” he said.

“Live theater is expensive. It’s expensive to produce; ticket prices are high. On the other hand, people love to be entertained when there’s a crisis, to escape.”

His advice to graduates: “Be creative.”

While performance students spend years working on their craft, that isn’t all it takes to succeed, Gruber said.

“I think what young performers miss coming out of school is that you also have to be creative about how to market yourself, how to make contacts, how to present yourself ... all that stuff.”

Gruber believes there’s also too much focus on Broadway as the destination for stage performers.

“Life experience is what we’re looking for, because we’re looking for a long career in the art. New York is only one-half of 1 percent of the amount of work available in this country,” he said. “And it’s not always the best and most satisfying work there, either.”

Traveling for the work

Gruber has learned to occasionally reinvent himself.

“I’ve done 10 shows in New York,” he said, “but I’ve also done a lot of small theater all across the country. I just work because I love to work, so I go wherever the work is offered.”

He remembered a rewarding time at Saugatuck’s Mason Street Warehouse in the cast of “What A Glorious Feeling” in 2005. It was the debut of a new musical, and he got to discover the beauty of Lake Michigan in the summer.

“It was like a summer vacation,” he said. “We didn’t get paid very much, but the experience was so rich and fun. It pays off.”

Connections lead to more work. At Mason Street, he met the writer of the show’s book, Jay Berkow. On the faculty of WMU’s theater department, Berkow is directing “Late Night Broadway.”

Gruber is looking forward to working with WMU students.

“Their passion (rubs) off on me and give me a kick of adrenalin,” he said. “I’m excited to see what they do.”

He kept catching himself calling the students “kids,” and apologized, adding that he just turned 47.

“They’re young adults,” he corrected himself, noting they are eager to make the step from school to stage. That eagerness will make for a great evening, Gruber hopes.

“You get some young, fresh energy, and then you get an old fart,” he said, laughing.

[lenbryant]

WGA Strike Is On!

(LATimes) A festering dispute over how writers are compensated in the streaming era came to a head Monday night, as leaders of the Writers Guild of America called on their members to stage Hollywood’s first strike in 15 years.

The boards of directors for the east and west coast divisions of the WGA voted unanimously to call a strike effective 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, the union said in a statement.

Thousands of WGA members were set to walk picket lines across Los Angeles, New York and other cities on Tuesday after the union was unable to reach a last-minute accord with the major studios on a new three-year contract to replace one that expired Monday night.

“The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing,” the WGA said in a statement. “No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership.”

In a statement, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said it offered “generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals.” The alliance, which bargains on behalf of the major studios, said it was prepared to improve the offer but was “unwilling to do so because of the magnitude of other proposals still on the table that the Guild continues to insist upon.” The alliance said primary sticking points included the guild’s demands over mandatory staffing levels and duration of employment.

Writers are seeking a larger slice of the streaming pie that has dramatically transformed the television business. They voted by a historic margin in favor — 98% to 2% — of granting a strike authorization sought by their leaders if they couldn’t reach a deal on a new film and TV contract on behalf of 11,500 members.

The walkout, which could last for weeks or months, is expected to halt much of TV and film production nationwide and reverberate across Southern California, where prop houses, caterers, florists and others heavily depend on the entertainment economy. The previous writers strike in 2007 roiled the industry and lasted 100 days.

The walkout will also mean temporary job losses for crew members and comes at a difficult time for the Los Angeles region, where many businesses are still attempting to recover from the effects of the pandemic and major employers are slashing payrolls. Hollywood studios have laid off thousands of workers as Wall Street investors punished them for losses linked to their streaming businesses. 

Even before negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers began on March 20, many in Hollywood believed a strike was inevitable because the sides remained so far apart on key issues even as the contract deadline loomed.

WGA leaders warned that their members faced an “existential” threat to their ability to earn a living in Hollywood. 

While streaming has been a boon for television, it has upended how writers are compensated. Writers say that they work longer hours for less pay and that they no longer can rely a steady stream of residual income they used to get in the days of broadcast TV, when shows lived on for years in syndicated reruns or the once-lucrative home video market.

The median weekly pay for writer-producers declined 23% over the last decade when adjusting for inflation, according to a WGA survey. When accounting for inflation, screenwriter pay declined 14% in the last five years, the report said.

The union has demanded compensation and other improvements valued at nearly $600 million, including increases in minimum pay, residuals for streaming and higher contributions to the WGA health and pension plan.

Additionally, the union wants to crack down on practices it says have eroded writers’ pay such as the prevalence of so-called mini-rooms, where small groups of writers on short-order series are hired to write out the arc of a show before it is commissioned, replacing the traditional practice of producing pilot episodes.

For their part, the major studios have said their goal is to reach a fair deal. They’ve cited their own set of challenges, including pressure from investors to cut costs and build profitable streaming businesses, a slowing national economy and long-term declines in box office revenues. Amid the upheaval, companies such as Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney have laid off thousands of employees. 

“The AMPTP member companies remain united in their desire to reach a deal that is mutually beneficial to writers and the health and longevity of the industry, and to avoid hardship to the thousands of employees who depend upon the industry for their livelihoods,” the alliance said in a statement.

It’s uncertain how long such a walkout would last, particularly if there is no unifying leader to corral both sides as there has been in previous strikes. In 2008, it was Walt Disney Co. chief executive Bob Iger and then News Corp. President Peter Chernin who united both sides. 

The shifting nature of the AMPTP has also complicated the picture because of the varied interest of its members. Now technology companies like Amazon and Apple, whose core business is not entertainment, have a seat at the table alongside Hollywood-focused companies such as Walt Disney Co., Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery. Netflix, which was just a mail order DVD business during the last strike, also is a key member of the bargaining alliance.

Studio executives have said they didn’t want a strike but prepared for the outcome. 

“A strike will be a challenge for the whole industry, everybody involved,” Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav told attendees at a MAX presentation. “We’re assuming the worst from a business perspective. We’ve got ourselves ready. We’ve had a lot of content that’s been produced.” 

Warner Bros. Discovery and studios have been taking various contingency measures for months in case of a strike, including accelerating deadlines for scripts and film shoots. 

The impact of a strike on the major studios will vary. Some have a deep library of shows and films on hand that they can offer to keep viewers watching. 

Netflix may have an advantage over other studios because it has a big international production presence. Many of its most popular shows and films stem from countries like South Korea and Thailand. 

In an April earnings presentation, Netflix co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos said the company wants to avoid a strike but that if there is one, the streamer has enough content that it can “probably serve our members better than most” entertainment companies, he said.

“An extended strike that lasts three-plus months should meaningfully advantage Netflix,” said Rich Greenfield, a co-founder of LightShed Partners, a technology and media research firm in New York, in an April research note. 

The reduction in costs from not having to produce shows could actually benefit studios, some analysts suggest. 

For example, studios could use the work stoppage to terminate costly contracts with writers through so-called “force majeure” clauses that allow a studio to terminate the deal if there is a labor action that lasts for a set period of time. 

“While we would not expect Warner Bros. to terminate its deals with star writers such as Chuck Lorre or Universal with Dick Wolf, there are lesser known writers who struck overall deals with studios that do not make economic sense today,” wrote Greenfield. 

Although the WGA strike has drawn widespread support from other Hollywood unions, a protracted walkout will cause hardships for a wide swath of workers. During the last strike, many of those who lost their jobsm such as set decorators, lighting technicians and makeup artists, did not get their work back as studios scaled back production. The 2007 strike cost $772 million from lost wages for writers and production workers, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. 

The WGA has a strike fund to provide grants or loans to help its members make ends meet during a stoppage. The WGA had $19.8 million of assets in its strike fund as of March 31, 2022, according to its latest annual report. 

Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.

[getwhizz]

 Best e-bike rental service in NYC

Whizz Inc. is a trailblazing company revolutionizing the e-bike rental landscape for delivery riders in New York City. Founded by Ksenia Proka, Alex Mironov, Mike Peregudov, and Artem Serbovka, Whizz targets a specific niche: delivery riders from services like Uber Eats, Doordash, and Grubhub. These riders often face financial constraints and lack access to cost-effective, reliable long-range e-bikes. Whizz addresses this by offering affordable, purpose-built e-bikes equipped with a 60-mile range battery, GPS trackers, and anti-theft systems, coupled with on-demand maintenance and repairs.

The company's mission is to empower delivery riders, ensuring their work is efficient, accessible, and affordable. Their core values include accessibility, ease of use, hassle-free ownership, efficiency, outstanding customer service, sustainability, trust and honesty, and safety. Whizz's approach is not just about providing e-bikes; it's about transforming the delivery experience in a rapidly evolving gig economy.

Competing with services like Zoomo, Joco, Rybit, Wheels, gas mopeds, and the option of owning an e-bike, Whizz stands out with its unique selling points. These include unbeatable prices starting at $149 per month with flexible plans and no hidden fees, the ability to ride up to 60 miles on a single charge, options to swap or rent an additional battery, same-day and hassle-free pick-up, rapid acceleration up to 25mph, a sturdy frame for smooth rides, free accessories like U-lock and alarm system, UL certified batteries and bikes, assistance in bike theft scenarios, and comprehensive support for maintenance issues.

Whizz's brand voice is informal yet professional, conversational, straightforward, and positive, catering to the needs of gig workers with clear and accessible language. Their communication across different platforms — website, SMS, emails, blog posts, and social media — reflects this voice, focusing on engaging, informing, and empowering their customers.

Overall, Whizz Inc. is more than just an e-bike rental service; it's a solution provider for delivery riders, ensuring they navigate the challenges of their job with efficiency, safety, and sustainability.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Lula and Biden trade compliments at meeting in New York

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Wednesday told U.S. President Joe Biden he’s the most worker-friendly American leader he’s seen, while Mr. Biden similarly exchanged pleasantries with his Brazilian counterpart.

“I watched your speech on Inauguration Day [in January 2021], and then more of your speeches. I had never seen a U.S. president talk so often and so well of workers,” Lula told Mr. Biden in New York.

The dialogue happened moments before both leaders launched the Partnership for Workers’ Rights, described by the White House as a “U.S.-Brazil global initiative to advance the rights of working people around the world”.

Challenges to be addressed by the initiative include worker exploitation, clean energy transition, workplace discrimination, and “technology and digital transitions, including the gig economy.” No specific policies were announced so far.

Continue reading.

[shreygoyal]

View on Twitter

Solar industry workers more than doubled in 2010-2020, and ‘solar panel installer’ was the third fastest growing US job in 2019. But the majority of them are non-unionised, poor, receive minimal benefits, and are always on the move to the next project.

Between 2010 and 2020, the number of workers in the solar industry more than doubled from 93,000 to 231,000 people, according to the most recent National Solar Jobs Census report. In 2019, solar panel installer was the third fastest growing job in the United States.

But unlike the unionized oil and coal workers in company towns of decades past, the majority of today’s solar farm installers are poor, receive minimal benefits, and are always on the move to the next project because solar fields require little maintenance once they’re set up.

Only 10 percent of solar workers are unionized, according to the census report. Workers on solar projects are often employed by temp agencies or subcontractors. And while the workforce is diverse—Black, white, Latinx, women, men, undocumented, and formerly incarcerated—the unifying trait of this workforce is overwhelming sense of financial desperation.

As the New York Times noted, the current state of the solar industry throughout much of the country resembles Amazon warehouse work and the gig economy with “grueling work schedules, few unions, middling wages and limited benefits.”

(Source)

[ausetkmt]

People's World: NYC Uber drivers stage one-day strike over company robbery of $12M in raises

NEW YORK—Some 80,000 low-wage mostly immigrant New York City Uber drivers staged a one-day strike on Jan. 5 over the firm’s robbery of an estimated $12 million in raises the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission ordered for them.

At a noontime rally at Uber headquarters at 175 Greenwich St., in downtown Manhattan, the drivers explained the city panel, following local law enacted in 2018, ordered a raise for them of at least $1,000 per driver per month, starting Dec. 19, 2022.

Including mileage reimbursements for skyrocketing gasoline expenses, the Uber drivers calculate they’ve lost $12 million. In addition to the strike, the drivers also asked customers to turn off the Uber app on their cell phones in solidarity through midnight.

Uber got a preliminary injunction to stop the raises ordered by the city—prompting a prior one-day drivers’ strike the day they were due to take effect, the 19th. The second strike precedes a Jan. 6 state Supreme Court hearing in Manhattan. In court, the commission is defending its raise for the drivers.

“Uber is trying to steal our raises from us. We aren’t going to let that happen,” responded driver Samassa Tidiane ahead of the rally.

The city’s Uber drivers, like their colleagues driving for the ride-share firm elsewhere in the U.S., are among the millions of exploited, low-wage fed-up workers from coast to coast who have had it with corporate greed at their expense.

Other such groups of workers include adjunct professors, port truckers, retail workers, warehouse workers, Amazon workers, and various “gig economy” workers. Those workers’ activism has led to large increases in union organizing and in employer-forced strikes. Other low-wage workers have just plain left for better jobs.

The commission-ordered raise for Uber drivers is supposed to cover inflation according to the Consumer Price Index for urban consumers’ transportation. That transportation index has skyrocketed since the first commission decision setting pay and reimbursement rates for the drivers, according to a friend-of-the-court brief the union-backed New York Taxi Workers Alliance filed with the judge.

In the brief, Uber driver Lamin Jatta said he told the city commission he used to pay $30 to fill up his tank and now pays $60. He wanted the panel to use “a consumer price that measures drivers’ professional expenses.” Driver Xavier Koudougou asked the commission “to use a CPI that reflects driver expenses because we drivers are consumer[s], but we use more gas than regular driver[s] and when the gas price [is] high, they have options. But we don’t.”

But after the commission approved the raise, Uber got the temporary injunction against it. The results: The drivers have had no raise at all, and their pay has not only fallen behind inflation but it’s also left many financially underwater. Many don’t even make the city’s minimum wage. So they’ve staged one-day strikes on Dec. 19 and on Jan. 5.

The Taxi Workers Alliance brief backing the Uber drivers lays out the impact in stark terms. So did the drivers, in statements before the noontime rally.“I’m shocked and speechless thinking of how Uber stopped our raise after all the hearings and all the protests we did,” said Uber driver Nusrat Jahan, a Taxi Workers Alliance member. “This raise was like a small light of happiness for our families and for us, which Uber didn’t let happen.

“I’m ashamed Uber blocked this happiness before the holidays. Now I’m working for Uber raising all this money for them so they can hire a private jet or go to a private island or go to Dubai to celebrate their happiness with their families. We could have been earning $1,000 extra a month to pay our bills, not for luxuries.”

“We won raises from the Taxi and Limousine Commission, but Uber decided to go to a judge to stop our raises. Uber doesn’t think about the drivers, they just think about themselves,” added Tidiane, also a Taxi Workers Alliance member.

“We’re suffering because car payments, insurance, food, gas, and mechanic prices are all going up. If Uber was the one paying expenses for cars and gas, they would have raised the prices a long time ago, but it’s drivers who pay for everything out of pocket. Uber is trying to steal our raises from us. We aren’t going to let that happen.”

The Taxi Workers Alliance brief elaborated on the conditions the drivers face without the raise. It also noted that even with the commission’s hike, the raise still would not keep up with inflation the drivers face, or the costs of buying and maintaining their cars.

“The cost of everyday essentials, from bread and milk to rent, has increased due to inflation levels not seen in the past 40 years. Uber speaks of the choice it must make: Bear the cost itself—as a major multinational company—or pass it onto customers, in whole or in part, and potentially upset customers with higher fare pricing.

“The stark reality [is] that drivers have no choice…. They cannot increase what Uber charges for fares. They must pay and have already paid higher vehicle costs. They cannot pass the increased cost of cars, insurance, repairs, and fuel onto customers. And they cannot decrease Uber’s commission” from each fare.

Drivers “have seen their take-home pay drop precipitously. The results of such a decrease have immediate, human impact on drivers and their families who, beginning with a baseline of low-wage earnings, cannot make any more trade-offs. Indeed, the record reflects nearly 80% of drivers were already struggling to pay rent, and nearly 50% struggling to afford food.”

[ccohanlon]

my generation, part 3

There was a period between 1974 and 1979 — no more than four or five years at most — when it looked as if we might redeem ourselves. Punk rock is rarely identified with Baby Boomers these days, but it is the one enduring cultural legacy to which my generation can lay sole claim. From its raggedy-assed, New York originators — among them, Iggy Pop (born 1947), Patti Smith (born 1946), Richard Hell (born 1949), Johnny, Tommy, Joey and Dee Dee of The Ramones (born between 1948 and 1952), and The Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra (born 1958) — to the rawer, more politicised and subversive Londoners with whom the public most readily associates punk — among them, The Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten (born 1956) and Sid Vicious (born 1957), The Clash’s Joe Strummer (born 1952), The Banshees’ Siouxsie Sioux (born 1957) and The Damned’s Dave Vanian (born 1956) — and its one great Australian band, The Saints, the late G.G. Allin (born 1956) oh, and Nick Cave (born 1957), still the coolest Australian alive, its protagonists were all, without exception, Baby Boomers.

Punk was unarguably a social as well as a musical revolt, and its raw, self‐negating anger was directed not only at an older generation, but at the majority of its own, which had sold out any chance for genuine social and political change. It was no accident that punk first emerged during the mid-1970s, when the city of New York, under mayor Abe Beame, teetered on the edge of bankruptcy or that many of its most coherent and vehement songs, such as The Clash’s London Calling, were released in 1978 just before the infamous ‘winter of discontent’ under Prime Minister James Callaghan’s Labour government, during which the economy began to collapse under the weight of high unemployment, industrial unrest, and dysfunctional public services. The rising groundswell of Conservative sympathy (and self‐interest) would carry Margaret Thatcher into power the following spring.

Punk’s musical prejudices were many, but a constant in all of them was impatience with its own generation’s obsession with the surface of things. With its pared‐down, DIY approach to recording, total disdain for basic instrumental skills, and simplistic, buzz‐saw‐like songs that were never more than one tempo — fast — two minutes’ duration, three chords and four‐beats-to‐the‐bar, with titles like Too Drunk to Fuck, Blank Generation, White Riot, and Anarchy in the UK, punk slashed at the tie‐died remnants of hippie counterculture — by then, an already long-in-the-tooth Eric Clapton, the legendary guitarist and founder of the ’60s ‘supergroup’ Cream, was appearing in British beer ads — and directed its razor‐edged, amphetamine‐fuelled intensity toward the shimmering glitter of disco and the grandiose posturing of heavy metal rockers, whose stadium gigs were becoming as over‐produced and robotic as Hitler-Jügend rallies in the 1920s and ’30s.

Malcolm McLaren (born on January 22, 1946 — one of the very first Baby Boomers) was punk’s arch manipulator, its media‐savvy Svengali. The then‐partner of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood (who had yet to make her name and fortune as a couturier) and the co‐proprietor with her of a fetish and bondage clothing shop called SEX on London’s Kings Road, McLaren was the dandyish, amoral and rudely cunning (if not downright crooked) manager of Britain’s most infamous punk band, The Sex Pistols, fronted by Johnny Rotten (neé John Lydon) The band was a McLaren creation, inspired by both the disaffected, working‐class kids — prototypical punks — that hung out at SEX, and McLaren’s own encounters with the nascent New York punk scene during a visit there in 1974. The Sex Pistols lasted only a couple of years — releasing just one album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, before Johnny Rotten announced their break‐up during a shambolic American tour in 1978, and the band’s notorious bass player, Sid Vicious, killed his girlfriend in a drug‐addled haze at New York’s Chelsea Hotel the same year, over‐dosing on heroin a few months later at a party to celebrate his release on bail from the city’s Riker’s Island jail — but not before McLaren had demonstrated just how to execute what he would later call “the great rock’n’roll swindle”.

In 1976, McLaren showcased The Sex Pistols during punk’s first festival at the 100 Club on Oxford Street, London, and talked EMI into signing the band for what was said to be a half‐million pound advance — although this figure was probably just McLaren hype — and releasing its first single, Anarchy in the UK, at the end of November 1976. Less than a fortnight after the song hit the UK charts, the band members got into an on‐air slanging match with Bill Grundy, the host of Thames Television’s popular early evening program Today; guitarist Steve Jones called him a “fucking rotter”. It was the beginning of a run of bad press – “Punk? Call it Filthy Lucre” ran the front page headline of The Daily Express – and it was deliberately inflamed by McLaren. It scared EMI enough to terminate its contract with the band at the end of January 1977. Six weeks later, in a ceremony staged (probably by McLaren) outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, the Sex Pistols signed to Herb Alpert’s A&M Records. This time the deal didn’t last the day: at a party back at the record label’s offices, the band members sexually harassed secretaries, picked fights with executives and, in a lurid coup de grace, Sid Vicious trashed the managing director’s office and vomited on his desk. A&M publicly cut the band loose less than a week later.

It was left to one of the first of England’s Baby Boomer entrepreneurs, Richard Branson (born 1950) — who played in an altogether bigger league than McLaren when it came to both opportunism and shameless self‐promotion — to sign the band to Virgin Records for another large advance and the promise of total artistic control. In May 1977, The Sex Pistols released its second single, God Save the Queen. With the help of some well‐planned radio airplay and the usual sensationalist press, it reached number two on the UK charts during the same week as the country celebrated Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee. Later, one of the band‐members, Paul Cook, told a journalist: “It wasn’t written specifically for the Queen’s Jubilee. We weren’t aware of it at the time. It wasn’t a contrived effort to go out and shock everyone.” Maybe not, but Malcolm McLaren convinced the band to change the original title of the song, No Future.

McLaren recently recalled that he made money then “by doing the exact opposite of what most people would think would be correct. I acted the irresponsible, the ultimate, child and everything I did was what society hated.” His public posturing and game‐playing during punk’s last gob‐spit at ‘the system’ would have made Sir Guy Grand proud. Sadly, by the end of the ’70s, punk’s truculent nihilism had dissipated, and a corrosive process of co-option and homogenisation had begun. Within a decade, punk and all the other good things youth culture had encompassed over the previous quarter‐century — and would encompass, briefly, in the decade ahead, such as rave culture, graffiti art, gangsta rap and mash‐ups — would be reduced to an unidentifiable but easily consumable mush. Meanwhile, a faltering global realpolitik, resurgent squabbles in the Middle East, and economic and social disarray in the developed world (especially the United Kingdom) suggested a future more uncertain and dangerous than anything that George W. Bush would have us fear in the aftermath of 9/11. The brittle, pre‐Apocalyptic edginess of the early ’80s was reminiscent of the ’60s.

MTV was launched on American cable networks on August 1, 1981. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention had just recognised the first cases of AIDS, in five gay men in California. Of course, the two events were unrelated but it felt like the beginning and the end of youth culture.

With its all‐music‐video format modelled on Top 40 radio by former whizz‐kid Baby Boomers fresh out FM radio programming and advertising — the first video that MTV broadcast was The Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star — and its use of young, good‐looking ‘video jockeys’, or VJs, who appeared to have been genetically engineered to match a broad cross‐section of the racially diverse, financially disparate, youth demography found in densely populated American urban centres, even if the music it first featured was predominantly white, MTV appeared to dull rather than enliven the collective imagination, despite its popularity. The symbiosis it had with a music industry already absorbed into huge, multinational media conglomerates — MTV itself was itself the product of a joint venture between Warner Communications and American Express, the Warner‐Amex Satellite Entertainment Company, that morphed into MTV Networks Inc. just ahead of an IPO in 1984 — was obvious and a little creepy: apart from hourly entertainment news spots and studio interviews with music stars, MTV’s only content was music video clips produced by the major labels and provided to the new network free of charge (although it would not be long before the network would charge them to put a video into what was called ‘heavy rotation’). In other words, MTV was running ads for the record labels twenty‐four hours a day, seven days a week.

None of its growing audience gave a damn. “Too much is never enough” as one of MTV’s earliest promotional slogans put it. In keeping with the times, the new network was about as cynical as you could get.

“I think the relationship between authentic youth cultural happenings and youth culture consumption is indistinguishable,” Douglas Rushkoff, Professor of Media Culture at New York University, said in a recent interview. He might as well have simplified it to “culture and consumption”, because even by the ’80s the porous membrane between the two had already been breached — and not just among youth. Shopping was the primary cultural activity of most major cities in the developed world, and with more products competing across more programming choices — if not yet more media –—for the exponentially shorter attention of more consumers willing to spend more time and money on themselves than ever before, it was inevitable that marketers would have to look for other ways of ensuring, if not higher (or more conscious) awareness of their brands, then more constant visibility. We needed the brands to become ambient, ever‐present. “Turn it on, leave it on” – another MTV slogan.

It didn’t take genius to figure out that brands should behave like the media they used to distribute awareness of themselves. Nuances of meaning and emotional engagement could be different depending on how and where the brand insinuated itself into a consumer’s awareness: the medium was no longer just the message, as McLuhan had argued when, in 1967, he rewrote his most famous catchphrase, but rather the massage, the effect on our sensorium. Traditional advertising was, and still is, interruptive — it deliberately intersected the periods of attention we allotted to entertainment and information programming across what was, in the ’80s, a limited range of passive media — so the logical step was to create opportunities for brands, their product expressions and values to exist not only within the context of entertainment and information (still mainly as interruptive advertising), but also within the content.

Today, a high percentage of the multi‐million dollar marketing budgets (and sometimes the $100–200 million negative costs) of blockbuster feature films — usually the action‐driven franchises such as James Bond, Spiderman or X‐Men, the so‐called ‘tent‐pole pictures’ that prop up the intrinsically rickety balance sheets of Hollywood studios — are funded by product placement written into the scripts even before shooting begins. For example, Ford’s multi‐picture, multi‐brand relationship (including Aston Martin, Jaguar, and Range Rover) with the most recent series of Bond films starring Pierce Brosnan was said to have cost the ailing US car manufacturer over $US125 million; and in 2000, international courier Federal Express underwrote much of the production and marketing budgets of Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks as your average FedEx executive who is transformed into a modern Robinson Crusoe when the FedEx cargo plane on which he catches a ride crashes on a remote island in the Pacific.

Pop singers such as Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Jay‐Z, Kanye West and Nelly supplement their already extraordinary earnings from record sales, music publishing and touring with millions more dollars just for ‘name checking’ brands in songs that will pervade, for a short while, the awareness of a huge number of young, impressionable consumers impatient to realise their potential. Agenda, a US youth marketing company, even tracks what brands are mentioned most in the songs on US music charts to create a Top 40 chart of its own, American Brandstand. (The current Gen Y pop stars have studied Boomer formulae for appropriation and hype, now so refined that anyone can use them. Rather than rejecting them, they have embraced these formulae with such enthusiasm that, for the first time since the ’30s, youth culture appears to be ‘aspirationally older’.)

In some cases, entirely new, purpose‐built content has been created as brand vehicles — not only TV programming, film and music but also sporting and cultural events. The array of high profile, sponsored literary prizes in the UK is an example. Another is the unregulated, post‐apocalyptic version of ‘the world game’, played inside a locked cage, that Nike invented to promote its involvement in the 2002 World Cup hosted by both Korea and Japan. Nike featured it in a couple of award‐winning TV ads starring some of soccer’s best‐known international players. Then the US company built a real‐ life arena — a playing field deconstructed as theme park and sci‐fi movie set — in a Tokyo warehouse, where Japanese youth, its target consumers, could play it as well.

All sides of the marketing/media/consumer equation are still dominated by Baby Boomers. We are the most powerful consumer segment in the global economy, with aggregate gross earnings in the United States alone of US4.1 trillion dollars a year (and with a projected global entertainment media spend of $US1.8 trillion a year by 2010). If we are no longer at the white‐hot core of the hyper‐mediated consumerism that passes for popular culture these days, our money — and the parasitic tenaciousness with which we have wormed our way into the imaginative ambitions of other generations, usually to their detriment, since the mid‐60s — enables us to exert influence everywhere.

Advertising strategists, demographic researchers and academics argue that both Generations X and Y are inured to Baby Boomer attempts to market to them on anything but their own terms. “Young people have grown up immersed in the language of advertising and public relations. They speak it like natives,” Douglas Rushkoff writes in his 2000 book Coercion: Why We Listen To What They Say.“As a result, they are more than aware when a commercial or billboard is targeting them. In conscious defiance of demographic‐based pandering, they adopt a stance of self‐protective irony — distancing themselves from the emotional ploys of the advertisers.”

To some extent, this ignores the depth of the Baby Boomers’ experience. Boomers were still young when passive, pre‐programmed mass media began a slow transformation of its hardware, formats and programming, and we not only participated in the early evolution of interactive media — through which individualised information, entertainment, transaction and communication could eventually be accessed any time, anywhere — we were among its inventors. Media are as much a natural element for Boomers as they are for younger generations. We have appropriated, co‐opted or ‘remixed’ the disparate perceptions, attitudes and trends of four generations of youth culture distributed — and preserved — by old and new media in order to commoditise them (while sterilising any inherent idealism): how do you think we came up with the amorphous hip‐ness of The Gap’s t‐shirts and cargo pants, or Starbucks’ Beatnik‐manqué coffee lounges?

Will the younger generations ever break the ageing Boomers’ suffocating headlock on popular culture? To some extent, they have already by sharing music, video, games and software online. Baby Boomer executives, lobbyists and lawyers decry file‐sharing because it deprives a work’s creator of both income and control, and because it threatens all businesses — not just those in entertainment or publishing — which derive revenue and power from the licensing of intellectual property (in other words, most of the world’s largest corporations). Our real dread is file‐sharing’s subversive simplicity. All it needs is mass for it to erase traditional concepts of ownership and value.

The revolution starts there.

Part three of three. First published as part of a single essay in Griffith Review, Australia, 2006.

[oficmag]

Contributor Spotlight: Glenn

Issue #2 is now out in the world, and we are so excited to spotlight some of our stupendous sophomore contributors. We hope you all love them as much as we do!

Today’s spotlight is on Glenn, who wrote “Little Ghosts by Esos Ridley” for Issue #2.

Tell us a bit about yourself!

Glenn Dungan is currently based in Brooklyn, NYC. He exists within a Venn-diagram of urban design, sociology, and good stories. When not obsessing about one of those three, he can be found at a park drinking black coffee and listening to podcasts about murder.

How did you find fandom?

Submission Grinder

What fandom are you in now and what brought you here?

Comic books taught me to read and even to this day they hold a special place in my heart. It was the only childhood fascination of mine that has carried me through to adulthood. Bring on the superheroes! I was brought to OFIC because of their passion for fandoms and the fans within. Fandoms are a very personal thing, and being able to identify with others who have just as much fashion for their corner of Comic-Con is, at least from a sort of meta stand point, really, really inspiring! 

What’s your favorite book of all time and what do you love about it?

Jerusalem by Alan Moore. You might recognize the name from graphic novels like Watchmen and V for Vendetta. The book is a doorstopper and I honestly think you can wield it as a weapon if you were threatened in a library or something. It truly is that big! 

I love Moore's dedication to the craft of storytelling. This passion bleeds through every word and every page. It's not a book for readers. It's a book for writers. I could tell you more about it, but I wouldn't be able to do it justice. Just read it, read it, read it! 

What projects are you working on right now?

I am working on a collection of short stories based on Coney Island, a piece about AA for cannibals, and am currently querying for an urban fantasy novel that aims to combine Lovecraftian cosmic horror with the gig economy, which, as an aspiring author living in New York City, I am all too familiar with.

What are your aspirations as a writer, big picture or small?

I would love to write a comic book series one day, either my own independent story or an arc of X-Men or Spider-Man. Going bigger, I'd love to get something I wrote adapted into a movie, or better yet, an HBO series. I don't know how any of that stuff works, but HBO if you're reading this, please reach out. There are only so many messenger pigeons I can send to your offices before I start running out of birds and paper. 

If you could give one piece of advice to beginning writers, what would you tell them?

Write. Read. Write. Read. Write. Read authors who are better than you because it will make you want to be better. Read authors who (in your opinion) are horrible, because if they can get published, so can you. Then write some more and read some more. That's it. If you want to get better, you have to put in the time. 

THANK YOU FOR BEING A PART OF THE OFIC FAMILY, GLENN! WE’RE SO THRILLED TO SHARE YOUR ART WITH THE WORLD.

[musicismylife120191]

Labor experts and advocates on Wednesday expressed disbelief and outrage as the details of an "unconscionable" new bill purporting to expand "flexibility and choice" in workplaces came to light, condemning Democratic co-sponsor Rep. Henry Cuellar for proposing the gutting of minimum wage protections.

Aiming to create a new classification for people working in the gig economy for companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash, the bill would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 by establishing "worker flexibility agreements" in which a worker "will not be treated as an employee for federal tax purposes" and "is not subject to the minimum wage and overtime protections."

The proposal would not only affect gig workers, said Dubal, who is a professor at University of California Hastings College of Law, but would "carve workers out of minimum wage and overtime protections" whenever an employer sets work schedules "using algorithms and incentives instead of providing secure hours."

In other words, said former New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse, "it seems to empower any employer—not just gig companies—to tell any worker: if you want to work for me, you must agree we won't follow minimum wage or overtime rules."

[gigslist]

Old Fav Resources SellSouls

A couple of age old resources were my original inspirations for GigsList. I used to post some of their gigs on the original GigsList yahoo group. Since then my web tech geekdom has continued and I never stop learning. 

As the way of some older successful ideas go, a certain famous casting resource got sold a few times. The last time in 2013 to a company called RZ Capital, with offices in Brooklyn, New York and Mexico. Yes that’s right… Mexico! 

For readers not in the USA.  I asked a roadie friend from Los Angeles if a/any company with offices in Mexico is safe to do business with. I didn’t mention any company or business or person’s name. I can’t repeat my roadie friend’s response, due to dramatic language. Suffice to say it wasn’t rave reviews.  More on Mexico later in this piece.

The other shock I got was when I applied for a job in Australia with a certain famous casting resource  New business development. I still have a lot of high level contacts in Australia. It wasn’t that I didn’t get the job with a certain famous casting resource, that’s their loss. The shock was I got a bat response from a third party non-show-biz job site. OMFG! Sorry to God! Isn’t a certain famous casting resource supposed to be a recruiting site?

If you’ve been an avid reader of my scribbles for the past couple of years, you know I have a beef with bats. I also have a beef with arts and showbiz jobs outsourced to non arts and show biz. It seems that even major PR companies don’t know about bats. From what I’ve seen of recent publicity stunts, such as fake paparazzi car chases. How memorably embarrassing was that for the PR firm that recently signed them/her up? 

Bats work with algorithms to keep human posts and websites  down in search rankings. Your posts and websites. Backstage.com  using third party non showbiz recruiters and bats help keeps your search rankings down. It also separates and dilutes creative industries and economies. It might not look that way on your screen. But that’s only on your screen to keep you sedated. So you don’t know about or look for the bats. My fav allegory for it is squirrels. Searching for squirrel vids for your cat, then play one or two squirrel vids. Next day every second and third vid in your streams is squirrels. Sometimes also on platforms you didn’t play the squirrel vids on. 

The bat problem’s been around for quite a few years. But the more recent years it’s getting ultra nasty. Eating away at your’s and my incomes and human creative and production industries’ survival. a certain famous casting resource was bastion of old school arts and showbiz tradition to rely on. Now??? It’s gone the way of Nat Sherman cigarettes trying to look like American Spirits. It still sells, but… it doesn’t taste of the same old school traditional quality …

Back to Mexico. I tracked down the address of RZ Capital in Mexico on Googgle street view. It was an old broken door in a back alley. That so doesn’t make sense if a certain famous casting resource has swanky offices in Brooklyn and RZ on Madison Avenue New York. The staff in their swanky Brooklyn office look like nice people in their office photos. The old door in a back alley really doesn’t make sense. Especially in Mexico, where it’s a lot cheaper than New York or Brooklyn to live and do business. The Mexico office should be very swanky, yes? Or at least a swanky house or luxury apartment building. Nope, the broken old door in a back alley doesn’t make sense one iota. 

I tried looking up a certain famous casting resource partner site. But it’s ownership also seems to be different businesses owned by other businesses.  

So what gives? Now it gets even more creepy and controversial. In my web searches another RZ Capital kept popping up. Fosun RZ Capital, a Chinese investment group in China. Chinese gov kind of owns all Chinese companies in China. Basically they set up shell companies in other countries to buy companies in other countries. And thus hide the identity of the true owners who other countries might not get along with. 

Seriously, sites like that have some explaining to do!