Labour & Pop Culture: Soup is Good Food

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Soup is Good Food” by the Dead Kennedys. This 1985 songs speaks to the disposability of labour in contemporary capitalism.

We're sorry
But you're no longer needed
Or wanted or even cared about here
Machines can do a better job than you
And this is what you get for asking questions

Recorded in 1985, the song rings true today, particularly with the deskilling or elimination of jobs due to automation. Interestingly, it also examines how government’s manipulate economic data to hide the real state of the world:

We're sorry, you'll just have to leave
Unemployment runs out after just six weeks
How does it feel to be a budget cut?
You're snipped, you no longer exist 

Your number's been purged
From our central computer
So we can rig the facts
And sweep you under the rug
See our chart? Unemployment's going down
If that ruins your life that's your problem

Having been through periods of layoffs in two different jobs (and seeing my own employer recently propose reducing further the notice period for layoffs), this verse rings particularly true:

Now how does it feel
(We don't need you any more)
To be shit out our ass
And thrown in the cold like a piece of trash
(We don't need you any more)

And morale is down, you say?

Apologies for the lack of a video—punks don’t go for that MTV stuff.

We're sorry
But you're no longer needed
Or wanted or even cared about here
Machines can do a better job than you
And this is what you get for asking questions

The unions agree
Sacrifices must be made
Computers never go on strike
To save the working man
You've got to put him out to pasture

Looks like we'll have to let you go
Doesn't it feel fulfilling to know
That you the human being are now obsolete
And there's nothing in hell we'll let you do about it

Soup is good food
(We don't need you any more)
You made a good meal
(We don't need you any more)

Now how does it feel
(We don't need you any more)
To be shit out our ass
And thrown in the cold like a piece of trash

We're sorry, you'll just have to leave
Unemployment runs out after just six weeks
How does it feel to be a budget cut?
You're snipped, you no longer exist

Your number's been purged
From our central computer
So we can rig the facts
And sweep you under the rug
See our chart? Unemployment's going down
If that ruins your life that's your problem

Soup is good food
(We don't need you any more)
You made a good meal
(We don't need you any more)

Now how does it feel
(We don't need you any more)
To be shit out our ass
And thrown in the cold like a piece of trash

We're sorry, we hate to interrupt
But it's against the law to jump off this bridge
You'll just have to kill yourself somewhere else
A tourist might see you and we wouldn't want that

I'm just doing my job, you know, so say uncle
And we'll take you to the mental health zoo
Force feed you mind melting chemicals
Til' even the outside world looks great

In hi-tech science research labs
It costs too much to bury all the dead
The mutilated disease injected
Surplus rats who can't be used anymore

So they're dumped, with no minister present
In a spiraling corkscrew dispose all unit
Ground into sludge and flushed away
Aw geez!

We don't need you any more
We don't need you any more

Soup is good food
(We don't need you any more)
You made a good meal
(We don't need you any more)

Now how does it feel
(We don't need you any more)
To be shit out our ass
And thrown in the cold like a piece of trash
(We don't need you any more)

We know how much you'd like to die
(We don't need you any more)
We joke about it on our coffee breaks
(We don't need you any more)
But we're paid to force you to have a nice day
(We don't need you any more)
In the wonderful world we made just for you

"Poor rats", we human rodents chuckle
At least we get a dignified cremation
At yet, at 6 o'clock tomorrow morning
It's time to get up and go to work

-- 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: The Triangle Fire Project

From October 10 to 20, Edmonton’s Walterdale Theatre is presenting “The Triangle Factory Fire Project.” This play recreates the events and aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

The New York textile factory was mostly staffed by recent and young female immigrants. When fire broke out on March 25, 1911, the workers found the fire doors and exits locked (to prevent time and product theft).

Consequently, 146 workers died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling to their deaths to escape the flames. The fire helped propel improvements in building safety across America.

-- Bob Barnetson

Poverty wages okay if you're an Alberta public-sector worker

On September 28, support staff in Living Waters Catholic School District went on strike. Living Waters and AUPE have been negotiating for two-and-half years and the key sticking points appears to be a wage increase (to cover the cost of living) and having defined hours of work.

Living Waters operates schools in Whitecourt, Slave Lake and Edson. Support staff include educational and financial assistants, library clerks, maintenance staff, secretaries, typists and custodians. They are the people who allow the school system to operate.

Educational assistants make a maximum of $26,500 per year. This reflects low wages and sporadic (and declining) hours of work. Some workers are forced to rely upon the food bank to feed their families. Despite this, the school board refuses to address these issues and applied for a lock-out.

The first week of picketing included two picketers being struck by cars driven by administrators. The RCMP took no action about these events, instead focusing their efforts on escorting administrators and scabs across the picket lines.

A return to the bargaining table in early October yielded no agreement. Not surprisingly, parents and students are siding with the strikers—joining them on the picket lines and making supportive social media posts. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the next school board elections.

The school board’s hard line is difficult to fathom. The district has been posting operating surpluses and has admitted it could afford to give raises. Bargaining to impasse in these conditions seems irrational. I would guess the district is picking up on the government’s messaging that public-sector wages must be frozen for two years.

Yet does this government requirement jive with the government’s messaging around the minimum wage? In justifying a 47% increase in the minimum wage over three years, the Notley government has been quite explicit that it is not acceptable for workers to earn below-poverty level wages. For example:

Ms. Notley: …You know, the Alberta families that I’m thinking of are the ones who work full-time at very difficult jobs and which deserve the respect of everybody in this Assembly, who do that to raise their families and feed their families, and after working 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week, still have to stop at the food bank on their way home to feed their families because right now our minimum wage does not come close to providing a living wage. …Mr. Speaker, the member opposite …would love for us to walk by those people who are unable to feed their families, who are unable to pay their rent, who are unable to secure affordable housing. (Alberta Hansard, April 21, 2016, 739)

So the government is happy to raise private-sector wages to prevent workers from having to go to the food bank. But it’s somehow cool for public-sector workers to make so little that they have to use the food bank?

That’s a pretty hypocritical position for the government to advance. It’s also a politically strange one, since the government will require public-sector votes if it expects to be re-elected. More importantly, it's a shameful way to run a school system.

-- Bob Barnetson

What would UCP labour policy entail?

With a provincial election expected in the spring of 2019, it is useful to consider what labour policies Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) might advance if they are elected. Analysis is made tricky because, (1) while the UCP passed policy at a convention (which should be binding on the party due to Jason Kenney’s grass-roots guarantee), (2) Kenney announced “he holds the pen” on policies after the convention passed some super embarrassing ones.

To try and get a handle on what UCP labour policy might look like in practice I have canvassed Hansard and media statements, UCP policy statements, and social media postings. I’ll limit this post to changes to issues associated with the Employment Standards and Labour Relations Codes.

Employment Standards

Effective October 1, the Notley government will have increased Alberta’s minimum wage to $15 an hour—an increase of about 50% since 2015. The UCP (and its predecessor parties) have opposed this increase in the Legislature, variously asserting:

1. Employers oppose it
2. It will cause job losses and prices to rise, and
3. It does not reduce poverty.

Kenney has been quiet on this issue (he likely wants to prevent the New Democrats from using the spectre of a minimum-wage rollback against him in te upcoming election). Kenney’s only comment in the Legislature was negative:

Mr. Kenney: …What do you think a 50 per cent increase in the minimum wage results in? Well, according to the Bank of Canada 60,000 job losses across the country. According to the C.D. Howe Institute 25,000 job losses in Alberta. Think about how – oh, my goodness – when New Democrats get on their moral high horse and pretend they have a monopoly on compassion, and then because union bosses tell them to, they bring in a policy that, according to the think tanks will kill 25,000 jobs for immigrants and youth. Where is the compassion for those who lost their jobs, Mr. Speaker? There is none. There’s no regard. (2018.04.05, p. 433).

The assertion that rising wages kill jobs seems to resonate with many Albertans. This may explain Kenney’s use of this narrative, despite there being limited and declining support for this position in the economics literature and good evidence that sectors that pay the minimum wage are experiencing growth in Alberta.

The NDs do not appear to have indexed the minimum wage to inflation (gotta save something for the 2019 campaign!) so a UCP government could freeze the minimum wage simply by taking no action to increase it. Over time, inflation would erode its value. Whether a freeze would satisfy the business lobby and more right-wing UCP members is unclear. While Kenney may be coy on a reduction now, as we’ve seen with Doug Ford, once in office, seemingly anything goes.

The Notley government has made a large number of minor changes to the Employment Standards Code. The UCP policy resolution promises a full and detailed review to ensure Alberta’s laws are comparable with other jurisdictions and make “workplaces safe and competitive”. Given that the recent changes to the Employment Standard Code were mostly about bringing it into line with other jurisdictions, I suspect such a review would identify few areas for change. It would be politically for the UCP to easier to just (further) lax enforcement of the law.

It is likely that the UCP would roll back the application of many employment standards to Alberta’s farms and ranches. Agriculture industry associations have indicated they do not support a full rollback (although I imagine they could be talked into some rollbacks…), perhaps because this would jeopardize the funding base of their new safety association.

Kenney’s response?

"What we hear from Alberta farmers loud and clear, not professional lobbyists but regular hardworking people in agriculture, is that this bill is a massive cost driver for them it is unnecessary red tape."

I suspect a significant rollback of farm-workers’ rights across all domains of labour policy would be in the cards. If done carefully, it should be possible for the UCP to prevent a successful constitutional challenge of such a rollback.

Labour Relations

The labour record of the Harper government (in which Kenney was a senior cabinet minister) was deeply regressive. It included:

• back-to-work legislation, 
• legislated settlements in anticipation of work stoppages, 
• over-riding negotiated agreements, 
• eliminating card-check certification, 
• prohibitions on unions assisting women to make pay equity complaints, and mandating onerous union financial disclosures. 

Many UCP members are stridently anti-union. While the party has declined candidate nominations from those espousing that “unions are evil” and that “we should really ban all unions”, those sentiments run deep in the party. Even the most cursory glance at UCP social media accounts (such as Kenney’s Facebook page) yields lots of examples:

The UCP policy document specifically identifies eliminating the recent re-introduction of card-check certification processes and returning to mandatory votes. The evidence on this is unambiguous: giving employers time to interfere in workers’ decisions about whether or not they want union representation (via a mandatory vote) results in more employer interference, fewer certifications, and fewer union drives. Basically, it is an anti-union policy dressed up in the clothes of democracy and would almost certainly be implemented under the UCP.

Kenney has also promised to scrap remedial certification power for the Labour Board revoked. At present, the Board can certify a union if the employer poisons the well through unfair labour practices. Under previous Conservative governments, the only remedy the Board could offer was another drink from the same well (which, of course, is no remedy at all). First contract arbitration would also likely hit the skids.

The UCP policy document also proposes “giv[ing] individual members of labour organizations the right to determine whether or not their mandatory union dues are used to fund political activity and social advocacy.” The reason to pay attention to this proposal is that it is closely associated with the right-to-work movement, whereby union security clauses (which require every worker to pay union dues, because they benefit from a union contract) are profoundly limited or forbidden.

Right to work laws were on the agenda at the UCPs policy convention and appear to be supported by the riding associations of sitting MLAs. These so-called “right-to-work” laws are an effort to undermine the financial security of the union (which, in turn, limits its ability to oppose the employer). They also divert union resources from fighting the employer to collecting dues. About half of US states have right to work laws. Research on their effect is mixed, with results often confounded by other factors.

Overall, a UCP government is likely to make a concerted effort to tip the playing field back in favour of their corporate buddies. This is likely to have a negative effect on the wages and working conditions of Albertans, particularly low-wage Albertans.

If I have time, I’ll have a gander at what Alberta might expect in terms of UCP policy on workplace injury prevention and compensation, immigration, and training as well as the tone of public-sector labour relations.

Update October 15: Kenney recently indicated he would freeze the minimum wage, look at implementing a two-tier wage (based age),and rollback other labour law changes made by the NDs. So, pretty much what you'd expect.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Office Drug Testing

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture revisits The Office to look at how employers handle drug use in the workplace. This skit is relevant given that, on October 17, cannabis consumption in Alberta (and elsewhere in Canada) will become legal (with some, still emerging, restrictions).

Alberta’s framework for regulating cannabis use is available online and includes a brief (and vague) discussion of cannabis use by workers:

Impairment in workplaces
Workers who are impaired on the job – whether by alcohol or drugs – are a danger to their coworkers and themselves. Alberta already has rules and programs in place to address impairment on the job and keep workers safe, but we are exploring options to better address all forms of impairment in the workplace, and will continue to work with employers, labour groups and workers to ensure the rules continue to address impairment issues. This may include developing additional regulations, education or training programs.

Employer efforts to randomly test workers for drug use and/or impairment have been a long-standing source of conflict in Alberta. For example, Suncor’s decision to randomly test workers has yielded an extensive amount of litigation since 2012 and the issue remains before an arbitration panel. An overview of this litigation can be found here.

Drug testing entails serious and competing interests. It is often framed as a contest between workers’ right to privacy and employers’ obligation to keep workplaces safe (although the evidence that random testing has any safety effect is basically zero).

The debate about drug testing is often tinged with an underlying moral judgment. It goes something like this: since drug use is illegal, workers who use drugs (on their own time) deserve to experience the workplace consequences associated with testing because they are criminals.

This dynamic is, in part, the premise of the joke in The Office skit above. The legalization of cannabis use undercuts this moralizing and it will be interesting to see how employers handle this change in the law.

-- Bob Barnetson

Weaponizing sick leave at Athabasca University

Employers have an obligation to accommodate workers who are unwell or who have a temporary or permanent disability. This obligation is often operationalized in the form of short-term sick leave and modified job duties.

Unionized workplaces often have paid sick leave and contractual requirements to accommodate disabilities. Accessing these rights sometimes requires an employee provide a note from a physician or other health-care professional, stipulating the duration of an absence or the nature of an accommodation.

Employers have little legal right to look behind physician-mandated leave or accommodation. For example, they are not normally entitled to know the nature of the underlying medical condition. And they have limited ability to contest physician-determined medical requirements, such as by making an employee see a company-appointed doctor.

Athabasca University (AU) has recently proposed new and quite aggressive “company doctor” language in its collective agreement with the Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA). This language would give the employer to power to mandate non-therapeutic medical examinations by a physician appointed by the employer.

AU’s proposal reads:

16.5.9. a. The University may require that a Staff Member be examined by a physician appointed by the University.

i. in the case of prolonged or frequent absence because of illness or,

ii. where the University considers that a Staff Member is unable to satisfactorily perform the Staff Member’s duties due to disability or illness, or

iii. where there is an indication of misuse of illness leave.

b. Upon request of the Staff Member, a copy of the report of the examining physician shall be sent to the Staff Member’s physician.

c. Expenses incurred under this Clause shall be paid by the University.

Practically, what this means is that:

1. HR could require sick AUFA members to report to a company doctor for a medical examination. 
2. Failure to do so could result in discipline (for insubordination) and possibly a suspension of paid sick-leave benefits or the denial of accommodation. 
3. If AU’s doctor disagrees with the staff member’s doctor’s recommendations, AU would then be in a position to deny the staff member the sick leave or accommodation their doctor deems necessary or force the worker into a third examination to "break the tie".

Being forced to submit to an examination by a company-paid doctor is a profound intrusion into a worker's privacy.

AUFA has been able to identify 1 instance in the past 15 years where the university formally brought up the possibility of mis-use of medical leave. There may be other cases, but none the employer ever brought forward.

What this means is that this proposal does not solve a real and pressing problem facing AU. The current process of staff members providing medical notes from their own physicians or other health-care providers is adequate.

This proposal does increase AU’s ability to harass AUFA members with medical conditions by subjecting them to non-therapeutic medical examinations conducted by a company doctor.

Bluntly, AU is attempting to weaponize the sick-leave and accommodation provisions of the AUFA collective agreement against workers when they are most vulnerable.

The likely (and typically intended) effect of introducing company doctors is to limit workers’ use of their sick leave. Workers subject to AU's proposed provisions are less likely to exercise their rights for fear of being targeted for a visit to the company doctor.

The Alberta Human Rights Commission characterizes examinations by company doctors as follows:

Requiring an employee to submit to an [Independent Medical Examination] by a doctor of the employer's choosing is intrusive. Arbitrators and courts are reluctant to require an examination by someone who is not chosen, or at least agreed to, by the employee.

While AU’s bargaining team has conceded this proposal is “not a hill [it] wants to die on” it has refused to withdraw the language.

This kind of aggressive (and needless) proposal is deeply disrespectful to staff members' integrity (we don't fake being sick or malinger) and privacy. 

And AU’s refusal to withdraw the proposal is contributing to a growing stalemate in negotiations during the parties’ first round of bargaining under strike-lockout.

One has to wonder what the employer’s strategy is here?

-- Bob Barnetson