The COVID-19 pandemic changed how we live, how we work, how we get from where we live to where we work or even if we have to leave where we live to get to where we work. But the number of workers that have had their commutes shortened from 45 minutes to 45 feet constitute only a fraction of the American workforce — the remainder are still making the twice daily trek. In his new book, Going Remote: How the Flexible Work Economy Can Improve Our Lives and Our Cities, urban economist Matthew E. Kahn examines how this tectonic shift in work-life balance might eventually play out, as well as the increased economic and social stratification it could bring about.

UC Press

Excerpted from Going Remote: How the Flexible Work Economy Can Improve Our Lives and Our Cities by Matthew E Kahn, published by the University of California Press. © 2022 by Matthew E Kahn.

Not everyone can engage in remote work. If 35 percent of the workforce is engaged in remote work at least a few days a week, this will have at least three effects on other workers. First, service jobs demand will rise in the residential areas where remote workers move to. As remote workers move farther from city centers, this will create exurban demand for service workers at the Starbucks and other stores where they shop. Land prices are cheap at the suburban fringe and the purchasing power of such local service providers will be higher than if they sought jobs in the center city. While service workers cannot work remotely, they can move to remote locations where rents are cheaper if more people work from home. If 35 percent of the workforce begins to work from home three days a week and thus are home five days a week, there is a demand for a service sector in areas where they live. This creates new jobs for less educated workers in such areas. In these areas, housing is cheap. This increases the quality of life for such service providers. There will also be new construction jobs as new homes are built farther from the employment centers. Families who spend more time at home will invest money to upgrade the home. This creates new opportunities for those who supply home improvement services. Some people may add a new office to their home or other features to customize it to their needs.

While there are significant opportunities for less skilled workers to live and work far from the cities in the cheaper parts of metropolitan areas, one countervailing force is the rising minimum wage. In cities, the minimum wage is usually not binding as workers must be paid higher nominal wages to attract them. In contrast, in more suburban and exurban areas, being required to pay service workers $15 or more per hour may reduce demand for workers. If workers can find very cheap housing far from the cities, then many would be willing to work for less than $15 an hour. While most people think that a high minimum wage is “good” for low-skill workers, economists emphasize the likely unintended consequence. When employers are required by law to pay a higher than competitive market wage to people, they create fewer jobs. For example, such firms can substitute and rely on robots or other pieces of capital. Economists argue that a higher minimum wage increases unemployment for less skilled workers. In places where housing is cheaper, the minimum wage will more likely be a binding constraint on employers. The net result here is perhaps counterintuitive. Less skilled workers will gain more from the rise of WFH when they live and work in states with less generous minimum wages.

Throughout this chapter, I have focused on how the WFH eligible reconfigure their lives to make the most of this new opportunity. Here it is important to note that those who are currently not WFH eligible are not locked into this category. Younger workers can retrain in fields to open up this possibility for themselves. Parents of younger children can make investments in their children to raise their probability of being WFH eligible in the future.

Those who work in the service industry and thus earn a living from face-to-face interaction still gain from the rise of WFH because they gain from a larger menu of options of where to live their lives. If a wealthy environmentalist community forms in Bozeman, Montana, then this creates new opportunities for those in the service sector to live and work there. While this option may not be attractive to everyone, the key is to increase the menu of possibilities. Non-WFH-eligible workers know themselves and their life goals, and they will make the right choices for themselves and gain from having a larger menu of alternatives.

As more people have the opportunity to live and work where they want to be, this increases not only their physical and mental health but also the accountability of our institutions. If there are places whose governments are failing to meet the desires of local residents, then people will be more likely to move away. In this setting, real estate prices will more quickly reflect changes in local quality of life. If an area features a rising crime rate, in the new WFH economy people will “vote with their feet” and real estate prices will decline in that area. This demands that local officials be more responsive in addressing emerging quality-of-life challenges because if they fail to do so, the tax base will shrink.

While this has been an optimistic chapter, I must add a few cautionary notes about concentrated urban poverty. WFH creates an incentive for the American people to spread out. This chapter has sketched out the benefits from this emerging trend. At the same time, such suburbanization may contribute to the further isolation of the urban poor. Poor people live in center cities in areas such as Baltimore and Detroit because there is old, cheap housing and there is good public transit. If the poor remain in these center city areas and richer people are suburbanizing, then there is greater geographic isolation of the poor and this may reduce political support for programs that redistribute to them because there is an “out of sight, out of mind” effect and the physical distance between the groups acts as a type of moat. Past research in urban economics has documented that college graduates are more likely to suburbanize when violent crime increases in the center city. This propensity to engage in “flight from blight” is likely to increase in a WFH economy because educated people no longer commute to center city jobs five times a week.

Cydia’s antitrust case against Apple can move forward, according to Reuters. On Thursday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, the same judge that oversaw the case between Apple and Epic Games, ruled Cydia’s creator, Jay “Saurik” Freeman, could present his claim against the company after rejecting a bid by Apple to dismiss the complaint.

Freeman first sued Apple at the end of 2020, alleging the company had an “illegal monopoly over iOS app distribution.” Judge Gonzalez Rogers dismissed Cydia’s initial complaint against Apple, ruling the suit fell outside the statute of limitations. But she also granted Freeman leave to amend his case, which is what he did. In its latest complaint, Cydia argues that iOS updates Apple released between 2018 and 2021 constituted “overt” acts that harmed distributors like itself. That’s a claim Judge Gonzalez Rogers found credible enough to explore.

"To the extent plaintiff's claims rely on Apple's technological updates to exclude Cydia from being able to operate altogether, those claims are timely," the judge said in her ruling.

Cydia is seeking damages from Apple (the company stopped processing purchases in 2018) and hopes to force the tech giant to open iOS to third-party payments and app distributors. Opening the App Store to more competition is something US lawmakers are considering as well, with the Senate Judiciary Committee recently advancing the Open App Markets Act. If enacted, the law would force Apple to allow sideloading on iOS and prevent the company from locking developers into its payments system.

Xbox head Phil Spencer reportedly said he would recognize a union at Raven Software once Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is complete, according to a recording of today’s all-hands company meeting viewed by Kotaku. QA testers at Raven earlier this week voted to unionize, becoming the first organized workers within a AAA gaming studio in North America to do so. 

“Once the deal closes, we would absolutely support [an] employees’ organization that’s in place,” said Spencer. “We think it is a right of employees and something that can be a part of a relationship between a company and people who work at the company.”

Microsoft has previously said it wouldn’t “stand in the way” of unionization efforts at the game studio. “Microsoft respects Activision Blizzard employees’ right to choose whether to be represented by a labor organization and we will honor those decisions,” said the company’s corporate vice president Lisa Tanzi in an interview with the Washington Post in March.

The FTC is currently investigating Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which the agency must approve before the deal is finalized. According to The Information, the FTC probe — which will mainly look into any anti-competitive impacts of the deal — will also focus on how it effects Activision’s current labor force, particularly workers who have lodged discrimination and harassment complaints against the company.

The Santa Monica-based videogame publisher has faced or is in the midst of addressing a number of lawsuits regarding its workplace, including one filed earlier this month by the New York City Employees Retirement System that alleges it devalued pension plans by failing to address allegations of workplace sexual discrimination and harassment. Meanwhile, both the SEC and DOJ are investigating Activision and its CEO for potential insider trading that occurred in advance of the Microsoft deal being made public.

Raven's QA testers began unionization efforts last year after the company abruptly terminated 12 contractors. This followed long-running claims from Raven testers that they aren't compensated as well as those in similar roles at Activision, as well as engage in "crunch" — a term for the often brutally long overtime hours many in the video game industry are expected to work in order to ship products on schedule. The company made attempts to disperse the team internally and otherwise frustrate the organizing process, ultimately without success. Overwhelmingly the vote swung in favor of unionization (19 voted for, while only three voted against). Both parties have until May 31st to file any objections; barring that, NLRB will certify the GWA union — after which point Activision will be obligate to begin negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with Raven workers, regardless of the outcome of the Microsoft merger.

Engadget has reached out to Xbox and the Game Workers Alliance for comment on Spencer’s remarks, and will update if we hear back.

Elon Musk is facing yet another lawsuit over his planned Twitter acquisition. Reutersreports investors have sued the Tesla CEO for allegedly manipulating stock prices ahead of his $44 billion takeover bid. As in an earlier suit, Musk supposedly saved $156 million by failing to disclose that he'd bought more than a 5 percent stake in Twitter by March 14th, violating SEC rules. The investors said Musk only disclosed his investments in early April, when he revealed that he owned a 9.2 percent slice of the social network.

Musk's post-announcement statements also amounted to manipulation, the investors said. They were particularly concerned about his claim that the deal was "on hold" until Twitter could prove that bots weren't a major problem and represented less than 5 percent of accounts.

The plaintiffs in the case are hoping for class action status, and ask for unspecified damages if they're successful. Twitter has declined comment, and Musk hadn't responded to Reuters' requests for comment.

Musk's hoped-for purchase has already sparked a flurry of legal action. In addition to the previously mentioned lawsuit from April, a Florida pension fund sued Musk for purportedly violating a Delaware law that would bar the merger until 2025. The SEC, meanwhile, is investigating Musk's disclosure timing. There's no certainty any of these actions will succeed, but they still pose serious challenges to Musk's ambitions.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has launched a second investigation into Google's ad tech practices. This probe, in particular, will look into the role Google plays in the "ad tech stack," or the set of services that facilitate the sale of online advertising space between advertisers and sellers like online content providers. The organization explained that Google has strong positions at various levels of the ad tech stack and charges fees to both publishers and advertisers. 

It's examining three key parts of the stack in which Google plays key roles, since it owns the largest providers for each. CMA will examine Google's practices for demand-side platforms, which give advertisers and media agencies a way to buy a publishers' space for advertising from many sources. It will also look into the company's practices relating to ad exchanges that can automate the sale of publishers' inventory. Finally, the CMA will examine Google's publisher ad servers that manage a publisher's inventory to decide which ad to show at a given time based on the bids and direct deals for the space. 

Google's practices — if indeed questionable — could distort competition, the CMA said. It could contractually tie these various services together, for instance, so users won't have a choice but to go with Google all the way, making it difficult for smaller rival services to compete. 

According to Andrea Coscelli, the CMA's Chief Executive:

"Weakening competition in this area could reduce the ad revenues of publishers, who may be forced to compromise the quality of their content to cut costs or put their content behind paywalls. It may also be raising costs for advertisers which are passed on through higher prices for advertised goods and services."

The organization is also investigating whether Google and Meta colluded over ads. That probe is all about digging into the advertising agreement between the two companies codenamed "Jedi Blue" and figuring out if that deal hinders competition in online advertising. 

Apple will start paying its corporate and retail employees more likely in hopes that they won't leave the company to find better prospects. According to CNBC and The Financial Times, the company will also raise its starting wage for new employees to $22 an hour, up from $20. Further, it will start giving some annual increases in salary starting in July instead of in the autumn. The tech giant didn't discuss specific details on how it will change its compensation structure, but it told the publications:

"Supporting and retaining the best team members in the world enables us to deliver the best, most innovative, products and services for our customers. This year as part of our annual performance review process, we're increasing our overall compensation budget."

A previous Bloomberg report said Apple is paying its sales staff, Genius Bar support personnel and senior hourly workers by as much as 10 percent more, though it's unclear if this is the same pay hike. Retail employees in various Apple Store locations started planning to form unions earlier this year in their quest for better pay and benefits. Inflation in the US has reached 8.5% in March, forcing people to look for better compensation as the cost of goods in the country reach new heights. 

At the same time, labor shortages caused by the pandemic have bolstered workers' confidence in challenging their employers and solidified plans to unionize across industries. While the company is raising employee compensation, it has also been accused of union busting by retail workers. A leaked video even showed Deirdre O’Brien, its VP of people and retail, trying to dissuade the company’s employees from joining a union. 

Apple isn't the only tech giant trying to hold on to its workforce and to prevent them from unionizing by increasing their salaries. Amazon more than doubled its base pay cap for corporate and tech employees, Google revamped its annual review process so that it results in increased salaries and Microsoft promised its people that pay increases are on the way.

A slowing economy continues to affect the tech industry, as NVIDIA has become one of the first chipmakers to announce a pullback on new hiring, according to memos seen by The New Indian Express and confirmed by Protocol. That lines up its comments during its latest earnings release, when it said that it expects sales of GPUs for gaming consoles and PCs to decline in the current quarter. "Overall the gaming market is slowing," CEO Jensen Huang told Reuters. 

NVIDIA actually had a solid previous quarter, with revenue up 46 percent over last year to $8.29 billion. It also noted that its "gearing up for the largest wave of new products in our history" with new GPU, CPU, DPU and robotics processors coming online in the second half of the year. 

However, it forecast lower revenue than the market expected for next quarter. And internally, the company appears to be bracing for a slowdown. "Onsite interviews... continue, but we will raise our standard to the highest levels," it reportedly said in a Slack message. "We were told that leadership wants to take a pause to onboard the thousands of new hires we've recently made." The company also told Protocol that it's slowing hiring "to focus our budget on taking care of existing employees as inflation persists.

NVIDIA will be joining a number of tech companies, including Lyft, Uber and Snap, in announcing hiring slowdowns. Tech companies have been hit particularly hard by economic headwinds cause by COVID lockdowns in China and the war in Ukraine. NVIDIA, however, was expected to weather events due to continued strong demand in the GPU market that has kept prices high and supply short. 

Apple’s vice president of people and retail Deirdre O’Brien tried to dissuade the company’s employees from joining a union in an internal video leaked to several media outlets. In the video — which was sent to all of Apple’s 65,000 retail employees in the US — O’Brien tells workers that a union would slow down the company’s efforts to address worker concerns.

“We have a relationship that’s based on an open and collaborative and direct engagement, which I feel could fundamentally change if a store is represented by a union under a collective bargaining agreement. To put another organization in the middle of our relationship that does not have a deep understanding of Apple or our business. And one that I do not believe shares our commitment to you,” she said in the video.

Unionization efforts are currently underway at a number of US Apple retail stores following months of worker-led protests over low pay and long hours, including union drives occurring in retail stores in Towson, Maryland, Atlanta, and New York City. A number of retail workers recently accused the company of union-busting. Earlier this month the Communication Workers of America — the union which is seeking to represent workers at the Atlanta location — filed an Unfair Labor Practice filing with the NLRB, accusing the company of holding mandatory “captive audience” meetings with bargaining unit employees.

O’Brien emphasized that a union would block Apple’s efforts to respond swiftly to worker concerns. “Apple moves incredibly fast,” she said in the video. “It’s one thing I love about our work in retail. It means that we need to be able to move fast too. And I worry that because the union will bring its own legally mandated rules that would determine how we work through issues it could make it harder for us to act swiftly to address things that you raise."

The tech giant in February announced it would expand its benefits for US retail employees, including offering paid parental leave and more sick days. It also raised the pay for a number of retail employees. But critics say that the company took these steps amidst a tightening labor market, after years of media coverage and complaints from Apple’s retail workers about the low pay and strenuous work environment.

Despite already struggling to meet production targets, luxury EV maker Lucid has now issued a recall for the Air due to potential issues stemming from the car's wiring harness.

In a recent notice posted on the NHTSA website spotted by Lucid Insiders, a summary for the recall says unsecured wires on 2022 Air vehicles could cause the car's displays to turn off. And because the Air's displays contain critical information including speed, range and warning indicators, this would present a hazard in violation of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.

The notice states that the potential number of affected vehicles is 1,117. That means with Lucid having delivered less than 1,000 cars to date, the recall appears to cover all 2022 Air Dream Edition and Grand Touring models. For any potentially affected owners, you can get more info by calling Lucid's customer service at 1-888-995-8243 and mentioning recall number NCR-22-01-0.

Official notification letters are slated to be sent out on June 20th Meanwhile, for cars that are subject to the recall, the NHTSA says Lucid dealers will be responsible for inspecting vehicles and addressing the issue as needed, free of charge.

Going forward, Lucid Insiders claims the company has already started making adjustments to the glass canopy on new vehicles to prevent any issues with unsecured wires. However, perhaps the bigger concern is that this recall comes just a few months after Lucid recalled 200 cars for having front strut dampers that may have been improperly installed by a supplier. And with reservations for the Air now exceeding 25,000 cars, ironing out any issues will be hugely important if Lucid hopes to deliver those vehicles in a timely manner.

Drivers for Amazon’s rapidly growing third-party delivery partner network are being hurt on the job with shocking frequency according to data compiled in a new report by the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC) — and the rate of injuries increased dramatically between 2020 and 2021.

Among the Delivery Service Partner (DSP) drivers it found OSHA data for, SOC claims there was "nearly one injury per five full-time-equivalent workers" in 2021 — an incident rate of 18.3. The Bureau of Labor Statistics's most recent incident rate average among "couriers and express delivery services" stands at just 7.5 per 100. According to SOC, the 2021 injury numbers represent an approximately 40 percent increase from the previous year.

There are some important limitations to the findings SOC — which itself is a collaboration between Service Employees International Union, Teamsters, Communications Workers of America and United Farmworkers of America — published however. Because DSPs are subcontracted, their injury data is submitted individually to OSHA; SOC was able to obtain incident logs for 201 such delivery companies that work with Amazon, but estimates that pool represents just ten percent of the total DSP workforce. Still, given the wealth of reporting on injury rates among Amazon's warehouse staff, the report indicates that trend may be broadly applicable to the company's workforce.

Working for a DSP, according to a lawsuit filed by one such company earlier this year, involves assenting to "near complete control" by Amazon without the ecommerce giant providing the "required safeguards." DSP drivers are also regularly monitored by Amazon through the company’s Mentor app and surveillance cameras installed in their vehicles. According to one driver in Indianapolis that SOC spoke to in March, Amazon uses a system of scores that rank drivers against their own co-workers in terms of delivery speed and completion rate; the driver said she knew of 15 drivers who were terminated for not meeting Amazon’s performance demands. The aforementioned lawsuit notes that “exceedingly aggressive time limits that could rarely be safely met” are a mainstay.

"This report cherry-picks data from less than 10% of our delivery partners to tell an inaccurate and misleading story," Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, told Engadget. "Safety is a priority across our network, which is why we’ve rolled out technology like innovative camera systems that have helped lead to an overall reduction in accident rates of nearly 50%, and we’ll keep investing in new safety tools to try and get better every day.” It's not clear if DSPs are obligated to share their injury data with Amazon as well as OSHA; Engadget has reached out for clarification.

The DSP program — which Amazon first launched in 2018 to reduce its reliance on USPS, UPS and Fedex — has grown rapidly since then to a network of over 2,000 companies. As Bloombergnoted, many DSP operators are veterans, retirees, first-time business owners and other neophytes to the logistics business. The same productivity demands placed on drivers are similarly leveraged against DSP owners who have reported razor-thin margins, and a feeling of being trapped in the program by "exit fees" if they choose to leave.