On Thursday, Tesla denied media reports that it fired employees who chose to stay at home during the coronavirus pandemic, rather than expose themselves to possible infection at Elon Musk's California factory. Read the rest

Unions that represent 60,000 hospitality workers in Las Vegas and Reno sued three Nevada casino properties Monday, claiming dangerous working conditions that fail to protect workers from the still accelerating coronavirus outbreak. Read the rest

Amazon says it will deploy an artificial intelligence surveillance system in warehouses that tells workers if they are too close to colleagues, as the coronavirus pandemic rages on and workers are placed at risk. Read the rest

• U.S. jobless claims totaled 2.98 million last week, unemployment is close to 16% Read the rest

Tesla worker: 'We’re extremely frustrated, angry, scared, that Elon is putting his cars before his workers.'

Tesla's chief executive said he reopened production at the company’s Fremont, California factory Monday, which Musk said he knew was a violation of public health orders. Read the rest

New jobs report from U.S. released on Friday:

JOBS LOST IN APRIL: 20.5 million

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE: 14.7%

This is the worst U.S. jobs report since the World War II era. Read the rest

The plant is “built around efficiency,” keeping workers in close quarters and making it impossible to social distance, Cargill says

Smithfield Foods, Inc. recently closed a major pork processing plant in South Dakota, after workers were sickened with coronavirus in what has since become an outbreak hotspot.

Now, U.S.-owned Cargill is cutting production at one of Canada's biggest beef-packing plants, after several dozen Cargill meat processing workers there were confirmed ill with the new coronavirus. Read the rest

'For the first time in our history, the government is going to step in and help pay people's wages,' Rishi Sunak announces

The UK government will pay up to 80% of wages for workers who are at risk of being laid off due to the coronavirus pandemic, the chancellor has announced.

The United States is not doing anything like this, or discussing anything like this.

Why isn't the purportedly richest and most powerful and most awesomest country in the world, ours, doing the same -- or something close -- for the millions of suddenly jobless workers? Oh yeah, a corporate tax cut instead. And a single thousand-dollar check, or something. Thanks, GOP Senate. Read the rest

Four senators, including Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, have written a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to ask what measures are being taken to protect warehouse workers from COVID-19. The coronavirus outbreak that causes this deadly disease has now infected more than 20,000 people throughout America. Read the rest

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has opened an investigation into a former Google employee’s pregnancy discrimination case, CNBC reports. Read the rest

An estimated 550 people who worked at Wayfair lost their jobs last Thursday, in what has been dubbed Wayfair's 'Valentine's Day Massacre.'

The layoffs included 350 workers at the online shopping firm's Boston headquarters. Read the rest

Smarter people than me have pointed out that "work-life balance" says the quiet part out loud, implicitly confirming that you stop living when you're at work. Miles Matrix's Dungeons and Deadlines makes all this much realer with acerbic wit and rockin' chiptunes. My spouse left me after five turns. (via Four Short Links) Read the rest

The China Law Blog (previously) is one of my favorite sources of insight into the secret workings of the businesses that produce the majority of the world's daily-use goods. Read the rest

If you are trying to find work in South Korea, you are likely to be interviewed by a bot that uses AI to scan your facial expressions to determine whether or not you are right for the job. Read the rest

About five years ago, I was trying to get a bunch of Big Tech companies to take the right side of an urgent online civil rights fight, and I called an old friend who was very senior at one of the biggest tech companies in the world; they told me that it wasn't going to work, in part because the kinds of people who were coming to tech were there because they wanted to get as rich as possible, no matter what they had to do. My friend contrasted this with earlier eras -- even the dotcom bubble -- when the financial motive was blended with a genuine excitement for the transformative potential of tech to make a fairer, more equitable world. Now, my friend said, the kind of kid who would have gotten an MBA was instead getting an electrical engineering or computer science degree -- not out of any innate love for the subject, but because that was a path to untold riches. Read the rest

This week, the Communications Workers of America -- one of the largest industrial unions in the country -- launched the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), which seeks to unionize people working for game and tech companies. Read the rest