Shane Getson put his foot in it at a town hall in Alberta recently when he suggested Albertans receiving CERB are lazy and spending the money on cheesies and drugs while watching cartoons.
Seems like political suicide to say that about your constituents, eh? 1/25+
Only, not only did Kenney not ask for his resignation, he backed Getson up. And then his issues manager, Matt Wolf, got busy doubling down. 2/25+
Employers are complaining that their employees are refusing to go back to work because of CERB. But let's unpack that a bit, shall we? 3/25+
First, the minimum wage in Alberta for most workers is $15 an hour. CERB pays $12.50 an hour based on a 40 hour work week. So, why would employees prefer to make less on CERB than go back to work? Hint: it's not just about the money. 4/25+
First of all, many employees do not get to work 40 hours a week. They might get 12 hours from one job and 15 hours from another job. In addition to their 27 hours a week, they are spending a lot of time in transit, getting to these jobs. 5/25+
Now, if an employer needs a person working all day in their business, why are they hiring two or more people to do the job, giving them each less than full-time hours? Well, they incentivized to operate this way. They don't have to pay for benefits for part-time employees. 6/25+
They save money by making other people's work-lives precarious. Furthermore, hours are a lever with which they can control employees. If you piss off the boss, your hours can be cut. That threat ensures compliance/no complaints. 7/25+
Second, many workplaces are pretty awful. I have been talking to people, hearing stories about their jobs. One person, an employee at a small retail store, had to have foot surgery. They had a doctor's note saying they couldn't work for several days. They were fired. 8/25+
Another person told me they had just got to work & they were going through to the staff room and another employee came out fast and the door hit this person in the face. Nose gushing blood, they asked to go home. They were told they had to work their shift or not come back. 9/25+
So, that person spent the next 8 hours in blood-covered clothing, face swelling and bruising, with a crushing headache, working their shift, because they could not afford to lose the job. 10/25+
Another person I spoke to worked a job where they would sometimes be sent to operate a kiosk at a trade show several provinces away. They were not given any per diem. Getting there, staying somewhere, and eating, while working 12 hour days, left them out of pocket. 11/25+
Still another reported working 21 days straight recently. They were scheduled to work a shift 6 days in a row and have a day off, but for 3 weeks they were called in on their day off. 12/25+
Most hospitality servers have to tip everyone else in the business, including the bartender and cooks, who often make more to begin with. Some also are required to tip the management. For the privilege of working there. 13/25+
Some people talked about getting no breaks, even though they were entitled to them. Some talked about workplace health and safety issues. One person described working in a place where the floor of the walk-in freezer was always covered in ice... 14/25+
They were supposed to use the ladder to reach things on higher shelves, but the ladder was incredibly unsafe on the uneven, icy floor, so the staff all climbed the shelves, which was also unsafe... 15/25+
Another spoke of finding out they were in debt to the CRA because their work had not been deducting tax. They use an electronic payroll system so this person never saw a pay stub and didn't know nothing was being deducted until they got a letter from the CRA. 16/25+
They are now working a second job to pay off their tax debt.
I have also heard of A boss using personnel records to find out where an employee lived and showing up to throw snowballs at their window. Which is actually, not only illegal, but creepy AF. 17/25+
One person talked about being ill (dizzy, unco-ordinated, headache) at work for days and finally going and sitting for hours in ER to see a doctor and get a note to excuse them from work, and then having the employer accuse them of forging the note. 18/25+
They then had to go through a whole process of tracking down the doctor and getting the doctor to speak to the employer so they could get the time off they needed to get well. 19/25+
I have also worked in toxic environments. In one job I had two bosses, and they seemed to be having some sort of pissing match. They both loaded me up with work, trying to claim more of my time. As hard as I worked, through lunches and breaks, I couldn't keep up. 20/25+
Whichever boss' stuff was falling behind would scream at me. This was a weekly event. By Sat evening I would feel sick knowing I had to go to work on Monday. Working as a server in a bar, management was ok, but I had to deal with inappropriate advances every single shift. 21/25+
People who work with the public, especially in retail and hospitality, have to deal with abuse on the regular. If the management does not back them up, or worse, if the management berates them in front of customers, it quickly becomes a terrible place to work. 22/25+
Casual sexism, casual belittling, riding roughshod over workers' rights and disregarding their feelings and well-being, all contribute to a worker preferring to stay home with less money over going back to a job that made them feel awful. 23/25+
And employers are freaking out now. Employees are choosing less money, or less but more steady, reliable money, and far less harassment/degradation/bullying, over going back into a toxic work environment. 24/25+
Employers need to look at their management practices. They need to ask themselves if they really treat employees fairly, if they respect their employees' dignity, or if they are, in fact, horrible, exploitive bosses. 25/25+
They need to ask, "how would I feel if someone treated me like this? Would I like working here?" And they need to find ways to fix what they are doing if they want to be able to retain employees. 26/25+
Employees are people. If you don't treat your people well, they will not want to work for you. Up until now, though, the employees had little choice. They needed to pay rent and buy food and so on. 27/25+
So, what is really upsetting a lot of employers and conservatives, is that suddenly employees have options. They are no longer indentured to endure whatever treatment bosses want to dish out. It is reckoning time. 28/25+
Finally, the pressure is on the employers to shape up, if they want to stay in business. And they do not like it. Not one little bit. 29/25+
I welcome your stories of employment. Toxic workplaces, unreasonable or downright evil bosses, even good bosses, because they can be a model others might draw on. Please post your experiences in the comments! 30/25+
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This is a "When did you stop beating your wife?" question. The person asking bases the premise of the question on the fact they have been reporting on a rumour all week. Really? So you report something based on speculation, then ask questions as though your speculation 1/
First, this rumour is not, apparently, based on any evidence because no evidence has been presented. Robert Fife's "unnamed sources" have been horribly wrong before. Remember Maher Arar?
So, how does this reporting fit into the principles of Journalistic
2/
Ethics? Let's have a look.
1. It must be true.
Hmmmm. Is it true? What assurances, other than the Globe & Mail has been saying it all week, do we have that there is any substance to this at all?
2. It must be verifiable.
OK, so what proof is there that any of this is real?
3/
I have been listening to @Justin_Ling 's podcast "The Village" again. I listened to the first season when it was new and only just now rediscovered it. It's all dreadful and shocking. The third season goes into what happened in Montreal to the LGBTQ2+ community, while the
1/
first two seasons focus on Toronto. The lack of enthusiasm in investigating murders by the Toronto police is disgraceful. The harassment of queer folks in both Toronto and Montreal by police is disgraceful. The violence towards a group of people for just being themselves is
2/
appalling. Gay bashing is a terrible hate crime, but when the police do it? They should all have been fired, but there were no consequences. So much to make you think in this podcast series. Everyone who feels they don't know much about the LGBTQ2+ community, or who complains
3/
I see a lot of people say they are not into politics. They don't want to hear about politics, or talk about politics. They say it as though that makes them more pure then the people who do speak about politics. Like they are above all that. Certainly, for a 1/ #cdnpoli
long time, people avoided speaking about politicis as a matter of politeness. That prohibition on talking about politics (or religion, or income) was always presented as a way to avoid conflict, but in fact, it is a way for the wealthy to prevent people from organizing,
2/
from questioning authority, and from rebelling against injustice and corruption.
These days, a lack of political awareness is actively encouraged by the far right, for precisely the same reasons. People who don't listen to the news, or read the news, or talk about the
3/
Chris Selley recently published a piece in the National Post excoriating Poilievre's critics. Some of those mentioned were professors and media personalities. Fair enough. But he also had a go at a regular citizen for expressing her political views. Is that what MSM is doing
now? I wonder if we will next see "journalists" like Chris publishing naughty lists, hit lists if you will, of people who hold unacceptable (to the CPC) views.Throwing their names out there so any off the rails CPC supporter who is itching for an active way to show his
devotion to Poilievre has a list of targets? The rest of the article is also trash. Why is Selley writing this lengthy defense of the Leader of the Official Opposition? Does he not know that the CPC has communications people and press secretaries and so on to defend the leader
@angryablib @TheBreakdownAB People in Alberta don't care. As long as it's conservatives doing it, they don't care. Kenney fired the Elections Commissioner that was investigating his leadership election. No one cared. The party was also being investigated by the RCMP. No one cared. They have changed laws to
@angryablib @TheBreakdownAB retroactively get themselves off the hook about things, and also to allow themselves to accept large gifts from lobbyists. No one cares. They want to arrest homeless people and force them into rehab, (which seems like a clever way to funnel public money to their friends who have
@angryablib @TheBreakdownAB suddenly got into the rehab business and no one cares. They created a "War Room" that they fed millions of dollars of OUR money into every year and we can't see where that money goes and no one cares. They were giving billions by the feds for Covid relief and they "misplaced" the
I just feel the need to say, Conservatives go on & on & on about freedom. Yet their campaign team employ persuasion methodology that can affect what you think. Shouldn't freedom to not have your thoughts messed with, without your knowledge, be the #1 freedom?
#cdnpoli
Because, yes, they are doing things to try to influence what you think. And their techniques take many forms. From getting people to broadcast specific messages to their friend groups and encouraging re-broadcast, to buying and disseminating poll results designed to make you
change the way you think about a subject. To repeating simple, sing-songy slogans over and over and over until they get stuck in your head. To spreading lies and disinformation backed up by "credible" MSM who never fact-check and just repeat the talking points as though they