There’s a growing and obvious labour shortage in certain fields that all connect to one culprit. But we don’t want be explicit about it. And N95s help as well! As mentioned by 1GoodTern, a Guardian article came so close to saying it in this editorial: “These days, staff shortages are causing
Continue readingTag: Work
Things Are Good: It’s Good to Say No
Helping people feels good and it’s easy to say yes to helping others; however, it’s not always the best course of action. Of course, this happens very often in the work environment where you and your overworked coworkers need more time to complete tasks. If you keep saying yes to
Continue readingThings Are Good: An Interview with a Cat
Those frisky felines are at it again! This time one of them is dishing out advice on how to improve your working life by communicating and acting with others. Jorts the cat is a Twitter celebrity that helps students understand their rights and workers understand theirs too. The key thing
Continue readingThings Are Good: 10 Ways Jobs can be More Sustainable
Today is the day to celebrate workers. If you’re currently employed and don’t own the company you’re at then, congratulations, you’re a worker! We can thank worker movements of the past for weekends, health care, and many other improvements to our quality of life. In the coming decades we may
Continue readingThings Are Good: Three Day Weekends Rule, Good For Your Health
Unions fought hard for a five day work week and now we need to fight for a four day work week. A global study of people who get a three day weekend from their job have better health and are happier. This is quite unsurprising to anyone who has enjoyed
Continue readingThings Are Good: Focus: Multitasking is a Myth
Think you’re bad at multitasking? You probably are, and if you think you’re good at it, well, you’re probably bad at it too. So why do we think multitasking is something we can do and why do we praise people who can? It has partly to do with sexism. There
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Let’s Talk About "Time Theft"
So, this morning, I woke up to find the lurid headline “What is Time Theft, and Why Are Some Employers So Worked Up About It?” on CBC. After reading it, I’m still spitting nails angry with the article and its suppositions. First, let’s start with the general idea of “time
Continue readingThings Are Good: Living Wage Canada Releases New Rates, Annual Calculations
It’s one thing to have a job, it’s another thing to have a job that pays you enough to participate in society. Canada’s minimum wage, like most places, doesn’t match the reality of what a person needs to earn to make a living (thus people say minimum wage deserves minimum
Continue readingThings Are Good: Protests Work: Ontario to Repeal Anti-Worker Legislation
Last week the Conservative Ontario government did what was previously unthinkable in Canada: take away charter rights from people who work. This unprecedented act was met with widespread opposition from unions coast to coast as the Conservatives made it clear that collective bargaining (like NHL and MLB players have) will
Continue readingThings Are Good: Unionized Workers Earn $1.3 Million More
Unions improve the working conditions across the board for any industry they are in, plus when unions work together they can inspire mass change. Anti unionists argue against unions because members have to contribute dues which, they argue, lowers total earnings. This is a flat-out lie. Researchers at Cornell University
Continue readingTHE CAREGIVERS' LIVING ROOM A Blog by Donna Thomson: Wish a Caregiver Happy Labour Day!
The feminist scholar Arlene Kaplan Daniels coined the phrase “invisible work” to describe the many tasks that women have traditionally performed in their families and communities. Picking apart our common understanding of what constitutes “work,” Daniels wrote (in 1987): We distinguish work from leisure activity (that we want to
Continue readingThings Are Good: Game Workers Uniting for Better Workplaces
In creative industries labour exploitation can happen because employers can get away with leaning into the passion creative workers bring to their field. The video game industry may be a young industry, but the tricks of getting free labour from workers are old ones. As a result, movements like Game
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: SocialCoin – The Socially Responsible Alternative to Bitcoin
I am placing this concept in the public domain for anyone with the necessary technical skills to create the structures and necessary algorithms to implement it. Wikipedia provides an extensive section on Bitcoin and in particular Bitcoin mining. Essentially Bitcoin is created by an energy wasting computer process they call
Continue readingThings Are Good: Punctual Meetings are More Productive
It’s not just you who thinks there’s too much useless chatter at the start of the meeting. Meetings that don’t start on time are less efficient than those that do, and less creative. Another neat factor researchers found out is that people are less satisfied with a meeting that starts
Continue readingThings Are Good: Work Culture is Changing for the Better
Managers who care more about time than results will have to change thanks to better approaches to work. The idea of having to sit at physical location all day regardless of how busy you are is no longer acceptable. A new attitude to work is a postive thing about the
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: On Puritan-Capitalism: Money As The Measure Of All Things
The mechanistic materialist world view, which the West, beginning with Europe, adopted a mere 400 years ago, and then exported through economic, financial, military and cultural colonialism and neocolonialism to the rest of the world, has been nothing short of a cultural, sociological, political, economic, ecological, spiritual, public health and
Continue readingThings Are Good: Shorter Work Weeks Work
Working less is better for everyone involved, including the employer. Iceland just ran a multi year experiment from 2015-19 to find out if a four day work week would damage productivity or improve it. Unsurprisingly, productivity didn’t go down and in some jobs it even went up. Tell your boss
Continue readingThings Are Good: You Don’t Have to Love Your Job
Too many people are told to follow their passion and find their dream job above all else. This is bad advice. Instead, go get a job that you can do, pays you well, and is filled with respect. There is no reason to be a sycophant at work. Sarah Jaffe
Continue readingThings Are Good: People Share What They Changed Their Attitude to Unions
In America anti-union sentiment is strong due to the marketing efforts of large business owners that don’t like paying workers. Amazon’s anti-union efforts are a great example of this. In recent years the pro-union movement has been growing and the recent push by Amazon workers to get respect is an
Continue readingThings Are Good: How PayUp Got Fashion Companies to Payout $22 Billion
Capitalism works when companies pay for good and services, when companies make deals and don’t pay for what they ordered then things fall apart. This is exactly what happened last year in the fashion industry, and it was the workers who suffered the most. The owners of companies like JCPenney,
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