Category Archives: Wage Slavery

The Visions of Progress exhibit features 611 polished portraits of Black Central Virginians during the beginning of the 20th Century. The portraits tell a different story of the lives of African Americans at that time.

A well-known portrait of Henry Martin, a former slave and University of Virginia bell-ringer at the turn of the 20th Century, tells the story of the good and happy slave, a Lost Cause delusion that made white people comfortable following the Civil War.

The 10-foot tall portrait of Martin that hangs in the Visions of Progress exhibit at the UVa Albert & Shirley Small Collections Library tells a completely different story of his life and image. According to the blurb beside the portrait, Martin did not have a say in most of the photos that others took of him over the years, but he intentionally commissioned the one featured in the exhibit.

Martins portrait is impossible to miss among more than 600 portraits of Black people from the Charlottesville and Albermarle county areas, which were captured by the Charlottesville-based Holsinger Studio.

People are also reading

SYDNEY SHULER, THE DAILY PROGRESS Henry Martin commissioned his own portrait from the Holsinger Studio, making one of the only photos of Martin that he curated to his own liking and to represent himself in the way he wished to be portrayed

The towering photo glows in front of a lightbox beside a display case with the archived portraits for which Martin sat throughout his lifetime.

After over 80 years of enduring slavery, low-wage work and Jim Crow-era policies, Martin has become a historical figure at the University of Virginia.

Born into slavery at Monticello in 1828, Martin spent the first 40 years of his life working for several slaveholders, including the Carr family, the namesake of Carrs Hill in Charlottesville.

Gaining his freedom after the Civil War, Martin worked odd jobs at UVa along with a stint as a farmhand at an Albemarle County farm. He began as a permanent janitor and bell ringer for the university in 1868.

The formerly student-run yearbook Corks & Curls ran a now-infamous photo of Martin ringing the bell in the Rotunda in a feature titled Uncle Henry.

The feature included Martins personal account of his life up until that point. At a time when UVa only admitted white students, the yearbook staff printed the story in a Negro dialect, a style that was used to mock formerly enslaved Black people. The white population at UVa became familiar with Martin and often called him Uncle Henry. One sentence reads, I dun know why they named me Henry Martin. Ole Missus got it outn a book.

But Martin took it upon himself to have the Holsinger portrait taken when David M.R. Culbreth requested one for his biography, Henry Martin.

The portrait that Martin presented to Culbreth befitted his role as a deacon at First Baptist Church, the passage reads. It shows no sign of his job as a janitor and bell ringer and no trace of the university. Instead, it shows Martins dignity and conviction that he was inferior to no one.

SYDNEY SHULER, THE DAILY PROGRESS Visitors browse the Visions of Progress exhibit as the Small Collections Library at UVa shares the collection with the public for the first time.

Martins commissioned portrait embodies the spirit of the collection, which maintains that Black Central Virginians were people of class, dignity, style and panache during some of the most difficult periods to be Black in America.

In the early 20th century, the most common employment options for Black men and women involved demanding domestic work and exhausting physical labor jobs for low wages. While many in the Black community had to work to maintain white spaces while receiving barely enough money to maintain their own, these portraits do not portray that struggle.

Martins is just one of four large portraits featuring subjects with stories that reach far beyond their employment history.

These are African Americans showing themselves the way they want to be seen and contrast these portraits with all the demeaning caricatures and racial stereotypes that were floating around America in this era, said John Edwin Mason, director of the Holsinger Studio Portrait Project and a UVa employee. These portraits were fighting against that. The portraits represent a variety of different things. They are hopes in dreams. They are, in part, what people wish to be, but they are also representative of who they are.

Bill Hurley was a Black man who was born into slavery and worked as a coachman, manual laborer, porter and a stable hand for a wealthy white lawyer. The lawyer became the last person to be publicly hanged in Charlottesville.

In his portrait, Hurley sits with a powerful masculine presence and the potential of a budding male model.

Anthony T. Buckner stands next to his granddaughter, Eileen T. Buckner for a portrait in 1912. Eileen T. Buckner is the great-grandmother of Charlottesville native and co-chair of the Descendants of Enslaved Communities at UVa DeTeasa Gathers.

DeTeasa Gathers, a Charlottesville native, UVa employee and co-chair of the Descendants of Enslaved Community at UVa, was able to identify her great-grandmother, Eileen Buckner, who posed beside her own grandfather in one of the portraits in the collection.

Entire families sat for portraits. While some, like the Washington family sat for individual photos over a span of six years, others sat with all generations of their unit together.

We want to transform the way that everyone in Central Virginia sees their history, Mason said. When I say their history, I mean in two different senses. I mean to see literally history when we talk about African Americans in the first decade of the 20th century.

Get local news delivered to your inbox!

Follow this link:

Visions of Progress tells tales of two Charlottesvilles, Black and white - Bristol Herald Courier

The backlash against Miss Malini's post comes at a time when employees have been pointing out toxic work cultures, demanding a fair work-life balance and even taking to quiet quitting.

September 29, 2022 / 07:49 PM IST

Malini Agarwal, who runs the entertainment website Miss Malini, has been facing backlash on social media after she shared an Instagram post about a job opportunity with her company.

Social media users pointed out that the expectations from the job were "cruel".

"Malini, pay your employees a livable wage challenge," commented @arshadwahid on Instagram. Another user @hotchocolateislove wrote, "Thats sheer slavery at 25K a month."

Apart from the lost list of demands and meagre pay, what social media users found offensive was that despite Miss Malini's intense stress on being grammatically correct, the post itself was riddled with typos -- a fact that the users took upon themselves to correct.

"Umm... For someone so particular about commas and punctuation, she should know its wears not wears. I know thats beside the point of the toxic expectations but still," tweeted @oknottested.

"Ma'am, you made typos yourself. It's Devil Wears Prada, not wear's, it's stationery, not stationary. Lol," commented @madhurikumar20 on Instagram.

The backlash against Miss Malini's post comes at a time when employees have been pointing out toxic work cultures, demanding a fair work-life balance and even taking to quiet quitting.

Read more:'Quiet quitting' is taking over workplaces. Here's all you need to know about it

Recently, Bombay Shaving Company CEO Shantanu Deshpande too had faced severe criticism and triggered a massive debate after he urged young professionals to work for 18 hours a day.

Originally posted here:

Miss Malini's job advert puts spotlight back on 'exploitative bosses' and a 'pittance' as salary - Moneycontrol

As Hurricane Ian Threatens Floridas Southwest Coast, Whats Happening On The Ground

Hurricane Ian's most damaging winds began hitting Florida's southwest coast Wednesday, lashing the state with heavy rain and pushing a devastating storm surge after strengthening to the threshold of the most dangerous Category 5 status. Fueled by warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Ian grew to a catastrophic Category 4 hurricane overnight with top winds of 155 mph (250 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm trudged on a track that would have it making landfall north of the heavily populated Fort Myers area, which forecasters said could be inundated by a storm surge of up to 18 feet (5.5 meters). Ian menaced Florida after bringing destruction Tuesday to western Cuba, where two people were reported dead and the entire island was blacked out as the storm brought down the country's electrical grid.

Today on AirTalk, well get the latest from the ground with Michael Kiniry, host and producer with NPR member station WGCU in Ft. Myers Florida.

The State Of California Prisons: Involuntary Servitude, Labor, And Fire Camp

Prison Labor and Firecamp 9.28.22

Under state law, most of Californias incarcerated population is required to work. These jobs vary from cleaning kitchens and sanitizing common spaces to fighting some of Californias biggest wildfires. While California forbids slavery, it does allow involuntary servitude, permitting the state to pay incarcerated folks far below minimum wage. A constitutional amendment known as ACA 3 came before California voters last November vying to outlaw entirely involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime. The bill passed in the Assembly in March but ultimately failed to receive enough support. The Department of Finance staunchly opposed the plan, saying it would cost the state $1.5 billion dollars to pay incarcerated people minimum wage.

Joining us today on AirTalk to discuss prison labor and the status of involuntary servitude in California is chancellor professor of law at UC Irvine, Michele Goodwin, executive director of the Anti-Violence, Safety and Accountability Project and original author of the legislation to end involuntary servitude in California, Samuel Nathaniel Brown, and former program director at Ventura Training Center, Michelle Garcia.

Hurrican Ian Update 9.28.22

We check back in on the latest in Florida as Hurricane Ian makes landfall. Joining to discuss is Matthew Peddie, host of Florida Matters, a weekly public affairs show from NPR Member station WUSF in Tampa Bay.

With An Election Around The Corner, We Speak With Local Registrars

Put it on your calendar now if its not already: election day is November 8. Today on AirTalk, we check in with local registrars about how they are preparing for the big day. Joining Larry is Registrar of Voters for Los Angeles County, Dean Logan and Registrar of Voters for Orange County Bob Page.

The OC Report: Why Orange County Is A High School Football Hotbed

High School Football 9.28.22

If you look at the top 15 teams in the rankings of California high school football teams, you might notice a trend: of them are from Orange County. Its no coincidence -- OC has long been a hotbed for high-level high school football. Mater Dei High School alone has produced three Heisman Trophy winners, but other schools like Los Alamitos, Mission Viejo, and Edison High School in Huntington Beach are also part of a competitive group of programs that make up the current OC high school football landscape.

Today on AirTalk, Larry talks with two local reporters with more than 80 years of combined experience covering Southern California high school sports -- Steve Fryer, high school sports reporter with the Orange County Register and Eric Sondheimer, prep sports columnist for The Los Angeles Times.

Excerpt from:

As Hurricane Ian Threatens Florida's Southwest Coast, What's Happening On The Ground - KPCC

It is essential to understand student loan debt and why forgiveness is essential. We must not give corporate parasites a pass.

Watch Politics Done Right T.V. here.

There are many arguments that the Right Wing and some on the Left use to dismiss the rationale for student loan debt forgiveness. On the surface, many of the arguments against relief seem plausible.

Progressives are supposed to believe in progress that moves society forward. We relegate obstructionist or status quo debates to Conservatives because, by design, their tenet is the maintenance of the present or past.

The arguments are many.

One could go on and on with reasons why forgiving student loan debt is not fair or favors some over others. The reality is that is true throughout a fundamentally capitalist country. Ponder this, if one believes in a system that distributes everything based on supply and demand, whether real or manufactured, then forgiving student loans is one of the least morally deficient acts that would put some fairness in our system for many. Note that when we view everything through the supply and demand lens, it says only those favored with capital are privy to all the spoil of the economy.

As my daughter puts it, would one choose to keep slavery because the system cannot free those who died in slavery retroactively? Progressives must believe in progress at all costs, providing reparation where possible.

Lets understand the sinister system we have now. It is a system of coercion where the individual with the least capital or resources pays to the extent that their wealth potential is untenable.

It is true that there are millions of necessary and good-paying jobs that require no college but training in the trade. But for a very long time, the private sector and government have been pushing most to attend college.

Early on, the government subsidized higher education liberally at good public universities. College costs were affordable. In effect, the private sector, through taxes, invested in the workforce that ultimately made a profit for their shareholders and a good wage for the employee. As corporations looked for every option to maximize profits and project growth, they bribed politicians to cut taxes; read cut public spending.

Students now had to pay more for their education and training to service these corporations. As these costs increased, students were afforded loans, some public, some private, at higher interest rates.

The bottom line is corporations broke the implied pact. They became larger parasites. Students went into debt to make themselves into a commodity the corporations needed and got with little investment. But it gets worse because corporations profit on all sides of the transaction. They profited because they got a skilled worker trained with workers' dollars. And then they profit from the loans the workers had to get to train them for the job. In a completely capitalized system, corporations and banking are in an incestuous relationship. And the kicker is that while corporations can unload their debt if they made the wrong bet, student loans are debts that one can rarely discharge, the heights of indentured servitude.

It is essential that everyone understand the nature of our economic system. It is designed for a few to prosper from the many. And to make it into the few, one must be invited. Dont be fooled by the semblance of prosperity.

I wrote a series of books titled Our Politics Made Easy & Ready For Action that put all of this into context. We will only change our system if we go beyond our indoctrination and work for real change.

Check out my books on our economic fraud, the necessity to engage the other side, and the creation of a real economy that serves us all. Subscribe to our YouTube Channelto help us get 100,000 subscribers. Will you help us widely deliver the progressive message by joining our YouTube channel?

More here:

Truths about student debt, college costs, and corporate freeloading on the backs of students. - Daily Kos

In the wake of Queen Elizabeths death, the debate over who is the rightful owner of the famed Kohinoor diamond has once again been reignited in India.

As the historian William Dalrymple pointed out, establishing ownership is far from straightforward but to many Indians, returning the Kohinoor is seen less as a referendum on the origins of the diamond itself and more as a statement of apology for the harms caused by colonial rule.

The Kohinoor is part of a larger conversation regarding reparations owed to the descendants of colonized people. To some, modern Europe is built on the backs of slavery, subjugation and forced labour. They argue that the practice hampered the economic and social growth of colonies even long after their former masters relinquished control. To bridge the gap between the developed and developing world therefore, reparations, whether symbolic, monetary, or otherwise, are much overdue.

However, for others, the rise and fall of empires is part of the natural course of history, and for realistic, legal, and moral reasons, reparations are not only impractical but also unnecessary.

According to estimates from French art historians, 90 per cent of Africas cultural heritage is believed to be in Europe. These include artefacts that were seized forcibly, gifted and inaccurately represented.

In 1897, James Phillips, a British official, visited the coast of Nigeria, demanding to meet the oba, or ruler, of the Kingdom of Benin. Despite being told that the oba couldnt meet with him due to a religious festival, Phillips persevered, hoping to convince the man to stop interrupting British trade.

Phillips and his colleagues never returned home.

In response, less than a month later, Britain sent 1200 soldiers to Nigeria to avenge the killing of Phillips and his men. Within weeks, the British forces seized control of Benin city to much colonial applause. However, what the newspapers at the time failed to mention was that the British forces also raided the city, violently looting its prized artifacts.

One British officer, Captain Herbert Sutherland Walker, wrote in his diary that British soldiers were wandering round with a chisel and hammer, knocking off brass figures and collecting all sorts of rubbish as loot. Additionally, he claimed that all the stuff of any value found in the Kings palace, and surrounding houses, has been collected.

Today, the Benin Bronzes, as they have come to be known, are spread out across the globe. Most are owned by museums but several also belong to private collectors and educational institutions.

Contrary to what their name suggests, the Benin Bronzes are neither from the country of Benin (originating instead from southern Nigeria,) and are not made solely from bronze. The various artifacts, believed to number over 3000, include wooden heads, ivory statues and brass plates.

Pressure to return these objects has arisen across the UK and the US. In 2016, students at Jesus College, Cambridge, campaigned to have a statue of a cockerel removed from its halls. At the Rhode Island School of Design in Massachusetts, students protested the presence of Benin Bronzes. Both institutions have pledged to return the items but have stressed that establishing ownership would be a challenging task.

After calls for the return of artifacts were amplified by the Benin Dialogue Group in 2010, the Nigerian local government agreed to open a museum in Benin City in 2023 featuring at least 300 Benin Bronzes. Those pieces will come from the collections of 10 European museums, including the British Museum, on a three year loan.

Similarly, calls have been made for the Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK to return the famed Tipu Sultans Tiger. Created to adorn the throne of Tipu Sultan, ruler of the Indian state of Mysore until East India Company troops besieged its capital in 1799. The sculpture depicts a British soldier being mauled by a tiger, his mouth frozen in shock as the beast sinks his teeth into his chest. If you turn the handle on its side, the soldiers arms flail in agony and cries of terror erupt out of it.

After defeating Sultan, the British forces routinely hunted tigers, both to emulate the practices of the Mughal court and to symbolise the defeat of those who stood in the way of British domination. Tipus Tiger, much like the man himself, represented Indian opposition to British colonialism and remains as one of the most popular attractions at the museum.

While the Benin Bronzes and Tipus Tiger are widely acknowledged to have been seized in an act of war, other colonial artifacts have a far more complicated history. Both the Kohinoor and the Cullinan diamond are believed to have been gifted to the British, albeit potentially in order to placate colonial forces and prevent any future bloodshed.

The Cullinan diamond, mined in South Africa in 1905, is the largest gem-quality uncut diamond ever discovered.

A couple of years after it was found, the diamond was gifted to King Edward VII by the Government of the Transvaal (South Africa), according to the Royal Collection Trust. Its plaque reads that the gift was a symbolic gesture intended to heal the rift between Britain and South Africa following the Boer War. After initial hesitation, the King accepted the gift on the recommendation of the British Government.

Despite its weight and value, the stone was famously transported by post from South Africa to Britain. It was then cut into nine large gemstones, each given s name Cullinan I to IX. 96 smaller diamonds were also produced from the stone. The largest of the lot is the 530 carat Cullinan I, also known as the Star of Africa, which now lies on the royal scepter of the British Crown Jewels. It is the largest colourless cut diamond in the world.

While the heritage of the Cullinan diamond and Tipus Tiger is well displayed, the same cannot be said of other looted artifacts. Most controversial of the lot is perhaps the Nigerian Chibok arrows.

In 1906, around 170 British soldiers launched an expedition against the Nigerian town of Chibok, now best known as being the setting for the kidnapping of 276 schoolchildren by terrorist group Boko Haram. Back then, Chibok represented arguably the greatest threat to British interests.

In defence against the British assault, the Chibok townsmen fought valiantly against invading troops, firing them with poisoned arrows and holding them off for 11 days. According to a report to Britains parliament at the time, the Chibok savages as they were described, had been the most determined lot of fighters ever encountered in what is now modern-day Nigeria.

It was only after the British forces discovered Chiiboks natural water sources several months later, and subsequently starved them out, did they manage to annex the region. The arrows and spears used by the townsmen were then collected and sent to London where they remain in storage today. However, the British Museum offers no description of how the artifacts were seized, nor of the exploits of the brave Chibok townspeople.

Perhaps most notably, CARICOM, an organisation of Caribbean states, has issued a ten-point plan outlying how reparations should be issued. As a starting point, the group has called for European governments to pay USD 50 billion for the stolen labour and resources that facilitated Europes rise at the expense of the colonized world.

Hilary Beckles, chairman of the reparations commission for CARICOM, insists that the sum is merely a drop in the ocean, estimating the European debt to the region at seven trillion British pounds.

The commission is also calling for a formal apology, rehabilitation programs, the development of cultural institutions, international debt forgiveness and investments in health and educational institutions.

Other countries have made similar demands.

Jamaica is seeking USD10.6 billion from the British, equivalent to the fees that Britain paid slave owners to populate the island.

Burundi asked for USD43 billion from Germany and Belgium, a figure calculated on the basis of the economic toll imposed by decades of violence and forced labour.

Congolese officials, while not setting an official price, have demanded that Belgium pay reparations for its brutal rule over the country, estimated to be so violent that it resulted in millions of deaths. According to one survey, nine of Belgiums 23 richest families still trace their fortunes to the Congo.

Rwanda for its part has accused Belgium of having taken the body of their former king after he was exiled in 1931. They are now making a case for the return of his remains.

Famously, Indian politician Shashi Tharoor made an impassioned case for reparations during a debate at the Oxford Union in 2015. While he dismissed the feasibility of the British ever being able to compensate India fully for colonial rule, he argued that a symbolic gesture would do much to repair the fractures that exist between the two nations. Towards that end, he suggested that the UK government pay India a sum of GBP1 per annum for 200 years to represent the same period of colonial occupation.

The most widely known example of international reparations is that of Germany after the Second World War, when the German government agreed to issue reparations to neighbouring states and individual survivors of the Holocaust. As per the terms agreed at the Yalta Conference, the reparations would not be paid in money, but instead through the transfer of German industrial assets as well as forced labour to the Allied powers.

Nearly half of payments were allotted towards France, the UK, and the US. Germany also paid Israel three billion marks over 14 years to compensate the families of Jews killed during the Holocaust. The USSR received payments from German allies including Italy, Finland, Hungary, and Romania.

Germany is no stranger to the reparations process itself, having extracted payments from the French after the Franco-Prussian war of 1970.

Britain, for its part, has compensated the survivors of the Amritsar massacre of 1919, paying nearly 2000 victims a mere total of USD30,000 at the time. More recently, families who suffered during an infamous 1950s crackdown in Kenya also successfully lobbied the British government for USD30 million in reparations in 2013.

Additionally, in 2015, public pressure in Germany over its genocide in Namibia resulted in the Bundestag committing USD1.35 billion in aid to the country, along with a formal acknowledgement of crimes committed there.

In terms of the return of stolen artifacts, governments have been similarly vocal, to limited success.

Under growing pressure, France repatriated 26 pilfered artworks to Benin last year, a small and arguably insignificant gestures considering that a French government audit estimated that the countrys museums hold 90,000 objects looted from Africa alone.

In June, Belgiums king traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo with one of 84,000 cultural objects being returned. However, his government offered no reparations, and despite repeated demands, no formal apology.

The primary argument in favour of reparations lies in the fact that colonialism was rooted in the desire to extract as many resources as possible from host countries leading to long term economic consequences. This wealth accumulation included extracting valuable natural resources, imposing trade restrictions, and destroying local industries. Since indigenous people were seen as inferior, it was also common to confiscate their lands and homes, enslave them and suppress their local cultures. In many cases, large swaths of the population were killed or died due to economic deprivation.

The economic extraction from colonies continues to have adverse consequences. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue in Why Nations Fail, that colonialism has shaped modern inequality in several fundamental ways. They write that 500 years ago, before the colonial project began, the economic inequality between rich and poor countries amounted to a factor of four. Today, they differ by a factor of more than 40.

Joshua Dwayne Settles, a professor at the University of Tennessee, argued in a 1996 paper that Africa faced similar problems after independence. He states that before the Scramble for Africa, African economies were advancing in every area, particularly trade. During colonial rule, European powers pursued self-serving interests, by encouraging the development of a commodity based trading system, a cash crop agriculture system, and by building a trade network linking the total economic output of a region to the demands of the colonizing state.

According to Regina Paulose and Ronald Rogo, who wrote an article on reparations for the State Crime Journal in 2018, although most of the colonisers and their victims may no longer be alive, the crimes committed were on behalf of the state. Therefore, while there may not be a case for individual criminal liability, there is one for civil liability of the state.

According to some, the precedent for this already exists. For example, a pan-African conference held in 1993 compared colonial reparations to those issued to victims of the holocaust.

According to Tharoor, international law also concurs with the demand for colonial reparations. He writes that the obligation to provide reparations arises when a violation of international law takes place, and it continues till a substantial step is taken to atone for the violation. It is not an act of charity, rather a principle founded in international customary law.

The case for returning artifacts is also a compelling one, laid bare by Felwine Sarr and Bndicte Savoy in their book, the Report on the Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Sarr and Savoy not only document how artifacts can and should be returned, but also argue passionately for why that is the case. They write that the youth of Africa, as much as the youth in France or Europe in general, have a right to their artistic and cultural heritage. Adding that erasing some of the wounds inflicted by colonialism would be achieved by returning cultural objects in aid of reconstructing the identity of subjects and communities.

The main argument cited by those who oppose reparations is that colonisation was a legal and common practice at the time.

As noted historian Edward Said once stated, partly because of empire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogenous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic.

Simply, neither land nor culture is exclusive to a single state, and the history of mankind has been characterised by the interchange of resources, particularly by force.

Additionally, not all colonies were treated equally and it would be almost impossible to account for everyones interests or calculate a fair sum for each. Then there is the matter of where the money would be allocated and whether it would actually address the challenges faced by postcolonial states today.

More practically, the concept of reparations could also set an unwanted and untenable precedent. Although Germany eventually agreed to pay Namibia reparations, Matthias Goldmann, a German legal scholar, said that German leaders initially resisted settling the claim out of a grave concern that this would give rise to a rule.

In a 2018 lecture, British scholar Jason Hickel further argued that no country could afford to pay the entirety or even fraction of reparations owed. He said, chalk up the billions of hours that enslaved Africans worked on British plantations, pay it at a living wage. Tally up compensation for the 60 million souls sacrificed to famineand you realize that if Britain paid reparations real, honest, courageous reparations there would be nothing left.

See the article here:

The Kohinoor, Cullinan and the enduring demand for reparations across the colonial world - The Indian Express

There have been notable victories for American workers since last October the first Amazon warehouse union in Staten Island has now amassed more than 8,000 members, more than 230 Starbucks have successfully unionized and various unions across the nation have won almost 77% of their elections in 2022. The tide seems to be turning in favor of the little guy, even as faux-liberal CEOs like Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz methodically work to litigate or legislate against their workers.

However, as is usually the case, all is not well a new threat seems to be rising in the midst of these wins. It is one that cannot be evaded or struck down by the collective action of chanting, invigorated men and women but with a lot of political progress and perhaps a bit of revolution, could actually end up being the key to a fairer world. The working class will soon be toe-to-toe with the gleaming steel of automated workers robots.

As frustrating as Andrew Yangs milquetoast Twitter posts and nonsensical musings may be, he was one of the prophets of this looming specter. His book The War On Normal People is lauded as one of the first accessible looks into a future of fully-automated factories, laboratories, offices, and stores. His predictions are backed by many peer-reviewed studies and scholarly analyses, all of which have the same grim message: the cynical, churning wheel of innovation that forced our ancestors into wage slavery during the Industrial Revolution will now actually do away with our jobs and wages, leading to unprecedented economic disaster.

Yangs proposal to combat this collapse is a UBI, or Universal Basic Income, which would provide a federally-funded, $1000 grant to all citizens, with no stipulations or conditionsan idea I am largely sympathetic to.

In a post-capitalist world one in which our ideas are not only outside of the box, but where the box has been eradicated entirelymaybe the rise of automation and adoption of a UBI can be an opportunity for workers to become people again. Robots can work far more efficiently and cost-effectively than humans can, which means we can use them to make our lives better. Theyll work for us, not the other way around.

Mindless, soulless robots can perform mindless, soulless work, producing unprecedented revenue. Companies that adopt automated labor can then be taxed and the subsequent revenue can be either taxed or redistributed entirely robots dont need salaries or benefits. This surplus money can then be reallocated to Americans through Universal Basic Income, or even job training and subsidized education. With a UBI, less tedious or brutal work, and more economic freedom, everybody can seek higher education, leisure time, artistic endeavors, familial and communal bonds, or the pursuit of happiness. Work is still sacred and always will be, but all people will be able to work good, fair, and stimulating jobs instead of just those with privilege.

Over the summer, I read some Beat Generation poetry (pretentious, I know), where I stumbled upon a particularly striking quote: Because in the end, you wont remember the time you spent working in the officeClimb that goddamn mountain.

Cliche, perhaps, but Jack Kerouacs words evoked a haunting realization for me: currently, the vast majority of the world will spend their lives working a job they dont particularly care about, wasting their one and only life on boring, degrading or all-consuming labor. So as we enter our newly mechanized world, we have two choices. We can continue on our capitalist path, leading to widespread poverty and economic misery, or we can take a deep breath and charge headlong into a society where humanity is prioritized over capital, technology benefits the poor, and all Americans are able to climb their mountain.

Read more:

Divine Politik: The rise of robots should be the downfall of capitalism The Daily Free Press - Daily Free Press

News1. Stacey Gomez

Stacey Gomez holding a copy of the decision from Residential Tenancies. Photo: Suzanne Rent

On Monday, Stacey Gomez got the decision from Residential Tenancies that told her she could stay in her apartment. Zane Woodford was at the tenancy hearing last week where Gomez and her landlord, Marcus Ranjbar, were presenting their cases about his application to have Gomez renovicted from her apartment on Church Street in Halifax.

Yesterday I went to the press conference Gomez organized for near her south-end apartment where she talked about what Mondays decision means not only to her, but other tenants in Nova Scotia.

There are so many people who are in similar situations like myself, and who maybe dont know what their rights are and dont feel confident to challenge when a landlord is trying to get them renovicted, she said. I think this is pretty huge in terms of tenant rights in the province. And its a relief because I have felt all along that what hes doing is not right, hes not following the rules, and just that his case was not very strong. To have that upheld by residential tenancy does feel good.

The decision also ordered the landlord to pay Gomez $837.91 for compensation/expenses relating to the loss of some enjoyment of her unit.

According to the decision, the board rejected Ranjbars application to renovict because there wasnt enough evidence regarding the presence of mold in the apartment. The board awarded Gomez compensation because the landlord didnt give her notice about the removal of her patio, and for the landlords failure to investigate and fix issues with the toilet and plumbing in the unit.

Gomez said shed like to see the province provide more support for tenants facing renoviction, including a legal fund they can access to help them fight their cases. She also reminded tenants not to sign any documents until they got legal advice.

If youre facing a renoviction or have any other housing questions, check out our PRICED OUT resource page for the list of housing organizations in your region.

Click here to read my story.

(Copy link for this item)

A scene from Tara Thornes film, Compulsis, which is screening at Atlantic Film Fest.

Evelyn C. White takes a look at the movies screening at FIN Atlantic Film Festival, which opens on Thursday night. That nights gala events include screen adaptations of Brother andWomen Talking by Canadian novelists David Chariandy and Miriam Toews, and directed, respectively, by Canadian filmmakers Clement Virgo and Sarah Polley.

White details the films of two local filmmakers, Koumbie and Tara Thorne, who hosts The Tideline here at the Examiner (Thorne interviewed Koumbie for the most recent episode of The Tideline).

White writes:

Local luminaries Tara Thorne and Koumbie address gender relations in their respective debut features,CompulsisandBystanders.Watching Thornes trenchant (and at times, hilarious) take on sexual predators, my mind wafted toHard Candy,the 2005 psychological thriller in which Elliott Page proved that payback (cue: James Brown) is a mother.

The film also earns props as a lesbian twist onThelma and Louise. Ditto for its evocation of Uma Thurman, the deadliest woman in the world, inKill Bill.Infused with monologues written by the poet laureate of Halifax, Sue Goyette,Compulsisis an unapologetically ballsy Take Back the Night romp.

Koumbie chooses a more subtle approach to male exploitation of women inBystanders.The scene: a diverse group of friends who have gathered at a waterfront cottage for a getaway. Spirited card-playing, tequila-drinking, and skinny-dipping ensues. As the vacay progresses, viewers learn that a member of the group is grappling with the possibility that he might have engaged in non-consensual sex with a woman who is not at the cottage. However, she is known to several of his friends.

Offering their various interpretations of consent, the group (some queer and/or questioning) straddles a line between supporting their friend and holding him accountable for a drunken encounter, the details of which he claims not to remember. The release is noteworthy for its cinma verit styling and analysis of a topic that the Me Too movement has rightly elevated. Koumbies use, in the film, of a reel of home movies, resonates profoundly in todays fraught racial climate.

Click here to read Whites story.

(Copy link for this item)

Work harder? Maybe for the right boss. Photo: Jordan Whitefield/Unsplash

Philip Moscovitch wrote this piece for Unravel about where all the workers went and learns its an employees market (I am here for it).

Moscovitch interviewed Kevin Kelloway, a psychology professor at Saint Marys University who said employers arent calling the shots anymore.

Youre going to see employees start to flex their muscle. Theyre going to do that as individuals by choosing not to work at certain places, or just quitting jobs if theyre treated poorly. And youre going to see it collectively through more unionization.

Moscovitch also chatted with two workers about finding new jobs in a pandemic. Katherine Hillman received CERB in the spring of 2020 when the lockdowns meant she couldnt work at her retail job. That gave her some time to find a new gig in customer service that allows her to work from home.

And Willow Raven was working remotely, but quit her job when her boss wanted her to go back to the office. She decided to take on a new career as a sex worker. She started an OnlyFans page and while she often works evenings and weekends, its on her own terms.

Its a good story that shows the labour shortage isnt because no one wants to work anymore its that they dont want to work for crappy bosses. You can read it here.

(Copy link for this item)

Photo: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

And heres another story about workers from Pete Evans at CBC. This one is about workers, most of them in the tech sector, who are working two jobs without their bosses knowing. Evans interviewed Mary, who thanks to working remotely at one full-time job, took up a second full-time job. So did her partner. Evans writes:

Working exclusively from home is almost always key to the entire operation. Marys partner, an engineer, was the first to dip his toe into the overemployment pool, signing up for a second full-time engineering job paying $90,000 a year back in January 2021. Mary decided to follow suit last fall by getting two jobs one in finance, and one in accounting, each paying $60,000 a year for full-time work.

We just looked at the budgets and we thought we definitely need this, she says of their four jobs, which doubled their household income to $300,000. Thats a large income by any definition, but Mary says they need the cash to stay afloat. It wasnt about whether we can or not we have to, she said.

It makes for some long hours, as Mary says they each average 12-14 hours of work every day, and some on weekends.Others onlinesay theyre able to swing it without putting in much more than40 hours a week. And the pandemic is what made it all possible,because of the widespread acceptance of remote work.

Mary and her partner were mindful of only seeking out jobs that could be done from home for the entire time, because the day any of their bosses call them into the office, the jig is up. If and when that happens, I would quit, she said.

Apparently theres a website, overemployed.com, that teaches remote workers how to do this. The site was started by Isaac Price, who in 2020 suspected hed get laid off from his job, so he started looking for another one. He found a new gig, but the layoff from his other job never happened, so he decided to work both. Now he gives others advice on how to do the same.

Working two full-time jobs isnt sustainable, of course, and Mary tells Evans she and her partner are already feeling the burnout. She said she knows if their bosses found out, theyd likely be fired.

Each day youre like, is this going to be the day that I get fired? Or one calls us back to the office; every single day youre on high alert. As soon as we can stop working two jobs, we will. Its not recommended. Its not desirable.

Ill point out that low-wage workers have been working more than one job for a long time

(Copy link for this item)

Last week, I watched a TikTok video in my Twitter feed that almost made my head explode.

The video is called 1950s woman meets the future, and shows a back-and-forth between two women: a young woman in a purple wig (the modern woman), and another woman in a floral apron (the 1950s housewife).

The modern woman tells the 1950s woman about all the exciting things to look forward to in the future. Welcome to 2022, where you can do anything a man can do! she says.

The two talk about going to work (in a cubicle staring at a computer), about housework (do I finally have a butler? the housewife asks,) and about preventing pregnancy (theres a magic pill for that, says the 2022 woman). Theres more talk of magic pills, too, notably anti-depressants if you need to cope.

The video is the latest trend in longing for the good old days that werent so good for everyone, including housewives.

I mentioned this horrid and misleading TikTok video on Twitter, and someone shared this brilliant takedown of just about every detail mentioned it in. For example, women couldnt get loans or credit cards without their husbands permission, and domestic violence was considered a private family matter.

One of the most interesting details in that thread documents the use of alcohol and drugs by those housewives, including a psychotropic drug called Miltown that was popular.

(This all reminded me of the wine mommy culture thats now pushed onto overwhelmed mothers today).

Several women in my Twitter thread pointed out that their mothers worked in the 1950s or earlier. My grandmothers did, too. The 1950s housewife was a role for a limited number of women, who, in many cases, werent so happy about it think the problem that has no name. And these women had other women, primarily Black women and women of colour, working in their homes.

I decided to look for more details about the lives of Canadian women around the 1950s and found this list. And while I knew many of these bits, its good to have a reminder of what rights women didnt have and what we did accomplish even in my lifetime (I was born in 1970). Here are some highlights:

1955: Restrictions on married women holding federal civil service jobs were finally abolished.

1955:Women from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and other Caribbean countries are recruited as domestics and received immigrant status.

1956: Legislation was enacted guaranteeing equal pay for equal work within federal jurisdiction.

1959: All provinces except Quebec and Newfoundland had equal pay for equal work legislation.

How did the 1960s look?

1960s: The start of the Womens Liberation Movement. It consisted largely of white, well educated women who fought for reforms such as paid maternity leave, rape crisis centres, and changes to abortion laws.

1960: Aboriginal women won the right to vote in federal elections (a right which had been granted to many other Canadian women in 1918) without having to abandon their Indian status.

1964:Married women allowed to be jury members.

1964: Women allowed to open a bank account without obtaining their husbands signature.

1969:The notion of head of the family is removed from the Qubec Civil Code.

What about the 1970s, when I was a kid?

1970: Jeannette Vivian Corbiere Lavell began a 15-year struggle to change the Indian Act to restore status and band membership rights to Indigenous women who had lost those rights through marriage to non-Indigenous men; the Indian Act was finally amended in 1985.

1970:Release of the Report from the Royal Commission on the Status of Women which reveals disturbing findings on the discrimination faced by women.

1971:Manitoba no longer fires women municipal employees who marry.

1975:Women earn 60 cents for every dollar earned by men.

1978: The Canada Labour Code was amended to eliminate pregnancy as a basis for lay-off or dismissal.

1978: Airline flight attendants gain the right to work after marriage and after they reach the age of 32.

Lets keep going. Heres the 1980s:

1983:Rape laws are modified in order to include sexual aggression and to make illegal the rape of a wife by her husband.

1983: The CHRA was amended to prohibit sexual harassment and to ban discrimination on the basis of pregnancy and family or marital status.

1988:The Supreme Court of Canada invalidates the Criminal Code sections which deal with abortion (I remember this as I was in high school at the time)

Oh, heres a bit from 1990 (I was 20).

In 1990 male managers earned an average salary of $48,137 while women managers earned an average salary of $27,707; men in teaching earned an average of $38,663 while women in teaching earned an average of $24,767; men in sales earned an average of $27,825 while women in sales earned an average of $13,405;

Id say every generation has a group that tries to tell us that feminism lied to us. For me as a teenager in the 198os, that group was REAL Women Canada, which was founded in 1983 and is still around today. Theyre a pro-family womens movement who in the heck is anti-family? that promotes traditional family values.

I went on its website so you dont have to, and it seems the group is very anti-LGBTQ, and has blogs on topics like how Disney is moving away from producing wholesome family entertainment and instead are being pushed to promote LGBTQ agendas.

How about instead of longing for the days that didnt exist, we support women where they are and in what they want to do. Were failing them in many ways. Certainly, the pandemic showed us women need more support, including child care (not the organic kind) and better wages. As the living wage report showed last week, the median hourly wage in Nova Scotia, as of June, is $22.80, but women earn $21.75, which is still less than what men earn at $24.04.

Now, wheres that TikTok?

(Copy link for this item)

Freelance writer Shayla Martin has this story in the New York Times this week about her visit to Nova Scotia to learn about Black history in the province and how some grassroots initiatives are bringing that history to more visitors.

Ren Boudreau, founder of Elevate and Explore Black Nova Scotia

Martin starts her story talking with Ren Boudreau, founder of Elevate and Explore Black Nova Scotia.(Matthew Byard profiled Boudreau and her work in this story from last year). Boudreau, who started her business in 2019, told Martin she noticed that many of her own family and friends hadnt visited some of the provinces most important Black cultural sites, so she decided to focus on that:

I realized its the local people here that have yet to experience a lot of these cultural sites in their own city, she told me over coffee in Halifax. When you dont see yourself represented somewhere, youre not going to think that place will be welcoming to you.

Martin headed out of the city and took a tour of the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre in Birchtown (Evelyn C. White wrote about the centre in this story from 2018). The centre, which opened in 2015, is located in what was the largest settlement of free Blacks in the world outside of Africa in 1783. On its windows, walls, and floor are the names of the Black loyalists who came here. Martin writes that she had conflicting emotions visiting the centre:

I had a shared sense of pride that the names and stories of these 3,000-plus ancestors were known and could be celebrated by Black Canadians today, yet I was jealous that for so many Americans like myself, we will never know the names of our ancestors. It felt like yet another distinct cruelty of American slavery, where names were infrequently recorded (usually only as property records), if at all.

Here, visitors are encouraged to search for the names of their ancestors and learn what became of them after arriving in Nova Scotia. With advance notice, the Black Loyalist Heritage Society staff members offer genealogical research services to the public, a service that members themselves have utilized.

Replica of the Seaview United Baptist Church that now serves as a museum to the historic community of Africville. Photo: Ethan Lycan-Lang

Martin wraps up her story with her visit to Africville. This visit, she said, filled her with apprehension, but after she saw the church where the Africville Museum is house, she got an invitation to the Africville Reunion.

Now in its 39th year, the annual homecoming is celebrated at the end of July by former residents who park their campers where their homes would have been, cooking, singing, dancing and reliving memories. I made my way into the camp and immediately a woman so strikingly similar to my own aunties waved me over to chat. Forced from Africville at the age of 15 and now in her late 60s, Paula Grant-Smith took a deep sigh when recalling that traumatic experience.

Growing up here was wonderful. If I fell and skinned my knee, I could go into any house and theyd patch me right up, said Ms. Grant-Smith. If I needed a snack, I could go stop by my neighbors and theyd feed me. I get very sad when I think about Africville, especially as I get older because we had so much freedom to play but also feel protected.

As she regaled me with memories of her childhood and past reunions, I felt that strange phenomenon of how alike so many Black communities are. Her description of Africville could have been my mothers Black neighborhood in southwest Louisiana, or my fathers in Montgomery, Ala.: neighborhoods that have seen their share of destruction because of racist government policies, yet have somehow maintained a spirit of love, family and hope.

We have a saying as Africville folk: The spirit lives on, Ms. Grant-Smith said. And when we come back here, the spirits of all of those folks that have gone on before us are right here with us.

You can read Martins story here.

(Copy link for this item)

Tuesday

Halifax Regional Council (Tuesday, 1pm, City Hall) agenda

Wednesday

Transportation Standing Committee (Wednesday, 10am, online) special meeting

District Boundary Resident Review Panel (Wednesday, 3:30pm, City Hall) agenda

Read the rest here:

Stop romanticizing the lives of 1950s housewives - Halifax Examiner

Published

2022-09-09 11:39

11:39

September 9, 2022

am

Over Labor Day weekend, President Joe Biden addressed steelworkers at a rally in Milwaukee. He lauded American laborers, including electricians, ironworkers, letter carriers, Teamsters, laborers, brick layers transit workers, plumbers, pipefitters, steelworkers.

Not in the presidents mentions: Americas 2.2 million domestic workers, who include house cleaners, home care workers and nannies, among others. These workers, mostly women, disproportionately immigrants and women of color, have long been left out of conversations about labor and the legal protections afforded to other workers.

Domestic workers and other labor advocates are pushing to change that through a measure known as the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act. It would extend protections currently enjoyed by most workers in America, including against workplace sexual harassment, to domestic workers. Their exclusion from these civil rights protections stem from the countrys legacy of racism and the fact that most are in workplaces of one, working independently or through an agency.

Ten states have passed Domestic Workers Bill of Rights legislation, but there is currently no similar legislation at the federal level. The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act was first introduced in 2019, but it was never referred to committee. The bill was reintroduced in 2021 by Democrats Rep. Pramila Jayapal in the House. Sens. Kristen Gillibrand and Ben Ray Lujn did the same in their chamber. The House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing about the bill in July, about a year after the bill was introduced.

Ai-jen Poo, president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, pointed out to The 19th that the American workforce today is different from a century ago. Since Labor Day was established, who we think of as working class and who workers are has really changed. At one point, our image of a working-class hero might have been as a factory worker or a mine worker. But I think in the 21st century, the Labor Day hero is a she-ro in the care sector, Poo said.

The people who do that work also have special concerns because of how their employment is structured, Poo said. Domestic workers are often the only employees in their workplaces, making organizing more difficult. She described the current labor situation for domestic workers as a free-for-all.

You might find a family to work for who respect you and treat you as a professional, give you paid sick days and vacation time. But then theres the other end of the spectrum, where theres cases of human trafficking and sexual assault and harassment. Theres no guidelines, no standards, she told The 19th. Language in the proposed measure would extend protections around issues like wages, being paid in full and on time, and harassment to all workplaces, not just workplaces with at least fifteen employees.

Thats why she and other advocates have pushed for legislative action.

The federal Domestic Workers Bill of Rights would establish fair and equal protections for the domestic workforce and account for the specific challenges workers face, Poo said.

According to Eileen Boris, a historian and professor of feminist studies at University of California Santa Barbara, this change has been a long time coming, and the lag has to do with the origins of how these workers jobs are perceived.

Care workers and other domestic workers had been excluded up until the Obama administration from the Fair Labor Standards Act, Boris said, referring to a 1938 law that she called the gold standard of labor regulation. The law was the first to set a federal minimum wage, among other protections.

The reason for this exclusion, as well as the exclusion from other labor protections, is the legacy of slavery, according to Boris.

The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed as part of the second New Deal. It had major exclusions, as did other New Deal measures. Why? Because the Democratic Party at that time was a coalition that relied on the South. White Southern legislators did not want to pay their maids the same, equal wages as other workers, Boris said.

According to Poo, that legacy has defined the conditions for domestic workers. Its always been treated as less than real work, always excluded from the basic protections that other workers take for granted.

Boris told The 19th that the legacy of slavery also feeds into sexual harassment and domestic workers fight against it. Historically, because of the lack of labor protections, women have fought back by quitting. This was, of course, not an option for enslaved women.

Enslaved women found themselves subjected to sexual coercion. And the labor takes place in the private home, so theres this idea that what happens in the home stays in the home, Boris said.

It is difficult to know how widespread sexual harassment of domestic workers is, as there is no federal recording or registry of official data. A 2021 poll from the National Domestic Workers Alliance found that a quarter of domestic workers reported feeling unsafe in their workplaces.

Right now, federal anti-harassment protections require workplaces to have a certain number of employees to be covered, Poo said. But the majority of domestic workers are in workplaces of one.

[The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights] would change the threshold, so any workplace with one employee or more would be covered by anti-harassment and anti-discrimination protection, Poo said.

That could give greater legal recourse to people like June Barrett, a proud, queer Jamaican immigrant and a domestic worker. They have worked in peoples homes for over two decades, as both a nanny and as a home care worker. They have also been personally impacted by the lack of protections available to domestic workers.

While working as a live-in home care worker for an older man, they were sexually harassed, repeatedly. On the first night working with him, the man asked Barrett to get into bed with him.

He said all of the other girls slept in the bed with him. I couldnt believe it. I told him its not professional, Barrett told The 19th.

Barrett also described multiple situations in which the man grabbed their breasts. Beyond the violation itself, Barrett was frustrated by the seeming lack of concern for their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their colleagues from employers Both agencies and families.

The family knows its happening. The agency knows its happening. They send woman after woman after woman, and nobody gives a damn. They just change out the woman, they told The 19th.

Barrett says disrespect is endemic to the profession.

Im still referred to as the girl. Im almost 60 years old. But I dont get angry or do sloppy care. I still put empathy and compassion in my work. Im a professional, Barrett said.

Barrett described national Domestic Workers Bill of Rights legislation as necessary and long overdue.

We are workers just like anybody else. We should get the same protections. Domestic workers are the fabric, the thread that weaves society together. We do real work, Barrett told The 19th.

Originally posted here:

Domestic workers, long excluded from labor protections, call for codified rights - The 19th*

Analysis

Poilievre has pushed hard for US-style Right-to-Work laws and defended the temporary foreign worker program as Stephen Harpers jobs minister

by Emily Leedham, Prairies Reporter

September 10, 2022

Newly elected Conservative leader Pierre Poilievres recent rhetoric pandering to workers contradicts his long track record of attacking unions and dividing workers, experts say.

Poilievre has spent much of his leadership campaign paying lip service to Canadian workers and claiming, without evidence, that workers support him.

The working class people are enthusiastic about my campaign, Poilievre tweeted earlier this year.

Poilievre, a career politician, has also responded to criticism that his campaign is promoting conspiracy theories by claiming he is defending the working class against elites, like politicians and bankers.

Workers have every right to demand raises for soaring food, homes & fuel prices, Poilievre tweeted on Labour Day. Lets be a country that gives its workers back control of their lives.

In Canada, workers in unionized workplaces earn more than non-unionized workers on average thanks to collective agreements that force employers to negotiate with workers for wage and benefits.

Unionized workers are also at the forefront of securing significant wage hikes amid soaring inflation. And more young Canadian workers are showing interest in the labour movement, kickstarting union drives at places like Starbucks, Indigo and Sephora.

However, Poilievre aggressively fought card-check legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize in favour of a two-step process that gives employers more time to interfere in the union drive.

Employers across Canada spend millions on union-busting lawyers, consultants and security firms to ensure union drives are unsuccessful.

Under Stephen Harpers government, Poilievre was one of the loudest supporters of the anti-union Bill C-377, a likely unconstitutional piece of legislation that tried to force Canadian labour unions to disclose all of their internal finances while big corporations would not have been subjected to the same rules.

Poilievre is also a major proponent of bringing US Right-to-Work laws to Canada. Right-to-Work laws weaken the labour movement by making it more difficult for unions to collect membership dues which pay for the collective bargaining process. Wages and benefits are lower on average in states with Right-to-Work laws.

I am the first federal politician to make a dedicated push toward this goal, Poilievre stated in 2013 about bringing right-to-work laws to Canada.

I am going to do my part to see that happens at the federal level and I would encourage provincial governments to do likewise.

In 2012, Poilievre mounted a campaign to allow public sector workers to opt out of paying union dues, a proposal that sought took aim at the Rand Formula a rule stemming from a Supreme Court decision that allows unions to collect dues.

Poilievre represents a blend of right-wing populism, economic nationalism, and libertarianism, and his labour legacy and policies reflect this, Brock University labour studies professor Simon Black told PressProgress,

This is how he can say recognize and reward hard work by making it pay but not mention the primary vehicle by which workers have improved the terms and conditions of work, that is labour unions.

Of course he has a history of supporting anti-union, right-to-work policy, which has racist roots in the Jim Crow South. Black added.

Right-to-Work laws were first championed in the US by a 1930s Texas businessman and white supremacist Vance Muse. Vance argued that Right-to-Work laws provide white workers with a means to opt out of union membership and associating with Black workers.

Martin Luther King Jr. thus recognized right-to-work laws as a threat to the civil rights movement and good jobs in 1964.

In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans such as right to work, Martin Luther King, Jr. said. It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.

Poilievre also used xenophobic rhetoric arguing that foreign migrant workers were taking Canadian workers jobs and driving down wages.

Poilievre was Stephen Harpers Employment Minister while thousands of migrant workers had their work permits expire in 2015 which forced them to leave the country or remain as undocumented workers.

Thats why theyre called temporary foreign workers, Poilievre said about the looming deportations in 2015.

Migrant rights advocates condemned xenophobic rhetoric which pitted Canadians against migrant workers.

While in the past racist headlines read Immigrants are taking Canadian jobs, now they insist Foreign workers are taking Canadian jobs. Whats the difference? wrote Migrant Workers Alliance for Change organizer Syed Hussan in 2014.

Full immigration status for all, full rights for all workers is the only way forward. Resist attempts to divide unemployed, migrant and poor people.

With limited pathways to permanent residency and work permits tied to employers, migrant workers recently compared the temporary foreign worker program to systemic slavery.

Massive campaigns from migrant rights organizers pressured the current Liberal government to develop a regularization program that could see over half a million migrant and undocumented workers granted permanent residency.

Poilievre defended his management of the temporary foreign worker program and the deportations: Broadly speaking, we made the right decision with the program, and were going to continue.

Our journalism is powered by readers like you.

Were an award-winning non-profit news organization that covers topics like social and economic inequality, big business and labour, and right-wing extremism.

Help us build so we can bring to light stories that dont get the attention they deserve from Canadas big corporate media outlets.

Read more from the original source:

Pierre Poilievre Claims He's a Friend of the 'Working Class'. He's Spent Years Attacking Canadian Workers. - PressProgress

In his push to embed Tennessees right to work law into the state Constitution, Gov. Bill Lee denies he and former Gov. Bill Haslam violated the Little Hatch Act with a video shot at the State Capitol.

AFL-CIO President Billy Dycus says they clearly broke the law, but hes not planning to request equal time with a big shoot at the Old Supreme Court Chamber.

Asked Thursday to explain how the video shoot is not a Little Hatch Act violation, Lee tells the Tennessee Lookout, I think its appropriate that we do that there and its important for Tennesseans to understand that issue.

But to use state property to push a campaign issue?

I think its a, its a legislative initiative. Its a constitutional issue, Lee says.

Yet Lee is chairman of the Yes On 1 drive, and, incidentally, he is running for re-election.

Tennessee Department of Human Resources policy states that the Little Hatch Act prohibits all state employees from, among several other things, using state-owned property for campaign advertising or activities.

Dycus says he thinks its a violation.

Theres no doubt it is. Theyre on state-owned property advocating for something thats political. Im not a legal expert, but I dont know how it could not be, Dycus says. Its typical. Youve got a billionaire and a millionaire, and its typical for them that they feel like theyre above the law, and they have a vested interest in seeing that this amendment passes.

Lee and Haslam have continually said how important they believe this amendment is for business, and they point toward the states solid economy as an example for why the amendment is needed.

The amendment would make it illegal for anyone to be denied employment because of union membership or refusal to join a union. But its really an anti-union measure.

The labor union president says the issue is as much about enshrining at-will employment in the Constitution as it is about the right to work law.

Dycus notes that Lee and Haslam dont talk about Tennessees poor track record for minimum wage jobs or safety violations in non-union plants vs. union plants.

It doesnt surprise me that theyre willing to do something that would violate a law when they dont have enough respect for working people to really and truly talk open and honestly about its the hard-working people of Tennessee that make this state what it is and not all their government hand-outs, Dycus adds.

Sen. Brian Kelsey, a Germantown Republican indicted for allegedly violating federal campaign finance laws, pushed the measure to the November ballot.

Kelsey, an attorney for a national law firm whose goal is to limit the effectiveness of unions, recently tweeted the Lee/Haslam video to garner

backing for the measure.

Tennessee has had a right to work law for 60 years, but Lee, Haslam and Kelsey want to kill any chance for outsiders to upend it.

Lee has no problem touting the need to insert the measure into the Constitution, all while playing nice with Ford Motor Co. as it builds Blue Oval City at the state-owned Memphis Regional Megasite and with General Motors as it produces the electric Cadillac Lyriq, which he test-drove this year. GM is a union plant, and Blue Oval is expected to be.

Dycus points out the right to work law applies only to people who work in a union shop with a collective bargaining agreement, which is less than 10% of the workforce in the state. People who arent represented by a labor union are at-will employees and can be fired for any reason, except an illegal one, or for no reason without taking on legal liability.

Those two shouldnt be confused.

While workers in organized plants dont have to join the union or pay fees, they benefit from the collective bargaining agreements and representation.

The term right to work is a great term to use if youre trying to hide behind something, but it doesnt apply to anybody unless they have a labor union, Dycus says.

Voters could consider that before they go blindly to the polls in November.

Towns lands Jack Daniels grant

State Rep. Joe Towns has the backing of a big bipartisan group in passing a constitutional amendment designed to remove all vestiges of slavery from the Tennessee Constitution.

Towns, a Memphis Democrat, also has the support of Jack Daniels, which he says is donating $50,000 to spread the word about the Vote Yes on 3 campaign as the November election arrives. Brown-Forman Corp. owns the Lynchburg whiskey maker.

Voters will see four questions on the ballot in November, and Towns initiative asks for support of a constitutional amendment to remove slavery from the Constitution.

The current Constitution says, That slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, are forever prohibited in this State.

Under Towns proposal, it would say, That slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited in the State. Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime.

The second sentence was inserted to make sure the bill would pass the Republican-controlled House. Tennessee doesnt have chain gangs anymore, even though some would like to see them revived. But some lawmakers feared that inmates would sit on their collective duffs and refuse to do hard labor.

Towns hit a snag and ran out of time when he tried to pass the measure initially but got everything lined up and pushed it through the General Assembly this year when Sen. Raumesh Akbari sponsored the Senate version of the bill. Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris carried the measure when he served in the Senate.

None of this can be done without support of everybody in the communities. This is the reason we have this bipartisan reach-out to communities, Towns says.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, Comptroller Jason Mumpower, Nashville Mayor John Cooper, Ripley Mayor and former House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh, Shelby Mayor Harris and Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs are just a few of those serving on the Yes on 3 Advisory Board.

Still, Towns says he isnt as confident as hed like to be about its passage.

He will be meeting with a coalition of ministers to push the message across the state, and he hopes to hold press conferences with Corker to show the importance of removing legalized slavery from the Constitution. Towns contends it never should have been left in the Constitution, under any circumstance, when the 13th Amendment took effect because its just plain wrong to brand a person as less than human.

Towns became the first Black lawmaker to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot. But thats just a by-product of doing the right thing.

The advisory committee is encouraging voters to click the yes box for question 3 and to cast a vote in the gubernatorial election.

In order to pass, a constitutional amendment must receive more yes than no votes, and the number of yes votes must be a majority of the total votes in the gubernatorial election.

To serve time or not

State leaders expressed their shock this week at the death of Memphis resident Eliza Fletcher, who was abducted and killed while running near the University of Memphis.

But the horrible incident elicited quite different statements from Gov. Lee and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally.

Said McNally, who sponsored a truth-in-sentencing bill that Lee allowed to become law without his signature, The monster that committed this crime was not unknown to the criminal justice system. He had done this type of thing before and now he has done it again and worse. It is simply disgraceful that this individual did not serve his full sentence for his previous crime. If he had, Eliza Fletcher would be alive today.

McNally says the case proves that the truth-in-sentencing act was necessary and long overdue.

In contrast, Lee said on Twitter, Maria & I are heartbroken by the tragic death of Eliza Fletcher, a dedicated teacher, wife & mother of two. We lift

the Fletcher family up in prayer during this time of unspeakable grief. I thank law enforcement for their tireless efforts & trust justice will be swift & severe.

Cleotha Abston Henderson is charged with first-degree murder, premeditated murder and first-degree perpetration of kidnapping.

He served 20 years of a 24-year sentence after pleading guilty to abducting a Memphis attorney in 2000.

Four other people also were killed this week in Memphis as part of random attacks. Police arrested 19-year-old Ezekiel Kelly, who served only 11 months of a three-year sentence for aggravated assault, according to reports. He was released in March.

Lee said Thursday he feels the community of Memphis has seen evil as innocent lives were lost to senseless murders.

Those who committed these crimes, these heinous crimes, will be brought to justice and it should be swift and severe, he says.

Lee commended law enforcement for their work on the spate of murders.

Memphis is the soul of the state, and its hurting right now, but we are committed. We are with that community, and we are committed to making certain that we address the issue of crime, he said.

He touted $100 million in state spending for a violent crime intervention grant fund, funding for 100 new state troopers, including 20 for Memphis, and a new law enforcement training center.

But the governor butted heads with McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton this year on their truth-in-sentencing, and even after these murders, he refused to bend to their way of thinking. Last spring, they had to fashion a compromise to require those who commit the most violent crimes to serve 100% of their sentences.

Lee continued tiptoeing Thursday around questions about his stance against the truth-in-sentencing bill. The governor only said the state needs to cut crime and stop ex-cons from going back to prison.

We need to be clearly tough on crime. We cannot be soft on crime, he says.

Lee pointed out his criminal justice reform legislation that passed two years ago required supervision for those released from prison. He said that didnt happen with the man charged with killing Eliza Fletcher.

The governors public statements drew scorn this week from Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, who noted Lee ran on a platform of criminal justice reform: That means letting violent criminals out early, Carlson said. It would be interesting to read a list of all the people who were let out early thanks to Bill Lee and guilty liberals like him and have them tell us which ones dont deserve to be in prison.

Rearranging welfare

The Tennessee Department of Human Services announced plans Thursday to allot $25 million each to seven entities in an effort to reshape the way the state deals with recipients of welfare money or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Those on welfare wont get more cash under this program, but the seven groups will be focusing on education, training, child care and better parenting. Essentially, it comes down to helping people figure out how to make more money so they wont need federal welfare.

The groups receiving the grants are Families Matter and University of Memphis in West Tennessee, Family & Childrens Services, Martha OBryan Center and Upper Cumberland Human Resource Agency in Middle Tennessee and First Tennessee Development District Foundation and United Way of Greater Knoxville in East Tennessee.

There are fundamental flaws in the social services safety net that have for too long counted the administration of services as a measure of success, said Human Services Commissioner Clarence Carter. The pilot projects that we celebrate today could demonstrate viable solutions and promising practices that address the flaws and better position those we collectively serve to thrive rather than survive.

The three-year pilot project is part of the states effort to pare down more than $741 million in reserves the Department of Human Services was sitting on two years ago when it was publicly humiliated for not spending federal money on people.

Even after this pilot, though, the departments reserve will remain flush with cash because the federal government sends more every year. A family of three receives about $200 a month, hardly enough to join Belle Meade Country Club. Maybe a little boost while theyre trying to work their way into Tennessees high-paying jobs would help.

Delay and deny

U.S. District Court Judge Eli Richardson approved a request by Cade Cothrens attorney for a weeklong extension of the deadline to seek a more detailed account of the indictment against him. The Tennessee Journal first reported the request.

Former House Speaker Glen Casada and Cothren, his ex-chief of staff, are accused of bribery, fraud and a host of charges as part of a phony campaign vendor scheme to enrich themselves. Cothren used Casada and former Rep. Robin Smith to steer House members taxpayer-funded constituent mailer work to him in return for kickbacks, according to the indictments.

They had to keep the thing secret because Casada got booted from the speakership, mainly because of the dealings of Cothren, whom he fired in 2019 amid a racist and sexist text message scandal.

Trial is set for Oct. 25, which would make for must-see TV during the lull before the November election and legislative session. But does anyone really believe it will take place that soon?

Cothren is already saying the truth will come out. And now his attorney is asking for the first postponement, albeit a short one. Deny and delay, deny and delay.

The waiting is the hardest part.

See the rest here:

Stockard on the Stump: Governor declares he didn't violate the Little Hatch Act Tennessee Lookout - Tennessee Lookout