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Skilled workers wait for their interview and skill test at a Haryana state government recruitment drive to send workers to Israel, at Maharshi Dayanand University in Rohtak, India, January 17, 2024.
Indian workers rush to fill gaps in Israel’s labor market
As an Israeli ban on Palestinian laborers begins to tax its own economy, foreigners are looking to fill the void.
In the days after October 7th, Israel closed its border with the occupied West Bank almost entirely, shutting out the roughly 150,000 Palestinian workers who previously crossed into Israel regularly for jobs in agriculture, construction, and other sectors.
Now thousands of miles away, Indian workers are eagerly looking to pick up that work. On Thursday, recruitment centers in India were thronged with people hoping to get jobs in Israel, which has launched a program to bring in as many as 70,000 workers from India, China, and other countries.
Why go work in a country at war? India itself is facing high unemployment. For many people, the promise of steady work with higher salaries (up to about $1,600 a month) – plus accommodation and medical benefits — is an attractive prospect.
Meanwhile, the West Bank suffers. It’s estimated that, overall, 276,000 jobs in the West Bank – 32% of all employment – have been lost since the Gaza war began. There are concerns this could contribute to further violence in the West Bank, where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military and settlers since Oct. 7.
Will those jobs come back? It’s unclear. But any move to permanently freeze Palestinian labor out of Israel could make life drastically more intolerable in the West Bank, which depends hugely on the Israeli labor market.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff walk to a helicopter on their way to Cape Coast in Accra, Ghana, Tuesday March 28, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Zambia warns against anti-LGBTQ protests, AI scares tech leaders
Zambia warns against anti-LGBTQ protests ahead of Harris’s arrival
Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema is warning against anti-LGBTQ protests ahead of US Veep Kamala Harris’s visit Friday, part of a three-nation Africa tour aimed at shoring up US relations across Africa.
While in Lusaka, Harris will (virtually) address the Summit for Democracy, a Biden-crafted international conference designed to bolster democratic institutions and norms amid rising global authoritarianism. But dozens of Zambian opposition MPs claim the summit also aims to introduce gay rights to the country.
The opposition Patriotic Front Party reportedly plans to hold protests before the summit, but Hichilema has called for calm and for a dialogue with his opponents. Earlier this month, he vowed to maintain Zambia’s laws criminalizing consensual same-sex acts, which carry a life sentence.
This isn’t the first time gay rights have come up during Harris’s tour. In Ghana, she noted that LGBTQ rights are human rights but did not discuss the proposed Ghanaian bill to criminalize LGBTQ identification and advocacy. Harris’s visit also follows Uganda’s adoption last week of a draconian law that criminalizes identifying as LGBTQ, which could involve the death penalty in some cases.
Is AI getting too smart, too fast?
Yes, according to billionaire Elon Musk and over 1,000 other artificial intelligence luminaries, who've published an open letter calling for a six-month "pause" on further AI development. Why? So it doesn't threaten humanity by creating digital minds so powerful that they can't be controlled by humans.
But perhaps "humanity" is code for white-collar jobs. After all, Goldman Sachs just warned that AI could put up to 300 million people out of work in a decade. Most at-risk jobs are desk gigs, not blue-collar manufacturing jobs we once thought would be wiped out by automation.
Should that be more or less important than stopping AI from automating political misinformation in social media? And what if China takes advantage of the pause to beat the US in the AI race? Let us know your thoughts on taking an AI break here.
Students from the Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., hold hands after getting off a bus to meet their parents at the reunification site following a mass shooting.
Hard Numbers: Nashville school shooting, Rohingya flee to Indonesia, Deutsche disruption, America’s tumbling tolerance, white-collar AI wipeout
6: Six people, including three young children and three adults, were killed on Monday at the Covenant School, a private Christian primary school in Nashville, Tenn. Audrey Hale, a former student, was identified as the shooter. The 28-year-old was shot and killed by police during the attack, the 130th mass shooting in the US this year.
184: That’s how many Rohingya refugees landed in Indonesia’s western Aceh province on Monday. Each year, asylum-seekers flee persecution in Myanmar by making the treacherous voyage through the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea to reach Muslim-majority Indonesia or Malaysia.
24: Transportation across Germany ground to a halt Monday in the country’s largest walkout in decades. Unions called a rare 24-hour strike to press for a double-digit rise wage hike amid soaring inflation — partly due to Germany kicking its Russian natural gas habit over the war in Ukraine.
58: So much for loving thy neighbor. A new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll finds that just 58% of Americans believe that tolerance for others is very important, down from 80% four years ago. People in the US now prioritize money more than patriotism and religion. Why? Experts cite the economy, COVID, and fractured politics.
300 million: Generative artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT — which can create human-like content — could put a whopping 300 million people out of work within a decade in big economies. According to Goldman Sachs, lawyers and administrative staff are the most at risk, and two-thirds of jobs in the US and Europe could be exposed to some form of automation.
Phonemaker Apple says no new business for supplier Wistron after India plant violence
Wistron failed to implement proper working hour management processes, Apple said.
Workers at iPhone plant in India riot over wages
BANGALORE • The authorities have vowed to crack down on workers who went on a violent rampage at a Taiwanese-run iPhone factory in southern India over allegations of unpaid wages and exploitation, with 100 people arrested so far.
Workers riot at India iPhone factory over exploitation claims
About 100 people have been arrested so far.
Malaysia's Top Glove fired whistle-blower before virus outbreak
Top Glove sent the whistle-blower a letter terminating his employment for sharing the photos
Taiwan to curb flow of Indonesian workers after Covid-19 spike
Taiwan is home to more than 250,000 migrant workers from Indonesia.