Capitalism's Stunning Contradiction

A good discussion on how capitalism & capitalists keep exploiting the general public. Of course, politicians are in their pockets, too, which means that these capitalists also control the government, which is supposed to look after the general public in a democracy.

Capitalism is only going to concentrate the wealth in a few hands & make the general public poorer & poorer. After all, there's no limit to the human greed. Greedy capitalists will keep taking money from the public, & keep making it poorer & poorer, without any regard to general living standards to their workers. At the same time, I am not defending the communism because we have seen its problems in Russia & China; far too much inefficiency & control when everything is handed over to the government.

The root cause of world's modern problems with resource depletion, poverty, & mass unemployment is this continual & increasing greed of capitalism. It is an unstoppable train, which will continue on, until & unless, the world put back religion & ethics in its economic system.

This Earth can definitely support a lot more people compared to current population, but it cannot support people when the resources are being depleted to make a few people on the top of the pyramid richer & richer. This world cannot support more people when those rich people keep hoarding cash & splurging on expensive, but useless, items, like buying football clubs, billion-$$$ mansions, whole islands, etc. With religion (any religion for that matter) & ethics, instead of throwing away their money on these useless materialistic things, they could invest in improving people's lives by investing in medicine, food, agriculture, & alleviating poverty.

Essentially, the world has not changed in the past millennia or so. Brutal monarchs, then, used to forcibly take their public's money & spend on themselves. Monarchs of current times are these super-rich elites (the "one-percenters") who keep hoarding money by drip-feeding their workers & spending that money on themselves. Instead of spending the money on charities, it would be better to not cut costs so much that the general public suffers cuts in paycheques & unemployment, in the first place. Those monarchs were the government themselves & current "monarchs" control the government.

The world is only going to get worse & worse, unless & until, people start involving religion & ethics in their daily lives & businesses, instead of a weekly attendance in a place of worship. Religion & ethics will help putting the fear of death & answering to a higher authority in the people's hearts, & let them think hard before brutally cutting down jobs, & costs, to ultimately make themselves even more super richer, & spend money frivolously on completely unnecessary items in their lives.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xglK2rdPmg4

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: I think it's getting clear to a lot of people that capitalism is out of solutions within its own framework. I mean, first of all, in terms of financial reform, there's been nothing serious enough. It's pretty clear there are still enormous financial institutions that are still speculating wildly, and the same stuff that happened in '07 and '08 is likely to happen again. It's kind of a question of when rather than if.

RICHARD WOLFF, PROF. EMERITUS OF ECONOMICS, UMASS AMHERST: That's right.

JAY: The issue of demand in the economy, low wages and such, nothing's changed. And climate change, capitalism, so far, at least, does not consider it a threat to capitalism to have global warming, and they're not really getting serious about it. So, I mean, are you finding that there's this sense of that, that there aren't solutions here anymore?

WOLFF: I think two things are happening. The one that's most important is that as the crisis since 2007 lingers and lingers, this crisis that was not supposed to happen, that was not supposed to cut so deep, continues to do all of that and to last and last and resist government efforts to change it, that people are shifting and beginning to want to look beyond the crisis years since 2007 and ask the question whether maybe we're not in a bigger, longer-term dilemma for capitalism. And I think we are. And if I could sketch it for a moment, think it would help people to see this as a momentary downturn within a longer crisis.

And here's how I would summarize it. For the first 200, 250 years of capitalism, which begins in England, goes to Western Europe, and then to North America and Japan, the capitalist system, it concentrated in those countries, concentrated its factories, its offices, and stores there where it began. And it turned the rest of the world--Asia, Africa, Latin America--into a hinterland to provide the people, to provide the food, to provide the raw materials. And that was how the world was globally organized.

Then in the 1970s something radically changed. With a jet engine, you could get anywhere in the world in a matter of hours. With modern telecommunications and the computer, you could monitor a factory in Shanghai from Cincinnati as easily as you could manage a factory down the street in Cincinnati. And so capitalists--and I want this really to be driven home if I can--capitalists in the 1970s in Western Europe, North America, and Japan have basically said to the United States and Western Europe and Japan, goodbye, we're leaving, we are abandoning you. You are not where the profit is. The profit is in those places we can now go to where we pay a small fraction of those wages, where we can operate with impunity, where the poverty of these societies, itself a product of all of this, makes them desperate to have the jobs that we can provide. It's a perfect scenario. We made a lot of money for 200 years in the West, and now we're leaving.

And I think the emblematic city that kind of shows this is Detroit, a place that was the apogee, the peak of capitalist efficiency in the 1960s, sustaining 2 million people population, today 700,000, a city that has been literally ripped apart and destroyed because three corporations decided, for profit, to leave that place and say goodbye and leave behind the desolation, the unemployment, the collapsed housing, and all the rest of a city and now has to be the largest bankruptcy of any American urban area in our history.

I think the capitalists of the world are saying to Western Europe, North America, and Japan, we were willing to give you higher wages because we were able to reorganize the planet for 200 years. Now our future is in the areas that are cheap for us--the rest of the world--and we're abandoning you.
...

... So basically they're saying to the West, we're leaving. Now, of course, if you make it worth our while not to leave by bringing the wages and the costs, well, we might reconsider. But then what they're saying to the American people is, you can have a choice of a slow decline as we leave or a rapid decline to slow our departure. This is an unbelievable proposition to present to Western Europe, Japan, and the United States and I think will shape the basic political struggles in all these places for years to come.

JAY: But it's so self-destructive even for capitalism, because now you've taken a market that was the consumer of last resort for the world and turning people into increasingly low-wage workers. You're going to sell your profits where? The places that are already low-wage workers? I mean, it's really completely--.

WOLFF: You know, it's wonderful, 'cause as you introduced me as a Marxist, Marx was fond of saying that capitalists are caught in a stunning contradiction. Every capitalist tries to lower the wage costs, reduce the workers, substitute a machine, cut the wages, never wanting to face the fact that if all capitalists are trapped in a system where they're systematically reducing the wages, then they won't be able to sell what those wage workers are producing. And if you don't face that, you're caught in the contradiction that what the system makes you do undoes you by the absence of anyone to buy this stuff. And there we are, back to the naked, basic contradiction of a system that doesn't want to face that it has these kinds of internal problems.

JAY: So in terms of long-term decline, why isn't this cyclical? We've seen these things over the last century. Why is this any different?

WOLFF: Well, I think that we have the cyclicals, but the one thing that I find so interesting is that this one has certain unique characteristics. It was really out of the blue in the sense that almost nobody saw this kind of thing coming. Everyone assured us, not just the president and the politicians, but the economists, that it wouldn't last long. That was wrong. That it wouldn't cut deep. That was wrong.

But I think the thing that really strikes me is the kind of utter failure of anyone in this system to cope with this other than the 1 percent. The politicians can't figure out a solution. The bankers can't, as you rightly put it--for example, the banks that were too big to fail without exception are now bigger than they were then. Nobody is solving it. And even the mass of people are like deer caught in the headlights not knowing which way to go. In the '30s, after all, they joined unions, they joined socialist and communist parties, and that made a difference. At this point, there is the behavior of a system that kind of knows that this isn't just a temporary crisis, there's something fundamental shifting. And yet no one quite knows what to do.

JAY: ... I've always been struck that one of the things that Marx and Engels said that I think gets completely underestimated is that socialism isn't just some good idea. It's not a better policy that we could adopt. It's something that actually grows within capitalism. You get these massive enterprises, and they're fabulously well-planned. Like, you take Walmart, you get a toothpaste off of a shelf in Walmart, they know to get another toothpaste thing going somewhere in China. But the individual, as you say, the individual enterprises try to drive down wages, but they also get extremely efficient, and especially with computerization and digitization. Walmart is a planned economy.

But it's, like, the biggest private employer. I mean, Marx's whole point is this is actually--this is the seeds of socialism, except they're privately owned.

WOLFF: That's right. They're privately owned. They're driven by the maximization of profit for a tiny fraction of the population. And then you can't be surprised that the capacity, what they're capable of doing, which is a staggering saving of labor for the community, ends up not saving the labor for the community at all, because the whole point of it is to gather absurd wealth in the tiny number of hands. And Marx's point was this is an irrationality that even the best public relations cannot forever cover over.

And I think we're in a moment where, both in the short-run crisis and this longer-run decline, the irrationalities, the contradictions--. Look, basically capitalism is saying to particularly the American working class, for 200 years, we really exploited you on the job, but we gave you rising standard of living. Compensation of an awful day was that you could go someplace at the end of the day and have something called a happy hour to console you for the unhappy hours prior. Now capitalism is saying to you, we're going to exploit the hell out of you, but we're not giving you a rising standard of living. We're actually giving you a falling one. We're condemning your students to debt they can't handle. We're taking away the benefits. We're taking away all of the job prospects and hopes for the younger generation. We're going to work you on the job more hours than ever, and we're going to give you less for it. Whatever you think about the past, I'm not clear that the American working class will find that an acceptable offer.

"Graduate Housing Tips" by Steve Breen



"Graduate Housing Tips" - Steve Breen, San Diego Union Tribune, San Diego, California, US

"Equal Pay" by Chip Bok

"Equal Pay" - Chip Bok, US

After being released, US prisoners find new struggles

It's quite common to look down upon people who are involved in small criminal activities but we often forget to peek "behind the curtain" why those people have become what they have become. They are not earning millions from causing pain to someone else. They are small time crooks.

Now, in North America, African-Americans & Natives are viewed as criminals by the general public, usually with the help of police & government's tough-on-crime stance.

Governments at all levels don't care in investing in the rehab of that person, & try to resolve the situation (reduce the crime rate) by trying to cure the symptom of the problem; imprison the perpetrator. Imprisoning these people usually hardens them into a bigger criminal than making them a better person. Governments don't invest in proper rehab of the person because it makes more money through imprisonment than spending money on rehab.

What's the proper rehab of the criminal or people who are involved in small-time criminal activities? Providing these people with education, housing, & employment opportunities. Creating laws where former convicts are properly re-integrated into the society.

Most people, who end up being labelled a "criminal", don't prefer criminal activities over non-criminal activities, at least, initially. But many people, and especially the ones who do fall into criminal activities, commit crimes because they need the money for their families. Basic needs of a human, like housing, education, & employment are all getting expensive or inaccessible.

Housing is getting expensive all over North America & Europe. Big cities like New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, Karachi, Dubai, Shanghai, Beijing, Delhi, Mumbai & etc. are becoming expensive in housing. As we all know that incomes never go up as fast as expenses, so poor people are usually pushed out of the cities & into the suburbs or fringes of the city. If they lose their jobs because of the economy, for instance, then they end up being homeless (the numbers of homeless people have actually increased in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, & London in the past decade).

Education is becoming expensive everywhere. Tuition keeps rising. Poor people can't even afford to go to school, anymore. Only way to go to school is taking on debt but good-paying jobs after graduation are becoming scarce so many would-be students don't want to take on debt. If they do take on debt & fail to repay it because they lost their jobs or fall ill, then they can be imprisoned (at least in US), which will mark them as a criminal for life, & then they will have a hard time in securing a job or even a house after they are released. Plus, failing to repay the student loans also put the credit history of the students in jeopardy, which in turn, creates problems for them in securing housing.

Employment has become network-based. North American & European economies are in decline. Jobs are scarce. Whatever jobs are available, even junior-level jobs that they require such high qualifications in terms of education & work experience that most people are excluded from ever being hired for those jobs. If the job seeker doesn't have close friends & family members in influential positions in companies, then forget getting a job, at least one that will pay good enough to cover housing & living expenses.

So, a poor person has only one route to make enough money to take care of the expenses; earn the money in the wrong way (i.e. become a criminal). And if & when that person is caught, as a criminal, & after spending their required time in prison, they will have a much harder time in reintegrating back into society because society & laws will make it much harder for that person to integrate back into society with restrictive laws & wrong social perception of such poor people.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33542839

On the day of Obama's speech, J Jondhi Harrell came down from his apartment & walked over to a nearby corner to haul 22-year-old Jeremiah Ross inside the offices of the Center for Returning Citizens (TCRC). Harrell, the executive director of the centre, has been trying to persuade Ross to stop dealing drugs, or "trapping" & instead find a full time job & stable housing.

Harrell tries to entice Ross - a thin, handsome young man with big eyes & a web of tattoos crawling up his neck - with $100 moving jobs, & lets him use the computers in the front office. If he can get Ross to leave the street corner behind, Harrell says, it could be a major coup - Ross is a leader, lots of the neighbourhood kids look up to him.

But Ross recently finished a stint in prison, he has no high school diploma, & right now TCRC can't afford to pay him a living wage. So the streets continue to beckon.

"After me and my family got evicted, I'm out here," says Ross. "It's hard to find a job, so this all I know. This is the first thing I go to."
...

Nicetown is about a 15 minute car ride away from Philadelphia's Center City where Obama outlined his plans to reform the criminal justice system at the National Association for Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) annual convention ... .

This speech came on the heels of his announcement that he is commuting the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders who've been incarcerated in federal prison for many years. While everyone agrees it is an important moment, the word some Philadelphian advocates for the formerly incarcerated use to describe the president is "disappointing."

Obama spoke of an America founded on second chances - but many return to find that Pennsylvania law prevents them from getting licences to do certain types of work, prevents them from getting housing & sometimes bars them from entering their former neighbourhoods altogether. These types of laws are known as "collateral consequences," & according to a national website that tracks them, Pennsylvania has nearly 1,000 of these restrictions.

"It's become almost like a sport for the legislators to create all these barriers," says Angus Love, a lawyer with the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project.

Germantown Avenue once teemed with black-owned businesses patronised by neighbourhood residents collecting good wages from nearby factories. Today, nearly half the people living in the 19140 zip code do not have a high school diploma. Most households bring in less than $30,000 (£19,000) a year & the glittering shops have shut down.

A huge number of the estimated 35,000 former inmates who return to Philadelphia each year from federal, state & county lockups head back to North Philadelphia neighbourhoods every year.

According to 2008 figures, it cost taxpayers $40 million to incarcerate men & women from Nicetown - the fifth highest rate in the city.

"In our community, mass incarceration I would say affects over 60% of the community," says Harrell. "You'd be hard pressed to walk down any street in any black neighbourhood in Philadelphia, and knock on 10 doors and find no one who is affected."

It's a neighbourhood that feels the full absence of "missing men," a term used by the New York Times to describe the large number of black men ages 25 to 54 who have disappeared from cities around the country due to either early death or incarceration.

Philadelphia is said to be missing 30,000 of these men. Nicetown is exactly the kind of community they're vanishing from.

Once released, these inmates could be said to be joining the ranks of the re-appeared men, & Harrell is one of them.

He spent 20 years in federal prison, & returned to Philadelphia 5 years ago. But don't call him an "ex-con" - he & other activists worked hard to get Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter to issue a proclamation declaring that the city officially refer to former inmates as "returning citizens," & Harrell is deadly serious about changing stigma with language.

He'll never use the word "re-entry" either, a term he associates with the sometimes-exploitative network of halfway houses that are often a required stop after prison.

"Frankly I was treated with more disrespect in those six months than in 19 years of incarceration," he says.

Harrell's three-year-old organisation emphasises a holistic approach for former inmates coming home. Harrell & his staff of four help connect clients to housing & employment, but also encourage the men & women they serve to get involved in community service, to join a faith community if they're religious.

He wants to plant community gardens & start buying up the properties on Germantown Avenue to start business that will employ & train returning inmates ... .
...

In fact, job placement & spiritual guidance can only take you so far on the streets of Nicetown. When Harrell thinks about the notion of the "missing men" of North Philadelphia, his thoughts go immediately to Cynthia Muse, who lives just around the corner from his office.

On 31 May, Muse's son Abdul Salaam walked out the door of their row house & headed to a celebration for his 36th birthday. Within hours, he was dead - stabbed in the heart in front of his toddler son & girlfriend in the courtyard of a public housing project less than 2 miles from his mother's home.

This is not the first time Muse, a mother of 5 sons, has been through this.

"It was my third time," she says ... . "My emotions and my logical mind is not giving me no answers. Why have you taken a third son from me?"

Muse never seems to get any resolution. Nobody knows how her son Jalaal ended up in the trunk of his own car, or who shot her 26-year-old son Abdul Aliym to death. Her youngest is in prison.

Only one of her sons, Jamal, now has a steady job & a family of his own to look after, despite spending almost 10 years in prison. He's not entirely sure himself how he made it out, but says the deaths of his brothers helped motivate him.

I am an adjunct professor who teaches 5 classes. I earn less than a pet-sitter

Not surprised at reading this article. But I am indeed sad at what is happening to our world. The world is unfair but it is just getting to an absurdly low point. Education is becoming meaningless in this modern world. Educated people who are without any influential networks are being used as mere slaves; jobs with low pay & without much benefits, if any.

People who are making six-figures or even millions are doing it by either exploiting others or themselves. All of the rich people in the modern world have become rich by trampling the basic human dignity, for example, by paying the federally-mandated minimum wages, which are themselves quite low. Some others are making money by exploiting narcissistic trends in social media or taking off their clothes in front of the camera. For example, some gamers, fashion & media vbloggers, Miley Cyrus, the Kardashian clan, most, if not all, rappers & hip hop artists, & of course, even the porn stars.

People who are working hard to teach & build the next generation are being treated like mere pawns. What message is being shown to the young minds of next generation? That it is better to go in sales (where one doesn't really need a relevant education & just be good in hustling or lying with a straight face), start making own videos for social media on completely inane topics, start twerking & dancing in front of millions, & of course, porn industry is another great option, too.

What kind of society are we expecting when the teacher of the next generation is being paid less than the cashier or grocery bagger at your local grocery store? After all, a simple cost-benefit analysis would lay the facts bare that just graduating secondary school is far better, since it's free (at least in North America, Europe, & some Asian countries) & that young kid won't even have to waste time, money (thousands of $$$ in most cases) in university, & his/her effort, to receive minimum wages, or perhaps, even less.

Frankly, why the world keeps shouting that education is important for everyone. It is indeed important, when the educated person is treated the way he/she deserves to be treated. It is indeed important in a meritocracy. But that's not the world we are living in right now. Grads are unemployed & burdened with student loans. Whereas, people who didn't go to university, but are good in selling (whatever they are selling) are swimming in cash.

Then, how can we expect this modern world to be any better than the world of yore? Then, how can we expect any kind of fairness in this world when the people with whom we are dealing got where they are by "selling" themselves, their morals, & their ethics?
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/adjunct-professor-earn-less-than-pet-sitter

Like most university teachers today, I am a low-paid contract worker. Now & then, a friend will ask: “Have you tried dog-walking on the side?” I have. Pet care, I can reveal, takes massive attention, energy & driving time. I’m friends with a full-time, professionally employed pet-sitter who’s done it for years, never topping $26,000 annually & never receiving health or other benefits.

The reason I field such questions is that, as an adjunct professor, whether teaching undergraduate or law-school courses, I make much less than a pet-sitter earns. This year I’m teaching five classes (15 credit hours, roughly comparable to the teaching loads of some tenure-track law or business school instructors). At $3,000 per course, I’ll pull in $15,000 for the year. I work year-round, 20 to 30 hours weekly – teaching, developing courses & drafting syllabi, offering academic advice, recommendation letters & course extensions for students who need them. ...

I receive no benefits, no office, no phone or stipend for the basic communication demands of teaching. I keep constant tabs on the media I use in my classes; if I exhaust my own 10GB monthly data plan early, I lose vital time for online discussions with my students. This, although the university requires my students to engage in discussions about legal issues & ethics six days a week, & I must guide as well as grade these discussions.

Three of my Philadelphia-area friends are adjuncts with doctorate degrees. One keeps moving to other states for temporary teaching posts. The others teach at multiple sites to keep afloat financially – one at no less than seven colleges & universities.

Having heard all my life about solid “government job” benefits, I figured I might have more stability, & still be able to handle teaching, if I worked for the Post Office. I started carrying mail in early January. As a City Carrier Assistant, I earned less pay than regular postal carriers do, though I did more than “assist”: my job was to handle absentee carriers’ routes. I had no medical insurance, no sick leave allowance & had to agree to work as much as managers deemed necessary for 360 consecutive days (whereupon I could sign up for a second 360-day contract, with no promise that it would bring me any closer to a permanent job offer). I worked on Sundays too, under the US Postal Service’s contract with Amazon.com. With human flaws – I fell on ice more than once – I was no match for the drones Amazon intends to deploy. After 2 months on the job, which was long enough to develop a lifetime fear of Rottweilers, I was behind in my university work. I turned in my cap.
In late March, I started a retail job. It offers real days off, & I expect to be eligible for health & dental benefits soon.

Last week, a friend came in to shop, saw me, & exclaimed, loud enough for all to hear: “What are you doing here?” Friends who know I hold two law degrees & teach at a university can’t fathom that my teaching doesn’t cover rent. Some writers have discussed adjuncts waiting tables or bagging groceries alongside their students as though it’s the ultimate degradation. I see things differently. I’m trained by the people who deliver parcels, serve meals & bag groceries & who might, any day, apply to take my courses. I am their equal, & I know it at a level most established faculty members do not.

Faculty members do not even interact with each other as equals. Most adjuncts aren’t included in regular faculty meetings, let alone conferences where ideas are exchanged & explored. A concept called the inclusive fees campaign seeks to make conferences affordable for adjuncts. (It focuses on PhDs, but could encompass teachers whose positions require law degrees or other alternative qualifications.) “Inclusivity” for a systematically exploited group is only a patch. But it’s good to see established professors challenged to acknowledge contingent workers, who now comprise the preponderance of the faculty community. Yes, of the 1.2 million instructional staff appointments in US higher education, 76% – more than 900,000 – are now contingent.

We are working for institutions that claim to open doors to career opportunities even as they etch contingency into their hiring practices. The significance of the inclusive fees campaign lies in its implicit question: how will the schools hear our voices over the silence of the tenured?

Even more daunting than the dearth of dollars is the fragmentation of the adjunct’s time. Recently, an editor at the University of Oregon School of Law asked if I’d be a conference panelist. Can I travel, yet still clock enough hours at my second job to stay above the threshold for health insurance?

Every day I live two people’s lives, & it’s fatiguing. Every day I need more time with students while being pulled away from them.

The best that could come of the adjunct crisis is a teaching community broadly committed to the civility & inclusivity we’ve been missing. This could lead to a new kind of education, based not on ranking, not on status, but on genuine guidance for living with decency & respect on this planet.

A conference on this is well overdue – & I don’t want to miss it while watching the time clock.

Why do people wrestle over cheap food? Because we’re desperate !!

The video in this article & the article itself is common in urban cities in all the so-called Western developed world, but we don't normally see it. The world sees the tall shiny business towers of downtown cities of New York, Paris, London, Toronto, & Chicago etc. The world doesn't see how the general public is making much more frequent rounds to the food bank & trying to get cheap food, which is also unhealthy, from supermarkets.

Although, I have personally never seen people scrambling & grabbing cut-price food in supermarkets, I do believe that day is not far. The way capitalism has gone greedy & thanks of continued automation of jobs, people are forced to work for minimum wages, which of course, will force you to fight your neighbour for that last piece of meat & fish.
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/cheap-food-desperate-supermarket-bargains-tesco

People in Britain are battling each other for cut-price food. This is what desperation & poverty does. Video has emerged of customers at a Tesco store in Weston Favell, Northampton, scrabbling around on the floor to reach discounted essential groceries – indicative of increasing & entrenched food poverty.

It might come as a shock to anyone who imagines that writers fly to work in their own helicopter with truffle sandwiches for lunch, but I survive on food found in the supermarket reduced aisle. Occasionally dealings around the cut-price food can turn ugly.

Every day, I see shoppers who desperately need these bargains, since for many, it’s the only possibility of eating properly. After all, a huge pack of reduced mince or chicken is a good source of protein lasting across several days if cooked & eked-out properly. But this level of thriftiness is exhausting, which might explain the frayed tempers of the Northampton food-scrum.

I order my day around the rhythms of the discount hour, which is different at each of the three shops on my circuit. Food is first reduced mid-morning, then again later in the day. Bargain hunters benefit from holding their nerve, as the real reductions are made later on.

There can be a sense of camaraderie, & my fellow bargain seekers acknowledge each other with wry smiles. We even share recipes – I hear familiar voices discussing how to turn slabs of cheap smoked fish into a nutritious & inexpensive chowder. We sometimes help each other out – I reach food for shorter or older customers & in return, they help me read the labels (I have some sight problems).

The Northampton all-in, food wrestle-mania occurred, I suspect, when informal protocols which bring order to the demeaning experience of hanging around trying to look busy while waiting for the soup to be reduced, were ignored. Personally, one vital guideline, & a rule which makes me furious whenever I see it being ignored, is don’t be greedy. If you see massive packs of organic vintage cheddar for 20p (this has happened) please don’t hog them all. I’ve witnessed people loading stacks of gourmet pizzas into the boot of a new BMW, which if owned by the loader seemed to me a little unfair.

The etiquette of poverty-induced budget food-hunting decrees that you don’t barge in & grab stuff over the heads of those too polite to let go of their manners. Around the appointed hour of food reduction, a vague, straggly queue forms. When it’s just one remaining pack of prime steak, then who dares wins, but don’t knock other people over.
...

The main (unwritten) rule of food-bargain club is this: be nice to supermarket workers – they are your friend, & will occasionally give you a sly nod to indicate when they will brandish their supermarket price label guns. Besides, they are doing a hard job for low pay. Some are even on work-for-benefits schemes & privately admit they would appreciate the chance to buy cheap food themselves. So be kind not just to them, but all your fellow bargain hunters.

Ontario employers get slap on wrist for mistreating employees

Another one of those articles highlighting how employers are exploiting workers, & the government is dragging its feet in actually doing anything to stop this open exploitation. Employers are not stopping at merely forcing workers to work more hours or work while they are injured or sick but they are also stealing workers' wages by either not paying them outright or delaying their wages.

As I always mention that keep in mind that this is happening in Canada & not in a developing country (where it would be most expected). People all over the world are same; after all, we all have red blood. Corruption & taking from others what's not rightfully ours (out in the open) is considered bad everywhere but it happens everywhere the same.
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http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/24/ontario-employers-get-slap-on-wrist-for-mistreating-employees.html

Scarborough resident Sylvia Buchanan was owed thousands by her former employer, who fired her the day after she asked to be officially put on the books as an employee.

Instead, what she got was a nine-month runaround from the Ministry of Labour, the department supposedly meant to protect her against workplace violations.

9 months of waiting for money she was legally owed. 9 months of stress & anguish as the bills piled up. All to get the wages she was entitled to by law.

Buchanan’s assessment of trying to navigate the system?

“It was horrible.

“If I had not pressured the ministers, if I had not constantly called my MPPs, I honestly don’t think this would be resolved,” she says. “I think it would still be in the system somewhere.”

When it comes to enforcing Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, critics say it is workers — not the government — doing the heavy lifting.

Complicating matters is the fact that, by law, workers are supposed to confront their employer about possible mistreatment before filing a complaint with the Ministry of Labour.

When a complaint is lodged, employers are immediately notified & are given the employee’s name, often leading to immediate dismissal.

The employment act offers no protection against unjust dismissal.

“The strongest condemnation of the model is the fact that virtually no employees file complaints, only former employees do,” says David Doorey, an employment law expert & professor at York University.

“People have to make a choice about paying the rent or making a complaint. So people will choose to pay the rent,” adds Deena Ladd of Toronto-based labour rights group the Workers’ Action Centre.

“I think that’s a real indication that the system is not working at all.”

Sylvia Buchanan, who has 3 degrees & more than a decade of teaching experience, began working with private college Oxford Education Group in April 2013, hired to create an English curriculum for the school.

But for more than a year, her boss refused to recognize her as an employee, she says, treating her instead as an independent contractor. Independent contractors have no rights under the Employment Standards Act.

Buchanan says she had no idea that she was hired as a contractor until she was first paid, receiving a mysterious cheque that bore little information instead of the official pay stub she was expecting.

She also says she was treated like any other employee: she worked predominantly from the college’s premises, used its equipment, had her hours set by her boss, & represented the college at conferences.

She says she was fired the day after she told her employer she was considering filing a formal complaint.

But because she was classified as a contractor, she did not receive termination or holiday pay.

In June 2014, Buchanan lodged a complaint with the Ministry of Labour, asking for those wages & claiming that she was the victim of reprisal for standing up for her workplace rights.

The process, she says, was riddled with frustrations.

By August 2014, Canada Revenue Agency had already ruled that Buchanan had rightfully been an employee of the college.

It took until October 23 for the Ministry of Labour to agree that she was owed holiday & termination pay.

It wasn’t until March 2015 that Buchanan finally received the $2,500 she was entitled to.

Mohammed Azharuddin, vice-president of Oxford College of Arts, Business & Technology, says his organization began Oxford Education Group as a “startup” & says he told Buchanan upfront that she would be hired as an independent contractor.

He told the Star that Buchanan’s termination had nothing to do with her complaint to the ministry, & that she was let go because “there was no progress happening” with her work.

He also says his organization paid the money owed to Buchanan on time, via the Ministry of Labour, & that the ministry was responsible for the delay.

“We definitely paid within the 30 days (required by law). There was a discrepancy at the Ministry of Labour end of it.”

The ministry refused to say whether Buchanan’s employer paid on time. In an email to the Star, it confirmed that it did receive the college’s cheque, but said the “the regional program office was not aware of this.”

That “clerical error,” as the ministry called it, added 4 months to Buchanan’s already agonizing wait time.

At 54, she is still living with her aunt & uncle in Scarborough because she can’t afford rent.

“I don’t feel like I have any protections,” says Buchanan. “They make it so difficult to get through these claims that I suspect that a lot of people just give up.”

The system designed to enforce the Employment Standards Act is increasingly under fire for being inaccessible, inefficient & — for workers such as Buchanan — infuriating.

Under the current model, employers have almost no incentive to obey the law in the first place.

The Ministry of Labour has a team of just 180 enforcement officers to look into employment standards violations across the entire province — less than half the number devoted to Occupational Health & Safety inspections.

Figures requested by the Star show that the 15,485 complaints made last year prompted 2,768 proactive workplace inspections. Only 8 resulted in prosecutions with serious financial penalties.

A further 321 tickets of less than $360 were issued for violations from failure to give regular pay, to denying overtime pay & not paying minimum wage.

York University’s Doorey says those penalties do little to deter lawbreakers, who are unlikely to be caught unless workers risk their job to speak out.

“The model depends on vulnerable employees learning the law, & then starting a legal fight with their employer, & that model will never be effective,” he says. “Violations of the ESA are treated as minor monetary infractions not deserving of a heavy hand of justice.”

“If you just slap (employers) on the hand & give them a fine of $200 or something, how is that going to stop them from exploiting people again?” asks Buchanan, whose former employer faced no penalties for firing her without pay.

In 2009, the government did commit $10 million to employment standards enforcement, allowing the Ministry of Labour to significantly reduce its backlog of more than 17,000 claims.

The ministry also operates an employment standards call centre in 24 languages, which last year received more than 265,000 calls about possible violations. But the hotline doesn’t offer any assistance in filing complaints, which must be done online. ...

The action centre’s Ladd says the process can be challenging for vulnerable workers who may struggle to understand the Act’s confusing exemptions, and may not have ready access to a computer or speak English as a first language.

And while employers can afford lawyers, the majority of workers cannot.
...

The province’s Open for Business Act, passed in 2010, includes a provision that can force complainants to first approach their employer about possible employment standards violations.

While the legislation says exceptions can be made in the case of vulnerable workers, experts say the measure still discourages employees from speaking out.

“I would say 99.9% would not file a claim until they decided to leave employment or they have been fired or laid off,” says Avvy Go, director of the Metro Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. “The employer will know who filed the claim & that person will lose their job.”

Figures requested by the Star show that in the year before that Act was passed, workers submitted 20,365 formal complaints. But since the Act’s implementation, the number of claims has fallen to an average of 15,500 a year.
...

Recognizing that relying on vulnerable workers to enforce their own rights makes little sense, many jurisdictions have moved to a more proactive model of enforcement.

In California, the state can slap embargoes on goods made by companies who violate labour laws. In Wisconsin, the government can place a temporary hold on employers’ property until they pay workers what they’re owed. And under New York State’s wage theft law, guilty employers can be forced to pay up to triple the amount of wages owed.

In a move welcomed by campaigners, the Ministry of Labour has started conducting so-called proactive inspection blitzes aimed at high-risk sectors, where inspections are done even if no complaint has been made. Its current blitz focuses on vulnerable & precarious workers.

But of Ontario’s 442,000 workplaces, just 2,694 were inspected in such investigations last year. There are only 35 enforcement officers dedicated to this proactive enforcement, & employers are given notice that their workplace will be inspected.

“It kind of defeats the whole purpose of the audit,” argues Go.

“I understand you will never have enough resources to investigate every single complaint,” she adds. “That’s why you need to look at how to change the system to ensure there is enough incentive for the employers to obey the law.”

In the meantime, Buchanan says, it is workers who are suffering.

“You’re putting people’s lives on the line. If I didn’t have family support, I’d be living on the streets.”

“I think it takes a very strong-willed person to go through this process,” she adds. “I expected the government to work on my behalf.”


Proposed solutions

A recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre makes a number of recommendations to improve enforcement of the Employment Standards Act. The proposed reforms include:

• Develop an expanded, proactive system of enforcement to improve compliance

• Increase enforcement team staffing

• Enact a “hot cargo” provision that would enable inspectors to impose embargos on goods manufactured in violation of the Act

• Revoke the requirement that forces workers to approach employers before filing an ESA claim

• Authorize the Ministry of Labour to place holds on employers’ property when a complaint is filed for unpaid wages

• Increase fines to double or triple the amount of wages owed

• Establish set fines for all offences, even when employers voluntarily agree to pay worker wages owed

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.
...

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.

'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