Not-So-Sweet Nothings

While I have written about unpaid internships briefly in the past, now seems a good time to revisit this predatory practice so eagerly imposed by the corporately conscienceless. While at one time internships were seen as a legitimate and constructive way to gain both valuable work experience and contacts for future employment, the system has, in many cases, devolved into mere serfdom, aided and abetted by government legislation that is more honoured in the breach than in its observance.

Today, two newspapers, The National Post and The Toronto Star, have articles detailing the sad state that desperate students seeing work and constructive experience find themselves in.

In Toronto, there is this story:

Samantha May, now 21, found herself cleaning rooms, including toilets, at an airport hotel for three months in 2011. She was required to clean 16 rooms a day, just like paid housekeeping staff.

“There were days I didn’t want to get up in the morning, mostly because I wasn’t getting paid. It’s like, ‘I don’t have to do this.’ ”

“Some men are very disgusting. Some ladies just don’t care about hair all over the place. I found a used condom in the bed once. That wasn’t very pretty,” she said. May was still in high school when she started as an intern, but her peers were in college.

Samantha received nary an honorarium for her labours.

John Moore, in The National Post, offers this:

In today’s job market internships are a means of squeezing free labour out of qualified workers whose only other option is making $8 an hour serving $4 coffees at Starbucks. When interns dare suggest their labour might be worth something their “employers” scold them about having a bad attitude and insist there’s a line up outside their door of people who would do anything for the same opportunity. Sadly, those managers are often right — interns are expendable, thanks to a dire economy for which today’s youth are blameless.

Moore goes on to illustrate his thesis with two examples. There is Frank, who had an internship at a major telecom in its “Professional Management Program.” He worked Monday to Friday, eight hours a day, and was supervised by another intern. At the end of four months he quit after being told that there were “no immediate hiring opportunities,” but the company wanted him to stay on as unpaid labour.

There are also, it seems, unanticipated perils to unpaid internships. Moore tells the story of Helen, who worked without pay for six months in a major company until a job position became available. Sadly, she was told that volunteers could not apply for 'real' positions. As a further insult, with 14 months of unpaid work on her resume, Helen was told by a potential employer:

“I can’t justify giving a job to someone who values their time so little that they would work for free”.

This would be considered humour in the Monty Python vein were it not so sad.

Perhaps even sadder is the almost indisputable fact that our governments, both provincial and federal, are so much in the thrall of their corporate overlords that nothing will change, no new legislation nor enforcement of current legislation will occur.

It is time for people to get very, very angry.

Not For The Faint Of Heart

Be careful who you open the door to this Halloween:



H/t The Toronto Star

How Much For That Bauble In The Window?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Today, on our national holiday, most will be giving thanks for what they treasure in their lives, whether it be a loving family, good friends, a solid roof over their heads, good food on the table, etc.

I suspect a sizable number will also be giving thanks, indeed perhaps even salivating (giving much-needed competition to that clichéd turkey) over the announcement that the upcoming throne speech will see the Harper cabal transforming itself into a 'consumer-first' government.

Apparently, one of the first crumbs it will toss to the masses is greater freedom to customize their bank of cable channels. According to Industry Minister James Moore, soon the misery of having to include unwanted channels in your cable selection will be a thing of the past. Say goodbye to the Shampoo Network, the Dog Grooming Channel, the Party Favours Channel, etc. (unless you really want them) and prepare to watch only what you choose to watch, thus ensuring that your hard-earned and increasingly scarce dollars (thanks to the abysmal record at job creation of our self-proclaimed economist Prime Minister) are spent on your viewing preferences.

Says our bespectacled savior, James Moore:

“We don’t think people should be forced to buy bundled television channels when they’re not interested in watching those channels and those shows”.

It is good to know that this regime has its head screwed on right. Bread and circuses, all day, every day, seven days a week. A fine strategy as a lead-up to the 2015 federal election where the newly-empowered may be coached off their couches to cast a ballot for a government that is finally giving the people what they want.

Can the legalization of other opiates be far behind?

How much for that bauble in the window? Too much, is my dark and pessimistic suspicion.

The Predator At Our Doorstep

I've just finished reading Confessions of a Sociopath, written by the pseudonymous M.E. Thomas, a law professor who confesses herself to be a sociopath who has integrated fairly well into mainstream society. The book offers a chilling if somewhat annoyingly self-aggrandizing portrait of the mind of a person lacking the normal constraints that conscience and empathy impose on most of us. Her goal in writing the book was to show that lacking the conventional tools to successfully navigate life doesn't automatically make one a 'monster.'

I will take M.E. Thomas at her word. Less likely, however, am I to feel even a modicum of sympathy for the worst of all contemporary psychopaths/sociopaths (as far as I understand it, the terms are interchangeable) known as the corporation. Accorded personhood status in the United States but something less than that in Canada, the corporate mentality is such that it has virtually no imperative beyond making money for its shareholders, no matter the extent of its immoral albeit legal exploitation of anyone and anything in pursuit of that goal.

A letter in today's Star reminds us all of the some of the terrible costs of having such predators within our midst:

Our youth deserve more mental health support, Opinion Oct. 7; and Offer hope to troubled kids, Editorial Oct. 4


I find both Michael Kirby’s campaign and your support of it to be superficial. Certainly kids with problems should be helped, but it seems that there are more and more of them as time goes on, hence the appalling incidence of suicide among young people. Why should this be?

I have just read a wonderful article by John McMurtry in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) Monitor for October. Its headline is “Profit-driven system exploits, mistreats vulnerable youth.” Corporations, it says, are profit-driven psychopaths, with no regard for anything at all but money, and they are exploiting our children.

Young people are sold junk foods and beverages, poisoned by untested chemicals and drugs and an increasingly toxic environment, addicted to junk commodities, and exposed to media, which induce aggressive and violent thought, create artificial, harmful, needs, and discourage rational thought, decency, or the search for real knowledge. They are supposed to become unthinking consumers and cheap labour for corporations.

We do really know what is good for children — whatever helps them to grow to be their best selves. With so many young people living in an environment that is physically, mentally, and emotionally toxic, it is easy to understand why our children are in trouble.

We need a caring society to elect a caring government that will pass laws and regulations to prevent the harming of the young. Michael Kirby wants to pull the drowning children out of the river. I suggest we stop pushing them in.

Jenny Carter, Peterborough

Advice From Pat Robertson On How To Get 'A Leg Up' In Life

If you are feeling a bit down, I hope Robertson's unintentional humour cheers you up:

Will History Repeat Itself?

Jeff Rubin, the former CIBC economist turned author, has suggested in his books that as energy costs rise, some manufacturing will return to North America. Indeed, there are growing signs that his prognostication will prove to be accurate.

An article in the online edition of the Hamilton Spectator offers this assessment:

Manufacturers are lining up to come back to North America, but a desperate labour shortage is hobbling their efforts.

Dubbed "reshoring" in industrial jargon, the trend sees companies that fled North America for low-wage countries such as China and India drifting back as Chinese wages rise and the costs of moving their products from the other side of the world becomes a burden.

While the situation may be grounds for guarded optimism, one part of the piece, in discussing why a return to North America is becoming increasingly feasible, must give one pause:

Other factors making North America attractive again are continuous innovation that has dramatically improved the cost performance of some companies, and wage erosion during the recent financial crisis. (Emphasis mine)

"There has been a sharp wage correction since 2009," said John Rose, chief economist of the City of Edmonton. "The positive note there is that it allows you to position yourself to move forward. When you come out of the downturn your cost structure is closer to what it should have been."

The fact that the 'cost structure is closer to what it should have been' has, I think, rather disturbing implications. Is the assumption underlying the statement that a severely chastened and disciplined workforce is one that will be willing to work in manufacturing for, say $12 an hour to start, so grateful will it be for the chance of reemployment?

If that is indeed the scenario fated to unfold as costs for overseas manufacturing continue to rise, will we eventually see a reechoing of labour history? Given the current low rate of unionization in this country, will we see, as workers once more become dissatisfied with being exploited, a resurgence in union drives so that once again, as in the days of yore, the employer will be forced to share more generously the profits made possible by the worker?

One can only hope for a return to both prosperity and equity in the workplace.

I Guess This Is What Resisting Police Looks Like

No doubt, the SIU would have given this one another pass had it happened in Canada.