Whenever I read stories about corporations wanting to do the right thing, I never hold my breath. Clothing corporations, the sector where “sweatshops” originates, want us to believe they care. They don’t.
Read what nonsense they are trying to peddle to get us off their back for exploiting people so we can have cheap t-shirts. Then, hold your breath for this, scroll all the way to the bottom to see how it comes all the way back to keeping Stephen Harper in power.
The 1% and their media apologists and think tank lackeys would have us all believe that minimum wage is for kids. It’s for unskilled labour in entry level jobs.And it’s ok. We shouldn’t worry. They’re just kids after all: no families or mortgages. They don’t have much training or life experience and honestly, they should be lucky to have work so they could buy CDs and go to movies.That mythology is alive and well, regardless of the fact that the demographics demonstrate that it’s not just shiftless youth who deserve this minimum wage punishment.As the OECD world embraces a paradigm of precarious work, we should simply look at the facts. US stats from the AFL-CIO indicate how this minimum wage mythology is just ignorance: wilful or otherwise.
And you’ll note women continue to get shafted as men make up just over half the number of minimum wage workers as women. So it’s class warfare [as always], and gender discrimination.
And in the “good olde days” [TM] when a high school diploma meant access to life-sustaining work, 93% of minimum wage workers lack a bachelor’s degree. And even though a bachelor’s degree doesn’t guarantee work in one’s field, it at least allows them access to higher paying jobs.
The flipside is disturbing. In America even more so than in Canada, the price to get access to non-minimum wage jobs is tens of thousands of dollars of student debt to get the bachelor’s degree. That barrier to entry is another fact of class warfare. The poor who can’t afford a bachelor’s degree deserve to remain poor.
The cycle of entrenched, multi-generational poverty is another tool of class warfare. Don’t fool yourself.
The Reality Of Who Actually Works For Minimum Wage Will Shock You
If you add up the totals in these charts, 75% of minimum wage earners are adults. Let that sink in for a minute. 70% have at least a high school degree, and some have had at least a year or two of college.
Take a look at the size of the big blue slice in the first pie chart — that represents adult women who are working for minimum wage, almost half of the total. This is why raising the minimum wage would make a huge difference for tons of families, especially those in which women are the primary breadwinners or single moms.
Supporters of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide chant and display signs outside the courthouse in Port au Prince on Wednesday, Jan. 9. When they learned that the prosecutor, Lucmane Delille, had gone to Aristide’s home to question him, a river of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people marched to his home, surrounding it protectively as they had when he returned to Haiti. – Photo: Swoan Parker, Reuters
Just imagine!
Imagine if, one day, US President Obama sent in the Marines to Ottawa [with support from, say, the Maldives, the UK and Peru, and other Coalition of the Willing partners], who then strolled up to 24 Sussex Drive, liberated Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his family from their residence, spirited them off to #YOW to be deposited on a plane, without passports, to fly to a foreign land, like Mali.
We know the prime minister is a bad guy, but this is pretty rough treatment. Then, once Harper was conveniently out of the way, these foreign powers, with the help of the UN helped make Elections Canada more robust to ensure we had a better democracy.
Then, in future elections, the UN-occupied Elections Canada does not recognize Conservative Party candidates in their application to be candidates because…get this…they could not get the signature of their party leader, exiled Stephen Harper [shhh, because he’s been exiled, and incidentally a faxed signature is not acceptable]. But this isn’t entirely fiction. Read why:
How would you feel about a news organization that treats a hurricane as a campy Halloween ratings booster? I’m appalled. Click on “Frankenstorm Promo” above and watch the above clip from GlobalTV last Thursday night.
Hurricane Sandy has killed dozens already and will likely kill more as it runs aground today in the northeast where tens of millions live.
I was stunned to see the jovial treatment that news broadcasters were taking to a subject packed with such calamity.
Cynically, it appears that an attempt to create levity about such an impending disaster is a compelling way to boost ratings to earn more profits for GlobalTV “News” when in reality they should take a more responsible approach.
In the end, I’m shocked, but sadly, not at all surprised.
Instead of asking people to only bring a quirky 45rpm record to my party next month, I’d rather give people an opportunity to donate money to the Canadian Red Cross for Haitian earthquake relief.
As many of you know, the case study in my master’s thesis was on how Haiti is the poster child for Canada pursuing, then undermining, the Human Security Agenda, with our economic exploitation of the country culminating in helping the USA kidnap Aristide on February 29, 2004 and flying him to the Central African Republic.
And many of you also know that I got my start in political awareness and international development work from Red Cross Youth seminars like this one over 25 years ago.
So, I’m fundraising in support of the Canadian Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti. It’s estimated that three million people have been affected by the disaster, and 200,000 have been left homeless. Thanks to hundreds of local volunteers with the Haitian Red Cross—many of whom lost loved ones, the Red Cross was able to respond immediately. Please donate and help the Red Cross. Haiti needs your help.And they need your help more then I need presents!
