Labour & Pop Culture: He thinks he’ll keep her

My wife flagged this 1993 song by Mary Chapin Carpenter as labour related. It traces the journey of a women who, at 36, opts to leave her marriage and role and primary caregiver to re-enter the workforce.

Most of the song chronicles the unpaid, social reproductive labour that the women does. It is interesting to see this work treated so explicitly as both skilled and demanding labour. And yet these skill have little market value when she decides to rejoin the paid workforce. It also nicely tease is out the often hidden power dynamics of one-income marriages.

I’m not a huge fan of the new country era, but the backup singers on this video are are pretty amazing. Trisha Yearwood, Emmylou Harris, and Patty Lovelace, to name a few.

She makes his coffee, she makes his bed
She does the laundry, she keeps him fed
When she was twenty-one she wore her mother's lace
She said, "forever," with a smile upon her face

She does the carpool, she P.T.A.'s
Doctors and dentists, she drives all day
When she was twenty-nine she delivered number three
And ev'ry Christmas card showed a perfect family

Ev'rything runs right on time
Years of practice and design
Spit and polish till it shines, he thinks he'll keep her

Ev'rything is so benign
The safest place you'll ever find
God forbid you change your mind, he thinks he'll keep her

She packs his suitcase, she sits and waits
With no expression upon her face
When she was thirty-six she met him at their door
She said, "I'm sorry, I don't love you any more"

Ev'rything runs right on time
Years of practice and design
Spit and polish till it shines, he thinks he'll keep her

Ev'rything is so benign
The safest place you'll ever find
God forbid you change your mind, he thinks he'll keep her

For fifteen years she had a job and not one raise in pay
Now she's in the typing pool at minimum wage

Ev'rything runs right on time
Years of practice and design
Spit and polish till it shines, he thinks he'll keep her

Ev'rything is so benign
The safest place you'll ever find
At least until you change your mind (he thinks he'll keep her) all right

-- Bob Barnetson

Indigenous gendered experiences of work in an oil-dependent, rural Alberta community

The Parkland Institute recently issued a very interesting report entitled “Indigenous gendered experiences of work in an oil-dependent, rural Alberta community.”

This case study of Wabasca “focuses on the lived experiences of Indigenous working families in the oil industry and how working conditions impact families and gender relations” (p. 1).

This study remedies the lack of attention paid by researchers to the economic, employment, or other benefits (and the tradeoffs among them) involving Indigenous communities and the gendered nature of these experiences.

The authors draw a number of conclusions and raise some very thought-provoking questions:

Interviews demonstrated that individuals working in the oil industry have experienced gender and racial discrimination at and related to work. At the same time, Indigenous companies have been able to carve out space in what has been an industry primarily dominated by non-Indigenous people. (p. 20)

The oil industry’s boom-bust cycle and the pressures of capitalism can bring significant imbalance and disruption to communities, as described here. However, through relationality in the community, specifically paid and unpaid caring work that is largely performed by women, the community works to establish balance. The industry itself may foster and exploit women’s engagement in this type of care work through its very structure and practices that create barriers and deterrents for women and ultimately reduce their participation in the higher-paying oilfield jobs. (p. 20) 

Some interviewees have internalized hegemonic racist stereotypes and narratives that Indigenous workers lack the drive to move up the labour ladder. At the same time, some workers are conscious of the stereotypes and resist them. These workers, especially Indigenous tradespeople, described the need to work harder than white workers to move up the ladder. (p. 20) 

Many Indigenous workers may end up streamed into unskilled labourer positions. The few Indigenous workers that become skilled journeymen or journeywomen sometimes end up being business owners by starting their own contracting companies. Indigenous business owners are a different class than their employees because they are wealthy enough to own some means of production. (pp. 20-21) 

Capital is a form of social and economic power that is not necessarily recognized as such. The long-term concern is that capitalist relations will get implanted in Indigenous communities, hooking them into the trans-local practices of ruling that are integral to corporate power (building stronger support for continued extractivism, as business revenue streams come to require it), and dividing the community against itself. From the perspective of miyo-pimatisiwin, how can Indigenous understandings of being relations (“all my relations”), and caring for the collective good be maintained when capitalist structures divide the community by class and individualist approaches impact community relations? (p. 21)

Overall, this is a very useful extension of the significant research done (primarily by University of Alberta scholars) on the social impacts of Alberta’s oil-dependent economy.

-- Bob Barnetson

On the Move: Stories of Mobile Work

One of the long-term research projects I’ve been involved with is the On the Move partnership, which examines economic-related geographic mobility (ERGM). The project is wrapping up and two new knowledge translation activities have recently rolled out.

The first is another episode of Ideas on CBC radio. This episode reports some of the findings of the series and the link includes other episodes of Ideas that have covered the project. These include the experiences of young migrant workers in Banff and live-in caregivers in Fort McMurray and the impact of the wildfire.

The second is a set of stories produced by the Alberta team which captures the stories of migrant workers in Alberta. There are stories of Indigenous, interprovincial, and international migration. My own work has mostly been with international workers and the stories (which are composites) reflect that:

• Carlos: A Gautemalan temporary foreign worker in the meatpacking industry who transitions to permanent residency.
• Anong: A Thai worker comes to Canada and experiencing human trafficking.
• Eugene: A Ukrainian migrant worker who stays on after his work permit expires and becomes undocumented.
• Gabriela: A Mexican agricultural worker struggles to assert her reproductive rights on a mushroom farm.
• Ashok: An Indian migrant worker struggles to work and live in rural Alberta.
• Reyna: A Filipina caregiver flees the Fort McMurray wildfire and sees her dreams of family reunification put on hold. 

These stories highlight the exploitation and vulnerability of migrant workers. It is not that they lack agency or understanding, but they are trapped within profoundly exploitative immigration regimes. These stories will be included as learning elements in a new course I'm writing, LBST 325: Mobile work and migrant workers.

-- Bob Barnetson

Presentation: Dead men tell no tales

Dead men tell no tales: Reporting and distorting occupational injuries
Bob Barnetson, NASH 81 Conference, Calgary, January 4, 2019

Introduction

Hey, I’m Bob. I teach labour stuff at Athabasca University. What I’m here to talk about today is how newspaper reporting about occupational injury is misleading and how that ultimately distorts public perceptions and public policy.

So let's start with some basic injury stats in Canada. The best data we have—but its not necessarily very good—comes from provincial and territorial workers’ compensation boards. These WCBs accept claims from injured workers who are seeking medical aid and wage-loss replacement.

Anyone want to guess the number of fatalities in Canada in 2016? Officially 904, of which 542 were from disease and 312 were from physical injury.

The problem with workers’ compensation data is that tends to under-report injuries. About 15% of folks are not in the ambit of the system so their injuries are not reported. Many of claims get rejected—like the 250 cancer claims at the GE plant in Peterborough.

Some fatalities also fall outside the narrow rules of WCBs. For example, if you are traveling to work and get killed, you don’t get counted, even though the injury would not have happened but for your need to go to work.

People who kill themselves due to work stress are mostly excluded. People who are killed due to occupational incidents but who are not workers (such at the residents of Lac Megantic when the tanker train derailed and exploded) are excluded.

Most numerically concerning are occupational illnesses that are not reported. Cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are two of the biggest sources of these deaths. They tend not to be reported because of long latency periods, worker ignorance of relevant occupational exposures, and murky causality.

All in, the annual death toll from work-related causes in Canada is 10 to 13 times what the official statistics show. So 10,000 deaths a year is a good solid number. That is a small city or the whole north shore of PEI killed every year by work.

Interestingly, fatalities are actually fairly uncommon. Other forms of injury are much more common. We have Canada-wide data on lost-time claims—basically an injury where a worker couldn’t go to work the next day so they “lost time”. Anyone want to guess how many lost-time claims there were in 2016? 240,682. Those claims represent about 60% of all lost-time claims—so the real number is over 400,000 serious injuries per year. So that’s like everyone in Saskatoon and Regina—kids, parents, grandparents—getting seriously injured each year.

Do those stats surprise you? Yeah, so what those stats tell us is that work is very, very dangerous. So let’s turn to newspaper reporting of workplace injuries and see what we find.

How accurate is reporting of work-related injury?

My colleague Jason Foster and I have been examining newspaper reports of injury. We’re going to look at national data in this next set of slides, but the results are pretty consistent nationally, by province, and between urban dailies and rural weeklies.

The most obvious finding is that newspapers report a minority of all injuries and fatalities. We can’t confidently estimate how much under-reporting there is but it’s fair to say that fewer than 1% are reported. And that’s understandable: not every injury is newsworthy. But an interesting question is, which injuries are newsworthy? Any guesses?

So we started by recording the ratio of fatalities to lost-time injuries in newspaper stories. We then compared that ratio to official statistics to get a sense of whether newspaper reports over- or under-emphasized injuries or fatalities.

Approximately 61.2% of newspaper reports (on the left) were about fatalities (which is the green part of the pie). When you look at official stats (on the right), you can see that fatalities actually comprise 0.4% of all serious injuries. So, basically, newspapers vastly over-report fatalities. Or, put another way, fatalities are much more newsworthy than injuries.

We then decided to look at the gender distribution of newspaper injury reports. Anyone want to guess what percentage of reported occupational injuries are actually experienced by women? Nationally, it was 37.1%. Anyone want to guess what percentage of newspaper injury reports were about women?

About 4.4% of newspaper reports (on the left) featured women (who are yellow). Official stats on the right show the true percentage is much higher. Basically, newspapers vastly over-report injuries to men. Or, put another way, injuries to men are apparently more newsworthy than injuries to women.

We then looked at what kind of injuries were reported. Newspapers are again green and official stats are yellow. Key take-aways are newspapers over-report fractures and traumatic injuries while entirely ignoring the most common kind of injury—a strain or sprain. Basically, if you got blowed up, or crushed, or burned to death, you made the paper. Otherwise, your injury wasn’t newsworthy.

We then looked at which industries received the most coverage for injuries and compared that to official stats. On the left we have the industries with the most newspaper report. On the right, we have the most injurious industries. You can see that that newspapers basically mis-represent which industries are most injurious. This pattern is likely a knock-on effect from the kinds of injuries that get reported, which are fatalities to men caused by a catastrophic event. 

Finally, we looked at who reporters quoted in their stories as a way to try and quantify who were the key sources. Reporters talked to government representatives and first responders most often, followed by the employer. They almost never talk to workers or their union representatives. 

So, if you relied on newspapers for your information about workplace injuries, you’d likely think injuries are fatalities caused by violent physical events that happen to blue-collar men. This is, of course, profoundly misleading.

How is work-related injury framed in newspapers?

Now while aggregate analysis of newspaper coverage tells us some interesting things, we can also learn a lot by looking at specific stories. The thing that jumps out when you start to read dozens and dozens of these stories at one time is that they all start to sounds the same. In fact there are three basic story templates (or frames) that reporters use when writing about workplace injury.

The first is what we call under investigation and it almost always reads like this example. The reporter notes a worker has been killed and the authorities are investigating. About 55% of all newspaper reports of injuries and fatalities look almost exactly like this—literally you can just swap out the proper nouns and, voila, you are a PostMedia journalist—your layoff notice is in the mail!

The key message in this frame is that the authorities have the situation under control. The passive voice (“the employee has been killed”) focuses attention on the victim rather than on what killed the worker or who was responsible for the death. Rarely do we see follow-up stories—instead the even, like the worker, just passes on.

This report is atypical in that it also names the injured worker and where he lived. Normally, the worker is described in generic terms such as “a 33-year-old carpenter”. Such sparse descriptions tend to dehumanize the victim by framing them as a nameless job-holder rather than in a more relatable way.

The second media frame is very similar and we call it before the courts. It comprises articles reporting charges filed or resolved under provincial OHS laws. They usually look a lot like this one and recount the facts of the case (similar to other court reporting) and the penalty(s) imposed. The reports use technical and passive language. 

While the issue of cause and blame can’t be avoided in these articles, they narrow the focus to legal culpability, thereby downplaying how the employer’s action (or inaction) killed or maimed a worker—in this case, a preventable electrocution due to employer inattention. Typically, the matter is discussed as simply a regulatory violation that’s addressed via a fine—a violation little different than being fined for speeding or jaywalking. What really happened here was involuntary manslaughter.

Finally, we have the human-tragedy frame. These articles typically recount the life story of a dead worker and most often appear around the National Day of Mourning in April. They often include an abbreviated summary of the incident followed by reminiscences about the worker’s interests, character, life history or social roles as told by a family member, friend or co-worker. These reports are highly idiosyncratic but the broad message is that the worker’s injury or death was a tragedy.

There are two key aspects of this frame. The first is that the “tragedy” is often accompanied by the word “accident” and implies the incident was unforeseeable and unavoidable. In this way, the human-tragedy narrative elides any discussion of wrongdoing, cause, or culpability.

Second, the tragedy in these articles is the personal loss and emotional suffering of the families. Focus is taken away from the workplace and put on the workers’ loved ones. In this way, the human-tragedy frame encourages readers to think of the worker, not as a worker, but as a father or son with interests and families--drawing out sympathy but, in doing so, removing the workplace context. Consequently, this frame discourages the reader from linking the human elements of the incident to economic, political, and structural factors giving rise to whatever caused the “tragedy” in the first place.

While each of the three media frames construct a different understanding of workplace injuries, taken together these frames create a meta-frame that guides readers’ understanding of workplace injuries. The four elements to the meta-frame are that injuries and fatalities are (1) isolated events (not part of a pattern) that (2) happen to “others” (generally blue-collar men) for which (3) no one is responsible (except maybe the worker), and thus (4) we ought not be concerned about them.

These conclusions are not true. Injuries are not one-off events. As we saw at the beginning of this talk, they are commonplace. A recent study Jason Foster and I completed found that 1 in 5 workers in Alberta had some kind of workplace injury in 2016 (~400,000 major or minor injuries). And 1 in 11 workers had a serious injury—where they need time off or modified duties.

Injuries don’t just happen to blue-collar men, although they do. They happen to all kinds of workers. We just tend to ignore injuries that happen to white-collar workers and to women because they are less likely to be newsworthy event. Think about the kinds of injuries that that serving staff get—burns, lacerations, chemical reactions, stress, and for women sexual harassment and problems caused by inappropriate footwear. That kind of injury almost never makes the paper.

Injuries all have causes. Typically, an employer structured work in a way that resulted in the injury. These kinds of root causes are often difficult to see. For example, Kelly may have slipped on the wet floor but the real question is why was the floor wet? Did Kelly’s boss lay off the person who maintained the hoses or cheap out on the fittings? That’s the root cause of the injury.

The only time we talk about the cause of injury is to blame the worker, often implicitly: For example, consider this article.



Basically, the newspaper parrots the employer’s assertion that, while the cause of a worker’s death is technically unknown, neither equipment nor training was at fault. The implication here is clearly that the worker made a mistake.

Finally, the meta-framing says we should probably not be worried about work-related injuries—the government has injuries under control. Even though that another injury happened is clear evidence that the state doesn't havinjuries under control.

So what factors explain these patterns of reporting? Well, we asked some reporters and editors just that.

What factors contribute to reporting of work-related injury?

Reporters use frames for four main reasons: three practical and one political.

The first reason is accessibility. A frame helps readers understand the story by presenting it in a familiar way. “A worker died on 50th street today and OHS is investigating” is a well known frame and we hardly have to read the rest of the story to get the gist. It saves the reporter and the newspaper time and space that a more complicated or nuanced report would require. That contributes to the template-style of reporting.

The second is limited knowledge. There are, essentially, no labour reporters left in Canada (the Toronto Star would be the sole exception). Generalists have little knowledge of labour issues and few contacts. So they are highly reliant upon government press releases for notification and information. The government tends to issues releases only when there is a fatality or an injury that dramatic (e.g., explosion or fire). That contributes to the distortion we see in what kinds of injuries are reported at all as well as who the reporters rely upon.

The third is time pressure. Reporters are pushed to get an initial story up online as quickly as possible. Rewriting a press release is the easiest way to do that. They say they have no time to investigate or go to the scene and talk to people. Exceptions are when there are multiple fatalities, such as when two saw mills exploded within a month of each other in BC. Instead, reporters crank out a story and then move onto the next. Only when there is some really unusual event—like the mil explosion—do stories persist through multiple news cycles.

These three factors reflect the work intensification in modern news room. Basically, newspapers are driven by the profit imperative (although you wouldn’t know it if you were a Postmedia shareholder!) so the managers are trying to increase productivity to reduce labour costs to increase profitability.

This leads to the fourth factor that explains the use of templates: newspapers are employers and they an have an interest in maintaining the stability of capitalist social formation. Specifically, they have no desire problematizing workplace injury because it reveals the effects of the profound power imbalance between employers and workers and how employers use that to maximize profitability by externalizing cost on workers in the form of unsafe workplaces and injuries.

Now, occasionally you’ll see an expose that reflects reporter’s personal interest in workplace injury—like we did here in Alberta in the summer of 2015. But day to day, there is rarely condemnation or even note of the injury epidemic in the workplace. Rather, newspapers use stories injuries to sell papers but make sure that there is no link between the stories or delving into the what all of these injuries say about employment.

In the end, though, does any of this matter? Does it affect the public discourse about injuries? The answer is yes.

What effects does reporting have on public discourse?

Before we go into this last section about research we’ve just completed, we need to briefly sort out the idea that the world as socially constructed. The basic nub of social construction is that there is an infinite amount of stimulus in the social world. We select some of it to pay attention to and then we interpret what it means. And what we pay attention to and how we interpret it depends upon our beliefs, values, and experiences.

For example, you’re a female student, you go visit you male prof in his office to ask a question, and he closes the door after you enter. How do you interpret that? Is it a bit a creepy? Or is he just trying to protect your privacy? There’s not really an objective interpretation based on the facts I gave you. How you interpret closing the door depends on your beliefs, values, and experiences.

We typically have two main sources of information about the world. We have our experienced reality—the things we and our friends and families experience personally. And we have symbolic reality—things we know about from the press, government, and other institutions (lobby groups, Wikipedia). We use symbolic reality to supplement our experienced reality to create a shared reality.

If the symbolic reality we are exposed to is biased, it may bias our shared and thus skew what stimulus we select and how we interpret it. For example, most of us have no personal experience with the macro-economic effects of increasing the minimum wage. But we hear from employer lobby groups and conservative politicians via the media that wage increases kill jobs. So we probably view increase in the minimum wage with at least some trepidation.

The reality is that historically there has been virtually no relationship between minimum-wage increases and job losses. But you’d never know that unless you looked very carefully at the academic research (which no one ever does). The point being, media distortions of facts have the potential to skew public perception and impact what public policy options are considered appropriate and acceptable.

So lets come back to injury. Newspapers provide demonstrably distorted coverage of workplace injuries. So it is possible they are skewing public perceptions. That said, the widespread nature of injury also means that most of us have at least some personal experience with injuries. So, that may offer a corrective to offset the distortion. We decided to test this with a survey of 2000 Alberta worker sin 2016. We asked them four questions about the level of injury in Alberta. We then compared their results with government statistics and we compared the answers of those who were injured with the answers of those who weren’t.

We started by asking respondents to estimate the number of serious injuries in Alberta—disabling injuries in WCB terminology. We asked this because most work-related injuries are not reported by newspapers. What we found was that 97.6% of respondents under-estimated the number of serious injuries. Most vastly under-estimated the number of serious injuries. On average, respondents estimated there were 5,545 serious injuries annually (which is about 11 or 12% of the official number) and almost no one estimated higher than 20,000 injuries. 

Personal experience of injury had no significant impact on worker estimates so doesn’t appear to be acting as a corrective.

We also asked respondents to estimate the ratio of fatalities to serious injuries. We asked about this because newspapers tend to over-report fatalities. The official ratio of was 1 fatality for every 384 serious injuries in Alberta. By contrast, newspapers report three fatalities for every serious injury.

What we found was that the vast majority of respondents over-estimated the ratio of fatalities to serious injuries. Respondents’ average estimate was 1 fatality for every 44 serious injuries. This estimate is not as extreme as newspaper coverage but it is still way out of whack with reality. And, again, personal experience of injury had no significant impact on worker estimates.

Our third question asked respondents to select from a list of 9 industry groupings the 3 most injurious industries. We asked this because newspaper coverage centres on industries with relatively low injury rates. 

There was significant agreement among respondents (right-hand column) about the most dangerous industries: 91% selected construction, 72% selected mining and petroleum development, and 65% selected agriculture and forestry.

These were the exact same industries that newspapers reported on the most and almost in the same order.

However, the industries with the highest disabling injury rates in Alberta (left-hand column) were entirely different from those selected by respondents and reported on by newspapers. Again, there was no significant difference in the responses between workers who were injured and those who weren’t.

Overall, what these three questions suggest is that workers’ views of injury tended to align with newspaper reports and diverge from the realities of workplace injury. And there was also no evidence that workers’ personal experiences with injury served as any sort of corrective.

The only exception we found to this pattern was in the fourth question, wheh we asked respondents what proportion of all serious injuries were experienced by women. The correct answer in Alberta was 32.7%. 

Overall, the mean answer given by respondents was pretty much bang on the money (33.8%) and men and women were about equally accurate in their estimates.

When you disaggregate the respondents’ answers a bit more nuance appears. There was quite a spread in responses. Only about 17% of respondents estimated the correct percentage (+/-5%). Inaccurate estimates were split evenly between estimating too high and too low.

While respondents weren’t particularly good at estimating the correct percentage, they were more accurate than newspaper reports. Workers’ more accurate estimates may simply reflect that Alberta newspaper reports were so extremely skewed towards injuries to men (91.7%) that workers pretty much couldn’t help but be more accurate.

The upshot of this research is that workers tend to view injury in ways that are consistent with distorted media reports. We can’t infer causality from correlation, but given the theory around social constructivism, the results are strongly suggestive of causality.

Conclusions

So what are the take-aways?

First, media reports of occupational injury paint a distorted picture of how gets injured and how. Second, the frames that are used serve to downplay that this issue is not being effectively regulated by the stat. Third, it is likely that these distortions are skewing the public’s view of injury.

More conjecturally, the absence of accurate information is likely undermining the political verve this issue should have. This takes the heat of policy makers to take meaningful action and allows employers to continue to organize work in unsafe ways—something they do because it is generally more profitable to do so than to make the work safe.

Report identifies failing in Caregiver program

A week ago, a coalition of groups released a report addressing shortcomings in Canada’s existing Caregiver Program. This program brings foreign nationals to Canada to work on a temporary basis providing care for children, the elderly and persons with disabilities. After 24 months of work, the caregivers can then apply for permanent residency.

The existing Caregiver program is set to expire in November of 2019. The coalition identifies a number of issues with the current program:

1. It defines caregiving as a temporary labour market need when, in fact, there is an ongoing need for caregivers (as witnessed by the ~5000 new caregivers who come to Canada each year).
2. The program requirements separates caregivers from their own families, often for years.
3. The structure of the program makes it almost impossible for caregivers to leave bad jobs, such as where there is economic exploitation or abuse.
4. The pathway to permanent residency contains a hard cap on the number of caregivers who may become permanent residents (which is the primary attraction of the program for workers) that is set at about half of the number of caregivers who are allowed into the country each year. Consequently, there is a huge backlog of applications.
5. Some of the requirements for permanent residency (language and education) are assessed only after caregivers have already been employed on a temporary work permit for two years. Other requirements (medical exam) are repeated.

The report also contains recommendations for actions and is well worth a read.

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: Family impact of mobility

The Vanier Institute recently published an article about the impact of work-related mobility on family life. The study looked at workers who commuted more than an hour a day and workers whose jobs required them to move from place-to-place during the day.

Among the findings is that there were significant effects on workers of unpaid idle time (e.g., time spent waiting for work that was not paid). Examples include caregivers who were waiting between client visits or shift workers who must arrive early for a shift due to poor public transportation alignment with their schedules. This time represented a cost transferred from employers to workers (in the form of time stolen from family responsibilities) by the mobile nature of the job.

The time pressures that mobility intensifies were also found to negatively affect the well being of workers. Effects included exhaustion, stress, and social isolation. The lack of alignment between non-standard work hours and child-care formed an additional burden that was felt particularly acutely by female workers.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: American Pie

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture looks at “American Pie” by Don MacLean. This song is among the most famous of pop songs and is a timely choice, given that tomorrow is the Day of Mourning for workers killed on the job.

The song features a 1959 plane crash that killed musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper (hence, the day the music died). More broadly, the song is about McLean’s sense (in 1971) that America had taken a turn in the wrong direction.



For those not keen on listening to ‘70s singer-sing writer, may I suggest Weird Al’s Star Wars parody, which anticipated the plot of The Phantom Menace?



A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
And, I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people dance, and...
Maybe they'd be happy for a while
But, February made me shiver with every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep - I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside the day the music died

So, bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing...
This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

Did you write the Book of Love and do you have faith in God, above?
If the Bible tells you so
Now, do you believe in Rock and Roll? Can music save your mortal soul? And...
Can you teach me how to dance real slow?
Well, I know that you're in love with him, 'cause I saw you dancing in the gym
You both kicked off your shoes - man, I dig those rhythm and blues
I was a lonely, teenage broncin' buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck, but...
I knew I was out of luck the day the music died

I started singing, bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing...
This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

Now, for ten years we've been on our own and moss grows fat on a Rolling Stone, but...
That's not how it used to be
When the Jester sang for the king and queen in a coat he borrowed from James Dean
In a voice that came from you and me
Oh, and while the King was looking down the Jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned - no verdict was returned
And, while Lennon read a book on Marx the quartet practiced in the park, and...
We sang dirges in the dark the day the music died

We were singing, bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing...
This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

Healter Skealter in the summer swelter - the Birds flew off with a fallout shelter
Eight Miles High and falling fast
It landed foul on the grass
The players tried for a forward pass with the Jester on the sidelines in a cast
Now, the halftime air was sweet perfume while the Sergeants played a marching tune
We all got up to dance, oh, but we never got the chance
'Cause the players tried to take the field - the marching band refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?

We started singing, bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing...
This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

And, there we were, all in one place - a generation Lost in Space
With no time left to start again
So, come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick - Jack Flash sat on a Candlestick, 'cause...
Fire is the Devil's only friend
And, as I watched him on the stage my hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell could break that satan's spell
And, as the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite, I saw...
Satan laughing with delight the day the music died

He was singing, bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing...
This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

I met a girl who sang the Blues, and I asked her for some happy news
She just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store where I'd heard the music years before, but...
The man there said the music wouldn't play
And, in the streets the children screamed, the lover's cried, and the poets dreamed, but...
Not a word was spoken - the church bells all were broken
And, the three men I admire most: the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, they...
Caught the last train for the coast the day the music died

And, they were singing, bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing...
This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

They were singing, bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing...
This'll be the day that I die

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: The Irregular

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is the 2017 novel “The Irregular” by H.B. Lyle. The setting is London in 1909 and the main character is Wiggins (I’m not sure we ever learn his first name). Wiggins is an adult version of one of Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars—a group of street urchins periodically employed by Holmes in his cases.

The novel is historical fiction, mixing facts with fiction to create a fairly decent thriller. Wiggins is recruited by the government to form what will eventually become MI5 and MI6 (he becomes Agent 00). His task is to unravel a spy ring in a munitions factory that is leaking secrets to Germany. There is a separate plot line about Wiggins seek to avenge the death of one of his friends at the hands of Russian anarchists.

Unions and workers form part of the backdrop of the story. London in 1909 is a pretty nasty place for the working class. There are rallies and protests (not covered by the press), with Marxist revolutionaries mixing with workers wanting 8 hour work days and decent pay and suffragists wanting the vote. The government’s response is to try to suppress demands demands made by the working class, often with the police.

It is interesting that the workers are painted with a fair bit of sympathy by the author--particularly with regard to the immigrants who came to London from all over the world. Indeed, Wiggins is clearly of the lower class, in his appearance, manners, and values. Yet his main job is to save the empire—which treats his fellow workers so shabbily. It will be interesting to see how this conflict plays out in future novels.

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: You don't have to be stupid to work here...

One of the great parts of being a professor is that my job can sometimes be to take a widely accepted idea and test it to see if it is true. This is very similar to what workers do around the lunch room when they roll their eyes at the latest employee engagement efforts, but just a bit more thorough.

The point of this style of research is to suss out ideas and approaches that don’t work as advertised in the hope of sparking change. A recent essay by Andre Spicer entitled “Stupefied: How organisations enshrine collective stupidity and employees are rewarded for checking their brains at the office door” is a good example of this kind of research. It is well worth the read.

Spicer examines the rather common experience of new graduates who are hired to exciting job descriptions based upon their skills only to find that their actual job is low-level paper pushing and that no one is interested in their ideas for change. The result of this false promise tends to be cynicism, learned passivity, and/or staff turnover (which continues until a suitably cynical and passive worker is found).

Bureaucratizing work is a key mechanism by which organizations stupedify their workers. Complex processes and forms (often enacted under the guise of risk management and quality control) limit workers’ scope for innovation. This happens in at least two ways.

First, creating a set process means that when a worker has a good idea, there isn’t a way to express and advance the idea (i.e., “there isn’t place for this on the form”). Second, advancing an idea outside of the existing norm tends to be slow, labour-intensive, and subject to multiple points where the idea can be shut down.

Underlying this approach is a Taylorist model of organizations as machines where all parts are expected to work in lock step towards making a single product )”you can have your Model T in any colour so long as it is black”). This logic is often unspoken (and sometimes exists below the level of consciousness).

Smart employees quickly get the idea, though, and then check out—either psychologically or physically. Management efforts to re-ignite engagement (e.g., buzz-wordy stuff like strategic planning, rebranding, and adopting best practices) typically fail because they don’t attend to the root the cause of the disengagement (i.e., the absence of opportunity to meaningfully shape work.

The opportunity cost of these sorts of behaviours is huge—both in wasted effort and in developing a culture of “three bags full, sir”. The costs of such behaviours are rarely borne by organizational leaders, who move onwards and upwards.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: The Clampdown

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “The Clampdown” by the Clash. The clampdown refers to the growing calls in the 1970s for governments to oppress groups (e.g., welfare claimants, striking workers and other agitators) that sought to change the social, economic and moral norms of the UK. 

You’ll recall that the 1970s was the beginning of what became the neoliberal retrenchment led, in the UK, by Margaret Thatcher.

There are lots of worker references in the lyrics. Wearing the “blue and brown” refers to the most common uniform colours of workers and the song talks about the tendency of workers to be co-opted by the system.

You grow up and you calm down
You're working for the clampdown
You start wearing the blue and brown
You're working for the clampdown
So you got someone to boss around
It makes you feel big now
You drift until you brutalize
You made your first kill now

The price of this, suggests the song, is that you essentially sacrifice your life to economically and socially benefit others (essentially capitalists).

The voices in your head are calling
Stop wasting your time, there's nothing coming
Only a fool would think someone could save you
The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don't owe nothing, so boy get running
It's the best years of your life they want to steal

At the end of the song, we hear a call for revolution (whether electoral or political is unclear):

In these days of evil presidentes
Working for the clampdown
But lately one or two has fully paid their due
For working for the clampdown

I picked a Springsteen cover because I can’t stand the Clash. You can suffer through a live version by the Clash here if you want.



Hey, hey!
Ooh!
The kingdom is ransacked
the jewels all taken back
and the chopper descends
they're hidden in the back
with a message on a half-baked tape
with the spool going round
saying I'm back here in this place
and I could cry
and there's smoke you could click on

What are we gonna do now?
Taking off his turban, they said, is this man a Jew?
'Cause they're working for the clampdown
They put up a poster saying we earn more than you!
When we're working for the clampdown
We will teach our twisted speech
To the young believers
We will train our blue-eyed men
To be young believers

The judge said five to ten, but I say double that again
I'm not working for the clampdown
No man born with a living soul
Can be working for the clampdown
Kick over the wall 'cause government's to fall
How can you refuse it?
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D'you know that you can use it?

The voices in your head are calling
Stop wasting your time, there's nothing coming
Only a fool would think someone could save you
The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don't owe nothing, so boy get running
It's the best years of your life they want to steal

You grow up and you calm down
You're working for the clampdown
You start wearing the blue and brown
You're working for the clampdown
So you got someone to boss around
It makes you feel big now
You drift until you brutalize
You made your first kill now

In these days of evil presidentes
Working for the clampdown
But lately one or two has fully paid their due
For working for the clampdown
Ha! Gitalong! Gitalong!
Working for the clampdown
Ha! Gitalong! Gitalong!
Working for the clampdown

Yeah I'm working hard in Harrisburg
Working hard in Petersburg
Working for the clampdown
Working for the clampdown
Ha! Gitalong! Gitalong
Begging to be melted down
Gitalong, gitalong
(Work)
(Work)
(Work) And I've given away no secrets - ha!
(Work)
(Work)
(More work)
(More work)
(Work)
(Work)
(Work)
(Work)
Who's barmy now?

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Midnight regulations

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Midnight Regulations” by Alexisonfire. This song appears to be about the pressure—both economic and moral--that workers find themselves in at work:

Burned his candle down
Working to make ends meet

And

They say just to hold onto your hope
But you know if you swallow your pride
You will choke

Now I may be missing something here around the use of midnight regulations. My understanding of midnight regulations is at they are rules enacted by US agencies by an outgoing president in order to box in his/her successor. I don’t quite see the link, but perhaps this is a nod to ability of the powerful to manipulate the future of workers with no accountability for the consequences?

And now he's hanging on
To his final stitch of faith
So, here's to all the years
Of deaf ear fallen prayers
Rich men behind closed doors
Are trying to keep him in his place

The most melodious version of this song is here. The only video I could find is this live, sharper-edged interpretation from (I think) the band’s final tour.



I find myself concerned
For the common man, these days
Evil are the minds
That push the divide
Forced to live a life
In fear that his future is on the wane
Midnight regulations
Midnight regulations

Burned his candle down
Working to make ends meet
But what can be done
About the way things have become
Fingers to the bone
Ready to admit defeat
Midnight regulations
Midnight

Brother! There is no charity
For the common man
When he is in need of relief

And now he's hanging on
To his final stitch of faith
So, here's to all the years
Of deaf ear fallen prayers
Rich men behind closed doors
Are trying to keep him in his place
Midnight regulations
Midnight regulations

Oh, all you common men
You need to fight for a new way
Old hearts, we need to mend
It's time to start again
Palace walls dismantled
Brick by brick, you will have your day
Midnight regulations
Midnight

Brother! There is no charity
For the common man
When he is in need of relief

They say just to hold onto your hope
But you know if you swallow your pride
You will choke

Brother! There is no charity (there is no charity)
For the common man
When he is in need of relief (when he is in need)
Brother!
Brother!
Men!
Men!
Midnight Regulations
Midnight,
Midnight regulations

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: Trans workers and precarity

This summer, I ran across a very interesting article exploring how trans workers face greater precarity of employment. “Gender Transition and Job In/Security: Trans* Un/der/employment Experiences and Labour Anxieties in Post-Fordist Society” explores how the pressure on workers to “use their bodies and working personas to create pleasant interactions and good experiences for customers and clientele” can negatively affect those workers whose bodies fall outside of conventional norms of beauty or normality (p. 168).

In effect, gender normative expression acts as a key determinant of employment. The devaluing of non-gender-conforming workers negatively affects them economically, physically, and psychologically. This is a fascinating article that explores the treatment of trans workers—something that I don't think I have every encountered in any of the HR texts or research that I’ve examined.

This lacuna in HR pedagogy is itself fascinating because not talking about trans workers reinforces (perhaps unintentionally) the social exclusion of trans workers. It reminds me a bit of how HR texts dealt with sexual orientation prior to the Vriend decision (i.e., they ignored sexual orientation). Interestingly, since then, HR texts have largely continued to marginalize issues of sexual orientation by lumping them into a brief discussion of how to avoid complaints of discrimination on the basis of various protected statuses. 

Few books explicitly sexual orientation in the sections they have on diversity. In this context, diversity basically means female workers, workers with disabilities, and workers of colour (although largely exclusive of Indigenous workers). As this article reveals, the silence of HR around the employment experiences of trans workers comes at a great cost to the workers themselves.

-- Bob Barnetson

OHS protections for pregnant and breastfeeding workers

Last week, the Parkland Institute published a blog post written by myself, and two research collaborators. It provided some important context for the Alberta Occupational Health and Safety Act review. The deadline for submissions to the review is October 16. 

An issue that has received little discussion so far is protective leave for pregnant and breastfeeding women. Yesterday, for example, a worker reported being terminated because she was pregnant because the employer was concerned that the lifting requirement of the job was to great for her. 

The company, now the subject of a human rights complaint, disputes this characterization. But:

The temp agency that hired Deghanifard, Manpower, told the commission they were informed Deghanifard's assignment had ended because her role involved lifting heavy items and in her condition the manager felt it could be harmful to her.

There are approximately 50,000 pregnancies in Alberta each year. Pregnant and nursing women face unique physical, biological, and chemical workplace health hazards. Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety Act requires workers to refuse unsafe work but, in practice, few workers refuse unsafe work for fear of job loss.

Alberta’s Human Rights Act requires employers to accommodate pregnant and breastfeeding workers to the point of undue hardship. Workers who are not accommodated can complain, but such complaints take months and years to resolve. During this time, workers who are denied accommodation may be without financial support.

Quebec provides pregnant or breastfeeding women who work in conditions that threaten their health or the health of their unborn or breastfeeding children (and who can produce a medical certificate to substantiate these concerns) with access to (1) immediate re-assignment, or (2) protective leave funded by the La Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (i.e., the workers’ compensation board).

Alberta’s current health and safety protections for pregnant and breast-feeding women are inadequate. Providing pregnant and breast-feeding workers with wage-loss benefits should their employer refuse to address workplace hazards will make workplaces safer for this uniquely vulnerable group. The cost of any such leaves can be recouped from the employer via a special workers’ compensation levy.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Talkin bout a Revolution

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Talkin bout a Revolution" by Tracy Chapman. Chapman wrote this song in response to her experiences of the wealthy disregarding the lives and struggles of the poor and blue-collar people.

The song pretty clearly identifies the American proletariat of the day:

While they're standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in the unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

It then suggests that the hopelessness of their situation will result in social instability:

Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take what's theirs

An interesting question is, to what degree, have we seen this talk of a revolution play out snce the song was released in 1988? We might consider the growing divide between rich and poor (often along racial lines) and the creation of an underground economy as one response. It isn’t a revolution in the 1960s, CIA sense of the term. But it is a rejection of (or a work-around to) mainstream American society.

A different angle is to look at the broad support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election—often by poor people who are now being harmed by his policies. Was this support about looking for an outsider who (at least superficially) addressed the needs of poor and dispossessed (white) people?



Don't you know
They're talkin' 'bout a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
Don't you know
They're talkin' about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
While they're standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in the unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

Don't you know
They're talkin' 'bout a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take what's theirs

Don't you know
You better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run
Oh I said you better
Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run

'Cause finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin' bout a revolution
Yes, finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin' bout a revolution, oh no
Talkin' bout a revolution, oh
While they're standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in the unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Capitalism Stole My Virginity

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Capitalism stole my virginity” by the (International) Noise Conspiracy. While there are lots of popular songs about work, there are far fewer songs that engage with the political-economy in which work occurs.

This song notes (via metaphor) how capitalism commodifies workers and their dreams:

All dreams corrupted in front of our eyes … 

Distasteful ugly and cheap
That is how you make me feel, I said
Capitalism stole my virginity 

We are all sluts, cheap products
In someone else's notebook

The result is a loss of commitment to capitalist social formation and the potential for resistance.

Robbed out of our bleeding hearts
Smashed our illusions, tore them all apart
Now we are unsentimental, unafraid
To destroy this culture that we hate

While obvious not everyone has lost faith is capitalism as an economic system, as an increasing proportion of the population is unable to access what is promised by the “American dream” (e.g., housing, food, education, good jobs), the potential for citizens to disengage politically and/or engage in fringe movements promising to make American great again increases.



Nowhere's untouched by the shame
Who said we could get by with our childhood games
Days of innocence are all long gone
Avoid the shock honey and try to live on

Woke up all paralyzed
All dreams corrupted in front of our eyes
On every forehead of every little whore
There's a sign that says, 'baby don't come back no more'

Distasteful ugly and cheap
That is how you make me feel, I said
Capitalism stole my virginity
Capitalism stole, capitalism stole
Capitalism stole my virginity

Robbed out of our bleeding hearts
Smashed our illusions, tore them all apart
Now we are unsentimental, unafraid
To destroy this culture that we hate

So tired of being nothing
When, when we should be everything
On every forehead of every little whore
There's a sign that says, 'baby we're all born to die'

Distasteful ugly and cheap
That is how you make me feel, I said
Capitalism stole my virginity
Capitalism stole, capitalism stole
Capitalism stole - yeah

We are all sluts, cheap products
In someone else's notebook
We are all sluts, cheap products
In someone else's notebook
We are all sluts, cheap products
In someone else's notebook
We are all sluts, cheap products
In someone else's notebook

Distasteful ugly and cheap
That is how you make me feel, I said
Capitalism stole my virginity
Capitalism stole, capitalism stole
Capitalism stole my virginity, oh
Capitalism stole, capitalism stole
Capitalism stole my virginity, oh yeah
Capitalism stole, capitalism stole
Capitalism stole my virginity, oh

-- Bob Barnetson