How the US fuelled the rise of ISIS in Syria & Iraq

Loved this opinion piece.

How can ISIS or any other terror group or terrorism can be wiped out by the same forces who helped flourish it in the first place? The Western countries have a habit of supporting a set of proxy fighters as long as those fighters help achieve the Western countries its objectives. As soon as those objectives are achieved, those proxy fighters or mercenaries are labelled "terrorists" & the West wants them to be eliminated asap. That may looks easy & good in Hollywood movies, but doesn't work in real life. As the author very nicely says that "terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – & allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call."

For instance, militant arm of the Kurdish party in Turkey, PKK, was labelled a terrorist group, for years, by US, UK, & their allies. Well, now, they are all supporting PKK because they are using them against ISIS.

Even the West wanted ISIS in Iraq & Syria. They wanted a Sunni group, which they can control, & which will keep Shiite Bashar Assad & its Shiite allies, Hezbollah & Iran, in check. But, when ISIS start slitting throats of westerners, they become a "terrorist" group, which needs to be bombed out of existence now.

The author very nicely ends the piece with "endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction & division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus."
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq

The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. ... the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.

The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead with the trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.

That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour & military vehicles), but training, logistical support & the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers & their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence ... for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US & British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion & occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.

But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – & allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.

For the past year, US, British & other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi & Syrian territory & proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate.
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Some Iraqis complain that the US sat on its hands while all this was going on. The Americans insist they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, & claim significant successes. Privately, officials say they don’t want to be seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian war & risk upsetting their Sunni allies in the Gulf.

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – & effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria & an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria & Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) & fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – & states that “western countries, the Gulf states & Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.

Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq & Iran)”.

Which is pretty well exactly what happened 2 years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted & there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US & its allies weren’t only supporting & arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.

That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US & Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.

The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners & posting atrocities online, & the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US & western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage.

It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011 in the NATO-orchestrated war in Libya, where Isis last week took control of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.

In reality, US & western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, & mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq & Syria fit such an approach perfectly.

What’s clear is that Isis & its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq & Syria in the first place, or whose open & covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction & division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.

Millions more have a bank account, but what is the impact on global poverty?

Primary problem is that poverty is not going to end by some poor people, in developing countries, opening a bank account. If merely opening a bank account would alleviate poverty, then there would be no poverty in the developed world at all. But, as you may know already, that's not the case. A walk in urban areas of any metropolitan city of the developed world; Paris, London, New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Chicago, Frankfurt etc., will show poor people, & the rising poverty, out in the open.

Alleviating poverty requires a much deeper, multi-faceted, radical approach. It will not happen overnight. It may take a generation or two. Social inequality requires a lot more work & participation of other social classes than merely opening a bank account.

For instance, cost of living in the developed world is constantly rising. Affordable housing in major cities from Paris & Frankfurt to Toronto & Vancouver to New York & Los Angeles is reaching out of hand of poor people. All of their other living expenses, i.e. food & utilities, keep rising, too. But, their salaries or wages are not keeping pace. Many are working in low-wage jobs, i.e. in service industry (restaurants, hotels) or retail industry, where minimum wages are way below to a level, which is understood to be required to sustain a living.

So those people are falling below the poverty line & are being classified as poor. They all have the bank accounts, & are actively using those accounts, too, but they are no use against the forces forcing these people pushing them in poverty. Capitalism, without any ethics or morals, are letting the rich get richer, at the brutal expense of making the masses further poor.

Rich keep finding ingenious ways to keep their money in their hands, for instance, loopholes in tax dodging & labour market, or greasing the political wheels with thick wads of cash, while, downloading all the expenses of government social services, infrastructure, education, healthcare etc. on to the poor masses. When the poor masses are getting a meagre salary, from which, they also have to pay rising taxes, education fees, medical bills, rising rents, increasing food prices etc., then how will they ever rise out of poverty?

Opening a bank account may help an abject poor farmer in Uganda to, perhaps, become more effective & efficient in conducting financial transactions, but it won't help alleviate poverty or eliminate social & financial inequality for billions around the world.
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/may/28/millions-more-have-a-bank-account-but-what-is-the-impact-on-global-poverty

Chabruma Luhwavi, a Tanzanian merchant, used to end his working day fearing thieves would rob him of his earnings as he drove home through Dar Es Salaam’s dark streets. But that fear vanished once he opened a bank account for his business, which he accesses through his mobile phone.
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Chabruma’s story is one example of how hundreds of millions of people around the globe are joining the financial system. Put simply, they are getting some type of account in which they can deposit, manage & save their hard-earned money.

Why is that important? Access to banking services – called “financial inclusion” – is increasingly held up as a key tool for pulling the world’s poor from poverty. Without an account, it’s a lot harder to save money, pay bills, receive wages, or operate a business.

In 2014, in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation & Gallup, we set off on a year-long journey to the heart of the debate on banking & poverty reduction.

We had a long list of questions. How many people around the world own a bank account? How does account ownership vary across gender & income groups? And, perhaps most importantly, are people actually using their accounts – &, if so, how?

Which brings us to today: we recently announced our findings with the Global Findex database, based on interviews with 150,000 adults in more than 140 economies – & there’s plenty to celebrate.

Worldwide, 62% of adults now have an account at a formal financial institution (such as a bank) or a mobile money account, up from 51% in 2011, when we launched the Global Findex. The number of adults struggling to get by without an account fell by 20%, to 2 billion.

Yet we found account ownership doesn’t easily lead to use. Look at India. Under an ambitious new programme, we discovered 125 million new bank account owners there. Account ownership has nearly doubled since 2011; but 43% of them have gone unused for a year. The same is true for one-fifth of all accounts in the emerging world.

Our journey taught us that the poverty-reduction potential of account ownership flourishes when people use their account to save money or send & receive payments. Your account can’t pull you out of poverty – unless you put it to work.

For women, owning an account is doubly important. It means privacy & control over their money & how it is spent. Research shows that giving women their own account increases household spending on food, education, & other necessities – which also means less money squandered by irresponsible family members.

To pay school fees, women, especially, often must travel to the school & take time off from work, thereby losing wages. Children can be barred from class until their mother pays up. Digital payments from an account eliminate these costs. But in developing nations, more than 500 million adults with an account pay school fees in cash.

Using an account to save can also help people weather an emergency such as a job loss or health crisis. In China, more than 40% of adults & in Indonesia, 70%, save at a bank or another financial institution. But fewer than 20% of adults in other developing regions save at a bank or financial institutions – instead, storing their money in their home for the future or for emergencies or as assets, such as gold or livestock, that can be lost or stolen.

The benefits from account ownership are reflected in instances of high account use across emerging economies. In Latin America, 40% of accounts are used to receive wages or government social benefits. More than a quarter of farmers in Kenya & Tanzania receive payment for the sale of their agricultural products directly to an account. Individuals are also using accounts to share money. In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of account holders use their accounts to send or receive funds to friends or relatives who live far away. Keeping funds in an account is safer than keeping the money under a mattress.

Our Global Findex database points to a number of opportunities for businesses & governments to help people get more out of their accounts. As financial inclusion takes centre stage in the poverty reduction agenda, international development agencies should focus not only on expanding account ownership, but on improving account use as well.


Leora Klapper is a lead economist at the Development Research Group, World Bank, & one of the authors of the Global Findex 2014.

Criminal Minds, S1E13 (quote 1)

Everyone doesn't have the same values or thoughts. What's valuable to one is worthless to another. What's considered by one household as good is not considered as good by another. What's important to one city is not so important to another. What's a priority to one province / state is not such a big priority to another. What's considered fundamental to life by one country (e.g. democracy) is not considered as much important to another country.

Tax dodging by big firms ‘robs poor countries of billions of dollars a year’

Loved the article. It's astonishing how large, multinational corporations, like Apple, Starbucks, Wal-Mart etc., move around their money, to take advantage of the lowest taxes possible. It doesn't affect them at all, & actually, their tax managers are rewarded further for helping the corporation & its investors save taxes. But, then these same corporations pay meagre wages to their employees (who then need social services, which are paid by taxes), & take advantage of other social services or infrastructure, paid for by the taxes.

Since, somebody gotta pick up the tab for all those social services & government expenses, & rich individuals dodge the taxes through offshore banking & corporations dodge the taxes through effective use of transfer pricing, the poor of the country gets the bills of the nation.

I'd call this "corruption". These corporations are all tout the horn of "ethics" but then find the first loophole in the law to dodge their fair responsibility. Ironically, when it's done in developing countries, it's called "corruption" & when it's done in developed countries, it's called "effective & efficient use of the law."
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jun/02/tax-dodging-big-companies-costs-poor-countries-billions-dollars

The international corporate tax system is outdated, unfair & will continue to cost developing countries tens of billions of dollars in lost revenues each year unless it is completely overhauled, a coalition of charities & civil society organisations has warned.

In a report ..., the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (Icrict), which was initiated by the charities & other organisations, argues that globalisation has rendered the century-old global tax system obsolete as more & more companies trade within related corporate structures.

“Tax abuse by multinational corporations increases the tax burden on other taxpayers, violates the corporations’ civic obligations, robs developed & developing countries of critical resources to fight poverty & fund public services, exacerbates income inequality, & increases developing country reliance on foreign assistance,” says the report.

On a more basic level, it adds, the tax policies of one country can have a dire effect on other countries’ ability to raise taxes that could be spent on education, healthcare & safe roads.

The report calls for the abolition of the separate entity principle, arguing that it allows huge multinational companies to dodge their tax obligations by presenting their operations in different countries as completely independent of one another. The principle permits them to shift their profits to countries with low or zero tax rates – & to move their losses into countries where taxes are higher.

“The primary enabler of international corporate tax abuse is the separate entity principle – a legal fiction that enables the flow of vast amounts of taxable income away from the underlying business operations,” it says.

“We believe the only effective way to stop this abuse is to treat multinational corporations as single & unified firms & divide the taxable profits between the countries where the income generating activities are located. If multinational corporations were taxed as single & unified firms, there would be no transfer pricing because global corporate profits would be consolidated, & thus no profits would be gained or lost through intra-company transactions.”

The report ... also calls for rich countries to agree a minimum corporate tax rate to stop “the global race to the bottom”.

“While each country is responsible for its own tax system, no country is unaffected by the tax system of others,” it says. “In addition to evaluation of the effectiveness of tax preferences, countries should also examine spillovers caused by their tax preferences for multinational corporations.”

Toby Quantrill, principal economic justice adviser at Christian Aid – which is part of the Icrict coalition – said drastic action was required when it came to retooling the international tax system.

“These ideas will be seen by many as radical,” he said. “Such changes will not be easy to implement & will not happen overnight. But as many people know, acknowledging the reality & severity of a problem can be the first step to recovery.”

Quantrill said that although the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) had launched a plan to tackle multinational tax dodging, it was focusing on the symptoms rather than the causes.

“As a number of reports & analyses are showing, its work so far will be limited in its impact in richer countries & simply will not deal with the fundamental problem for poor countries,” he said.

“As an organisation often described as a ‘rich countries club’, it is hardly surprising that the OECD has not prioritised the problems faced by the poorest countries. And let’s be clear, these problems are significant.”

A recent report by the UN Conference on Trade & Development estimated that profit-shifting by multinational companies costs developing countries $100 billion a year in lost corporate income tax. Another report, by IMF researchers, estimated that developing countries may be losing as much as $213 billion a year to tax avoidance.

Oxfam – which published its own report on tax avoidance ... – says that corporate tax avoidance in the form of trade mispricing by G7-based companies & investors cost Africa $6 billion in 2010 alone. According to the NGO, the sum is more than 3 times the amount needed to improve the healthcare systems in the Ebola-affected countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea & at-risk Guinea Bissau.

Oxfam & others are calling for the British government to introduce a tax-dodging bill that would oblige UK companies to pay tax in the countries where they operate – & would also make it harder for big companies to avoid paying tax in the UK.

“Multinational companies, many with headquarters in the UK & other G7 countries, are cheating African countries out of billions of dollars in vital tax revenues that could help vulnerable people get decent healthcare & send their children to school,” said Nick Bryer, Oxfam’s head of UK campaigns.

“To fund the fight against poverty & to tackle worsening extreme inequality, we need action to ensure big companies pay their fair share, here & in the world’s poorest nations.”

Ontario employers cashing in on temporary workers

Since, I've posted & blogged these kinds of news stories quite a few times (Aug, Sept), I don't have much to say here.

When people tell me that take a temporary / contract job & it will turn into a permanent job later (I don't know how they know that), my answer is that there's a high chance that the job won't turn into a permanent one. After all, what incentive the company has to hire a worker, on a permanent basis, & pay for his/her health insurance & pension expenses, when the same worker can be kept on a temporary basis, indefinitely, & still get the job done, without any pension & benefits expenses for the company.

Another question I have for people who advocate "networking" is why are there 340,000 temp workers & there is a 33% increase in temporary workers, in the past decade (2004 - 2014), when all these people could've done "networking" to get a permanent job. Are all these people stupid, too timid, or unsocial to not know how to network? Networking is useless if you don't have influential family members or close friends in your circle, who are willing to bat for you.

I do see that there is an explosion in the Employment agencies in Ontario, & all over Canada, & the amount of money in this industry is obscene. With the commissions these employment agencies pay out to their workers, 6-figure salaries are common. People who are earning these 6-figure salaries have neither worked for years in the industry or have multiple relevant degrees & designations. That's why, I also see CAs & MBAs working in employment agencies now, because there's far more money in this industry than they will ever earn anywhere else.

But all this money is being earned by trampling on the workers' & human rights of thousands of other individuals. Many people choose the path of employment agencies only when they don't have any other option of getting a job. They all hope to get a permanent job one day. But, the way the contracts are structured, companies are also discouraged to hire temp & contract workers on a permanent basis. For instance, the one-time fees a company has to pay to hire a worker from a temp agency on a permanent basis are hefty.

All in all, everyone is making money & earning huge benefits at the expense of the small guy who has no rights. I thought that only happened in developing countries where rich control everything & the poor, small guy is pushed around.
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http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/10/ontario-employers-cashing-in-on-temporary-workers.html

For more than 5 years, 61-year-old Angel Reyes has woken up 5 days a week at 3 a.m. & braced himself for 8 hours of hauling garbage at a Toronto recycling plant.

The university-educated refugee is the longest-serving worker on the floor, hired through a temp agency more than half a decade ago.

Half a decade &, technically, still a temp.

Half a decade earning minimum wage, never having seen a raise.

Half a decade, & still paid less per hour than his permanent colleagues for doing the same job.

Half a decade, & still no benefits.

Half a decade, & still no obligation for his employer to hire him permanently.

“If hell exists, that is hell,” says Reyes, a father of 3 who came to Canada in 1993 after he was kidnapped & imprisoned in El Salvador for — ironically — lobbying for workers’ rights.

Under Ontario’s antiquated Employment Standards Act, which is currently under review, there is no limit on how long a company can employ a worker as temporary before giving him or her a permanent job.

There is nothing to stop employers from paying temp workers less than their permanent counterparts, nothing to prevent them from hiring their entire workforce on a “temporary” basis if they so choose.

“If the employer knows that they can hire you & they don’t have to give you benefits, they don’t have to give you a pension, they can hire you for a lot less, there’s no incentive for them to hire permanently. Why would they?” says Deena Ladd, who heads the Toronto-based labour rights group the Workers’ Action Centre.

“The biggest issue is the lack of respect & dignity in (temporary) work. Nobody is seeing them for who they are & the work that they’re doing. They are completely invisible.”

In Toronto, their ranks are growing, with temporary workers outpacing permanent ones at twice the rate, their wages significantly lower.

Over the past decade, there has been a 33% increase in the number of temporary workers in Toronto, to more than 340,000 in 2014 from 256,000 in 2004, according to Statistics Canada. Industries such as food manufacturing, transportation & health care saw some of the biggest jumps.

By contrast, the number of permanent employees increased by just 12% over the same period.

Not all temporary workers are hired through agencies; many are hired directly on fixed-term contracts. Statistics Canada figures don’t differentiate between temp agency workers & direct hires.

Still, Ontario’s temp agency industry is flourishing. The province’s employment services sector earned $5.7 billion in revenue in 2012, a near 72% jump from 2002. Temporary agencies account for an estimated 60% of that industry’s total revenue.

Temp agencies are responsible for paying a worker their wages, which they bill the company for, & also take care of statutory entitlements such as Canada Pension Plan, injury pay & vacation pay. The agencies charge their client companies a fee for each assignment to cover all of these costs.

The hourly rate paid to the temp agency for an assignment can be as much as double the worker’s wage. Temp agencies are not required under the Employment Standards Act to tell workers how much they are charging the company per hour to employ them.

Toronto resident Antoinette Schokman-De Zilva, 66, a retired former executive assistant who worked numerous placements through temp agencies, says she was shocked to discover on one assignment that the company was paying the temp agency almost double her hourly wage.

“If I’m paid $20 an hour, they’re charging $45 from the company,” she says.

For some employers, temp agencies help match them with high-level, specialized workers.

But for many others, using temp agencies is part of what the action centre’s Ladd calls a “cheap wage strategy” to keep costs low & responsibilities, such as health benefits & pensions, to a minimum.

Figures provided to the Star by Statistics Canada show that the median wage of a temporary worker in Toronto is just $15 an hour, while permanent employees make $22.40 — a pay gap of 33%.

The gap is even wider for male temps in non-unionized workplaces, who make a median hourly wage of just $13.50. Their permanent counterparts make 40% more, at $22.50 an hour.

Ontario has made some recent strides toward reform, such as giving workers the right to receive public holiday pay & one weeks’ termination notice. But other countries have done more to protect temporary workers from unequal pay & long-term temp work.

In the U.K., temp workers are entitled to receive the same pay as permanent workers in equivalent positions after 3 months on the job.

In Italy, temporary positions automatically become permanent after 36 months in the same assignment.

And in Australia, employers who hire temps must pay them a 15% to 25% premium on their hourly wage in recognition that such workers rarely receive benefits.

But while Ontario’s Employment Standards Act mandates pay equity between men & women, there are no provisions to protect workers from pay discrimination based on their temporary employment status.

Reyes, for example, says permanent employees at his plant make more than him when they start, plus receive benefits, while he still earns minimum wage after more than 5 years on the job as a temp. The only time his salary increased was when the government raised the minimum wage to $11 an hour.
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The repercussions of endless temp agency work for some of the province’s most vulnerable workers are more than financial.

A 2013 study by the Toronto-based Institute for Work & Health, which conducted interviews with more than 60 low-wage temp agency workers, industry experts & employers in Ontario, concluded that poor oversight & intense competition between agencies put temporary workers at greater risk of work injury than their permanent counterparts.

Ellen MacEachen, the report’s lead author, says workers told her they felt powerless to complain about poor work conditions because they knew they were replaceable & feared losing even poorly-paid jobs.

“Workers who have job insecurity will take care to protect their jobs, & that can often mean trying not to complain about anything,” she says.

Since the Workplace Safety & Insurance Act recognizes temp agencies as the sole employer of their workers, companies can also keep a clean WSIB record if temp agency workers are injured on the job.

“No one is looking out for them,” says the action centre’s Ladd. “You have a perfect environment for a complete deterioration of health & safety, wages, & working conditions.”

Mary McIninch, director of government relations at the Association of Canadian Search, Employment & Staffing Services, which represents more than 1,000 employment agencies including temps, says her members actively maintain a voluntary code of ethics. She describes them as “the most reputable, credible firms in the industry.”

The association has supported some government measures to give temp workers rights, McIninch says, but adds it would oppose reforms like pay parity.

She says “a strong majority” of her members place workers in highly paid positions, & that workers are compensated according to skill & experience.

“We have so many positive testimonials from new Canadians & students,” she told the Star, calling the example of Angel Reyes “not representative of the majority of workers in the industry.”

“I think if that were representative of even a strong minority, I doubt very much that as many individuals that we see — over 300,000 across the country — would continue to use our members’ services,” she adds.

But former temp worker Schokman-De Zilva, who immigrated to Toronto from Sri Lanka in 1989, says she only turned to agency jobs when permanent ones were not available, hoping they would lead to stable employment.

They never did.

“They just threw the contract in my face when I protested,” she says. “And that was it.”
Despite the recent government reforms, people like Reyes are still falling through the cracks.
For him, life at a drafty, dust-filled recycling plant may not be glamorous, but a job is a job.
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Proposed solutions

A recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre makes a number of recommendations to tackle the widening disparity between permanent employees & temporary agency workers. These include:

• Requiring companies to pay temps the same wages & benefits as permanent staff in equivalent positions.

• Requiring temporary agencies to tell workers how much they are charging a company per hour for an assignment.

• Instituting a six-month limit on temporary assignments, after which temps must be directly hired by the company.

• Scrapping a provision that allows temp agencies to charge companies a fee if they give temps permanent jobs in the first 6 months of work.

• Limiting how many workers in a single company can be temporary agency employees (no more than 20%).

"Earth Home" by Jen Sorensen

"Earth Home" - Jen Sorensen, US

How a corporate cult captures & destroys our best graduates

Although, this opinion piece by George Monbiot is good, & I would love to agree with it completely but it has a few major flaws.

Yes, students are one of the most idealistic people of any nation. They see the problem from an innocent point of view &, without any conflicts of interests or any politics, they try to find the best resolution to the problem. But with the same vein, they try to resolve every problem in a very straight-forward way, without thinking how the systems are structured or controlled or influenced. Merely protesting against the government on the streets won't help much if your demographics is not influential enough in the hallowed halls of the political powerhouses. For instance, we can see what did Egyptian youths & students achieve after protesting for weeks on end. Or students protesting against rising tuition fees around the world have not been able to convince post-secondary institutions to lower tuition fees.

So, at the same time, it is very true that students want to see the world develop in the noblest of forms; without any discriminations & prejudices. But at the same time, they also want to achieve success in their careers & life. They all want to climb high in the corporate world based on their merits & hard work. They all want to work for large, international, world-renowned companies.

The primary reason for this is how the labour market works. If these graduates get in a large, international, world-renowned company at the beginning of their careers, they can build their careers from that point, onwards & upwards. Other companies will look at their resumes & CVs & will be immediately impressed with their work experience, which they achieved at the large company. Those graduates may even build strong & influential networks by working in large multinational companies. For example, a graduate working in McKinsey or Bain or Boston Consulting Group or Deloitte or KPMG or General Electric or Phillips or Honda or Toyota or Google or Facebook etc will be able to transfer between different companies, in the same industry or even in different industries, very easily, due to how his/her work experiences will be looked upon by his future employers. A management consultant from McKinsey gets the doors flung open for him/her at other management consulting firms or even at non-consulting firms, like Google or General Electric.

Besides, the work experiences being favourably looked upon & networks being built, the salaries at these firms are good, too. But, I will not discuss the finance part of the argument, since, not every graduate chases the biggest pay packet. For many, salary comes second to experience.

Working for non-profits may elate a graduate for a short while, but, unless, they are willing to spend their whole life in the same company or stay within the non-profit sector, their experiences will most likely be considered not as important as a graduate's who has worked in a major consultancy firm. Is it unfair? Definitely. Should this be changed? Definitely. But who is willing to change it? There are not enough principals of the consultancy firms in this world who will look at a resume or CV of a person working at a non-profit agency & be immediately impressed.

Heck, even in personal lives, telling someone that one is working at such & such multinational consultancy firm or tech firm or other international company not only seem impressive but helps a lot in other ways. For instance, in Asian, South Asian, South American, & African societies, the measure of success of one's life is how big & well-known the employer of that person is. It doesn't even matter if that particular person is a janitor in that company. Parents & family members proudly boast that their family member is an employee of such a well-known international company. They don't care if that company is making weapons of mass destruction or destroying the environment or even killing the very soul of the society.

So, I agree with the argument that smart students should not be courted by large firms right before their graduations; when they may have not seen the world enough to make the right decision to choose the right career path for themselves. I also agree with the argument that students who want to work in such places where they can achieve their ideals, whatever they might be. But I disagree with the point that universities are failing in their duty of care by letting their graduates go for work for major "soulless" companies. Regardless of how much or how little universities market these companies to their intelligent students, those students will chase the large multinational companies because they know they will be able to travel the world, receive large pay packets, & most important of all, gain the work experience which will propel their careers in the stratosphere (assuming they don't screw up somewhere to derail their careers).

Everyone wants to go for the highest purposes of humankind but when push comes to shove, those noble ideas & meanings are pushed aside. It's not the fault of the universities or the companies or the young graduates, but the structure of the whole labour market is to blame. It rewards networks, not merits. It rewards experience gained at a multinational company, not the experience gained at a non-profit agency. It casts aside those who want to pursue highest purposes of humankind for the ones who are selfishly chasing money & careers.
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/city-corporates-destroy-best-minds

To seek enlightenment, intellectual or spiritual; to do good; to love & be loved; to create & to teach: these are the highest purposes of humankind. If there is meaning in life, it lies here.

Those who graduate from the leading universities have more opportunity than most to find such purpose. So why do so many end up in pointless & destructive jobs? Finance, management consultancy, advertising, public relations, lobbying: these & other useless occupations consume thousands of the brightest students. To take such jobs at graduation ... is to amputate life close to its base.

I watched it happen to my peers. People who had spent the preceding years laying out exultant visions of a better world, of the grand creative projects they planned, of adventure & discovery, were suddenly sucked into the mouths of corporations dangling money like angler fish.

At first they said they would do it for a year or two, “until I pay off my debts”. Soon afterwards they added: “and my mortgage”. Then it became, “I just want to make enough not to worry any more”. A few years later, “I’m doing it for my family”. Now, in middle age, they reply, “What, that? That was just a student fantasy.”

Why did they not escape, when they perceived that they were being dragged away from their dreams? I have come to see the obscene hours some new recruits must work – sometimes 15 or 16 a day – as a form of reorientation, of brainwashing. You are deprived of the time, sleep & energy you need to see past the place into which you have been plunged. You lose your bearings, your attachments to the world you inhabited before, & become immersed in the culture that surrounds you. Two years of this & many are lost for life.

Employment by the City has declined since the financial crash. Among the universities I surveyed with the excellent researcher John Sheil, the proportion of graduates taking jobs in finance & management consultancy ranges from 5% at Edinburgh to 13% at Oxford, 16% at Cambridge, 28% at the London School of Economics & 60% at the London Business School. But to judge by the number of applications & the rigour of the selection process, these businesses still harvest many of the smartest graduates.

Recruitment begins with lovebombing of the kind that cults use. They sponsor sports teams & debating societies, throw parties, offer meals & drinks, send handwritten letters, use student ambassadors to offer friendship & support. They persuade undergraduates that even if they don’t see themselves as consultants or bankers (few do), these jobs are stepping stones to the careers they really want. They make the initial application easy, & respond immediately & enthusiastically to signs of interest. They offer security & recognition when people are most uncertain & fearful about their future. And there’s the flash of the king’s shilling: the paid internships, the golden hellos, the promise of stupendous salaries within a couple of years. Entrapment is a refined science.

We have but one life. However much money we make, we cannot buy it back. As far as self-direction, autonomy & social utility are concerned, many of those who enter these industries & never re-emerge might as well have locked themselves in a cell at graduation. They lost it all with one false step, taken at a unique moment of freedom.

John Sheil & I sent questions to 8 of the universities with the highest average graduate salaries: Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, the LSE, the London Business School, Warwick, Sheffield & Edinburgh. We asked whether they seek to counter these lavish recruitment drives & defend students from the love blitz. With one remarkable exception, their responses ranged from feeble to dismal. Most offered no evidence of any prior interest in these questions. Where we expected deep deliberation to have taken place, we found instead an intellectual vacuum.

They cited their duty of impartiality, which, they believe, prevents them from seeking to influence students’ choices, & explained that there were plenty of other careers on offer. But they appear to have confused impartiality with passivity. Passivity in the face of unequal forces is anything but impartial. Impartiality demands an active attempt to create balance, to resist power, to tell the dark side of the celestial tale being pummelled into the minds of undergraduates by the richest City cults.

Oxford University asked us, “isn’t it preferable that [the City] recruits bright, critical thinkers & socially engaged graduates who are smart enough to hold their employers to account when possible?”. Oh blimey. This is a version of the most desperate excuse my college friends attempted: “I’ll reform them from within.” This magical thinking betrays a profound misconception about the nature & purpose of such employers.

They respond to profit, the regulatory environment, the demands of shareholders, not to the consciences of their staff. We all know how they treat whistleblowers. Why should “bright, critical thinkers & socially engaged graduates” be dispatched on this kamikaze mission? I believe these universities are failing in their duty of care.

The hero of this story is Gordon Chesterman, head of the careers service at Cambridge, & the only person we spoke to who appears to have given some thought to these questions. He told me his service tries to counter the influence of the richest employers.

It sends out regular emails telling students “if you don’t want to become a banker, you’re not a failure”, & runs an event called “But I don’t want to work in the City”. It imposes a fee on rich recruiters & uses the money to pay the train fares of nonprofits. He expressed anger about being forced by the government to provide data on graduate starting salaries.

“I think it’s a very blunt & inappropriate means [of comparison], that rings alarm bells in my mind.”

Elsewhere, at this vulnerable, mutable, pivotal moment, undergraduates must rely on their own wavering resolve to resist peer pressure, the herd instinct, the allure of money, flattery, prestige & security.

Students, rebel against these soul-suckers! Follow your dreams, however hard it may be, however uncertain success might seem.


A fully referenced version of this article can be found at Monbiot.com

Thousands of children in Britain being forced to live on £1 a day

Since, this is happening to 1000s of children, "many of whom are British children," what do you expect will happen to the children of refugees. In many cases, refugees are treated much better than the country's own citizens. Why?

Reason being that, depending on how visible the issue is of refugee crisis (for example, the current refugee crisis stemming from the wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya etc.), governments tend to throw inordinate amount of money at the crisis to appease the voting public. But, since, the government has a set amount of money in its coffers, it takes that money from somewhere else in the social security system. So, for instance, in this case, other vulnerable families & children.

This news story also dispels the myth that Western countries are awash in money. This myth is especially true in Asia, Africa, & Middle Eastern countries ... all the developing nations. At least, 80% of the public of Western countries is struggling financially. These people are the residents & citizens of the country; be it UK, US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy etc.

Problem is that these people & stories are not visible. What is visible in the media is the high-falutin' people with luxurious lifestyles of the rich. In many cases, those people themselves are also struggling financially, & only able to afford luxurious items by borrowing heavily on their credit cards.

So, anyway, if & when, refugees & their families are treated much better in a Western country than their own citizens & their families, resentments & hate start fomenting among the public. Citizens turn against refugees, whom they see as robbing them off jobs & money, of which those citizens think they were entitled of, in the first place. Were those citizens entitled of that extra financial help is a separate discussion. But what should be of common sense to any government is that the welfare of its own public comes first.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/thousands-of-children-in-britain-being-forced-to-live-on-1-a-day-10292792.html

Thousands of children – many of whom are British citizens – are subsisting on as little as £1 a day because their parents are migrants with no recourse to public funds.

There are 5,900 children in England & Wales living on the brink of total destitution because their parents cannot work or receive government benefits, according to research from The University of Oxford’s migration unit. Charities say the situation is pushing vulnerable children into “severe poverty & hunger.”

In almost a quarter of the families affected at least one child is a British citizen, researchers from Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy & Society (COMPAS) found. Some go for months without receiving any help at all, forced to sleep in cars, disused buildings or even on the street.

Most of the families affected are here legally but awaiting a Home Office decision on their immigration case. ... 71% of the families helped by local authorities in 2012/13 had a decision on their immigration status pending.

Forbidden from working or receiving welfare, the only money many migrant parents can find to feed their children is a child poverty payout from social services, which can be as low as £5 a week for a family. If the local authority decides the child is destitute its family will also be given accommodation.

The Home Office does not help families while they wait for a decision on their immigration case unless they are seeking asylum - & it forbids them from working.

Local Authorities have an obligation to help all destitute children under the Children’s Act. The financial support, known as Section 17, is set by individual councils, often on a case by case basis.

Since councils’ budgets have been significantly cut back by central Government, these payments are frequently far below the necessary amount to live on. Payments typically range from £23 to £35 per child per week but this money has to feed parents too. If a family receives help from a food bank the value of this is often deducted from the meagre council help, leaving them with just a few pounds a week for nappies & other essentials.

Matthew Reed, chief executive of The Children’s Society said: “The desire to be seen to be tough on immigration can often mean the government overlooks its legal obligation to recognise children as children. As a result, too often they & their families are being pushed into severe poverty & hunger. They are being made homeless, forced into over-crowded, inappropriate accommodation & even on to the streets.

“Some families aren’t even being assessed to determine what help they need or are entitled to. And if they do get support, it is too low & often at the discretion of local authorities. Recent cuts to legal aid & the Home Office’s slow decision making means children are being forced to live on this support for long periods of time. This must change.”

Experts believe the Government needs to step in & provide funding to protect children’s welfare in this situation. Mr. Reed said: “It is critical that these families get the help they need & that the Government provides the funds necessary so local authorities can protect these children’s welfare. Children must be treated first & foremost as children — not as immigration statistics.”

Councils have to assess whether a family is eligible by working out if they are truly destitute. Researchers found social services often rejected cases with very little evidence.

Rita Chadha, chief executive of the Refugee & Migrant Forum of Essex & London (RAMFEL), said: “We see at least one client a day in this situation. They come in extremely distressed. We’ve seen children sleeping in church graveyards & disused shops. In many cases councils won’t give families money until prompted to by other agencies.”

More than a third of families surveyed survived on rudimentary council support for more than a year, largely due to lengthy waits for a decision from the Home Office. In 7% of cases, families needed help for more than 3 years.

Jonathan Price, co-author of the report, said: “Even after they have started receiving Section 17 support, some children face long periods living on subsistence rates that are well below those deemed minimal for any other category of people in the UK. This raises real concerns about the long-term impact of poverty on these children.”

Price added: “These are vulnerable people. We found that, prior to receiving local authority support, children & families were living highly precarious lives & were sometimes subject to exploitation. Domestic violence was an element in many referrals.”

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “We welcome those who wish to make a life in the UK with their family, work hard & make a contribution. But family life must not be established here at the taxpayer's expense.

“We work closely with local authorities to ensure that immigration decisions in cases receiving local authority support are made as quickly as possible.

“In exceptional circumstances, or where people granted leave on family grounds show that they would otherwise be destitute, they are granted recourse to public funds.”

The study was based on a survey of 137 Children’s Services departments in England & Wales, as well as 105 voluntary sector organisations & 92 interviews.

World War Z quote

 IMDB          RottenTomatoes          Wikipedia

So true. That's the same problem people have, for instance, with understanding the problem of climate change or cloning or economics or finance or any number of problems, on a micro or macro level. Regardless of how much an expert tells them that it will become a problem later on, people will hold on to their beliefs until that given event has happened. Watching it by their own eyes is the only way for them to believe. BUT, by that point, it's already too late for those people to save themselves from whatever that problem or calamitous event it is.

It's the same problem Quran mentions multiple times. Several prophets came & told the same thing to their people, but until & unless, God's punishment came down upon them, the public didn't believe those prophets. And by that time, it was already too late for any repentance. Be it Noah's people or Lot's, Shelah's (Saleh's) or Eber's (Hud's), they all didn't believe their prophets until God's punishment came down upon them.

'Wild West' scheduling holds millions of Ontario workers hostage

News stories like these are not so obvious to a majority of people in Canada & pretty much none abroad. The public thinks that since I am doing great in a permanent, full time position, everyone else must be in the same boat. We don't realize how the proverbial graph of labour conditions in US & Canada has consistently being going down for the past decade.

Employment is rising fast in retail industry in Canada. Search jobs in any one of the hundreds of job search websites & apps & you will definitely come across some retail sector jobs, regardless of what position you are searching for. However, most retailers are operating in a cut-throat market, & hence, try to be efficient by cutting down on their labour costs.

That happens despite some of the owners of the retail sectors becoming filthy rich & continuously becoming rich, for example, Walton family of Wal-Mart, Sobey family of Sobeys, Weston family of Loblaws etc.

These retailers try to find any loophole which can benefit them. For example, the article mentions that retailers hire new part-time staff, when the sales in store increases, instead of offering those extra hours to their existing staff. It doesn't provide any reason, but the reason retailers do that is because if existing part-timers are offered those extra hours & their hours get past the minimum threshold at which retailers are obliged to give those part-timers medical & dental benefits, then it will cost those retailers even more. So, retailers hire new staff, & this way keeping the hours of all part-timers below the minimum threshold of benefits.

People, who don't know what retailers do, very easily say that take a job at a store. They don't realize how hard life would become once you get in that cycle. As the article mentions, you won't even have the time to take a second job to cover your expenses, since erratic scheduling will demand your full schedule to be opened. You might be required to work at the store at any time.

But then, can we blame the retailers for this?

After all, as I said above, they are operating in a cut-throat environment & they need to cut costs wherever they can. Labour costs are a big chunk of total operating expenses. A majority of consumers demand lowest prices possible. They can easily do comparison shopping through websites, flyers, apps etc. & look for the cheapest price possible for the same product. There is no such thing as customer loyalty.

Most consumers, of course, are looking for lowest prices because they themselves are living on meagre wages. They don't have extra cash lying around to splurge on even organic & healthy food (which is generally more expensive than regular, non-organic food), forget then that they will spend extra on general products.

To keep prices so low, for example, like Wal-Mart, stores need to cut costs as much as they can. Of course, that means using technology as much as they can, for example, use of self-checking kiosks. Technology, though, take away jobs even from those part-timers. So technology makes more people unemployed.

Root of the problem lies at the mentality of owners that accumulation of wealth at the top is good. Owners think it is their entitled birth-right to accumulate as much wealth as they can. Rich elites, in general, are looking forward to keep hoarding money in their bank accounts. They cut costs brutally in their businesses; whatever industry they are in. Their workers are paid meagre wages. Those workers then spend their salaries very carefully. The rich owners also try to avoid, as much as they legally can, to pay for benefits; vacations, health, pensions etc. Workers then are required to buy those benefits & save for their pensions themselves ... from their already meagre wages.

Government, on the other hand, keep cutting social services & health benefits. I remember a decade ago that eye tests in Ontario were free for all every 2 years. Now, they are free only for diabetics, children & seniors. Adults have to pay for their eyes to be checked. Governments are cutting social services & health benefits because they don't have enough money in their public coffers (at least that's what the government says). They don't have enough money because rich business & political elites find ingenious ways to dodge taxes.

So, the rich business elites try to save big in their business operations through cutting wages, hiring more part-timers, cutting benefits etc. & then also save money by not paying their fair share of the taxes, which will, at least, help provide social services for those same poor workers whose wages & benefits they are cutting. So, the rich business elites have both their hands & the head in the money pot.

And we thought that this would be done by some unscrupulous, corrupt, unethical businessmen in the developing world !!!
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http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/03/outdated-employment-standards-act-holding-millions-of-ontario-workers-hostage.html

...
In Ontario, employers don’t have to provide workers with their schedule in advance.

There are no penalties for cancelling an employee’s shift even an hour before it’s due to start.

There is no obligation to guarantee part-time workers a certain number of hours.

There is no law preventing more part-time workers from being hired before offering existing employees more hours.

There is nothing that saves part-time workers from being paid less than full-time workers — even when they do the same job.

Many low-wage workers desperately need to take on second jobs but can’t, because employers expect full-time availability from their part-time employees.

Experts call erratic work scheduling the “Wild West” of employment standards, a practice that causes havoc in the lives of millions of Ontario workers but is almost completely ignored by provincial law.

The result in many industries is a “brutal combination” of unpredictable schedules, insufficient hours & poor wages, says Deena Ladd, who heads the Workers’ Action Centre, a Toronto-based labour rights advocacy group.

Now, Ontario’s so-called “precariously employed” are demanding change on these issues, as Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government embarks on a review of employment & labour laws that is expected to conclude in August 2016.

“It’s just incomprehensible that we’re asking people in our province today to try to manage their lives under these kinds of conditions,” says Kendra Coulter, a professor of labour studies at Brock University.

So-called flexible schedules are often welcomed by employees who want greater control over their work-life balance. But for the growing number of people in low-wage part-time positions, “flexibility” provides little in the way of control or balance.

41% of work in Ontario is now done outside a full-time, permanent relationship with a single employer.
...

Expecting full-time availability from part-time employees, the action centre’s Ladd says, makes it difficult for many low-wage workers to take on much-needed second jobs.
...

Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, last reviewed in 2000, is almost completely silent on the subject of scheduling, containing just one provision to protect workers.

The “three hour rule” forces bosses to give their employees 3 hours of pay if they arrive at work only to have their shifts abruptly shortened or cancelled. The rule does not apply to workers who are regularly scheduled to work less than 3 hours, which labour activists say is increasingly common.

Beyond that, employers have no responsibility to provide workers with a predictable schedule.
...

Erratic scheduling is most common in booming sectors such as retail, where jobs tend to be low-wage & non-unionized.

In Toronto alone, the number of people employed in retail has grown by 34% over the past 15 years, to more than 300,000 in 2014 from just under 227,000 in 1999.

Angelo DiCaro, Unifor’s lead researcher on the retail sector ..., says negotiating scheduling rights for union members is tough since there are no province-wide standards.

Flexible scheduling is popular with employers because it allows companies to spend less on payroll when sales slow down. Managers are often evaluated based on their success.

“It’s a pure efficiency argument from the retailers’ viewpoint,” explains Joseph Milner, a professor at Rotman School of Management. “The more flexible you can get your resources — your human resources, in this case — the more you would expect to get efficiencies.”

In addition to keeping wages low, hiring a large pool of part-time employees who work limited hours minimizes employers’ obligation to pay benefits such as medical & dental. Even in unionized settings, workers must often work a certain number of hours to be eligible for such entitlements.

Mary Gellatly of Parkdale Community Legal Services argues this “shifts what’s traditionally been the cost of doing business onto workers, especially low-wage precarious workers who can least afford it.”

“The reality is that at this point (scheduling) is a ‘Wild West’ when it comes to employment standards,” adds Brock University’s Coulter, who calls the reforms proposed by the Workers’ Action Centre “thoughtful, comprehensive & achievable.”

She also points out that not all employers take advantage of loose rules.

Costco Canada, for example, guarantees its full-time staff 40 hours a week, & its part-timers 25 hours. Schedules are posted at least 1 week in advance, & both full-time & part-time employees are entitled to health benefits.

The upshot, says Ross Hunt, the company’s vice-president of human resources, is one of the lowest employee turnover rates in the industry — 12%, compared with the retail average of about 21%.

“It gives (workers) a better quality of life. And if they’re stable & they stay with us, it’s great for us, too,” he told the Star in an interview.

But the political push for province-wide standards has so far lagged. In the US, the proposed federal Schedules that Work Act sets out much stronger protections, including mandatory two-week scheduling notice for many low-wage sectors.

The Act will face tough passage through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, but that hasn’t stopped San Francisco from enacting game-changing municipal legislation with similar provisions, including providing retail workers with two weeks’ notice of their schedules.

“I think we’re way behind many jurisdictions in the US where they’re trying to put a halt to the unfettered growth of just-in-time scheduling,” says Parkdale’s Gellatly.

But campaigners say the Ontario government’s current review of the Employment Standards Act is a golden opportunity to fix what the action centre’s Ladd calls a “massive, gaping hole” in the province’s laws.


Proposed solutions

A recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre on precarious work in Ontario recommends reforming the Employment Standards Act to:

• Require two weeks’ advance posting of work schedules

• Give employees the right to one hour’s pay if their schedule is changed with less than a week’s notice, & 4 hours’ pay if less than 24 hours’ notice

• Mandate minimum three-hour shifts for all workers

• Require employers to give existing part-time & casual employees preference for available hours before hiring additional workers

• Give workers protection from reprisal when requesting schedule changes

• Mandate equal pay for equal work, regardless of part-time or full-time status


BY THE NUMBERS

40%: Pay difference per hour between part-time & full-time workers in Ontario

$11: Median wage for a Toronto grocery store worker in 2014

60%: Grocery store workers in Toronto who are not unionized

88%: Retail workers in Toronto who are not unionized

87%: Retail workers in Ontario who are not unionized