Black teachers still face racism on the job in Ontario

I used to be surprised when people used to get surprised at the news that there's racism in Canada; the country which thinks it is better than US in regards to such form of discrimination & hatred.

But I don't get surprised at them, because I already know those people, who are the majority of the population, are living under a rock, when it comes to their social knowledge. They may know a lot about their profession, politics, sports etc., but when it comes to know what's going on in their vicinity which is affecting adversely to their fellow human beings, they are completely clueless.

I know there's racism in Canada because I suffer it myself. I know there's racism in Canada because I hear from other people in my community who suffer from it. But most people in our supposedly "diverse" society live in so insularly that they are completely oblivious to these daily facts of life.

Recent riots & violence in US in regards to racism didn't come out of nowhere, but they were the result of years & decades of racism by the American "white" majority. Since, African-Americans are that many more in population in US than any other race, racism affects them with that much force.

In Canada, the adverse effects of racism are few but intense. Reason being that a large majority of some 35 million of Canadians are of one race, & other races make a small portion of the whole population. On top of that, many stories of racism never surface, so we never come to hear the full extent of racism in our society.

As interim president of ONABSE says in the article below that "racism is still deeply ingrained in society."
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http://www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/education/2015/05/29/black-teachers-still-face-racism-on-the-job-in-ontario.html

Many black teachers across Ontario still face racism on the job, according to a new study of educators, half of whom said they believe being black has hurt their chance of promotion. Some told of hearing the ‘N’ word used in the staff room & being mistaken for a trespasser.

“I had a supply teacher tell me I am not allowed to park my car in staff parking,” said one of the 148 black educators across 12 Ontario school boards surveyed for a report ... . “The ‘N’ word was used in casual conversation in our staff room,” said another. “I was introduced as ‘home girl’ to a student teacher.”

The 63-page report, The Voices of Ontario Black Educators, prepared for the Ontario Alliance of Black School Educators (ONABSE), calls for Ontario to enact tough employment equity legislation, provide training against anti-black bias, set targets for promoting teachers of colour & cluster black teachers in particular in schools where there are high numbers of black students.

“We’re disappointed, but not surprised at the findings — racism is still deeply ingrained in society,” said Warren Salmon, interim president of ONABSE, which commissioned the report because of concerns expressed by its members.

Of the black teachers, principals & vice-principals surveyed, one-third said they believe they have been passed over for advancement because they are black. Some 27% said racial discrimination by colleagues affects their day-to-day work life & 51% said they believe anti-black bias at their school board affects who gets promoted.

Equity consultant Tana Turner of Turner Consultants conducted the survey, & called for school boards to “set equity goals & timetables — not just have an employment equity office which merely measures the numbers of employees …"

Toronto vice-principal Darlene Jones said she has not experienced racism either as a teacher or as vice-principal of Beverley Heights Middle School — “not at all; but I’m not alarmed that it exists. It’s our world; you just have to hope that by changing mindsets, things will change.”
...

The report included numerous anecdotes of “micro-aggressions … the everyday slights, insults & indignities” that imply black teachers don’t belong:

• One was “asked by a principal if I would ever consider straightening my hair.”

• Another was “told I should steer away from too much black history in the class as black history is not important when no black students are present.”

• On arriving at a new job assignment, “colleagues asked if I am a new caretaker.”

• “A colleague was shocked that I was raised by both parents — & expressed it in the staff room.”

Turner noted that in 2011, 26% of Ontarians were “racialized” (visible minorities) — a figure that soars to 72% in Markham, 66% in Brampton, 54% in Mississauga & 49% in Toronto. However, she said the percentage of teachers of colour lags behind the population.

Some 31% of the Toronto District School Board’s staff self-identified as visible minorities in 2012. At the University of Toronto’s faculty of education, 46% of current students self-identified as being part of a visible minority.

The ONABSE report calls for more rigorous tracking of the diversity of teachers in Ontario schools.

How the 'poshness test' is denying working-class people top jobs

A few months ago, I blogged about how universities in US are laying out the red carpet for children of rich parents. That is skewing the education paradigm in favour of the rich. Well, this news from the UK is highlighting how the social favouritism for the rich doesn't stop at the school but continues on to working lives.

Now, this news may surprise that lot in the world, who think that there is merit & fairness in the Western world. In the Western world, most jobs, & definitely the good ones, are only available through the "power of Networking." Of course, employees of certain socio-economic background keep similar friends, & hence, when the boss says that a vacancy is coming up in a department (marketing, finance, human resources etc.), employees tell their friends (who are like them) about that vacancy.

Eventually, people of a certain socio-economic background end up in the same company. Promotions take place from that employee pool. And then, those people hire the same; other people in their own image. After all, it's just human psychology that we like other people who seem similar to us; in values, in finances, in habits, in education etc.

So, of course, the good jobs in the top firms will go to the people who are of a certain "posh" class. It doesn't matter what education or how good a person was in school, anymore; it all comes down to who you are friends with, nowadays. This is the case everywhere around the world.

At the end of the day, the so-called "modern" society is going back to the days of dark ages, when the few select elites of the society used to have everything in the society working for them; from politics to finances to education and work for their kids.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/poshness-test-is-the-new-glass-ceiling-lack-of-wealthy-background-denies-working-class-people-top-10319541.html

Thousands of working-class people are being denied jobs at top firms, as they effectively need to pass a “poshness test” to join elite employers, according to the official body set up by the Government to promote social mobility.

Executives are more likely to judge potential recruits by how they speak than by how well they might do the job, research by Alan Milburn’s Social Mobility & Child Poverty Commission found.

Its review shows that more than two-thirds of the job vacancies in elite legal & City firms are filled by university graduates who have been through private or grammar schools. By comparison, nearly 90% of schoolchildren have a comprehensive education, compared to just 7% attending fee-paying schools & 4% going to selective grammar schools.

Discrimination comes about because the managers who conduct job interviews do not like working-class accents, the commission reported, but are impressed by young people who have travelled widely, which naturally favours those from well-off families.

One employer frankly admitted his firm’s recruitment practices were loaded against young working-class applicants. But, he asked: “How much mud do I have to sift through in that population to find that diamond?”

Even when a working-class youth is on first rung of the ladder, he or she is likely to be passed over for promotion because of “the tendency of more senior professionals to promote in their own image & thus ‘misrecognise’ merit,” the commission said.

“This research shows that young people with working-class backgrounds are being systematically locked out of top jobs,” said Mr. Milburn, the former Labour Cabinet minister who chairs the commission. “Elite firms seem to require applicants to pass a ‘poshness test’ to gain entry. Inevitably that ends up excluding youngsters who have the right sort of grades & abilities but whose parents do not have the right sort of bank balances.

“Thankfully, some of our country’s leading firms are making a big commitment to recruit the brightest & best, regardless of background. They should be applauded. But for the rest this is a ‘wake up & smell the coffee’ moment. “In some top law firms, trainees are more than 5 times likely to have attended a fee-paying school than the population as a whole. They are denying themselves talent, stymieing young people’s social mobility & fuelling the social divide that bedevils Britain. ”

The “poshness test” is one way in which Britain’s social divide is widening, despite the rise in the number of professional jobs, which is expected to increase by 2 million in the next 5 years.

Research has previously shown that graduates whose parents can support them while they do unpaid work have a marked advantage, because almost a third of graduates recruited for full-time jobs in the top firms have already worked for them, usually as unpaid interns. It has also been found that most major firms tend to recruit graduates from just 19 universities.

The commission, which advises the government on social mobility, has examined the recruiting history of 13 elite firms employing 45,000 of Britain’s highest paid professionals.

They concluded that the recruiting practices are now so skewed in favour of “poshness” that many of the firms’ own senior executives would have not been hired under the criteria now used.

Between 60% & 70% of job offers made by the leading accountancy firms are to graduates of the 24 leading universities that make up the Russell Group.
...

But on a positive note, some firms have acknowledged that A-level results are not always a good indicator of performance, & have stopped taking them into account. In one firm that was studied, more than 10% of recruits would have failed if they had been judged on their school results.

Dr. Louise Ashley, of Royal Holloway, University of London, who led the research, urged firms to recruit from a wider range of applicants, & make sure that those from “diverse” backgrounds were not at a disadvantage. “Selection processes which advantage students from more privileged backgrounds remain firmly in place,” she said.

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

Cinderella's new moral: Be rich or be a pumpkin

A great opinion piece taking the recent Disney movie, "Cindrella," & showing how it portrays where the US, & essentially the whole developed world, is going. Of course, Europe's march towards that future where one-percenters control everything for the "commoners" is slow but the direction is same, as we can see with the harsh austerity plans Greeks have to abide by to keep themselves in the EU.

Socio-economic classes, or perhaps, social segregation, is becoming more & more evident in the developed West, where the one-percenters elites (business & political elites) live in their own little world. They socialize / network within themselves & their connections to the common public is only when they want their needs to be served. Their children don't need to study hard to get in top schools or get top marks to secure that coveted position. Why? How can that happen in such a seemingly just & fair society, like North America? (sarcasm)

Because, top jobs in business & politics are all based on networks & influence. Of course, rich elites are friends or associated with other rich elites. So, great, top jobs are guaranteed to rich kids. Good, quality post-secondary education is getting out of reach of kids of common masses, anyway.

Poor, low-quality post-secondary education & a fierce competition for low-quality jobs with no influence whatsoever leaves many frustrated. They also can keep working longer & harder (as per GOP 2016 Presidential candidate, Jeb Bush) but they would never achieve the level of wealth elites have. Upward mobility is now "Upward Friction".

To add insult to injury, if the common masses want to protest against their rising injustice & inequality, then the so-called "democratic" governments of the West have already, or still enacting, tough laws against protests. For instance, countries like Spain, Canada, US, UK etc. As the piece very correctly puts it, "The privileges of the prince & his fellow one-percenters are simply accepted as an immutable law of the universe. There’s no notion of busting up the system, Katniss Everdeen-style. Best to just accept it & grab the goodies if you can."

The last line in the piece very nicely summarizes the new social evolution of the developed world. "The film teaches ... a harsh lesson: If you’re not rich, you may as well be a pumpkin."
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/26/idUS176886111620150326

Once upon a time, during a brief egalitarian period in postwar America, people of different classes did not live in separate worlds. The promise of mobility & prosperity was alive throughout the land. In 1950, Walt Disney Productions was saved from bankruptcy with its smash hit Cinderella, which audiences cheered at a time when the future looked bright & it was still possible for the dream of marrying up to come true.
 
A new Disney film of Cinderella is a big box-office success today, but how different things look! Cinderella marriages are getting to be as rare as golden coaches. Economist Jeremy Greenwood has found that your chances of marrying outside your income bracket have been dropping since the 1950s because of something called assortative mating, which means that we are increasingly drawn to people in similar circumstances.
 
Since the 1980s, inequality has grown & mobility has stalled. Today, the rich forge their unions in exclusive social clubs, Ivy League colleges & gated communities. ... Without ... magic, the gates remain closed.
 
At first glance, Kenneth Branagh’s remake of the classic Disney film seems to offer a sunny romp through the magic kingdom. But a closer look reveals a troubling economic message.
 
Economists like Thomas Piketty have been warning that if we don’t do something to stop growing income inequality, we may end up back in a 19th-century world, where hard work won’t lift you up the economic ladder because the income you can expect from labor is no match for inherited wealth. This is the world of the new Cinderella.
 
More so than the original Disney film, Branagh’s version highlights what happens when people are forced to compete for illusive rewards in a harsh economy. Families turn on each other, chances to get ahead are few & you’d better hope for a magic wand.
 
Subtle changes to the story bring the point home. In the original animated version, the father is a gentleman, a widower who remarries & then promptly dies, leaving a jealous stepmother & her mean-girl daughters to torment his beloved only child. But in Branagh’s film, the father is a merchant, & his death deprives the family of his income — leaving them all in straitened circumstances.
 
The stepmother’s first thought on hearing of her husband’s demise is entirely practical: How shall we survive economically? Her answer: Turn Cinderella into a servant & search for wealthy matches for her two daughters.
 
The marriage market illustrated in the movie reflects what economists like Robert H. Frank describe as a tournament, a “winner-take-all” game associated with economies where wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top. In these cutthroat markets, only a handful of people can win big, while the rest are left with little.
 
Cinderella & her stepsisters are locked in a down-and-dirty competition for scarce resources, & they understand how high the stakes are. Luckily for her, Cinderella possesses advantages that her sisters lack: She is beautiful & charming.
 
She is clever, too. But there’s no notion that her intelligence can be put to any use other than besting her competitors in the marriage tournament. She’s not going to be looking for a job or an education. That’s for suckers. Or peasants.
 
The importance of being rich is clear when Cinderella goes to the ball — the fairy godmother must make her appear to be a wealthy young lady. You can’t win the prize dressed in rags. The film may give lip service to the values of kindness & courage, but it’s the ability to gain access to luxuries like a bedazzled gown & golden coach that really gets you places.
 
The privileges of the prince & his fellow one-percenters are simply accepted as an immutable law of the universe. There’s no notion of busting up the system, Katniss Everdeen-style. Best to just accept it & grab the goodies if you can.
 
In the end, Cinderella gets the prince & the palace, & the other women get absolutely nothing. That’s the way of tournaments.
 
The postwar America that was demonstrates that extreme inequality does not have to be our reality. Americans can write their own story so that even people without a fortune can lead a secure & dignified life. Things like making the rich pay their share in taxes, allowing unions to organize & increasing fiscal spending on things like infrastructure & jobs would ensure that many more Americans could expect a happy ending.
 
But Branagh’s Cinderella in no way attempts to question, much less abolish, a paradigm of haves & have-nots that leaves us with fewer opportunities. The film teaches little viewers a harsh lesson: If you’re not rich, you may as well be a pumpkin.

Keep smiling if you want a job in 2015

Ironically, the more humans naively / foolishly think that they are making the world a better place through technology & the world is becoming a better place to live, the more human suffering has increased. The mantra of work-life balance is for foolish people to believe in, since it doesn't actually exist.

What's the point of such "modern" world, where people don't have any life? Work, work & more work. Both parents are working to make ends meet. As soon as kids are old enough to work, they are out earning their share, too. All the while, humans are expected to work at the same speed as machines (computers).

Most of the inspirational quotes / thoughts from rich business elite is "you gotta be driven to achieve success" & "success comes to those who relentlessly work hard to achieve it" etc. But in practical life, that's the farthest from truth. Rich business, & even political, elite got whatever they got in this world through their networks; not by hard work. Levels of success are constantly changing & bars are constantly rising.

So, for the majority of the world citizenry, they are expected to keep working round the clock, but they will never taste the sweet taste of success (assuming they don't have the right network). That will only drive people to more stress & depression. Then, people are told to not take stress or be depressed. What an utterly moronic advice !!!
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/19/work-life-balance-ever-harder

This year ought be a great moment in the history of work, by which I mean there shouldn’t be very much work to do. 85 years ago, John Maynard Keynes predicted that the problem of future generations would be too little rather than too much work: not a bad problem to have. Technological development & compound interest would mean that we in the 21st century would be “only too glad to have the small duties & tasks & routines” of the rich, as paid work would take up an ever diminishing part of our time. We might be needed on the job for 3 hours a day.
 
While Keynes’s prophecy hasn’t come to pass, he was right in a sense: machines can do many things – more all the time – better, cheaper & more efficiently than people can. Algorithms write share reports for the Associated Press with a flat clarity; computer-controlled robot arms bend & weld the bonnets of Minis at the BMW pressings plant in Swindon. But in Swindon, & pretty much everywhere else, the robots’ human designers & repairers aren’t yet on a 15-hour week. Why have machines, & an evermore productive economy, led not to the world Keynes foresaw, in which work is a shrinking part of life, but to one in which work seems to be colonising life?
 
In the past, you could tell what work was partly because it consisted of tasks you wouldn’t do at home, where there are no crops to harvest or assembly lines to man. Economists think of jobs as belonging to 1 of 3 broad sectors: agriculture, industry & services. Agriculture employs very few people today, industry takes on far fewer workers than in the past, while the service sector has nearly doubled in size.
 
In 1948, teaching, nursing, retail, administration and so on employed 44% of the workforce; today, the service sector employs 85% of workers across the UK. This shift has meant 2 things for what work feels like in offices, shops & factories across the country: an upsurge in the sort of jobs that use our emotions instead of our bodies; & the crumbling of the divisions between work & life.
 
Over the last 50 years or so – when, not coincidentally, women have become a permanent fixture in the workplace – jobs have more & more required doing the sort of “women’s work” formerly associated with home life. Work increasingly consists of doing things you already do for love (for want of a better term), not money. Call centres, cafes, homes, boardrooms, classrooms, waiting rooms: working in these places demands caring, smiling, anticipating someone’s feelings or, indeed, changing them.
 
We know there is work behind the relentless cheerfulness we buy along with our morning coffee ... but we don’t often think about what goes into that alacrity. Perhaps we don’t want to be scowled at when ordering a cafe creme, ... but what’s the cost of the manufacture of feeling that, increasingly, we are all required to do?
 
What does work feel like now it has so much to do with feelings or, we might say, the presentation of feelings?
 
Women’s work – “care work” or “affective labour”, as academics often call it – is no longer just for women. The call-centre worker had to be good humoured & reasonable at all times, but also talked of being signed off with depression, of drinking more than he used to, of his son trying to convince him that work was closed today. The creative director in advertising had to leave her young son for several weeks while she shot an ad across 4 continents. She described her work as talking, “from the moment I get in until the moment I go home”. A social media entrepreneur relied on her iPhone calendar to know where she had to be every day & while her tote-bag office could be set up in a park or at a cafe or on a hot desk, she had to be instantly & always available for her employer.
 
For this is another way in which the boundaries between work & “life” have broken down. The working week refuses to get shorter & sometimes seems to have burst its boundaries altogether. Everyone who works in an office feels they must answer emails outside the office too, because jobs are no longer for life & we must constantly, & anxiously, prove ourselves. Work has become both less remunerative – wages are down 8% on 2010 – more pervasive & less secure.
 
Though no one I spoke to yet worked Keynes’s 15-hour week, I did find someone who worked only a 24-hour week, in 2 shifts. Ina, born in Bulgaria, has done sex work from a flat in central London for 5 years. She holds her 2 nights of work apart from the rest of her life: partly because not everyone in her life knows what she does, partly because that’s the way she sees things: “I tend not to take home my work,” she says. “Like even when you work in an office or a restaurant, don’t take it home with you, don’t take the stress with you at home.”

... Whether through smartphones or zero-hours contracts, work has seeped into all the corners of our lives: we need to collectively resist the idea, ... that work is all there is & that workers are all we are. Not-just-workers of the world, unite!

Joanna Biggs is the author of All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work

Snitch fact

This is what the country gets when the justice system gets greedy. Prisons have become for-profit businesses. State & Federal Attorney Generals have aspirations to become governors etc. & hence, their performance is based on how many people, innocent or guilty, get in the prison system. Judges are paid well to hand down harsher sentences for misdemeanors.
 
Result is that prisons are getting filled up. For-profit companies are using those prisoners in those prisons as slave-labour to manufacture products. Judges & AGs are being perceived as increasing safety & security for the ordinary citizens.

 

The losers are people who make one mistake in their life & will pay very dearly for that one mistake until their death; be it financial, social, economical cost (unemployed, discriminated etc.).

 

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Law Society seeks to break down damaging racial barriers

This problem of race is in every profession, all over North America & Europe. Of course, this problem is more defined in some professions than others. This is one of the primary reasons why a majority of immigrants, regardless of intelligence & competence, never rise to the top, whereas, Caucasians, with their entrenched networks in the society, get to the top of their career ladders, much more easily.

Furthermore, I get confused when people tell me to network to land plump jobs. Yes, statistically, it is proven that about 80% of the jobs are found through networking & those jobs are usually the good ones. Problem is that the people in your network are not only ready to help, but are also influential enough in their own organization, by virtue of their own positions or through their networks, that they can get you in the door, for those plump jobs.

That's where immigrants have problems. Their networks are usually full of people of similar backgrounds, & hence, they are, in all likelihood, are in the same boat as you, with having the same kind of "weak" network. They themselves are in the lower levels of corporate hierarchy in their own companies, & hence, they are devoid of any influence, & their networks are full of people who also don't command much influence, if any at all.

So, the most probable end result will be a two-tier society, with most of the Caucasians in the society at the upper tier (who got there with their entrenched & strong networks) & most immigrants are left in the lower tier (due to a lack of an entrenched & strong network). Eventually, that gap in workplaces carries into income & wealth gap, which affects immigrant families in regards to their residence location (ghettos at the extreme), kids in criminal activities, educational & recreational activities available to kids etc.

Sometimes, I think, that North America & Europe may have abolished slavery decades & centuries ago, but this concept of "networking for jobs" is creating nothing else than more slaves to serve the Caucasians of North America & Europe. History seems to be repeating itself again.
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While he has encountered blatant racism – a client once called him a “sandwich boy,” – Toronto lawyer Shawn Richard says it is the invisible barriers non-white lawyers face that remain harder for many to overcome.
 
Mr. Richard, 36, an associate at a Toronto family law firm, says in law school he felt surrounded by white students who, unlike him, all seemed to have family members in the profession or appointed to the bench.

“The legal profession is still a profession where you find that lawyers are often the children of lawyers. Race affects that issue only because the legal profession is still a white profession,” he said in an interview. “If you’re not white, chances are your parents are not lawyers & judges & politicians in this country.”

This kind of subtle barrier is among those laid out in a Law Society of Upper Canada consultation paper that says many lawyers from black, Asian & Middle Eastern backgrounds feel alienated by the dominant white culture of many of the province’s law firms, where conversations among white lawyers are often about “playing golf, going to the cottage & watching hockey.”

This feeling of not fitting in, the report says, has real consequences. The lack of a built-in network of family & friends already in the legal profession, the report says, adds to the trouble some from non-white backgrounds have finding mentors to champion careers. The result is that many non-white lawyers end up leaving larger firms for smaller firms or to practise on their own.
 
The Law Society’s report says 57% of Ontario lawyers who self-identified as “racialized” told an online survey they felt disadvantaged in their career. Large percentages also said their background was a barrier to entering the profession, & felt they had to perform to a higher standard than other lawyers.
 
The report, on which the law society has been holding consultations, recommends a series of proposals to address these barriers, including improved mentoring programs. But the report also suggests that law firms be forced to disclose demographic data on their diversity, or lack of it, to the Law Society, which regulates lawyers in Ontario.
 
The law society itself already collects demographic data from all individual lawyers in Ontario, but the submission of the data is voluntary. That data do show a large increase in the number of lawyers who self-identify as “racialized,” up from 9% in 2001 to 17% in 2010. (Aboriginal lawyers are not included in this statistic.)
 
Linc Rogers, a partner with Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP & long an active member of CABL, applauds the report. But he said the Law Society should be promoting, not regulating, diversity in the profession.

“Part of the problem with mandatory requirements is it can often just become a check-the-box exercise,” Mr. Rogers said. “You don’t necessarily have the buy-in & commitment that you are looking for.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/the-law-page/law-society-of-upper-canada-seeks-to-break-down-damaging-racial-barriers/article23009495/