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Tech giant Microsoft and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) have announced a new partnership to discuss how artificial intelligence (AI) can anticipate the needs of workers and include their voices in its development and implementation.
According to the AFL-CIO, the agreement’s goals include information sharing among labor leaders and workers on AI trends, incorporating worker perspectives and expertise in the development of AI, and helping shape public policy that supports the technology skills and needs of frontline workers.
Microsoft president Brad Smith said the agreement involves a collaborative effort with labor leaders to ensure AI benefits workers. AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler sees Microsoft’s neutrality framework and acknowledgment of workers’ expertise as a signal that the AI era can foster productive labor-management partnerships.
In 2022, Microsoft entered into a similar agreement with the Communications Workers of America, which focused on upholding workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively at Activision Blizzard. The tech giant was in the process of closing its acquisition of the video game producer at the time.
Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI — the U.S.-based nonprofit AI firm that created ChatGPT — and holds a 49% ownership stake. However, it has no voting rights and claims to have no operational control over the company. Microsoft has also developed a generative AI platform, Azure, which taps into OpenAI’s GPT products to expand its functionality.
Related: Microsoft faces UK antitrust probe over OpenAI deal structure.
Workers across numerous industries have expressed apprehension about the potential impact of AI on their jobs. In the entertainment sector, Hollywood actors went on strike in July to protest against an AI proposal by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The proposal advocated scanning background performers, compensating them for a single day and granting companies full ownership of the scan, image and likeness.
The emergence of generative AI has sparked concerns about its potential to significantly impact the job market. In May, IBM estimated that AI could replace around 7,800 jobs at the company within five years. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and xAI, went further, predicting that AI could eliminate the necessity for the contemporary workforce altogether.
Magazine: Real AI use cases in crypto, No. 3: Smart contract audits and cybersecurity
(Reuters) -Production workers at Ford’s Louisville assembly and Kentucky truck plants have voted against the tentative labor agreement, while skilled trades workers voted in favor, the local chapter of the United Auto Workers (UAW) said on Monday.
The ratification of the contract was voted down by 55% of the production workers whereas 69% of the skilled trades workers, which includes maintenance and construction employees backed it, the UAW Local 862 said in a Facebook post.
The union did not disclose the overall percentage of the votes in favor or the total number of votes cast.
The vote signals that approval of the deal, which is set to significantly raise Ford’s costs, is not guaranteed. The union and the company did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
The automaker had last month pulled its full-year forecast due to uncertainty over the pending ratification of the deal with the UAW.
Union workers are voting on contracts from each of Chrysler-owner Stellantis, GM and Ford, after the first coordinated strike against Detroit’s Big Three automakers.
Of the total votes cast at Ford’s various facilities so far, 70.7% of workers have voted in favor of the deal, according to a UAW vote tracker.
Workers at some of the company’s major plants including the Dearborn Truck plant in Michigan are yet to vote.
On Friday, union members at General Motors’ Flint assembly plant in Michigan narrowly voted against the proposed contract with the U.S. automaker.
(Reporting by Gokul Pisharody and Shivansh Tiwary in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil and Arun Koyyur)
Construction workers at a project in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, NY on Oct. 6th, 2023.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
The cost of labor unexpectedly declined in the third quarter, providing at least some relief on the inflation front, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
Unit labor costs, a measure of hourly compensation against productivity, fell 0.8% for the July-through-September period at a seasonally adjusted rate. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a gain of 0.7%. On a 12-month basis, unit labor costs increased 1.9%.
The breakdown reflected a 3.9% increase in hourly compensation, offset by a 4.7% rise in productivity.
That increase in productivity also was more than expected, beating the Dow Jones estimate for a rise of 4.3% for the biggest quarterly gain since the third quarter of 2020. Output climbed 5.9%, while hours worked rose 1.1%.
The developments come as the Federal Reserve is seeking to tamp down inflation through a series of interest rate increases.
On Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said wage gains “have really come down significantly over the course of the last 18 months to a level where they’re substantially closer to that level that would be consistent with 2% inflation over time,” the central bank’s target.
In other economic news Thursday, initial filings for unemployment benefits for the week ended Oct. 28 totaled a seasonally adjusted 217,000, up 5,000 from the previous period and higher than the 214,000 estimate, the Labor Department said in a separate report.
Continuing claims, which run a week behind, totaled 1.82 million, an increase of 35,000 and higher than the 1.81 million FactSet estimate.
By David Shepardson
(Reuters) -Toyota Motor said on Wednesday it is raising the wages of nonunion U.S. factory workers just days after the United Auto Workers union won major pay and benefit hikes from the Detroit Three automakers.
Hourly manufacturing workers at top pay will receive a wage hike of about 9% effective on Jan. 1, the company confirmed. Other nonunion logistics and service parts employees are getting wage hikes.
The largest Japanese automaker also said it is cutting the amount of time needed for U.S. production workers to reach top pay to four years from eight years and increasing paid time off.
The media and organizing project Labor Notes earlier reported the wage hikes and other details, citing a company document.
“We value our employees and their contributions, and we show it by offering robust compensation packages that we continually review to ensure that we remain competitive within the automotive industry,” Chris Reynolds, Toyota Motor North America’s executive vice president, said in a statement.
The pay of production Toyota workers in Kentucky at top scale will rise by $2.94 to $34.80 an hour.
Under the new tentative agreements with General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, UAW workers will receive a wage hike of 11% upon ratification and 25% in wage hikes through April 2028. UAW workers will also be given cost-of-living adjustments. The amount of time needed for workers to hit top pay will decrease to three years from eight years.
The top pay of UAW workers at Ford will initially rise to $35.58 and hour from $32.05.
For years, the UAW has unsuccessfully sought to organize U.S. auto plants operated by foreign automakers including Volkswagen and Nissan. UAW President Shawn Fain said his goal is to organize plants operated by other automakers after the Detroit Three deal.
“One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we’ve never organized before,” Fain said on Sunday. “When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the Big Three, but with the Big Five or Big Six.”
The UAW declined to comment on the Toyota wage hikes.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in WashingtonEditing by Chizu Nomiyama and Matthew Lewis)
With just 20 employees and a fleet of remote-controlled robots, a startup called PaintJet has managed to cover more than 1.5 million square feet of building exteriors and ships in less than three years.
The startup, based in Hendersonville, Tennessee, is the brainchild of CEO Nick Hegeman along with co-founders Steve Wasilowski and Sonia Chacko. They started the company after Hegeman drew inspiration from his first foray into business ownership: running a CertaPro Painters franchise in greater Nashville.
Hegeman tells CNBC: “With painting, the labor shortage hits you right in the face. It was not so much a challenge to sell and book work, but it was always a challenge to do the work. At one point, we were painting a 150,000-square-foot warehouse and I had to let go of a crew – it’s not ideal, but it happens. Then it was just myself and my wife painting a huge warehouse just to meet a customer deadline.”
Before the soreness from their exertion had even worn off, Hegeman, who is a mechanical engineer by training, began dreaming up systems that could meet the demands of a growing market for painting services as labor remained in tight supply.
Rather than engineering a complex humanoid robot to paint like a person, or some kind of autonomous wall crawler, PaintJet focused on pragmatic engineering. The team studied equipment that was already proven safe and widely used on jobs that are generally challenging for staff, such as painting the exterior of warehouses and data centers.
The company’s eventual solution was to build modular robotics that are attached to a lift, or “cherry picker,” like the ones commonly used to hoist construction workers to work high up on large buildings.
The PaintJet system is affixed to the basket of the lift as an “end effector” and includes cameras that scan the surface of a building, one 50-square-foot box at a time. After the area has been scanned, sprayer jets glide over, painting box by box until the job is complete. PaintJet operators on the ground use a remote control to operate both the lift and the end effectors.
Instead of selling or renting its robots out to construction crews, the startup offers an end-to-end service and maintains control of the entire painting process. PaintJet can use any commercially available paint in its machines, but also makes and sells its own line of paints.
One of the startup’s objectives is to help customers use as little paint as possible to get a job done, says Hegeman. “Paint can be expensive when you’re using so much of it, and a lot of paints contain toxic chemicals that nobody wants to touch,” the CEO said. The company’s precise application results in around 25% less paint being used than in a traditional application, he said.
Exterior paints typically include volatile compounds that make paint glide onto a surface more easily, stick there even through bad weather, and prevent rust, corrosion, or fungus and algae growth. Large ships, which PaintJet can also cover, need to include anti-fouling agents that also block mollusks from attaching themselves to the bottom of a boat. “The state of how smooth the bottom of the boat is really matters — if that starts getting rough you can lose 40% of your fuel economy on a ship,” Hegeman said.
Besides helping ships ensure fuel efficiency, commercial buildings — such as warehouses and data centers — can use paint with insulating properties to save on heating and cooling costs. PaintJet says its customers can see 9% savings in HVAC-related energy costs after they repaint.
New paints could make those savings even greater. SRI International, for example, has developed what it calls a “Self Cooling Paint,” that can cool the temperature of any surface down about 18 degrees (or 10 degrees Celsius) lower than the ambient air temperature.
While PaintJet’s early customers have included construction companies and real estate developers, the startup is aiming to expand rapidly within exterior painting, which it sees as a quarter-trillion-dollar industry. That means building and deploying more of its robot painters, and doubling or tripling headcount over the next year, Hegeman says.
PaintJet, which is incorporated as Foreman Technologies, has raised grant funding from 757 Accelerate in Virginia, and early stage venture funding from MetaProp in New York, Dynamo Ventures in Chattanooga and Pathbreaker, a San Francisco venture fund focused on robotics.
Pathbreaker’s founder and managing partner, Ryan Gembala, says PaintJet could potentially benefit from a number of climate and infrastructure-focused bills and programs in the U.S. But he invested in PaintJet well before initiatives like the Inflation Reduction Act.
“It was just fundamental business strength,” the investor said. “PaintJet is tapping into this $200 billion-plus paint market. And paint is everywhere! But the way it’s done today — it’s a service businesses where the employees are leaving. It’s just a very tough industry to maintain personnel-wise. This company has a novel tech approach that’s hard to replicate and they’re already exceeding customer expectations.”
Hegeman said the company is also developing capabilities to handle more tasks in construction and maintenance with robotics including pressure washing, caulking and sanding.
Don’t miss these CNBC PRO stories:
Say farewell to summer.
True, the season doesn’t officially end until Sept. 23 this year. But most of us consider the Labor Day weekend the unofficial end, and we often celebrate it by gathering with friends and family for picnics and barbecues, or by attending events of all kinds.
Of course, Labor Day, which falls on the first Monday in September, is really about something else — namely, it’s “an annual celebration of the social and economic achievements of American workers,” as the U.S. Department of Labor describes it. The commemoration dates back to the late 19th century and was made a legal U.S. holiday in 1894.
So naturally, there are many closings on Labor Day. Here’s what to keep in mind this year.
Is the stock market open on Labor Day?
All key markets — NYSE, Nasdaq and the bond markets — are closed.
Read more: Yes, the stock market is closed for Labor Day on Monday
Is the post office open on Labor Day?
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will not deliver mail on Monday. FedEx
FDX,
will not be operating, except for its Custom Critical shipments; FedEx Office stores will have modified hours. Similarly, UPS
UPS,
will not offer service, save for its Express Critical shipments; UPS Store locations are closed.
Are banks open on Labor Day?
Banks are generally closed on Labor Day, although you can always visit an ATM to withdraw money or deposit cash, and you can still use your banking app to transfer funds. Check with your local branch to be sure.
Are government offices open on Labor Day?
Since Labor Day is a federal holiday, all nonessential federal government offices are closed (and the same generally applies to state government offices).
Are schools open on Labor Day?
Schools are typically closed on Labor Day, though it’s always best to check with your local school district.
Are most stores open on Labor Day?
It’s a big three-day shopping weekend, and most stores are open throughout. But there are some exceptions — notably, Costco
COST,
locations are closed on Labor Day itself. Sales on such items as clothing, appliances, mattresses, grills and outdoor gear are common at many retailers during the holiday weekend.
The U.S. stock market will be closed for Labor Day on Monday, Sept. 4, along with the roughly $25 trillion Treasury market, giving workers an extra day for a long holiday weekend.
Labor Day typically represents the last blast of summer before school starts back up. Wall Street tends to mark the holiday by prepping billions of dollars in corporate bonds to sell for investors. This year, a $15.4 billion flurry of “junk-rated” bonds and loans are being lined up for sale, according to Bloomberg.
The market backdrop heading into the fall has been surprisingly strong and still without a recession. Despite a modest pullback in August, U.S. equities were still nearing record levels, with the AI-craze helping push up some technology stocks, including shares of Nvidia Corp.
NVDA,
to fresh highs.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP
was up 34.1% on the year through Thursday, scoring its best eight months before Labor Day in a year since 2003, according to Dow Jones Market Data. It was the strongest such stretch for the S&P 500
SPX
and Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA
since 2021.
Labor Day this year will be notable as well of the renewed focus on labor and strikes, in particular, or as MarketWatch’s Levi Sumagaysay puts it: Strikes beget strikes.
Listen: Revitalized unions ignite ‘hot labor summer’
Friday’s jobs report for Augusto showed a slowdown in hiring and an uptick in the unemployment rate to 3.8%, the highest level in a year and a half.
This Labor Day also ushers in a fresh push to get more workers back to the office, including by the federal government, starting in September and October. But with interest rates at a 22-year high and the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield
BX:TMUBMUSD10Y
above 4%, it isn’t a cure-all for the reeling office sector.
Read: Labor Day is just a ‘milestone’ in the marathon to get workers back to the office
And: Are banks open on Labor Day? Do UPS and FedEx deliver?
A woman with a Shein bag after entering its first physical store in Madrid, June 2, 2022.
Europa Press News / Contributor
Fast-fashion juggernaut Shein is facing more scrutiny from elected officials in the U.S. who want the company to prove it doesn’t use forced labor before it files for a widely rumored initial public offering.
Attorneys general from 16 states sent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler a letter last week asking the agency to ensure Shein and other foreign companies are following U.S. law before they’re permitted to trade on American exchanges.
“It is apparent that SHEIN is attempting to launch an IPO before the end of this calendar year. An IPO of this magnitude—involving a foreign-owned company that is facing credible concerns about its core business practices—cannot move forward on self-certification alone,” the missive, written by Montana’s Attorney General Austin Knudsen and signed by 15 other Republican attorney generals, stated.
“We urge you to require, as a condition of being listed on a U.S. based securities exchange, that any foreign-owned company certify via a truly independent process that it is compliant with Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which prohibits the import of any product manufactured wholly or in part by forced labor.”
The letter was sent Thursday, the same day the company announced it was taking a stake in Forever 21’s parent company Sparc Group.
Shein has faced accusations that it used forced labor from the Xinjiang region in China to fuel its meteoric rise as rumors swirl that it is preparing to go public. The company’s supply chain has a large presence in China, where it was founded, but U.S. law prohibits imports from Xinjiang because of widespread human rights abuses against Uyghurs in the region.
The company is currently under investigation by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which has also accused Shein of evading U.S. tariff law. The probe comes as U.S. lawmakers from both parties increasingly scrutinize companies from China or those with potential ties to its government.
The letter cited a Bloomberg story published last year that showed, via independent testing, that some Shein clothes were made with cotton from the Xinjiang region.
Shein has faced enormous blowback from the report. The accusations have become a major hurdle the retailer must overcome before it can grow its presence in the U.S. and go public.
At the time of the Bloomberg report, Shein and its executives rarely spoke publicly. But since then, it has become more open to press, and has acknowledged to CNBC that some of its cotton supply has been found to come from the Xinjiang region.
To test its cotton, it contracted the supply chain tracing firm Oritain, which says it’s able to track the origin of cotton fibers down to specific farms. Between June 2022 and July 2023, it has conducted 2,111 tests, which resulted in 46 positive results, or a rate of 2.1%, from banned regions, Peter Pernot-Day, Shein’s head of strategy and corporate affairs, told CNBC.
“These are in raw materials so when we have a raw material positive test, that means that raw material is removed from production,” Pernot-Day said.
Oritain, which bills itself as an independent firm, previously confirmed those results to Politico and said Shein has fared better than the fashion industry on average.
Each year, the company tests more than 1,000 cotton samples. During a recent testing round across the industry, Oritain found 12% of samples came up positive for an “unapproved region,” Politico previously reported.
Pernot-Day said one of Shein’s primary objectives at the moment is to get its positive test results down to zero. To do that, it is conducting testing from all 40 of its mills each month, and stopped buying cotton from China altogether, Pernot-Day said.
The U.S. had more than 9 million open roles in June, and while that’s down from the peak of 12 million in March 2022, it’s still among the highest number of openings we’ve had since before 2000.
“You’re talking about passing up something like $1 trillion in production every year that these jobs go unfilled,” David J. Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, told CNBC.
With 5.8 million unemployed workers in the U.S., some economists say all of these roles are unlikely to be filled by people currently living in the U.S.
Currently, American immigration policies bar many employers from hiring unskilled migrants.
Bier explained, “In 1986, Congress banned people working without authorization in the U.S. They made it impossible to hire someone who was in the U.S. illegally or without employment authorization.”
Now, some argue this protects workers already living in the U.S., but the public is split almost evenly on this. Fifty-one percent of Americans surveyed by the Cato Institute worry immigration could reduce the number of jobs available.
Meanwhile, the number of job openings remains at historic levels. Darrell Bricker, co-author of “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline” and CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs said, “The effect of a shrinking aging population is a decline in innovation, combined with the fact that you’re just going to run out of the things that drove economic growth.”
He continued, saying there is “a huge opportunity for the United States to blunt some of the effects of fertility decline and population aging by having an immigration policy that may be a bit more focused, not necessarily on just accepting anybody for compassionate reasons, but for bringing in people to fill in those skill gaps.”
Bricker’s home country of Canada has a much more open immigration policy and credits its Covid pandemic recovery in part to its approach to immigration.
Dany Barah, associate professor of the practice of international and public affairs at Brown University and a Venezuelan immigrant, said, “One could argue that Canada has benefited a lot from the broken migration system in the U.S.”
Bahar and his colleagues are developing what they’re calling the Occupational Opportunity Network to help keep decision-makers informed about how migrants can help the U.S. economy grow.
“By looking at every occupation in every locality in the U.S. and projections and historical data, we’re able to actually come up with numbers that are much higher than the current caps in the U.S. system and we hope that these numbers are going to be the basis for a comprehensive immigration reform,” he told CNBC.
However, not all immigration experts agree we need more open borders. Simon Hankinson, senior research fellow, border security and immigration center, at the Heritage Foundation said: “We’re in a really unique environment at the moment. We’re sort of testing, pushing the envelope of our national sovereignty and our ability to to absorb people.”
Hankinson explained the current visa system, specifically in the case of the HB-1 visa, undercuts the skilled labor market by bringing in workers from abroad. “It’s never allowed the market to exercise that function where the wages go up and then people are tempted to go into those fields and fill those jobs.”
Watch the video to learn more about how U.S. immigration policies impact economic growth and how the U.S. can fix it.