Gadgetwise Blog: To-Do Lists, File Sharing and Other Home Worker Needs

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Ex-Hotel Worker — I Was Fired for PRAISING Jennifer Aniston

Ex-Hotel Worker
I Was Fired for
PRAISING Jennifer Aniston
An ex-employee of a New Mexico hotel claims he was FIRED for talking about Jennifer Aniston to hotel guests while she was staying on the property ... even though all he said was that she's "very sweet."

A man named Terry Siegler says he worked at the Encantado Resort in Santa Fe as a shuttle bus driver -- but as of Monday, he was no longer employed ... because he allegedly violated the hotel's confidentiality policy regarding famous people.

Terry tells us, the alleged violation occurred last week when he was shuttling random hotel guests who had just seen Jennifer Aniston in the hotel spa.

Terry says the guests asked if he had seen Aniston, and he replied yes, telling them Aniston is "very sweet and much more petite than I thought."

According to Terry, the guests then went back to the hotel where they openly yakked about their discussion with him -- and a member of Jen's camp overheard them, believing Terry was divulging information about Aniston to guests.

We're told Aniston's pal reported the incident to hotel management -- which then fired Terry this week, citing the celebrity policy violation.

Terry says it's part of his job to engage guests and be friendly -- claiming, "They brought [Jennifer] up first ... Was I supposed to deny it?"

Terry says he's crushed after losing his $30,000-a-year job, but he's still unsure if he'll sue for wrongful termination.

The GM of the resort tells TMZ, "I cannot confirm anything about our employees but I will say that we have a very strict confidentiality policy and we do enforce those policies."

Foxconn Plant in China Closed After Worker Riot

A spokesman said some people had been hurt and detained by the police after the disturbance escalated into a riot involving more than 1,000 workers late Sunday.

The company said the incident was confined to an employee dormitory and “no production facilities or equipment have been affected.” It said the cause of the disturbance was still under investigation.

One Foxconn employee reached by telephone Monday afternoon, however, said the incident began when workers started brawling with security guards.

Unconfirmed photographs and video circulated on social networking sites, purporting to be from the factory, showed smashed windows, riot police officers and large groups of workers milling around. The Foxconn plant, in the Chinese city of Taiyuan, employs about 79,000 workers.

The Chinese state-run news media said 5,000 police officers had been called in to quell the riot.

A Foxconn spokesman declined to specify whether the Taiyuan plant made products for the Apple iPhone 5, which went on sale last week, but he said it supplied goods to many consumer electronics brands.

An employee at the Taiyuan plant, however, said iPhone components were made there. Most Apple-related production, though, takes place in other parts of China, particularly in the provinces of Sichuan and Henan. Apple could not be reached for comment.

Foxconn said it employs about 1.1 million workers in China.

Labor unrest in Taiyuan, in northern China’s Shanxi province, comes as strikes and other worker protests appear to be increasing in frequency in China this year compared to last year, said Geoffrey Crothall, spokesman for the China Labor Bulletin, a nonprofit advocacy group in Hong Kong seeking collective bargaining and other protections for workers in mainland China.

Many of the protests this year appear to be related to the country’s economic slowdown, as employees demand the payment of overdue wages from financially struggling companies, or insist on compensation when money-losing factories in coastal provinces are closed and moved to lower-cost cities in the interior.   

But the level of labor unrest in China this year has not yet matched 2010, when a surge in inflation sparked a wave of worker demands for higher pay, Mr. Crothall said.   

Mr. Crothall said that while the cause of the latest dispute in Taiyuan remained unclear, his group had found an online video of police there using a megaphone to address “workers from Henan” – the adjacent province to the south of Shanxi. The police officer said that the workers’ concerns would be addressed.    

Disputes involving large groups of migrant workers are common in China. In some cases, workers protest after believing that they have been promised a certain pay package and traveled a long distance to claim it, only to find on arrival that the details are different from what they expected. In other cases, workers from different provinces with different cultural traditions coming together in a single factory have clashed over social issues or perceived slights.

The disturbance is the latest problem to hit Foxconn, which also is a key supplier to Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.

Foxconn, which is part of Hon Hai Group of Taiwan, has been struggling to improve labor conditions at its China factories after reports about labor abuse and work safety violations.

Apple and Foxconn have worked together in the last year to improve conditions, raise pay and improve labor standards.

Mr. Crothall said workers in China had become increasingly emboldened.

“They’re more willing to stand up for their rights, to stand up to injustice,” he said, adding that damage to factory buildings and equipment still appeared to be unusual, occurring in fewer than 1 in 20 protests.

The same Taiyuan factory was the site of a brief strike during a pay dispute last March, the Hong Kong news media reported then.

Social media postings suggested that some injuries might have occurred when people were trampled in crowds of protesters.

Foxconn Plant in China Closed After Worker Riot

A spokesman for the company said some people had been hurt and detained by the police after the disturbance escalated into a riot late Sunday. The company said the cause of the disturbance was still under investigation.

One Foxconn employee reached by telephone Monday afternoon, however, said the disturbance had begun when workers started brawling with security guards, and it eventually had led to a huge riot involving more than 1,000 workers. Foxconn said no property had been destroyed or damaged.

Unconfirmed photographs and video circulated on social networking sites, purporting to be from the factory, showed smashed windows, riot police officers and large groups of workers milling around. The Foxconn plant, in the central Chinese city of Taiyuan, employs about 79,000 workers.

The Chinese state-run news media said 5,000 police officers had been called in to quell the riot.

A Foxconn spokesman declined to specify whether the Taiyuan plant made products for the Apple iPhone 5, which went on sale last week, but he said it supplied goods to many consumer electronics brands.

An employee at the Taiyuan plant, however, said iPhone components were made there. Most Apple-related production, though, takes place in other parts of China, particularly in the provinces of Sichuan and Henan. Apple could not be reached for comment.

Foxconn said it employs about 1.1 million workers in China.

The disturbance is the latest problem to hit Foxconn, a key supplier of products to Apple and other global electronics companies, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.

Foxconn, which is part of Hon Hai Group of Taiwan, has been struggling to improve labor conditions at its China factories after reports about labor abuse and work safety violations.

Apple and Foxconn have worked together in the last year to improve conditions, raise pay and improve labor standards.

Disturbances at factories have become increasingly common in China, rights groups say, as laborers have begun to demand higher pay and better conditions.

Geoffrey Crothall, spokesman for the China Labor Bulletin, a nonprofit advocacy group in Hong Kong seeking collective bargaining and other protections for workers in mainland China, said workers in China had become increasingly emboldened.

“They’re more willing to stand up for their rights, to stand up to injustice,” he said, adding that damage to factory buildings and equipment still appeared to be unusual, occurring in fewer than 1 in 20 protests.

The same Taiyuan factory was the site of a brief strike during a pay dispute last March, the Hong Kong news media reported then.

Social media postings suggested that some injuries might have occurred when people were trampled in crowds of protesters.

Foxconn Factory in Taiyuan, China, Is Closed After Worker Riot

The company said several people were hospitalized and detained by the police after the disturbance, which occurred late Sunday, escalated into a riot.

Unconfirmed photographs and video that was circulated on social networking sites purporting to be from the factory showed smashed windows, riot police and large groups of workers milling about. The Foxconn plant, in the city of Taiyuan, in central China, employs about 79,000 workers.

A Foxconn spokesman declined to specify whether the Taiyuan facility made products for the Apple iPhone 5, which went on sale last week, but he said that it supplied goods to many consumer electronics brands. Foxconn said it employed about 1.1 million workers in China.

The disturbance is the latest to hit Foxconn, a key supplier of products to Apple and other global electronics companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Microsoft.

Foxconn, which is part of the Hon Hai Group of Taiwan, has been struggling to improve labor conditions at its China factories following reports about labor abuse and work safety violations.

Apple and Foxconn have worked together in the last year to improve conditions, raise pay and improve labor standards.

Disturbances at factories have become increasingly common in China, rights groups say, as laborers have begun to demand higher pay and better conditions.

Geoffrey Crothall, spokesman for the China Labor Bulletin, a nonprofit advocacy group in Hong Kong seeking collective bargaining and other protections for workers in mainland China, said workers in China had become increasingly emboldened.

“They’re more willing to stand up for their rights, to stand up to injustice,” he said.

The same Taiyuan factory was the site of a brief strike during a pay dispute last March, Hong Kong media reported then.

Social media postings suggested that some injuries might have occurred when people were trampled in crowds of protesters.

App City: Office Space for the Wandering Worker

PLATFORM Web, with iPhone in development

PRICE Free

I wrote this column from the office of CleanEdison, a green energy consultancy on Fifth Avenue. The company has a spare room that it uses to store old office supplies, collect cardboard boxes and host members of a mobile work force. On Monday, when I visited, I worked quietly as three women had a meeting about their event-planning business and a Labrador retriever wandered in and out.

We all ended up at CleanEdison through Loosecubes, a start-up that matches people looking for a place to work for the day with businesses that have desk space to offer — except for the dog, who apparently is always there. On Sunday night, I pulled up Loosecubes’s mobile Web site, chose an office that had open space and booked myself a desk. With the confirmation, I was sent the name of the contact with whom I would check in when I got there. (The company is planning a full iPhone app.)

Loosecubes has about 120 spaces in New York City, from a home office in Flushing to shared working spaces in the meatpacking district. About 70 percent of the available desks are full on any one day, the company said.

When Loosecubes started, companies could set a price for a spot in their office, but many companies quickly made it zero, because they found the service useful as a networking tool. All spaces are now free.

The current crop of technology start-ups is full of variations on this idea. People rent out their apartments on Airbnb, hire one another to do chores on Taskrabbit and bum rides around San Francisco on Sidecar. The trick is finding a way to balance the needs of people on both sides of the transactions, and to maintain the trust that keeps them going.

In the case of office space, the problem is that there are more willing guests than there are hosts. So on Wednesday, Loosecubes is going to change its model. Companies that host guests will gain access to the network of offices for their own employees. Loosecubes also plans to rent office spaces and then manage them as shared facilities.

People just looking for a place to lay their laptops can request an invitation, but those kinds of slots will be limited. Later this year, Loosecubes plans to start charging subscription fees.

“Our objective is not to leave people out; our objective is to balance the supply-demand economics of the community,” said Campbell McKellar, the founder of Loosecubes.

But do not despair, freeloaders. If you sign up for the service before the changes go into effect, you will be grandfathered in.

I worked in two places, each with its own personality. First was REV, a shared working space in the lower level of Vitra on Ninth Avenue in the meatpacking district. There were free snacks, Mac computers and couches for meetings. Also, because Vitra is an upscale furniture store, the chairs at REV are really comfortable — something I took for granted until my spine came under attack at CleanEdison. In each place, though, the basics were there: Wi-Fi, bathrooms and water. I even had a few minutes of friendly banter with my temporary colleagues.

Of course, people are mostly in these offices to work. When I first sat down at REV, I clearly projected the vibe of a guy getting ready to start a conversation. The man sitting nearest to me took one look and immediately put on his headphones.

Have a favorite New York City app? Send tips via e-mail to appcity@nytimes.com or via Twitter to @joshuabrustein.