Defend customer privacy & Globetech workers’ jobs

By Mick Barry TD 

A recent controversy about Apple’s Siri voice assistant raised important questions about consumer privacy and workers’ rights.

The case came to light in the pages of The Guardian after a worker in Cork blew the whistle on a quality control programme which involved employees having to listen to tens of thousands of Siri voice recordings without customer consent.

Invasion of privacy 

These recordings included instances of the voice assistant being accidentally activated and recording conversations between people.

After The Guardian published the story, workers at GlobeTech (one of the two companies contracted to do the work) were sent home on full pay.  Two and a half weeks later, they were called back in, told that the contract had been terminated and were then dismissed with one week’s pay.

Half the workers were Irish, many were from other EU countries, and some had come from outside the EU on work contracts.

Apart from those workers who had travelled halfway across the world to take on the job, there were others who had given up alternative employment to work for GlobeTech/Apple.

Controversy ensued.  The Socialist Party and Solidarity were to the fore in highlighting the scandalous treatment of the workers.

Role of trade unions

Apple have now been forced to give commitments that customers will have to opt-in in future to allow their recordings to be “graded”, that such work will be done in-house in future by Apple workers, and that many of the 300 people who lost their jobs will be employed for this purpose.

A debt of gratitude is owed to the whistleblower who highlighted the case and won the opt-in for Apple customers.  Apple must be kept under pressure to employ all 300 people let go, and not to pick and choose in an attempt to weed out the whistleblower(s).

The trade union movement must take a far more active and vocal role in issues relating to privacy rights, and the rights of contract workers. This means playing an active role in organising workplaces like Apple so workers can fight precarity and bullying management. 

Total
0
Shares
Previous Article

Amazon Forest- Burning the Future

Next Article

NBRU conference – fighting mood on pay and driver safety

Related Posts
Read More

Net activism: The “Kony 2012” phenomena

Seldom before has an idea spread so quickly across the world. Within days tens of millions watched Invisible Children’s “KONY 2012” video as it went viral across the internet and social media. Shocked at the story of killing, rape and child soldiers, demands multiplied that “something must be done” against Joseph Kony and the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) he leads in eastern and central Africa.

Read More

March against austerity 24 November!

Between 1 October and Budget Day, €2.9 billion will have been handed over to parasite bondholders. That will bring the total amount of money given to bondholders this year to €19,911,338,474. Then, on that day, Minister Noonan will stand up in the Dail and announce a further €3.5 billion worth of cuts and extra taxes.