Friday Tunes: Ghost Town

This week’s installment of labour themes in popular music is The Specials’ 1981 hit “Ghost Town”. It chronicles the decline of urban England during a prolonged recession. This includes rampant unemployment due to deindustrialization, the shuttering of businesses.

As the song hit number 1 in 1981, rioting erupted all over Britain to express dissatisfaction with the growing sense of hopelessness. To many British workers who grew up in the era, the song profoundly reflected their experiences:

'Ghost Town' spoke to me and every other teenage kid. I remember the school careers officer telling me that if I didn't smarten up I wouldn't get a job in the local carpet factory. … 'Fuck you,' I thought when the careers office door closed. I joined the Labour Party.

The sharpest commentary in the lyrics are these:

Why must the youth fight against themselves?
Government leaving the youth on the shelf
This place, is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country

The musical discordance that characterizes this reggae-punk fusion (called 2 Tone) song was designed to play up these themes and the song was named Single of the Year in 1981. The accompanying video shows the band driving through the empty and desolate streets of London, visual designed to convey the hollowing out of industrial towns while touring England.



This town, is coming like a ghost town
All the clubs have been closed down
This place, is coming like a ghost town
Bands won't play no more
too much fighting on the dance floor

Do you remember the good old days
Before the ghost town?
We danced and sang,
And the music played inna de boomtown

This town, is coming like a ghost town
Why must the youth fight against themselves?
Government leaving the youth on the shelf
This place, is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country
Can't go on no more
The people getting angry

This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: Union safety effect in construction firms

The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine just released a new study into the presence of a union safety effect in Ontario’s industrial, commercial and institutional construction sector. “Protecting Construction Worker Health and Safety in Ontario, Canada Identifying a Union Safety Effect” found two interesting results.

First, accepted no-lost-time claim (NLTC) reports were 13% higher in unionized firms than in non-unionized firms. NLTCs are injuries where the worker required some sort of medical attention but went back to work the next day. These injuries are often thought to be “minor” injuries.

Second, accepted lost-time claims (LTC) reports were 14% lower (adjusting for firm size) in unionized forms than in non-unionized firms. LTCs are injuries were the worker could not go back to work the next day. These injuries are often thought to be “serious” injuries”.

Basically, it looks like unionized workers are more likely to report minor injuries but less likely to report major ones. The research does not explain why this effect occurs, but, off hand, I’d guess unionized workers are less likely to fear retaliation for reporting injuries (ergo higher NLTC reports) and are less likely to be seriously injured due to safer workplaces (ergo lower LTCs). 

There are other potential explanations for these findings (e.g., unionized workers may be more experienced and/or safety conscious—the question here would then be why unionized firms attract these kinds of workers). Overall, an interesting study that begs for additional research.

-- Bob Barnetson

Friday Tunes: For the Workforce, Drowning

This week’s installment of labour themes in popular culture is “For the Workforce, Drowning” by Thursday. This song is about the alienating nature of modern work (“without a name, just numbers, on the resume stored in the mainframe, marked for delete”). There are themes of death, whether of the body or the soul (“dressed for the funeral in black and white”).

The song nicely captures the sense of desperation many workers face (“please take these hands/throw me in the river/don’t let me drown before the workday ends.”). When I worked in a cube farm at the WCB doing pointless work with no privacy and often nothing to do—just waiting for the day I could finally, blessedly quit—the days seemed endless.

Interestingly, the singer draws attention to the intergenerational nature of alienating work:

Now we lie wide awake in our parents beds,
tossing and turning.
tomorrow we'll get up
drive to work,
single file
with everyday
it's like the last.
waiting for the life to start, is it always just always ahead of the curve?

In effect, the commodification of labour (wherein we have to sell our labour in order to survive) creates an enduring class experience. While perhaps the minutiae of the experience changes over time (e.g., my dad killed time going for coffee; I kill time facebooking), our lack of control over what we do (and the attendant meaninglessness of much of our work) remains constant.



Falling from the top floor your lungs
fill like parachutes
windows go rushing by.
people inside,
dressed for the funeral in black and white.
These ties strangle our necks, hanging in the closet,
found in the cubicle; without a name, just numbers,
on the resume stored in the mainframe, marked for delete.

[chorus]
please take these hands
throw them in the river,
wash away the things they never held
please take these hands,
throw me in the river,
don’t let me drown before the workday ends.

9 to 5! 9 to 5!

and we're up to our necks,
drowning in the seconds,
ingesting the morning commute
lost in a dead subway sleep.

Now we lie wide awake in our parents beds,
tossing and turning.
tomorrow we'll get up
drive to work,
single file
with everyday
it's like the last.
waiting for the life to start, is it always just always ahead of the curve?

[chorus].

just keep making copies
of copies
of copies
when will it end?

it'll never end, 

'til it gets so bad
that the ink fills in our fingerprints
and the silhouette of your own face becomes the black cloud of war
and even in our dreams we're so afraid the weight will offset who we are
all those breaths that you took have now been canceled in your lungs.
last night my teeth fell out like ivory typewriter keys
and all the monuments and skyscrapers burned down and filled the sea.

save our ship
the anchor is part of the desk
we can't cut free,
the water is flooding the decks
the memo's sent through the currents
computers spark like flares
i can see them.
they don't touch me,
touch me.

please someone,
teach me how to swim.
please, don't let me drown,
please, don't let me drown.

-- Bob Barnetson

Illegal and injurious: How Alberta has failed teen workers

The Parkland Institute has released a report about teen employment in Alberta today. Illegal and Injurious: How Alberta Has Failed Teen Workers looks at the working conditions faced by teens in Alberta.

Among the report’s findings are that up to 70 percent of 12- to 14-year-olds in the province may be employed in prohibited occupations, and that more than half of all employed teens experience work-related injuries each year.

This sad state of affairs reflects that (1) employers don’t tend to obey workplace laws and (2) Alberta’s Progressive Conservative government largely failed to enforce those laws. This is profoundly disappointing given the vulnerable nature of teen workers. Hopefully, Alberta's New Democratic government will give teen workers more consideration.

-- Bob Barnetson

Friday Tunes: Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

This week’s installment of labour themes in popular culture is perhaps the best known Canadian song about a mass workplace death, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” The song memorializes the 29 crew who died when the ship sank during a storm in 1975 on Lake Superior.

The crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald were making a routine ore run to Detroit before heading onto Cleveland to dock for the winter when something went wrong. Lightfoot’s lyrics suggest the main hatchway gave in. An alternate theory is the ship hit a shoal (her radar was out) and tore a whole in bottom.

Lightfoot’s lyrics about the sinking are very powerful. I actually get a chill when sings:

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?

He also captures the human tragedy of the sinking well:

And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
Then later that night when the ship's bell rang
Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
When the wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too
'Twas the witch of November come stealin'
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashin'
When afternoon came it was freezing rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck
Sayin' "Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya"
At seven PM a main hatchway caved in
He said, "Fellas, it's been good to know ya"
The captain wired in he had water comin' in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went out of sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below, Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early

-- Bob Barnetson

More farmer bullshit on farm safety

Over the summer, there were encouraging signs that Alberta’s New Democratic government was going to provide Alberta farm workers with basic workplace rights, such as the right to refuse unsafe work. The details remain sketchy (the NDs inherited a pretty full plate of problems!) but one report suggests farms will become subject to the occupational health and safety regime effective in 2017.

The farm lobby has long resisted being subject to OHS rules, arguing that farms are somehow special because most (at least 96% in 2011) are owned by families. The relevance of ownership is hard to see. The family farm argument mostly looks like a red herring designed to evoke a ma-and-pa-on-the-prairie (who couldn’t possible comply with complicated regulations) image of Alberta agriculturalists.

Let’s look at some facts about farm employment (drawn from Alberta tallies in the 2011 agricultural census), shall we?

In 2011, Alberta farms of 1120 acres or more employed 52.9% of all paid workers and were responsible for nearly 60% of all weeks of paid farm work even though they comprise only 26.4% of all farms. Farms of at least 2880 acres comprised only 8.9% of all farms in Alberta yet they employed 28.9% of paid workers and were responsible for 37.6% of weeks of paid work.

Farms that are two sections (1280 acres) or more in size are hardly traditional ma-and-pa-homesteading-a-quarter-section-with-a-horse-and-a-plow operations. Rather they are highly capitalized operations that comply with all manner of other regulations. Looking at the finances of these so-called family farms also suggests that those hiring help can afford to comply with workplace regulation.

In terms of annual revenues, farms with gross annual receipts above $250,000 comprised 20.0% of farms. Yet these farms employed 67.3% of all paid workers and accounted for 81.2% of all weeks of paid work. Those farms with at least $2 million in annual gross receipts comprised only 1.8% of farms, yet employed 21.5% of paid worker and accounted for 33.0% of weeks of paid work. These farms employed an average of 10.4 workers each.

This seems to put to rest any notion that so-called family farms somehow can’t afford to comply with regulations. Those farms that employ the majority of Alberta farm workers are financially large operations. If their profit margins are so small that they can’t afford to adequately protect their workers, then those operations are not financial viable and should close. We shouldn’t subsidize these operations by allowing them to operate unsafely.

This morning I awoke to see that Alberta’s Wheat Commission (basically a farm lobby group for grain farmers) is advancing the argument that farmers know what will work on their farms around health and safety and that training and education is the way to go.

“As is the case with every safety measure, we believe that education and training are the most critical aspects of developing a program that will work,” said Alberta Pulse Growers Commission chair Allison Ammeter. “Farmers are the subject matter experts on what will be most effective for their farm, and we look forward to sharing that expertise with the Government of Alberta.”

This is, rather obviously, self-serving bullshit.

If farmers knew how to prevent injuries and were motivated to do so, then agriculture would not be one of the three most dangerous occupations in Canada.

And, if education and training prevented injuries (an assertion the Progressive Conservative government pushed for years in an effort to avoid regulating farms), then farm injuries would have gone down given we’ve been doing farm safety for decades.

The ineffectiveness of farm safety efforts Alberta is hard to see because the government failed to track this data (how convenient!). But we can look to research in Saskatchewan for evidence that education has no meaningful effect on farm injury rates.

An important reason that education does not work is that education does not require farmers to take any action to identify and control workplace hazards. Only regulation does that.

Installing roll bars on tractors, for example, is expensive and farmers likely prefer not to spend the money. We don’t accept this attitude from any other group of employers and we shouldn’t accept it from farmers (no matter how much we may like them and value their work).

The bottom line is that all employees deserve the same workplace protections. And the government should step up and ensure farm workers have these rights now, not some watered-down version of these rights in frigging 2017.

-- Bob Barnetson

Take your kid to work: Why bother?

My daughter starts junior high this week. A friend was joking with me about working from home and “take your daughter to work day” (usually the first Wednesday in November).

“Daddy, do we have to wear our bathrobes all day? How long do we have to keep yelling at the computer? Here, let me show you how that actually works.” It could be worse, I suppose…

Anyhow…. The idea of take your kid to school is to help students plan “their future career by helping them better understand a profession or workplace environment.” Yet it strikes me how “band-aid-y” the whole undertaking is, given the structure of school.

The K-12 system segregates kids by age, which is completely unlike the “real world” and isolates them from contact with work or mentors (excepting hyper-dangerous early apprenticeship programming). If the point of schooling is to help students prepare for a career (and I’m not sure it is), then one day of following a parent around is unlikely to meaningfully counteract the structure of schooling.

The K-12 system also subjects students to a profound amount of control and surveillance. While surveillance is endemic in the workplace, the hyper-structuring of time no longer exists except in the worst jobs (e.g., fast food). While my job is unusually unstructured, no job that I’ve held (and there have been a lot!) have exhibited anywhere near the degree of arbitrary time blocking we see in school. Again, one day in a workplace can’t teach students to be responsible for their own time.

Finally, while I have lots of teacher friends and quite like teachers, I’m skeptical that we should rely on teachers (who mostly made one career choice at age 22) to help students either make a career choice or develop job-search skills. As a group, they are profoundly unqualified to speak about the realities of work and working.

The point of this was not to bash teachers or the school system, both of which do a good job of teaching literacy, numeracy and the knowledge of science and society necessary to be an engaged system. Instead, the point is to question what real value students derive from a one-off exposure to a random (although, I suspect, skewed towards white-collar) job? It seems to be more about generating positive media photo-ops than any real educational outcomes.

-- Bob Barnetson