Posted on 05/01/2019 11:30:15 AM PDT by matt04
A few years ago, Marriott debuted a new app at hotels in five cities that was supposed to save housekeepers time by telling them which rooms to clean. It was a disaster.
Housekeepers ended up yo-yoing between rooms on different floors, ignoring messy rooms just down the hall. If anything, the cleaners felt that the app made them less efficient, and they worried about being disciplined by their bosses for failing to finish their work on time. A wild-goose chase is how Rachel Gumpert, a spokeswoman for Unite Here, the labor union that represents Marriotts housekeepers, describes the episode.
Several months after the union became aware of the problems the app was causing, Marriotts hotel workers went on strike, partly because of new technologies like the housekeeping app. In December, after intense negotiations, the hotel workers won a remarkable concessiona new contract that requires management to tell them 150 days in advance about new technology so they can raise any concerns.
...
In the retail industry, software for scheduling employee hours is a big sticking point, says Carrie Gleason, who directs the Fair Workweek Initiative at the advocacy group The Center for Popular Democracy. The technology weighs the hours when stores are expected to be busy or empty to schedule workers, creating a so-called just-in-time workforce.
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In reaction, some unions representing retail workers have recently negotiated contracts that spell out how management can use scheduling software, to avoid disrupting the lives of employees. One example is a 2014 contract between the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 and retail firm Macys that requires advance notice to workers about their schedules and any changes to them.
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
Let the Unions try to stop technology, they, i mean, their "brothers and sisters" will strike themselves out of jobs while the Union bosses keep their 6 figure salaries.
Unions, with their often outrageous demands to extort luxurious bennies or risk a costly strike and the bad PR that goes with it, are the CAUSE of automation and tech takeover. (And movement offshore.)
Unions are insignificant and only 7% of the private sector is even in a union. They have little power to affect anything.
I wonder how much of that 7% are in non-RTW states? If National RTW were a thing, I’m willing to bet that 7% would be reduced to the low single digits.
The more you they do this kind of stuff the more incentive employers have to rid themselves of unionized workers. A downward spiral the Unions are incapable of seeing.
Was the Jetsons' maid Rosie a member of a union?
Did she have the right to vote?
I'm sure the democrats will be wanting to sign up all robots as socialist democrats.
Years ago I worked a part-time job where the schedule changed every week. I asked why we couldn’t be scheduled the same hours every week and was told that the scheduling software didn’t allow for that. The place was only open from 6 am to 6 pm. Weird...
Bring back treadmill power.
The marriot app sounds like a fine idea but poorly designed. Proper algorithm design could minimize yoyoing.
Unions trying to keep the extortion and vote power going....
It’s not going to be unions stopping technology, it’s going to be our ruling class. The need for massive and unending immigration from the third world is their goal. Needing the workers is just an excuse. They want to replace the population. Muh free market for labor is just a way to get the right side of the equation to go along with it. How far are we from robots picking lettuce? Probably not far. At least they won’t poop on it.
Surely you can get wooden shoes in bulk on Amazon. Maybe they could use them. ;)
For those in Rio Linda, it’s about Luddites. :)
When I was in a union I kept reminding the leadership that the members needed jobs to actually have a union.
No jobs, no reason to have a union.
Absolutely. And the programmers probably did the most half-assed job possible, despite the requirements they received and simply wrote an app they took each “this room needs to be cleaned” in the order received and once one was cleaned assigned the next one in the list to that crew even if it was on the 12th floor and they were on 3.
Should have grouped it by floors, ad if no more work was available on the 3rd floor then you change floors, etc.
That’s why electronic medical records haven’t turned out to be the panacea they were touted to be.
Doctors and nurses in hospitals hate them. They take up incredible amounts of time that could be devoted to patient care. Instead, everyone feels the pressure to “tend” to the computers first.
Don’t think patients don’t notice.
I've been saying this for a while now. Many developers of software that is targeted to end users requires very little programming. They now configure "black boxes" to interface together. Their logic is lost and undeveloped.
Yes. EMR vendors have their own special circle in hell.
Part of it is the result of government meddling and part of it is just sheer incompetence, but, as far as I can tell, all the EMR systems are just different flavors of craptastic. I feel sometimes like I’m living through the mid 90s again when it comes to medical software, and the good old days weren’t all that good in that respect.
I happen to manage technology for a rural health system so I have to live this stuff every day.
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