Business

CrossCountry train drivers to strike in disciplinary process row

Published

1 day ago

September 4, 2025

CrossCountry train drivers are to strike in a row over the company not following agreed disciplinary and grievance processes, according to a union.

Aslef said its members would walk out on 3 October and refuse to work non-contractual overtime from 21 September because of the company’s “persistent refusal” to adhere to guidelines for disciplinary proceedings.

It comes after members of the RMT union walked out during the last August bank holiday weekend over allegations CrossCountry had failed to honour agreements on staffing, safety, and pay.

The train operator said it was “disappointed” by Aslef’s decision and remained committed to “reaching an agreement”.

CrossCountry’s network stretches across Britain from Aberdeen to Penzance and from Stansted to Cardiff. Its services connect most of the UK’s biggest cities including Birmingham, Edinburgh, Bristol, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle and Manchester.

Aslef’s district organiser Andy Hourigan said the dispute with the operator had been running “for some considerable time”.

“The company constantly breaks agreements, arrangements, and procedures – and it’s been brought to a head by the misuse of the grievance and discipline process,” he said.

He accused the company of “unilaterally, regularly, and conveniently” misinterpreting the union’s terms and conditions, but said the union was “open to any dialogue to resolve this situation”.

According to Aslef, more than 80% of its 632 members at CrossCountry had voted with almost 90% electing in favour of strikes, while 96% backed other forms of industrial action.

Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “When we make agreements, we stick by them. This company doesn’t. That’s why we are taking strike action.

“Passengers need to know it’s the result of bad managers, acting in bad faith, that they will not be able to travel as and when they would wish.”

Shiona Rolfe, CrossCountry’s managing director, said: “We are disappointed for our passengers that Aslef has announced industrial action from Sunday 21 September and strike action on Friday 3 October.

“We remain committed to reaching an agreement with Aslef that avoids disruption for passengers, and remain available to continue talks.”

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Business

AI company Anthropic to pay authors $1.5 billion in landmark settlement

Published

1 hour ago

September 6, 2025

The Editors

Big numbers often get thrown around in the aftermath of legal battles, as judges hand down judgements—or attorneys arrange settlement amounts—in the tens, or hundreds, of millions of dollars. Still, even jaded legal observers can occasionally run into a genuinely daunting number while parsing this stuff. Like, say, the $1.5 billion settlement that AI company Anthropic has agreed to pay in the ongoing class-action suit against it, launched by authors who said the company infringed on their copyrighted works by feeding them as training data to its “AI assistant” Claude. Sure, parts of that sum (calculated at $3,000 per work for a staggering number of works, and with its first $300 million installment due just five days after the settlement is approved) might potentially vanish in a puff of future bankruptcy. But it’s still the “largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history,” according to legal documents from the authors’ attorneys.

That being said, the win here on the wider AI front is quite a bit less clear than “hand our clients the annual estimated GDP of Grenada” might suggest. Yes, U.S. District Judge William Alsup set the stage for Anthropic to eat that massive price tag by ruling that the company clearly violated copyright agreements via how it acquired the books it fed into its own personal woodchipper. (I.e., downloading pirated datasets of millions of books that had been floating around the internet.) And, yes, the settlement will require Anthropic to destroy those “shadow library” datasets in its possession. (But notably, with no actual changes to the Claude large language model itself.) Most critically, though, back in June, Alsup also ruled that “reproducing purchased-and-scanned books to train AI” falls under fair use, calling the case “exceedingly transformative” as a justification for the designation.

As such, both sides in the fight issued statements claiming a form of victory today, with the authors’ side focusing mostly on the massive size of the settlement amount. Anthropic, meanwhile—which has been backed in the past with more than $6 billion in contributions from Amazon and Google—focused its statements on the legal precedent it achieved in the case: “In June, the District Court issued a landmark ruling on AI development and copyright law, finding that Anthropic’s approach to training AI models constitutes fair use. Today’s settlement, if approved, will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims.” What this likely means is that AI companies aren’t going to slow down—especially with, say, a $1.5 billion mortgage suddenly hanging over their heads—but simply become a lot more choosy about how they get their training data.

[via Deadline]

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Business

Runway founder Cristóbal Valenzuela wants Hollywood to embrace AI

Published

3 hours ago

September 5, 2025

The Editors

At 84, veteran mogul John Malone is still a power broker, hinting at “further consolidation in the media industry” following a recent sit down with David Ellison. Should we be on the lookout for a Warner–Paramount merger? Meanwhile in Vegas, the Sphere’s $100 million Wizard of Oz reimagining leans on AI to expand the visuals and even slip in cameos of David Zaslav and James Dolan. The Directors Guild did not take kindly to the stunt. Partners in Banter Kim Masters and Matt Belloni pull back the curtain on the Sphere’s Emerald City sideshow.

Plus, Masters speaks with Runway co-founder Cristóbal Valenzuela about the role of artificial intelligence in Hollywood. The Chilean-born developer acknowledges that AI may lead to some job losses, but he argues it will ultimately benefit filmmakers. He explains why studios including Lionsgate, Netflix, and Disney are already using Runway’s tools. Plus, he compares the current backlash against AI to the upheaval that followed the introduction of sound in film.

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