perhaps-mr-collins-has-a-cousin:Good morning to those who wish people a good morning, those who mean…

perhaps-mr-collins-has-a-cousin:

Good morning to those who wish people a good morning, those who mean that it is a good morning whether anyone wants it or not, those who feel good this morning, those who feel it is a morning to be good on, those who suppose they mean all of these at once when they say good morning, those smoking a pipe of tobacco out of doors in the morning, and those who never thought they’d see the day they’d be good-morninged by Belladonna Took’s son.

“October Country … that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the…”

“October Country … that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.”

- Ray Bradbury, The October Country.

Call center workers pay for the privilege

mostlysignssomeportents:

If you only learn one technical term from labor economics, make it “chickenization” - Christopher Leonard’s term for the way that the Big Three poultry processors have structured the chicken-farming industry (I learned it from Zephyr Teachout).

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/break-em-up/#break-em-up

Here’s chickenization: you’re a chicken farmer. There is only one company that can buy your birds, thanks to market concentration. They tell you how to design and maintain your coop. They sell you the chicks. They tell you which feed to use, how much and when.

They tell you when the lights go on and when they go off. They tell you how which vet to use, and which medicines they can use. They bind you to secrecy through nondisclosure and strip you of the right to sue through arbitration.

They experiment on you. Your barn is filled with sensors that they monitor, and they tell you to vary feed, lighting, medicine and other variables to see if your birds get bigger. They are the only buyer in your region, so they know how each farmer’s birds are thriving.

But if the “independent” farmers ever tried to compare notes, they’d be violating their nondisclosure agreements and could be sued. Farmers who complain to regulators are barred from the market.

Once your birds are grown, you bring them to the processor, who exploits their information asymmetry to figure out how to pay you JUST ENOUGH to go back to things, but not enough to get ahead. Since chickenization, poultry farmers have faced a wave of suicides.

Once you know about chickenization, you see it everywhere: crop farmers are chickenized by seed companies, and Uber drivers are chickenized by their apps.

The contours of chickenization are impossible to miss: it’s a shifting of all the risk from the employer’s side of the balance sheet to the workers’, using the fiction of independent contractorship, the data-gathering capabilities of digital work, and monopolies.

Today, I learned about the worst chickenization scheme I’ve ever encountered: a giant, global company that has chickenized a vast workforce, but maintains total secrecy, even as it services massive blue-chip companies from Airbnb to Disney.

That company is Arise, and Propublica and Planet Money just blew the roof off its ghastly charnel house of a chicken farm by, as Ken Armstrong, Justin Elliott and Ariana Tobin reported out leaks, arbitration reports, and whistleblower accounts.

https://www.propublica.org/article/meet-the-customer-service-reps-for-disney-and-airbnb-who-have-to-pay-to-talk-to-you#1001065

Here’s chickenization, Arise style: the company is a outsource phone support system. Workers have to pay to work for Arise (they’re “independent contractors”): buy a dedicated PC, internet connection and other equipment.

They have to do weeks of unpaid “training” just to get started, and then they have to pay more to get specific training for every one of Arise’s giant corporate clients, from AT&T to Carnival Cruises to Comcast to Disney to Airbnb to Intuit to Barnes and Noble to Ebay.

After passing random, invasive, in-home inspections, after shelling out thousands of dollars and doing weeks - if not months - of unpaid training, they are finally eligible to sign up for shifts.

These shifts come in 30 minute slices, widely spaced, and turning them down gets you blacklisted. It’s impossible to hold down another job while you’re an Arise chicken-farmer.

But you don’t get paid for 30-minute shifts. You just get paid for the time that you’re talking to customers.

The whole time you talk to a customer, an algorithm is ready to penalize you: i.e., if it takes too long to deal with queries, or if there’re too many pauses.

Meanwhile, the client’s outsource managers randomly (or not-randomly) listen in on your calls, and they can penalize you too.

The main penalty is being “deskilled” - barred from working for that client, after paying (in cash and time) to get trained to be their phone rep.

Workers are barred from hanging up on abusive customers. Women report high levels of sexual harassment, which they have to patiently endure, because they risk getting fired if they hang up on their abusers.

And all workers are expected to tolerate unlimited abuse from callers. 64% of Arise’s workers are people of color. 89% of them are women. Arise’s recruiting ads target Black women in particular.

There *is* a way to get ahead in Arise: recruit other workers. Because, in addition to everything else, it’s a pyramid scheme, and the business is riddled with people who’ve been previously convicted of wire fraud.

Nearly every person in the Arise structure is chickenized:. The following jobs are all performed by “independent contractors”:  

  • Client Support Professionals
  • Quality Assurance Performance Facilitators
  • Chat Performance Facilitators
  • Escalation Performance Facilitators


Not only do you have to pay to work for Arise - you have to pay (a “contract termination fee”) to stop working for them.

Arise binds workers to arbitration, meaning they can’t sue. The right of workers to join class actions in spite of arbitration waivers went to the Supreme Court in ‘18, where the illegitimate justice Neal Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, ruling against workers.

Arise honors Juneteenth with a day off for all employees. But all those Black women it has chickenized are independent businesses and are still expected to show up for work.

Arise’s founder is Richard Cherry, a Canadian “serial entrepreneur” who started off writing scammy get-rich-quick and lose-weight-quick books before moving to Florida and getting heavily involved with the Home Shopping Network.

Today, the company is a division of a giant private equity fund, Warburg Pincus.

workingclasshistory: On this day, 16 October 1854, Oscar Fingal…



workingclasshistory:

On this day, 16 October 1854, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland. After graduating from Trinity College, Wilde left for Oxford and then London, where he became an advocate of libertarian socialism and an early inspiration for what would, many years later, become a movement for LGBT+ rights. Wilde’s most overt political statements are to be found in his essay, “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” in which he observed that “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” He was a leading proponent of aestheticism and became famous as the author of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray. At the height of his fame he was convicted of gross indecency after unsuccessfully prosecuting his male lover’s father for libel. He was sentenced to two years hard labour and his experiences in prison inspired his final work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He lived his final years in exile and poverty and died of meningitis at the age of 46.
*
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How to Support Mi’kmaq Fishers Asserting Treaty Rights in Nova Scotia

WHAT’S HAPPENING:

I think it’s incumbent on the national government and (the Fisheries Department) to quickly pull together a meeting that brings all sides together to find a solution that the courts told us 21 years ago we needed to find, and that has to happen soon.” — Premier Stephen McNeil, Nova Scotia

Vehicle torched, lobster pounds storing Mi’kmaw catches trashed during night of unrest in N.S. : https://www.cbc.ca/1.5761468

Lobster catch destroyed, vehicle burned as tension rises over Indigenous fishery in N.S.: https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/atlantic/2020/10/14/1_5144540.html

And it continues tonight:

https://m.facebook.com/100002294959034/videos/3345228868896912/

I live in Ontario, have never been to Nova Scotia, nor am I Indigenous and I don’t eat lobster. But all the same I am furious about this entire situation. Mobs of white racist fishers are attacking Indigenous fishers, trespassing and destroying their property while RCMP stand around and do nothing more than turning their body cams off. These guys might as well be wearing white hoods and hammering burning crosses into the ground. 8

This is textbook systemic racism. And it is happening because the Government of Canada failed to do its job on the 21 years since the Supreme Court of Canada’s Marshall Decision. https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/1999/1999canlii665/1999canlii665.html

What ever happened to Canada’s vaunted rule of law? Mobs of white vigilantes are trespassing and destroying property.

It is up to the Federal Government DFO to announce that the Indigenous fishers are not breaking the law.

It is up to the Nova Scotia government to ensure the RCMP upholds thd law, which includes keeping the peace, preventing violence and arresting perpetrators.

If there are any non-racist white people in Nova Scotia, they need to get out and stand with their Indigenous neighbors.

Those of us who don’t live there can help in ways suggested in the list below, republished here to amplify the message.

WAYS TO SUPPORT MI’KMAQ ASSERTING THEIR TREATY RIGHTS IN DIGBY, NOVA SCOTIA (UNCEDED MI’KMA’KI)

  1. DONATE TO THE FRONTLINERS. E-TRANSFER OR PAYPAL:

MAKE THE SUBJECT LINE “1752 MODERATE LIVELIHOOD”

  1. EMAIL & CALL YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS. HERE IS A TEMPLATE & CONTACT INFO
  1. SUBSCRIBE & DONATE TO INDEPENDENT MI’KMAW JOURNALISTS
  1. ATTEND THE SOLIDARITY RALLY IN HALIFAX / KJIPUKTUK
  1. DROP OFF SUPPLIES TO THE WHARF IN SAULNIERVILLE (60 Saulnierville Rd)
  • Current Needs:

CLOTHING! Warm socks, gloves, hats, sweaters (men’s and women’s – all sizes), men’s sweatpants (all sizes), t-shirts, underwear (men’s and women’s – all sizes), rain jackets

  • Flashlights
  • Go Pro’s
  • A Company who can clean on site Porta Potties
  • Tarps
  • Gasoline (Fuel for generators)
  • Handwashing Stations (4)
  • Face Cloths
  • Towels
  • Shampoo and Body Wash
  • Lip Balm
  • Rain Boots
  • Pepsi
  • Plastic Storage Bins/Rubbermaid Totes + Tupperware
  • Blankets + Sleeping Bags
  • Tobacco
  • Rope*
  • Lobster traps*
  • Lifejackets
  • Coffee + Tea
  • Sharpies
  • Duct Tape
  • Firewood
  • Lighters
  • Deodorant
  • Serving Utensils + Kitchen knives
  • External Phone Chargers + Battery Packs
  • Hand warmers
  • Coolers + Ice
  • 1ply toilet paper
  1. SHARE AND AMPLIFY MI’KMAW VOICES. HERE ARE ACCOUNTS TO FOLLOW:

Facebook:

Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs: www.facebook.com/AssemblyNSChiefs/ 

Mi’kmaq Rights Initiative: www.facebook.com/KMKNO1752/ 

Assembly of First Nations: www.facebook.com/AssemblyofFirstNations 

Instagram:

@alexa.metallic

@Mgoogoo

@kukuwes_news

@killaatencio

@hannahmaltay

@jennifer.l.denny

@amberblueskye

@devannmarie

@sabredam

@lil.pharroh

@justicegruben

@kirsten_the_worsten

@sl.francis

@junnygirldecolonized

@onecraftymikmaq

@savvyunltd

@MikmaqAngel

Twitter:

@Pam_Palmater

@Mikmaq_star

@AndreaPLFN

@TrinaRoache 

@angelharksen

@BarbaraXLow

@mgoogoo

@Kukukwes

@TheAgentNDN

@Mikmaq_Michelle 

@amberblueskye

@KaraSPaul1

@PhillipProsper

@perrybellegarde 

@mb2law 

@nicmeloney

@JorgeBarrera

@BrianFrancisPEI 

RESOURCES TO SHARE WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY

On Site Video of Van Fire (Oct 13th)

Posted by Riley Howe moments after Shannon Oliver-Sack’s (Mi’kmaq Fisherman) Van was set on fire.

ALL EYES ON MI’KMA’KI (Mini-Documentary by: Brodie Young, Cheyenne Isaac-Gloade, Alexa Metallic & Jocelyn Mas’l)

APTN – The Facts Behind Mi’kmaw Fishing Rights

https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/the-facts-behind-mikmaw-fishing-rights/

TREATY EDUCATION NOVA SCOTIA (Video)

PAM PALMATER  

MI’KMAW STATE OF EMERGENCY:

WARRIOR LIFE, CHERYL MALONEY ON MI’KMAW RIGHT TO GOVERN FISHERY (podcast):

MI’KMAW TREATY RIGHTS, RECONCILIATION, AND ‘THE RULE OF LAW’

https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/mikmaw-treaty-rights-reconciliation-and-the-rule-of-law

PEACE & FRIENDSHIP TREATIES:

SECTION 35, CANADIAN CONSTITUTION:

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-16.html

THE MARSHALL DECISION:

https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/marshall-case

SHERRY PICTOU

Mi’kmaq and the Recognition and Implementation of Rights Framework: https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2018/06/05/mikmaq-rights-framework/ 

What is Decolonization? Mi’kmaw Ancestral Relational Understandings and Anthropological Perspectives on Treaty Relations (Chapter 1): https://bit.ly/3cisdwY 

ABORIGINAL LAND AND RIGHTS:

FILM: IS THE CROWN AT WAR WITH US?

https://www.nfb.ca/film/is_the_crown_at_war_with_us/

UNITED NATIONS DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES:

“Food Fish, Commercial Fish, and Fish to Support a Moderate Livelihood: Characterizing Aboriginal and Treaty Rights to Canadian Fisheries” by Douglas Harris & Peter Millerd:

NEWS ARTICLES:

AMBER BERNARD – “MODERATE LIVELIHOOD IS NOT AN ILLEGAL FISHERY”:

CBC – Mi’kmaw journalist assesses media coverage of fisheries dispute:
https://bit.ly/35NKmBv 

The Nova Scotia Advocate – After 21 years of government inaction Mi’kmaq assert their right to fishhttps://bit.ly/3ccehV6 

contact charlotteroseconnolly@gmail.com with questions