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Paying people for their work
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I was very stubborn at someone today re: the principle that they deserved to be paid for their work.
I’ve been seeing a lot of reluctance to this idea, including from government workers who are expected to donate their own time and resources to their employer, effectively subsidizing their own jobs.
It blows my mind that “payment for labour” is a radical position under capitalism. Or maybe it’s technically an accepted position but “labour” has been defined to exclude basic human facts and also all sorts of effort.
People are so used to being extracted from as part of the “bargain” of a job, which often begins with the usually unpaid, often absurd gauntlet that is the hiring process. I think this creates an expectation and a culture of employees doing unpaid labour, particularly when and where everything feels precarious.
We make exceptions, because we care. We devote extra hours and bankroll work supplies. Sometimes we perform significant emotional labour for clients or coworkers or even management. We sacrifice our “free” time to be a team player or a workhorse. We are expected to smile infinitely, even where work doesn’t pay enough to live, even where our health is suffering.
I doubt I can succeed at convincing governments and corporations to care about their workers and customers more than their money. But I can insist on personally living the radical principle that people deserve to be paid for their work.
I’m sorry that this makes people uncomfortable.
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A short chronology
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27 March 2024: Voilà sends me an email about the day’s delivery, with fine print about bags that includes the concluding statement: “Bag charges reflect actual number of bags accepted at delivery.”
27 March 2024: I point out that I did not “accept” four bags that they nonetheless charged me for: “Please refund the difference and ensure your drivers are made aware of the importance of complying with your own legal fine print.”
2 April 2024: Voilà sends me an email about the day’s delivery where the fine print about bags does not include the concluding statement about bag charges reflecting bags “accepted” by the customer.
One possible explanation is that this is not a change but rather a discrepancy, because the first email was in English and the second one was in French. Sometimes translators miss a sentence. This explanation seems unlikely, though, because their service is uncommonly good in both languages.
Another possible explanation is that they realized I was right and the easiest solution was just to delete the sentence from the standard language in their emails.
I think that makes sense. It was inconsistent with the “terms and conditions” on their website anyway: “By completing the checkout and submitting an order through Voilà, you are agreeing to pay, in full, the prices of the items selected (or any substitutions accepted by you) and all applicable charges (such as charges for bags, deposits, delivery fees, etc), taxes, by credit card or other permitted payment method.”
(I did a comparison using the wayback machine and that sentence does not appear to have changed recently.)
The outcome I wanted was for them to uphold the fine print in their email and stop forcing expensive waste on customers, but it looks like at best I have annoyed them into deleting a sentence that could be used against them.
So far, anyway. My other two arguments remain good.
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Societal untruths
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On this April first I’m thinking about some of the different ways society encourages or enables us to deceive each other.
There’s April Fools’ Day, of course, and there’s Santa Claus. Government entities like NORAD and Canada Post even get in on that “benevolent” lie.
And then there is Parliamentary privilege, which includes immunity for speech made during official proceedings:
The privilege of freedom of speech in parliamentary proceedings is generally regarded as the most important of the privileges enjoyed by members of Parliament. This right is protected by the Constitution Act, 1867, and the Parliament of Canada Act.
Freedom of speech permits members to speak freely in the conduct of a proceeding of Parliament, such as in the Chamber during a sitting or in committees during meetings, while enjoying complete immunity from prosecution or civil liability for any comment they make. In order to encourage truthful and complete disclosure without fear of reprisal or other adverse actions as a result of their testimony, this right is also extended to individuals who appear before the House or its committees. The House of Commons could not work effectively unless its members, and witnesses appearing before House committees, were able to speak and criticize without being held to account by any outside body.
Here this is presented ideally, as a way to encourage truth. It is my observation that what in fact results is a lack of accountability. Parliamentarians taunt and dare each other to repeat inflammatory statements outside the Chamber, while being procedurally discouraged from calling something a lie. The Speaker of the House has also declined, despite being the inside body, to hold MPs accountable for the accuracy of their statements: “I can determine neither their veracity nor their consistency with prior statements.” This is how this revered institution handles truth.
And then journalists are corporately and culturally expected to maintain “balance” in their reporting, an appearance of neutrality between truth and codswallop.1
I once again wonder what principles we’re serving, and I worry about the scope of less obvious societal untruths.2
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- I would like my partner to know that I originally wrote “bullshit” here but then, with him in mind, edited it to “codswallop,” since that doubles as a joke about unparliamentary language. ↩︎
- In preparing this post, I also enjoyed reading “The House of Commons is a sham,” a 2011 piece by Aaron Wherry in Macleans about how effectively this revered institution is working. ↩︎
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Arbitrary deadlines
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In case anyone is interested, there has been no activity on the pharmacare bill the federal government introduced a month ago and bragged about as a “giant step forward for our health system” and “a concrete step toward true and lasting gender equality.”
I am of course unsurprised, and I’m annoyed anew at everyone who participated in the farce. But also I’m thinking more broadly about arbitrary deadlines.
I would guess the NDP set a March 1 deadline in the hopes that would be enough time to pass before the summer break. I’d also guess both they and the Liberals liked the symbolism of introducing the bill on February 29. How historic!
And promptly the newly introduced bill – “a game-changer for millions of people” – was plonked onto the “for later” shelf. Press conference over; millions of people can keep waiting.
Probably lots of employees depleted themselves to prepare that bill in time for the arbitrary deadline, for what practical difference? Why do we celebrate this way of life / governance?
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Some good sentences
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I wrote a good sentence today in relation to the air quality saga. In response to my “now with confirmatory data!” email, the place where my lessons are held responded with more empty words about (1) the quality of their ventilation and (2) their abiding concern for the health of their students. I replied that I had just brought to their attention science from Harvard that proves their ventilation is inadequate and asked if they want to publicly take the position that over 1900 ppm C02 shows abiding concern for health. They have now said they will have someone in to test the air quality. I suppose that is in the direction of a win.
I wrote a good sentence yesterday in relation to the project about fees for mandatory wasteful bags. I had noticed, at the bottom of one of their emails, the following legal fine print: “Bag charges reflect actual number of bags accepted at delivery” (my emphasis). This feels like legal language designed to shift responsibility to the customer: whether or not I asked for bags, I accepted them, so the fees are justified. So yesterday I did not “accept” all their bags, and then when they charged me for them anyway I wrote them an email that concluded: “Please refund the difference and ensure your drivers are made aware of the importance of complying with your own legal fine print.” (I wonder if they’re just going to change their fine print.)
I also scribbled some sentences in draft reply to a huge ongoing argument I haven’t talked about here. I think they will be good too.
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About the author
CKirkby
- earned degrees in language / literature and law (but is not currently a lawyer or a journalist);
- worked for over a decade on Parliament Hill;
- misses writing; and
- appreciates thoughtful comments, en anglais ou en français. (Email addresses are not published.)
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