White House labor task force meets Thursday to discuss key report that boosts unions

President Biden's administration may be the most  pro-union since Harry Truman left the Oval Office nearly 70 years ago, 

Nandita Bose
Wed, October 6, 2021


WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Vice President Kamala Harris and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh will convene a second meeting on Thursday of the White House labor task force, a group of cabinet secretaries and top aides that aims to boost union membership in the country, two officials with knowledge of the matter said.

The group will discuss recommendations for a report commissioned by President Joe Biden in April on ways existing policies can promote labor organizing in the federal government, new policies that are needed and associated regulatory challenges. The report is due in late October, a White House official and a senior administration official, who did not wish to be named said.

The meeting on Thursday will be attended by Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, the White House official said.

Others including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will attend virtually.

"The group will discuss taskforce progress so far, including significant recommendations for executive actions in their upcoming report," the White House official said. It will also discuss ways the administration can leverage the federal government's authority as an employer to promote worker organizing.

In June, Harris held the first field meeting of the taskforce in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and spoke to union organizers about their campaign to increase union membership and barriers to organizing.

Between 1979 and 2020, the percentage of American workers represented by a union dropped by 14.9 percentage points, according to estimates from the White House. As a result of that drop, American workers are losing out on $200 billion a year in wages and benefits they could have achieved under union contracts, the White House has said.

President Biden's administration may be the most overtly pro-union since Harry Truman left the Oval Office nearly 70 years ago, labor leaders and outside analysts have said, citing actions that have put unions at the center of policy — viewing them as vehicles not only to rebuild middle-class jobs but also to address climate change and racial and gender inequity.

Earlier this year, the U.S. labor movement suffered a significant setback when an effort to organize warehouse workers at an Amazon facility in Alabama failed badly. In August, a U.S. labor board official recommended a rerun of the landmark union election.

The death of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who had close ties to Biden, and had been an influential outside voice in helping to shape his ambitious jobs and infrastructure proposals, has also posed a challenge to the American labor movement.

 (Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons, Chris Sanders and Richard Pullin)

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Australia resources minister floats A$250 billion coal lending facility

Wed, October 6, 2021

FILE PHOTO: Coal is unloaded onto large piles at the Ulan Coal mines near the central New South Wales rural town of Mudgee, Australia

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia's resources minister has proposed setting up a government-run A$250 billion ($180 billion) lending facility for the country's coal industry in return for supporting a net zero carbon emissions target for 2050, he said on Thursday.

Resources minister Keith Pitt, a member of the junior coalition partner National Party, told the Australian Financial Review his idea was for the government to be the "lender of last resort" to the mining sector as banks and insurers are increasingly unwilling to fund and underwrite the industry.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has come under increasing pressure to adopt a zero emissions target, but has been stymied by opposition from the party's junior partner. Pitt's proposal is a first sign of what that support might cost.

Morrison said on Thursday he will advise his government's position on cutting emission before he goes to the COP26 conference in Glasgow, but it's not clear he will attend the global climate meeting. Attendees have been asked to bring ambitious emissions reduction targets.

The loan facility proposal was not a policy of the National Party, which represents rural Australians for whom jobs in coal producing regions are a major concern, but it was up for discussion, Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce told ABC Radio.

"No matter what happens, we need to find a way to fund the resources sector and provide insurance,” Pitt told the Australian Financial Review.

Pitt also said the agriculture and resources sector should be excluded from any sacrifice in terms of reaching net zero, according to the AFR report on Thursday.

“If we want to look after 300,000 jobs, provide power to 70% of homes, the Australian government will have to become the lender of last resort," he said, according to the paper.

Australia's coal industry is suffering from dwindling access to finance and insurance, raising the costs of doing business and threatening the longevity of an industry that accounts for the country's second-most-valuable exports, submissions to a parliamentary inquiry showed in May.

Pitt said last month coal will be a major contributor to Australia's economy well beyond 2030 given growth in global demand, after a United Nations envoy called on the country to phase out the fossil fuel.

($1 = 1.3732 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Melanie Burton; Editing by Tom Hogue)

U.S. Coal Mines Are Running Out of Miners Just as Demand Booms

Will Wade
Wed, October 6, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- Just when the world is clamoring for more coal, U.S. suppliers are facing a shortage of miners.

The number of coal miners in the U.S. has been sliding for years, and is down about 8.6% from before the pandemic. People who have left are reluctant to come back and young people are even more wary about taking a job in an industry that they’ve consistently been told has no future given the global push toward clean energy.

That’s making it difficult for mining companies to boost production at a time when the global energy crisis is making utilities desperate for every lump of coal they can dig up. Even with coal prices surging around the world, the labor shortages are another sign that it’s going to be tough to shore up energy stockpiles.

“They used to walk into our offices,” said Erin Higginson of Custom Staffing Services, which recruits miners in the Illinois Basin. “Now we’re holding job fairs all over just to find a few.”

She’s trying to fill about 300 mining positions right now, three times as many as a year ago. But attracting miners has become a tough sell. Experienced miners have taken their skills to car factories, construction sites and other fields where they enjoy less demanding work schedules. Even though mines are boosting wages, so are other industries and workers are showing more interest in careers that offer a better work-life balance.

Some mining companies are raising wages 10% to 12% over 2019 levels, estimated Ernie Thrasher, chief executive officer of Xcoal Energy & Resources LLC, a Pennsylvania coal trader that works with several suppliers. With overtime, a miner can now make close to $100,000 a year. His suppliers are down about 200 workers from before the pandemic and haven’t been able to lure them back.

Miners who have left the industry aren’t coming back, and more significantly, new ones aren’t joining, Thrasher said.

“There’s a perception that the coal industry, if not dead, is dying,” he said. “Young people just have many more choices.”

Mining companies are getting creative in their recruiting, said Rich Nolan, CEO of the National Mining Association trade group. Along with more money, some are offering benefits like daycare.

“Everyone is scraping for employees,” he said. “They’re using every trick in the book to attract qualified workers.”

And more miners are sorely needed. As the global economy rebounds from the pandemic, demand for electricity is climbing and there have been shortages in Europe and Asia. That’s led to higher prices for natural gas, resulting in utilities leaning more heavily on coal. In the U.S., utilities are switching away from gas and expected to burn about 23% more coal this year.

Yet that surge in demand is constrained by miners’ limited ability to boost output. Coal companies have been closing mines and cutting staff in recent years amid the global push to rein in the carbon emissions that are driving climate change, and it’s known as the dirtiest fossil fuel. Local and national governments that have rapidly moved to embrace clean energy, are now discovering the potential pitfalls of moving too quickly away from fossil fuels.

Total U.S. output plunged during the pandemic will still be below 2019 levels this year, despite an anticipated rebound of 12%, according to government data.

“There is an energy transition taking place,” said Xcoal’s Thrasher. “But it’s going to take longer than people think.”

(Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, has committed $500 million to launch Beyond Carbon, a campaign aimed at closing the remaining coal-powered plants in the U.S. by 2030 and slowing the construction of new gas plants.)

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Shareholders table resolutions with Australia's banks to stop fossil fuel financing

Paulina Duran
Wed, October 6, 2021


Shareholders table resolutions with Australia's banks to stop fossil fuel financingA pedestrian is reflected in the window of a branch of the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) in central Sydney

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A group of shareholders filed climate change resolutions with three of Australia's Big Four banks on Thursday, asking them to abide by their self-declared support for net-zero emissions by 2050 and stop financing fossil fuels.

The resolutions ask for a firm commitment from Westpac Banking Corp, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and National Australia Bank not to fund any fossil fuel projects, in line with calls by the International Energy Agency (IEA)

 https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/radical-change-needed-reach-net-zero-emissions-iea-2021-05-18

The resolutions, filed by a group of about 100 shareholders, come ahead of the United Nations' COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, set to begin on Oct. 31, and as Australia regulators step up their scrutiny of climate-related risks and disclosures.

They are unlikely, however, to be officially tabled for a vote at the banks' annual general meetings in December, partly because of restrictions under Australian corporate law.

But backing for these types of resolutions is often acknowledged at meetings and support for similar proposals has risen in recent times.

Last year, shareholder support for similar resolutions tabled at the annual meetings of ANZ and NAB doubled to 28% and 26% respectively.

In one of the three matching resolutions, the shareholders say: "Despite committing to the climate goals of the Paris Agreement ... ANZ is aligning its investment practices and policies with the failure of these goals, resulting in our company falling behind rapidly evolving investor and regulator expectations, and the practices of other financial institutions."

Earlier this year, a group of investors managing $4.2 trillion, called on some of the world's biggest banks to toughen their climate and biodiversity policies or risk rebellions at their next annual meetings.

In a statement, ANZ said its thermal coal mining exposure had reduced significantly, while lending to renewables had increased. Exposures to oil and gas exploration and development has remained relatively flat.

The bank will update its Climate Change statement

 https://www.anz.com/content/dam/anzcom/shareholder/ANZ-Climate-Change-Statement-November-2020.pdf 

with new climate targets in the coming month, a spokesman said.

Westpac said it only finances emissions-intensive sectors in line with principles aligned with its climate change action plan

 https://www.westpac.com.au/content/dam/public/wbc/documents/pdf/aw/sustainability/WBC-climate-change-position-statement-2023.pdf

, adding that the bank would not "establish relationships with new thermal coal mining customers".

At end-March, mining accounted for about 0.75% of the bank's total loans and lending to oil and gas extraction represented 0.22%, the bank said.

A May report by the International Energy Agency said there should be no more new fossil fuel projects after this year for the world to reach its target of net zero emissions by 2050.

Australia, the world's biggest coal exporter and one of the world's largest carbon emitters per capita, has not signed up for that target, and this week approved its third coal mine extension in the past month.

(Reporting by Paulina Duran in Sydney; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Richard Pullin)

Tesla got hit with a $137 million jury verdict: Why the case was 'so important'

Alexis Keenan
·Reporter
Wed, October 6, 2021

FREMONT, CA - SEPTEMBER 29: Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during an event to launch the new Tesla Model X Crossover SUV on September 29, 2015 in Fremont, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A California jury’s $137 million verdict against Tesla (TSLA) in a racial discrimination case brought by a Black contract worker is notable for its size and because it was a rare employment grievance that played out in public court rather than in a closed-doors arbitration.

“The verdict is designed to do what punitive damages are supposed to do: deter and punish Tesla,” veteran discrimination attorney Nancy Erika Smith told Yahoo Finance.

The award, which the judge could reduce, came down Monday for Owen Diaz, a former elevator operator at Tesla’s Fremont factory who said he was subjected to racially offensive taunts and graffiti. Diaz, a contractor paid by two staffing agencies rather than Tesla itself, said on a daily basis that Tesla employees directed racial epithets at him and other Black workers, including telling him to "Go back to Africa."

$1 million isn't punishment for Tesla

The case is an unlikely one to see the light of public litigation due to Tesla’s policy — common among large U.S. corporations — requiring workers to agree to arbitrate workplace disputes. Diaz, unlike the vast majority of other Tesla plant workers, could go to trial because he never signed the arbitration agreement.

Virtually everyone who works at Tesla's Fremont factory has a binding arbitration, J. Bernard Alexander, one of Diaz's attorneys, told Yahoo Finance. These types of agreements "allow companies to litigate and have their dirty laundry stay in the dark," Alexander said, noting the irony of racist conduct occurring at a company with headquarters in liberal Silicon Valley.

"That's why this case was so important," Alexander said. "So there would be a light shined on it through the justice system."

Arbitration is controversial. Those who favor it, largely employers, argue that arbitration is more flexible and efficient than litigation. However, critics say arbitration is opaque, can't be appealed, and tends to offer smaller awards than those granted by juries — something that Diaz’s case suggests could be true.

A similar dispute brought by former Tesla materials handler Melvin Berry was handled through mandatory arbitration. In August, Bloomberg reported that an arbitrator ordered Tesla to pay $1 million for harassment by company supervisors who called him the “N-word.” Smith, the veteran discrimination attorney, suggested that $1 million is a minor amount for a company like Tesla.

“Tesla is not punished by a $1 million verdict. Tesla is punished by a $137 million verdict,” Smith said.
Tesla could 'tie this up in court for years'

The large verdict is unlikely to stick. Tesla could ask the judge to overturn the verdict or reduce the award, and the electric car giant could also appeal the case to a higher court. David Miklas, an employer-side attorney said the size of the award "absolutely is noteworthy," meaning Tesla will likely appeal.

"Tesla could appeal this and tie this up in court for years," Miklas said, adding that some appeals can span as long as a decade.

Tesla could also offer to settle with Diaz for a lower amount, which Smith said could be the most strategic path given that Tesla's public debate over workplace discrimination isn’t going away just yet.

On Oct. 7, during Tesla's annual shareholders’ meeting, shareholders are expected to vote on a proposal from activist shareholder Nia Impact Capital that would require Tesla to report on the impact of its use of mandatory arbitration. Tesla’s board has discouraged shareholders from voting in favor of the measure.

Smith suspects that any changes to Tesla's mandatory arbitration policy depend on several factors.

“It depends on how much power the board has, and how much power the activist investors are going to have, and whether it really affects whether people buy Teslas,” she said.

Tesla's Valerie Capers Workman, Tesla’s vice president for people, issued a statement Monday saying that the company believes the facts do not justify the verdict in the Diaz case. However, she suggested that the company has improved since Diaz worked there in 2015 and 2016.

"[W]e do recognize that in 2015 and 2016 we were not perfect. We’re still not perfect. But we have come a long way from 5 years ago. We continue to grow and improve in how we address employee concerns. Occasionally, we’ll get it wrong, and when that happens we should be held accountable.”

Yahoo Finance reached out to Tesla for comment and will update this post with any response we receive.

Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on Twitter @alexiskweed.

Tesla would face tough road in any bid to slash $137 million racial bias verdict in U.S


Daniel Wiessner
Wed, October 6, 2021



(Reuters) - Tesla Inc will likely seek to slash a $137 million jury award for a Black worker who accused the automaker of racial discrimination, but could have difficulty reducing the verdict amid claims that the company tolerated widespread harassment, legal experts said.

A federal jury in San Francisco on Monday ordered Tesla to pay $130 million in punitive damages to Owen Diaz, a contract worker who was employed as an elevator operator at the company's factory in Fremont, California, according to a court filing.

 

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-ordered-pay-over-130-mln-black-former-worker-over-racism-wsj-2021-10-05 

The jury found that Tesla failed to take steps to prevent race-based harassment of factory workers, including the use of racial slurs and racist graffiti in bathrooms. Tesla also was ordered to pay Diaz $6.9 million in compensatory damages.

Punitive damages are designed to punish and to deter future unlawful conduct, while compensatory damages are intended to pay victims for their actual losses.

The U.S. Supreme Court has said 

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/538/408

 punitive damages should generally not exceed 10 times the amount of compensatory damages, and that even a ratio greater than 4:1 might be excessive. As a result, large awards handed down by impassioned juries are commonly reduced by trial judges or appeals courts at the behest of defendants.

If Tesla challenges Monday's verdict, the company will likely point to the fact that the amount of punitive damages is nearly 19 times the compensatory damages, legal experts not involved in the case said. Tesla could also claim the verdict was not supported by evidence, and attempt to settle with Diaz to stave off further litigation over the size of the jury award, the experts said.

The Supreme Court guidelines can go out the window if misconduct has a widespread impact on workers and is found to be highly offensive or reprehensible, according to Catherine Sharkey, a professor at New York University School of Law.

Since the jury found that Tesla had created a hostile work environment based on race, it follows that allegations that the company tolerated racist speech and graffiti affected other workers and could justify the massive award, she said.

"The idea is that making an employer pay for that widespread harm could lead them to put in place measures to avoid future harm," she said.

In a memo to employees on Monday, Tesla Vice President Valerie Workman said the company believed the facts of the case did not warrant the large award, and that Tesla took immediate action each of the three times that Diaz complained about racist conduct.

Tesla did not responded to requests for comment on a potential appeal.

Lawrence Organ, a lawyer for Diaz, said the case was unusual because of evidence of widespread use of the "N word" at the Fremont plant and Tesla's failure to address it.

"We would argue that ... the jury got it right, particularly in light of Tesla's financial condition as one of the wealthiest corporations in the world," Organ said.

Several legal experts said the award for Diaz was among the largest in a U.S. discrimination case involving a single plaintiff.

A federal jury in 2014 awarded $186 million to a former AutoZone Stores Inc manager in a pregnancy bias case, which at the time was widely reported in the media to be the largest verdict of its kind. AutoZone moved for a new trial but settled with the plaintiff on undisclosed terms before the motion was decided.

The nine-figure award for Diaz is "pretty unheard of," and sends a message to employers that tolerating discrimination can be costly, said David Lopez, a professor at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey who was general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during the Obama administration.

Tesla has been accused of tolerating race-based harassment at the Fremont plant in several lawsuits aside from Diaz's, including a pending class action in California state court. The company has denied the claims and says it has adopted policies to better address complaints about racially-charged incidents.

Lopez said the jurors in Tesla's case likely took into account the pervasiveness of the conduct alleged by Diaz and the company's value and high profile, which could also come into play if the company seeks to lower the jury award.

Tesla's market value has reached  nearly $800 billion, making it the world's most valuable automaker.

https://www.reuters.com/article/tesla-stocks-int/tesla-market-value-crosses-800-billion-for-the-first-time-idUSKBN29D20B

"The jury was asking itself, 'what would sting Tesla and make sure they don't treat this as just another cost of doing business?'" Lopez said.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner; Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Rebekah Mintzer, Noeleen Walder and Grant McCool)

The Electricity Crisis Was Not Caused By A ‘Perfect Storm’

Editor OilPrice.com
Wed, October 6, 2021

Recent news from the global electricity sector looks grim. South Americans, heavily dependent on hydroelectricity, face drought-induced scarcity. Hard to believe in a continent laced by three enormous river systems. The alternatives for South American electricity users are an increased reliance on fossil fuels or turning off the lights (conservation). And unlike relatively inexpensive hydroelectricity, generating electricity with fossil fuels (apart from the ecological consequences) incurs fuel expense, which raises prices.

The news emphasizes growing inflationary pressures. And this certainly feeds into that narrative. But there is a more worrisome problem for energy planners here. More droughts mean that hydro can no longer be considered a “firm” long-term resource for the electrical grid. Subtracting a major low-cost resource like hydro from a region’s energy mix and replacing it in any other fashion is an enormous financial undertaking. Just as countries are moving to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, one of the cleanest energy sources becomes scarcer.

But there is a distinctly global flavor now to stories of electric utility infrastructure under duress not simply due to extreme weather. Failure of human ingenuity plays a part here. In Puerto Rico, the reorganized and semi-privatized electricity system, PREPA, experiences frequent blackouts. Yet customers seeking to install their own generation (and potentially resell power to the utility at critical times) can’t get the power company to hook them up. India faces an electricity shortage because power companies failed to restock coal inventories. Their executives expected a meaningful decline in coal prices which never materialized so they’re stuck. In the UK the windpower yield was below expectations and that dramatically pushed up power prices.


But winter is coming—when the existing natural gas shortage pushes prices even higher. And then there is China. Electricity demand rose, coal usage increased, and coal prices went way up. But the government puts a ceiling on the price of electricity which causes generators to lose money on power sales in periods of rapidly escalating fuel prices like the present. So who wants to lose money on every KWH sold in the hope of making it up in volume? After experiencing blackouts and other usage reduction measures, the electric companies went to purchase more coal. However, world coal markets are now tight. One obvious short-term solution is a rapprochement with regional neighbor Australia despite a recent chilling in relations between the two governments.

In many places, the price of natural gas determines the price of electricity. If global warming were not a pressing concern, natural gas would be the boiler fuel of choice. In its absence, they would burn coal or oil. Natural gas prices have more than doubled this year in the US and quadrupled in European markets. No doubt a combination of higher demand and more cautious development by petroleum companies has tightened the market. But Europe depends to a great extent on Russian supplied gas and there are indications that the Russians did not fill European storage facilities in order to manipulate scarcity to their advantage. The Europeans do have alternatives to Russian gas, such as pipelines from Algeria (which is not the most stable supplier). Morocco wants to sign a deal but it has a problem caused by the sometimes rebellious Polisario Front which claims to represent the western Sahara region. European countries could sign big gas deals with Israel and Cyprus but would face Turkish objections. As they say, it’s complicated.

These and similar problems are not accidents and do not result from one-off difficulties or calamities. Forget about the perfect storm excuse. The problems arose because electric companies chose to defer capital and maintenance expenses, skimped on adequate fuel reserves, and focused on cost efficiencies. Customers would have been better served had they focused on hardening grid infrastructure and preserving continuous service against an increasingly hostile climate. Excessive focus on creating shareholder value can mean cutting corners to achieve savings. But the implied hope (and whether hope is an adequate basis for corporate strategy is another question) is that nothing untoward happens as a result. It’s like building a house of cards outside assuming the wind will never blow. It was in this vein that electric utilities adopted what amounts to a just-in-time supply system mentality with respect to electricity.

And there is another point to be emphasized. A well-functioning just-in-time inventory management system is a thing of beauty, efficiency, and cost minimization. But because of the extreme interdependency, one factory relies on the output of another, often thousands of miles away, any break in this carefully choreographed manufacturing process results in chaos and dysfunction. This corporate mentality has resulted in electricity systems that are now relatively low-cost but increasingly fragile.

Puerto Rico, for example, is a simple case of underinvestment. The electric company, PREPA, would have had to raise prices substantially to improve the network. If the UK had sufficient gas reserves in storage low wind conditions would not have been a big problem for power generation. But new construction and adequate gas reserves cost money. And UK regulators have worked heroically to keep down capital spending.

The Europeans signed up voluntarily for Russian gas and nixed other projects. More pipelines serving their market meant paying the overhead on several competing gas transport lines which were not deemed economically efficient. As for Chinese and Indian utilities, having at least a 90-120 day coal inventory may become part of normal operations if one burns coal. But again all that adds substantially to costs.

Roughly four decades ago, neo-liberal economic principles were introduced to the electricity sector. The industry gradually changed from one dedicated to serving the public and encouraging economic development to one focusing instead on maximizing profits. Along the way, the political and regulatory systems seem to have become unusually obliging with respect to corporate interests as big money in US politics exerts its corrupting influence. Where will this lead? Well, sadly we don’t think it will lead to any serious evaluation of the structure of the electricity markets, or natural gas networks, or government policies that control them. Introspection or reflection about better utility arrangements takes time possibly even for trial and error. But our present system lurches from crisis to crisis.

So where does that leave us, the electricity consumers? First, power users will try to disassociate themselves from increasingly expensive and unreliable networks. There are two reasons for this, reliability and price. As we wrote recently in reference to Entergy’s four- to six-week power outages following hurricane Ida, repeated outages of this duration are unacceptable in that it makes those regions both commercially disabled or even uninhabitable for protracted periods. We believe for this reason alone those who have the means will increasingly look for alternatives to the local power company.

In addition, we’re also now witnessing rapid fuel price increases which are driving escalating electricity prices. Installing individual, non-fuel power generation and storage systems provide the energy user with long-term price stability. Once installed, a solar and battery storage system provides long-term price stability for the life of the system, possibly 20 or 30 years! This is a gigantic inflation hedge— although not looked at that way at present. In inflationary times self-generation permits power users to cap their (self-generated) rates for an extended period—a considerable benefit against a backdrop of volatile energy prices.

Lastly, we should mention the resurrection of nuclear power generation technologies both small-modular and gigawatt-scale. New and existing nuclear is heralded as the perfect low emissions, base load complement to intermittent wind or solar. It is relatively unaffected by the variabilities of nature and does not rely on fossil fuels with volatile prices. Nor need its fuel be imported from unfriendly nations which may suddenly turn off the “spigot” so to speak. As the notion of energy independence once again gains currency, widespread nuclear new-build may actually resume. But there is always something. The resumption of interest in new nukes is occurring against a backdrop of rampant price inflation. We will conclude by saying that the last time those two teamed up in the 1980s it wasn’t pretty.

By Leonard Hyman and William Tilles

Why India is on the brink of an unprecedented power crisis


Arunoday Mukharji -

 BBC News, Delhi
Wed, October 6, 2021,

Electricity pylons at sunrise in Delhi, India.

India is on the brink of an unprecedented power crisis.

More than half of the country's 135 coal-fired power plants are running on fumes - as coal stocks run critically low.

In a country where 70% of the electricity is generated using coal, this is a major cause for concern as it threatens to derail India's post-pandemic economic recovery.

Why is this happening?

This crisis has been in the making for months.

As India's economy picked up after a deadly second wave of Covid-19, demand for power rose sharply.

Power consumption in the last two months alone jumped by almost 17%, compared to the same period in 2019.

At the same time global coal prices increased by 40% and India's imports fell to a two-year low.

The country is the world's second largest importer of coal despite being home to the fourth largest coal reserves in the world.

Power plants that usually rely on imports are now heavily dependent on Indian coal, adding further pressure to already stretched domestic supplies.

What is the likely impact?

Experts say importing more coal to make up for domestic shortages is not an option at present.

"We have seen shortages in the past, but what's unprecedented this time is coal is really expensive now," said Dr Aurodeep Nandi, India Economist and Vice President at Nomura.

"If I am [as a company] importing expensive coal, I will raise my prices, right? Businesses at the end of the day pass on these costs to consumers, so there is an inflationary impact - both direct and indirect that could potentially come from this," he added.

If the crisis continues, a surge in the cost of electricity will be felt by consumers. Retail inflation is already high as everything from oil to food has become more expensive.

Vivek Jain, Director at India Ratings Research described the situation as "precarious".

In recent years, India's production has lagged as the country tried to reduce its dependence on coal to meet climate targets.

India's Power Minister RK Singh, in an interview with The Indian Express newspaper, said the situation is "touch and go" and that the country should brace itself for the next five to six months.

A senior government official, on the condition of anonymity, confirmed to the BBC that the situation is worrying.

If this persists, Asia's third largest economy will struggle to get back on track, warns Ms Zohra Chatterji, the former Chief of Coal India Limited - a state-run enterprise responsible for 80% of the country's coal supply.

"Electricity powers everything, so the entire manufacturing sector- cement, steel, construction - everything gets impacted once there is a coal shortage."

She calls the current situation a "wake-up call for India" and says the time has come to reduce its over-dependence on coal and more aggressively pursue a renewable energy strategy.

What can the government do?

The question of how India can achieve a balance between meeting demand for electricity from its almost 1.4bn people and the desire to cut its reliance on heavily polluting coal burning power plants has been a major challenge for the government in recent years.

The vast scale of the problem makes a short-term solution unlikely, according to Dr Nandi.

"It's just the sheer scale of things. A huge chunk of our energy comes from thermal [coal]. I don't think we've reached that stage yet where we have an effective substitute for thermal. So yes, it's a wake-up call, but I don't think the centrality of coal in our energy needs is set to be to be replaced anytime soon, he said.

Experts advocate a mix of coal and clean sources of energy as a possible long-term solution.

"It's not completely possible to transition and it's never a good strategy to transition 100% to renewables without a backup. You only transition if you have that backup available because then you're exposing a lot of manufacturing to many risks associated with the environment", Mr Jain said.

Long term investment in multiple power sources aside, former bureaucrats like Ms Chatterji say a crisis like the current one can be averted- with better planning.

She feels there is need for closer coordination between Coal India Limited - the largest supplier of coal in the country and other stakeholders.

From ensuring smooth last-mile delivery to demanding more accountability from power companies in India, Ms Chatterji adds, "power producers must stockpile coal reserves, they must have a certain quantity at all times.

But in the past we have seen that has not happened, because maintaining such an inventory comes at a financial cost."

What could happen next?

It is unclear how long the current situation will last, but Dr Nandi is cautiously optimistic.

He says "with the monsoon on its way out and winter approaching, the demand for power usually falls.

So, the mismatch between demand and supply may iron out to some extent".

Vivek Jain adds, "This is a global phenomenon, one not specifically restricted to India. If gas prices dip today, there could be a switch back to gas. It's a dynamic situation".

For now, the Indian government has said it is working with state-run enterprises to ramp up production and mining to reduce the gap between supply and demand.

The government is also hoping to source coal from so-called "captive" mines. Captive mines are operations that produce coal or minerals solely for the company that owns them and under normal conditions are not allowed to sell what they produce to other businesses.

The overwhelming verdict from experts is that short-term fixes may help to get India through the current energy crunch but the country needs to work towards long-term alternatives to ensure its growing domestic power needs are met.

As India works to climb out of one of the worst recessions among the world's major economies the country will aim to avoid any further hurdles.

How a small-town B.C. council meeting became a source of COVID-19 disinformation worldwide

LONG READ
Andrew Kurjata, CBC

© Sam Martin CBC 

Dawson Creek Mayor Dale Bumstead says he will no longer allow impromptu speakers at city council after a clip spreading false information about COVID-19 vaccines went viral.

The city of Dawson Creek, B.C., home to about 12,000 people near the B.C.-Alberta border, has removed a previously published portion of a recent city council meeting video after it began circulating in COVID-19 disinformation groups worldwide.

The incident illustrates why everyone — including small communities — needs to think more deeply about who they give a platform to, says Ahmed Al-Rawi, an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University who specializes in disinformation.

The portion of the video that was removed featured several speakers at a Sept. 2 council meeting making false or misleading statements about COVID-19 vaccines and their effectiveness.

The speakers arrived at city hall ahead of the meeting to protest the B.C. government's recent announcement of a vaccine card program, which limits access to non-essential recreational and social activities to people who can provide proof of vaccination.

The meeting was called to clarify how the program would impact city facilities such as the pool and curling rink, said Mayor Dale Bumstead — not to debate the merits of the vaccine card or vaccination itself.

But outside city hall, about 100 people angry about the vaccine card held placards and demanded a chance to speak.

Council decided to let some of them make short presentations ahead of the regular meeting. Bumstead said it was not an effort to endorse their ideas, but to allow them to be heard as members of the community he was elected to represent.

"We had no way to verify or even identify some of the information and people speaking, because it was spur-of-the-moment," he said in an interview with CBC.
False comparisons to the Holocaust

Things didn't get off to a smooth start. Before the meeting, police were called to respond to several protesters who refused to wear a mask inside council chambers, a requirement under public health guidelines.

In a video live-streamed to Facebook by one of the protesters, police can be seen escorting one man away as another begins yelling, "Brownshirts!" Later, members of the crowd joined in, calling RCMP "Nazis" and "Gestapo."

The video has prompted condemnation from both B.C. Premier John Horgan and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, headquartered in Toronto, which said the comparison of B.C.'s public health policy to "the systematic identification, humiliation, persecution and murder of Jews and millions of others is absurd, dangerous and disrespectful."

Inside council chambers, several presenters made similar arguments, comparing B.C.'s voluntary vaccine card to 1930s Germany and sharing false information about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

Since then, one of those presentations has been circulated on multiple social media platforms by anti-vaccination groups, racking up tens of thousands of views.

The presentation in question was made by a woman who, in local small business listings, identifies herself as the owner of an "alternative clinic" that uses "energy healing" and "psychic readings," along with herbal teas and essential oils, to help clients.

While presenting to council, she said she was a "molecular biologist," without specifying her credentials. She falsely called the vaccines a "genetic experiment" with a high fatality rate, when the reality is they are the result of years of research and have been safely distributed to millions of people worldwide after passing multiple clinical trials.

At the end of the presentation, the mayor thanked the woman for her time, and she thanked him for hearing her out.

And that, thought Bumstead, was the end of it. Council later voted to follow public health guidelines and adjourned.

Afterwards, city staff did what they do with every meeting: they uploaded it to the city's YouTube page, where the woman's presentation took on a life of its own.
Exploiting 'a fake expert'

At first, people just shared a direct link to the entire council meeting. But before long, some users started extracting the woman's presentation and sharing it on its own. One YouTube user with more than 21,000 subscribers clipped her speech and uploaded it to their channel, where it has racked up more than 200,000 views.

The video has also been posted to Twitter, TikTok and Facebook, as well as to alternative sites popular among anti-vaccine users. In most posts, the woman is referred to as a molecular biologist, while in some she is wrongly identified as a doctor. Few mention her true profession as a natural healer and psychic.

Disinformation expert Ahmed Al-Rawi said this is a common technique among anti-vaccine groups — inflating or inventing the credentials of people speaking out against public health measures in an effort to give their viewpoints a false sense of credibility.

"They bring in a fake expert who will provide contrary evidence to what the scientific consensus is to cast doubt on the validity of public health policies," he said.

Al-Rawi compared the technique to past efforts to undermine consensus science surrounding climate change or the dangers of smoking. People can search the internet for videos like the Dawson Creek council meeting that can be re-purposed to serve their needs.

"They cherry-pick information … in order to convince others that they are right."

Al-Rawi said the presence of the video on the city's official website lent it additional credibility, as did the appearance of Dawson Creek's logo and the fact that the presenter was speaking inside council chambers. Without context around why she was being allowed to speak, he said, the setting added a sense of legitimacy to what she was saying, no matter how incorrect the content.
No more impromptu sessions

As the number of views of the video increased, so did scrutiny of Dawson Creek's council for giving anti-vaccine protesters a platform to speak in the first place.

Bumstead said staff at city hall were inundated with calls from people across North America about the video, some pleased with what they had seen, others upset the city had allowed false assertions to be broadcast unchecked.

After several weeks, Coun. Shaely Wilbur issued a public apology on her Facebook page. "I am from the core of my being disturbed that if in any way I have allowed misinformation to be taken as fact and distributed through social media via a delegation to council," she wrote, and encouraged residents to get vaccinated.

Likewise, Bumstead said he was upset by the "turmoil" the video had caused, and last week the decision was made to remove all the impromptu speakers' videos from the city's YouTube page.

The official reason, Bumstead said, was that none of the speakers had properly applied to give their presentations to council, nor had they been properly vetted or identified in advance, so ultimately they are not considered part of the official meeting.

But other videos out of the city's control are still circulating, which illustrates why officials need to think more deeply about who they give a platform to, said Al-Rawi.

In years past, he said, council meetings were seen only by those able to attend in person. Now they can be recorded, edited and redistributed for millions worldwide.

"[Local governments] have to be more literate about how to deal with these issues."

For his part, Bumstead said he still believes in listening to people with differing opinions, but the whole episode has left him "disappointed and hurt." Moving forward, he said he will not consider allowing impromptu presentations from members of the public, no matter the topic.

"We were trying to be lenient," he said. "But it just created a huge amount of extra work."

Canada faces wave of terminations as workplace vaccine mandates take effect: Lawyer

HALIFAX — Canada is facing a potential wave of terminations tied to mandatory workplace vaccine policies as a growing number of employers require workers to be fully inoculated against COVID-19 — or risk losing their jobs, legal experts say

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

Governments, institutions and companies have spent months hammering out vaccine mandates in a bid to curb an unrelenting pandemic fuelled by variants.

As employer deadlines to be fully vaccinated approach, unvaccinated workers could soon be placed on unpaid leave or terminated altogether, lawyers say.

"We’ve been contacted by thousands of people from across Canada who all have these ultimatums in front of them saying they have to be vaccinated by a certain date or risk losing their jobs," employment lawyer Lior Samfiru, a partner with Samfiru Tumarkin LLP, said in an interview.

"We're going to see the biggest wave of terminations we've seen since the pandemic started," he said, noting that his firm has been contacted by workers in a range of industries including health care, education, banks, construction and restaurants.

"It will be significant."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled Canada's new mandatory vaccine policy on Wednesday. It requires the core public service, air travel and rail employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of October.

The federal vaccine mandate mirrors provincial policies, such as in Nova Scotia where all school and health-care workers are required to have two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of November.

Private companies have also developed corporate vaccine mandates, with looming deadlines for staff to be fully vaccinated.

The situation has left legal experts grappling with the tension between protecting the rights of individual workers and ensuring employers meet their health and safety obligations toward staff, clients and the public.

There's also the question of what reasonable accommodations or exemptions should be available to workers and whether unvaccinated employees who are ultimately terminated are owed compensation.

"There's an overriding obligation on the employer to make sure the workplace is safe," said Ron Pizzo, a labour and employment lawyer with Pink Larkin in Halifax.

"With COVID being an acute illness with the potential for loss of life, the risk of harm is pretty high," he said. "Employers are imposing those policies for valid reasons as they have a duty to keep their workplace safe."

Pizzo said his firm is getting quite a few calls from people who do not want to vaccinate and want to fight employer vaccination requirements.

Still, he said he's not expecting mass resignations that will leave companies without enough workers given the relatively high vaccination rate among the general population. Slightly more than 80 per cent of all Canadians aged 12 and older are fully vaccinated.

Pizzo added that many law firms are introducing mandatory vaccination policies for face-to-face meetings in the office.

Wayne MacKay, professor emeritus at the Dalhousie Schulich School of Law, said employers have to balance the individual rights of workers, such as by offering reasonable accommodations, with maintaining a safe work environment.

But he said a recent review of cases involving the balance between individual rights and public health have sided with the latter.

"I went through a lot of the cases and tribunals and the great majority are saying that while individual rights are important and you should do everything you can to respect them, in the time of a pandemic, reasonable limits are going to be given broad scope," MacKay said. "Most restrictions that governments are doing have been found to be reasonable given threat of COVID-19."

While these cases didn't deal specifically with vaccine mandates, he said the same reasoning would likely apply.

MacKay said there are very few legitimate reasons to seek an exemption to a vaccine policy, such as for medical reasons.

Yet he said some workplaces will likely have a stronger need for a mandatory vaccines than others.

"If you can work exclusively from home, it's not a very compelling argument at all to require that person to be vaccinated as part of their employment," MacKay said. "If you are in the public sector and serving the public, then that is a much more credible case for requiring vaccinations."

As for whether workers who are terminated for refusing to vaccinate are entitled to compensation, he said it depends on the work environment, how valid the need for the policy is and whether the worker was unionized or not.

Samfiru suggested terminated workers who are not paid sufficient compensation could claim wrongful dismissal.

"The employer is imposing a new rule, one that was not part of the original employment agreement," he said. "That becomes a termination without cause and severance has to be paid. Beyond that, there could be a human rights claim as well."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 6, 2021.

Brett Bundale, The Canadian Press

CANADA

Urgent government action needed to tackle COVID-19 health-care crisis, medical leaders warn
CBC/Radio-Canada 

© Canadian Medical Association virtual briefing Canadian Medical Association president Dr. Katharine Smart and the Canadian Nurses Association president Tim Guest shared an update on Wednesday following an emergency summit of…

Urgent action from all levels of government is needed to bring Canada's strained health-care system "back to life" as the COVID-19 pandemic keeps raging, medical leaders warned in a Wednesday briefing.

The remarks followed an emergency summit Tuesday night, which brought together more than 30 national and provincial health organizations including the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA).

Leaders from both the CMA and CNA said the summit discussions confirmed there are high levels of burnout among health-care workers, chronic under-staffing issues, and an urgent need for government intervention and longer-term supports.

There was "such a sense of hopelessness last night," CMA president Dr. Katharine Smart told reporters during a virtual briefing.

"It has been nearly two years since the first headlines of what we know now to be COVID-19, and since that time, health-care workers have been at the forefront," said CNA president Tim Guest.

"Our front-line workers are no longer on the brink of exhaustion," said Smart. "They are exhausted."

'No light at the end of this tunnel'

Smart said the current health-care crisis is unacceptable and called for immediate relief for health-care workers in COVID-19 hot zones.

"We need governments to listen to what front-line workers are telling them … 19 months into this pandemic, there is no light at the end of this tunnel." She said the onus is on all levels of government to help bring the health-care system "back to life."

Guest said there needs to be a multi-pronged solution to address current levels of burnout and staffing issues, provide long-term, sustainable mental health supports for health-care workers, and implement better data collection to determine staffing gaps.

Smart acknowledged efforts made to date, including mobilizing the Canadian Armed Forces, have been helpful. But she also stressed the need to remove jurisdictional issues around licensure, allowing workers to move between provinces more easily.

Canada needs a better plan going forward to manage its health-care resources, and has long trained too few physicians, Smart said.

"There are no easy fixes," she acknowledged.

The CMA and other organizations are already working together to lobby the government to create a national health workforce agency to better plan for the future of health human resources, Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, previously told the Canadian Press.

Alberta health-care workers now 'demoralized'

Smart said another key request from Canada's medical community is for various government officials to take ownership of their role in the current COVID-19 crisis.

"Health-care workers want our leaders to be honest," she said.

In hard-hit Alberta, which recently tightened some restrictions and has delayed or postponed around 8,500 surgeries to handle a surge of largely-unvaccinated COVID-19 patients, Guest said health-care teams are "extremely demoralized" while the overall system is on the brink of collapse.

Health-care workers have also shared stories of being afraid to walk in and out of work, over fears of being accosted by members of the public, he said.

"We just can't have those additional stresses."

REST IN POWER

Nadia Chaudhri, beloved Montreal neuroscientist with fans worldwide, has died
Verity Stevenson 7 hrs ago

© Submitted by Krista Byers-Heinlein Nadia Chaudhri, a Concordia University professor and neuroscientist who shared her palliative care journey online, has died. She was 43.

Nadia Chaudhri, a Montreal neuroscientist who gathered a worldwide following while sharing her journey in palliative care with ovarian cancer, has died. She was 43.

Chaudhri was renowned for creating scholarships for underrepresented young scientists and raising awareness about ovarian cancer amid her terminal diagnosis.

Her friend and colleague, Krista Byers-Heinlein, tweeted confirming her death Wednesday afternoon, saying Chaudhri had passed away the previous evening.


"She leaves behind her Sun and Moon, a loving extended family, colleagues and students, friends around the world, and so many others who have been touched by her and her story," Byers-Heinlein wrote, referring to Chaudhri's six-year-old son and husband, whom she called her Sun and Moon.

"Nadia wanted the end of her life to be marked with a celebration of everything she brought to the world, rather than a mourning of what we have lost."

Byers-Heinlein wrote that one of Chaudhri's final goals was to raise awareness about ovarian cancer.

Chaudhri garnered an international audience of more than 143,400 followers on Twitter. She wrote on the platform in September about how she had been treated for a urinary tract infection for months before receiving a diagnosis for advanced ovarian cancer in June 2020.

While Chaudhri's cancer had been discovered late, she wanted others to know about a screening tool developed by her doctor, Lucy Gilbert, who she saw after diagnosis. The test can help with earlier detection and determine a patient's possible predisposition to the disease.

Though Chaudhri shared the harsh realities of living with a terminal diagnosis — such as the angst she faced before telling her young son about it — she also shared pockets of wisdom and joy, including paintings she made, close-ups of flowers and pictures of her and her family.

CBC News wrote about Chaudhri's work to fundraise for under-represented students in palliative care last month.

Kristen Dunfield, an associate professor of psychology at Concordia, told CBC that Chaudhri had made her appreciate being an instructor more.

"I think that level of openness and honesty resonated with a lot of people. She was mid-career, thriving; she had this phenomenal lab and these great students. She has a young son and I think we can all resonate with the unfairness of cancer," Dunfield said.
'A force of nature'

Concordia University said Wednesday that Chaudhri's cause had raised $615,000 from 8,600 donors, a record for the university.

Concordia called the scholarship in Chaudhri's honour the Wingspan Award.

"Nadia was a force of nature. She was an incredibly talented researcher with a passion for teaching and student success matched only by her commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion," Concordia President Graham Carr said in a written statement Wednesday.

Chaudhri was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, and left at 17 to pursue a liberal arts degree at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania.

She told CBC in April that support from professors there encouraged her to pursue neuroscience.

According to Concordia, she became the first woman to receive the college's Williamson Medal, "awarded to a member of the senior class for their outstanding academic and extracurricular achievement."

Chaudhri's highly-cited research focused on the development of alcohol and drug addiction and led to the creation of her lab at Concordia.

Chaudhri said providing mentorship to students eventually became a crucial part of her career, and made her want to leave a legacy that would help promote young scientists from underrepresented backgrounds, as she once was.

"Her innovative research led to major discoveries in the field," Aaron Johnson, the chair of Concordia's Department of Psychology, said in a written statement.

"However, perhaps her greatest accomplishment was working with students in her lab and our psychology program."

Concordia promoted Chaudhri to the rank of full professor Sept. 9. The university will fly its flags at half-mast Thursday in her honour.