It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Australian Leader Smacks Down Ted Cruz Over COVID Rules: ‘We Don’t Need Your Lectures, Mate’
Andi Ortiz Mon, October 18, 2021,
Michael Gunner, chief minister of Australia’s Northern Territory, isn’t interested in Ted Cruz’s opinions when it comes to COVID-19 protocols. So on Sunday night, Gunner released a scathing statement clapping back at the Texas senator. For some context: On Wednesday, Cruz tweeted his disappointment in Australia’s COVID measures, specifically calling out a video of Gunner imposing new vaccine mandates in the territory. Gunner said in the video, “If your job includes interacting with members of the public, then you need to get the jab.”
In response, Cruz tweeted: “I love the Aussies. Their history of rugged independence is legendary; I’ve always said Australia is the Texas of the Pacific. The Covid tyranny of their current government is disgraceful & sad. Individual liberty matters. I stand with the people of #Australia.”
That really irked Gunner, who bit back hard on Sunday, noting he’s proud of how his constituents have handled COVID-19 — especially in comparison to a place like Texas.
“Here are some facts,” the Australian official wrote. “Nearly 70,000 Texans have tragically died from COVID. There have been zero deaths in the [Northern] Territory. Did you know that? Vaccination is so important here because we have vulnerable communities and the oldest continuous living culture on the planet to protect. Did you know that?”
Gunner added that the Northern Territory has “done whatever it takes” to (very successfully) mitigate the spread of COVID, and then shut Cruz down by calling out the senator’s own views on vaccinations.
“We don’t need your lectures, thanks mate,” Gunner wrote. “You know nothing about us. And if you stand against a life-saving vaccine, then you sure as hell don’t stand with Australia. I love Texas (go Longhorns), but when it comes to COVID, I’m glad we are nothing like you.”
See Gunner’s full tweet below.
Buoyed by pandemic boost to books, Frankfurt fair returns CANADA IS THE FEATURE COUNTRY
Issued on: 19/10/2021 -
The Frankfurt book fair, the world's largest, returns this week as an in-person event after going almost fully digital last year to curb the coronavirus spread
Arne Dedert POOL/AFP/File 3 min Listen to the article ADVERTISING
Frankfurt (AFP)
The Frankfurt book fair, the world's largest, opens its doors this week to a publishing industry in robust health after the pandemic boosted reading -- but supply chain concerns threaten to dampen the mood.
After going almost fully digital last year to curb the coronavirus spread, this year's fair is returning as an in-person event but will still be a more muted version of past editions.
Fewer international exhibitors and authors are descending on the western German city than before Covid, and much of the action will be online.
Fair director Juergen Boos, who will host the opening press ceremony on Tuesday, said "it's still not a normal book fair" but offered a chance for the industry to "reconnect".
It comes as the book business has been "doing pretty well over the past 18 months", he said, with people in many countries using the slower pace of life during lockdown to read more -- adolescents especially.
"Young people didn't just want to play computer games all day," Boos recently told reporters.
In the United States, printed book sales rose by more than eight percent in 2020 to record their best year in a decade, according to the NPD research group.
Growth was driven by teen categories but also adult non-fiction, as people turned to cookbooks and DIY books to pass the time at home.
In Germany, the European Union's largest book market, bookstores used the shutdowns to expand their online sales, leading to a 20-percent jump in internet revenues to 2.2 billion euros ($2.5 billion). Audio and e-books also saw double-digit growth.
- Christmas concerns -
Books "proved to be a particularly resilient and popular medium during the pandemic," Boos said.
But the news isn't all good. The book trade, with global revenues of around $100 billion annually, isn't immune to the worldwide shortages of raw materials and supply chain disruptions roiling national economies as they rebound from the coronavirus downturn.
With the crucial Christmas holiday season fast approaching, publishers are sounding the alarm about paper and cardboard shortages, bottlenecks at shipping ports and a lack of lorry drivers.
"I fear that this Christmas people cannot be sure of getting any book they want at short notice," Jonathan Beck, head of renowned German publishing house C.H. Beck, told the Handelsblatt financial daily. He also warned that books could become more expensive. - Atwood phoning in -
This week's Frankfurt gathering is the latest example of trade fairs stirring back to life, and comes after the German city of Munich welcomed 400,000 visitors to the IAA auto show in September.
Nevertheless, the pandemic will loom large over the Frankfurt fair.
Daily visitor numbers are capped at 25,000 and fairgoers must show proof of vaccination, a negative test or prove that they have recovered from Covid.
Masks must also be worn inside the conference centre and the aisles will be wider to avoid the usual shoulder-to-shoulder crowds at publishers' booths.
More than 1,500 exhibitors from more than 70 countries will be present, well below the 7,500 exhibitors from over 100 countries that came in 2019. Just 200 authors are travelling to Frankfurt.
Uncertainty about travel restrictions and virus concerns are keeping many large publishing houses and big-name writers away, particularly from the US, Asia and South America.
As a result, much of the networking and haggling over licensing and translation rights will be done on digital platforms.
Canada meanwhile is getting a second chance as guest of honour, after last year's Covid curbs upended the country's plans for the fair.
A delegation of Canadian authors including Michel Jean, Dany Laferriere and Michael Crummey will be taking part in events open to the general public.
But Canada's star author Margaret Atwood of "The Handmaid's Tale" fame, a Frankfurt regular in recent years, will only be appearing via video link.
The Frankfurt book fair, which runs until Sunday, is the world's oldest publishing trade event and dates back to the Middle Ages.
Lessons from Nuremberg, 75 years on Noelle Swan Mon, October 18, 2021,
Philippe Sands is on a journey through history, one that has particular resonance this year as the world marks the 75th anniversary of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany.
As a human rights lawyer and a legal scholar, he traces his work directly to those trials as the birth of international law.
More personally, his odyssey has taken him through his own Jewish family’s reckoning with the Holocaust – and brought him to another man’s struggle to come to terms with his father’s legacy as a Nazi governor.
Growing up, Mr. Sands knew he was descended from Holocaust survivors and that his mother had been a hidden child, sheltered by sympathetic Christians. But his grandfather never discussed this period with him.
So as an adult, Mr. Sands turned to history books, and later to his own research, to better understand what it had been like to live under the Nazi regime.
“It was an act of identity, a way of understanding my grandfather better as a way of knowing myself better,” he says during an online discussion commemorating the Nuremberg trials hosted by Temple Beth El in Boca Raton, Florida, and American Friends of the Hebrew University.
This quest brought him to another family, that of Otto von Wächter, a high-ranking member of the SS who was indicted for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews but ultimately escaped international justice.
Just as Mr. Sands was trying to better understand his family history, Horst von Wächter, Otto’s son, was also grappling with his family’s past. Mr. Sands found he could relate, and says he even came to like Mr. Wächter, though he struggles with Mr. Wächter’s tendency to sanitize his Nazi father’s culpability.
Despite their differences, the two men continued to correspond.
Mr. Wächter expressed frustration that others labeled him a “new kind of Nazi” because he felt compelled “to find the good in my father.” “How can I prove I’m not a Nazi?” he asked.
Mr. Sands suggested donating his father’s photos, letters, and documents to a museum. And so Mr. Wächter donated all 10,000 pages to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “For the first time we have a detailed account of what happened in the period of May 1945-July 1949,” because of that donation, Mr. Sands says.
Understanding this period after World War II is just as important as documenting the atrocities of the Holocaust itself, Mr. Sands says.
The Nuremberg trials brought some closure to a horrific period of human history. But they also represented the beginning of a new international order and human rights. They gave the world a shared set of international principles for warfare that forbade crimes against humanity and genocide, both terms coined during the proceedings.
“People are beginning to realize that what happened in 1945 was nothing short of revolutionary,” Mr. Sands says. “We have a big responsibility to carry the torch going forward.”
Granderson: Looking for opposing perspectives on the Holocaust? Try Texas
LZ Granderson Sat, October 16, 2021 Texas state lawmakers reconvened for a special session in late September.
(Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)
Can you think of an opposing view on the Holocaust that isn’t antisemitic? Evidently, a school administrator in Texas seems to think so.
Gina Peddy, the executive director of curriculum and instruction for the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, was caught on an audio recording telling teachers to “make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives."
I hope she wasn’t proposing that teachers supply students with neo-Nazi propaganda.
THE OPPOSING PERSPECTIVE ON THE HOLOCAUST
This all started with Republican lawmakers in Texas looking for ways to have teachers talk about American history without making white people look bad. I kid you not.
When hysteria over critical race theory became all the rage in the past year, the Texas Legislature came up with House Bill 3979 — a great whitewashing effort that instructs teachers who choose “to discuss widely debated and currently controversial issues” to “explore such issues from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.”
Of course, before the CRT “threat,” Texas conservatives were already upset because the state’s new history standards point out that slavery played “the central role” in the Civil War — 155 years after the end of the Civil War. Until the 2019-2020 school year, students were taught the war was caused by sectionalism and state’s rights, with slavery merely a third factor.
The political sanitizing got a booster shot with the passage of HB 3979, which prohibits any teacher from being trained on issues “that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or blame on the basis of race or sex.” Can you think of a way to talk about American slavery without the role of race? How do you have an intelligent discussion about women’s suffrage without addressing the role of men? You don’t.
Texas state Sen. Kelly Hancock, a Republican, immediately took to Twitter to blame Peddy for her statement: “School administrators should know the difference between factual historical events and fiction,” he wrote, adding that “no legislation is suggesting the action this administrator is promoting.” Seems like Hancock didn’t read HB 3979 at all.
Now, because this unnecessary law was created to prevent educators from teaching students about systemic racism, it’s quite possible Texas Republicans didn’t consider how it could apply to other issues. In other words, maybe getting neo-Nazi propaganda in the school library to balance out the Holocaust wasn’t part of the plan.
Still, I’m sure the KKK would love to circulate some pamphlets showing all the good that came from discriminating against Black people in education, housing, banking, employment, healthcare, criminal justice, to name a few issues. You know, just offering “other perspectives.”
Maybe if one of your state’s claims to fame is being the last in the nation to tell enslaved people that they’re free, suppressing information about race should not be a 2021 agenda item.
In apologizing for the incident, Supt. Lane Ledbetter of the Carroll Independent School District, said Peddy’s comments “were in no way to convey that the Holocaust was anything less than a terrible event in history” and “we recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust.”
But the thing is, there are two sides — humanity versus Hitler. Peddy’s comments were reprehensible, but the confusion is not surprising given the purpose of HB 3979, which is to provide cover for those who committed heinous acts while erasing the long-standing ramifications of those acts.
Of course, doing so requires that we ignore certain “factual historical events,” to borrow Hancock’s words. Things like Texas’ declaration of secession in 1861, which, in part, stated: “We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”
Seems pretty racist to me. I can see why many Republican lawmakers don’t want to talk about it. At least, not factually.
School administrator's compassionless comments on Holocaust invalidate pain of generations
Fern Schumer Chapman Mon, October 18, 2021,
Children of Holocaust survivors and refugees felt a knife twist in their backs on learning that Gina Peddy, a school administrator with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, recently advised teachers that they are now required to provide students books with “opposing ... perspectives” when discussing the Holocaust.
The school district soon backtracked, but it’s too late. The compassionless, clueless comments of this bureaucrat challenged the veracity of the lived experiences of the second generation. She invalidated what we have seen with our own eyes, known in our yearning hearts and felt throughout our homes and communities all over America.
Our Holocaust parents’ pain was palpable. Like a second pulse, their sorrows beat within all of us. To replace and rebuild some of what they had lost, survivors and refugees relied on us – their memorial children – sometimes going so far as to name us after relatives murdered by Nazis. In this photo taken Saturday, March 21, 2015, visitors look at portraits of victims at the Holocaust Museum in the town of Kalavryta, western Greece. The Nazis deported Greece's Jews to death camps in Poland.
Sadly, some Holocaust parents had little sense of how to love a child, having lost their own nurturing role models at a young age. Others clung desperately to their children, never allowing them to individuate and create their own lives. Some parents even inverted the parent-child relationship, assigning a son or daughter the role of becoming the parent the survivor lost at a young age.
In a disturbing transmission of trauma, the past was a presence suffusing us and our parents as we lived and relived all they had suffered, lost and endured. Holocaust survivors’ grief and guilt shaped their children’s consciousness, a backdrop framing each conversation and every act of our shared lives. We had not known their experiences directly, but we felt them intimately, indirectly. Some scientists have found that our genes, as the children of trauma survivors, have literally been remapped by the profound shock our parents suffered.
The Nazi genocide of the Jewish people is the most thoroughly documented mass murder in human history. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has an enormous amount of material available, free of charge, to educators, students and the public. Thousands of nonfiction books and memoirs in dozens of languages have been written on this topic.
Yet somehow, a school administrator in Texas has managed to speak as if she's unaware of this abundance of information. Perhaps she is intimidated by citizens who want to undermine Holocaust education. These statements amount to sanctioning anti-Jewish bigotry, just as critics of education about slavery or the eradication of Indigenous peoples cloak their racism in demands for “fairness.”
This incident follows one during which a teacher drew a reprimand for keeping an anti-racism book in her classroom. During a training seminar, Peddy cited a new Texas law requiring teachers to provide multiple perspectives on controversial topics.
She directed teachers to “make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”
“How do you oppose the Holocaust?” a teacher asked incredulously.
“Believe me,” Peddy replied, “that’s come up.”
It is ludicrous even to suggest that an “opposing” view exists on the topic of mass murder. The "other perspectives” here aren’t condemnation of mass murder. They’re denial that the Holocaust ever occurred.
In fact, the enormity of the evil and its horrific manifestations frighten many educators. The subject is so awash in pain, sadness and wrongdoing that even sensitive educators may shy away.
Yet this evades a teacher’s duty to history and to students. Beyond explaining the objective reality of the Holocaust, teachers can and do use its example to impart a serious, vital understanding of social forces. This mission includes nurturing students’ empathy and compassion. Learning about the Holocaust cultivates an appropriate outrage at wrongs – helping youngsters develop a voice to speak out against bullying, exclusion and prejudice.
Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said, “Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.”
We are living in a deeply dislocating moment as elderly Holocaust survivors pass away, robbing us of the opportunity to hear their stories firsthand. My mother, who escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 as an unaccompanied minor refugee, in recent years overcame decades of silence and found the courage to share her experiences with middle- and high-school students. To her surprise and relief, she discovered that telling her story is a healing act.
Watching my mother interact with captivated students was transformative – for her, for the students and for me. Many students wrote her personal notes about what the experience meant to them, saying that she had brought this history to life. Some students promised to become her voice in the future.
Those who have heard Holocaust survivors and refugees tell their stories will never forget. When students who have had this privileged educational experience become adults, they will be less likely to tolerate misguided school administrators who try to blur the truth.
Neither will the second generation. Our families were annihilated. We won’t allow any “opposing ... perspectives” to slash at the fragments that remain. To do so denies one of history’s worst mass murders, but also our own lived experiences and family stories.
Take it from a former history teacher: Southlake must teach facts of the Holocaust
Star-Telegram Sun, October 17, 2021,
Don’t downplay the Holocaust
Southlake school officials just can’t keep from tripping over themselves and putting the district continuously in the national spotlight. The story about an executive director of curriculum and instruction telling teachers to provide opposing perspectives if they have books about the Holocaust is only outlandish (Oct. 15, 1A, “Southlake teachers told books about Holocaust need opposing views”).
The comment gives the stamp of approval to downplay or deny it ever happened. If not an attempt to whitewash history, it is nothing short of an ignorant understanding by the administrator.
I’m a former world history teacher, and students left my class every year knowing facts and details about the Holocaust. There was never any question in their minds about what happened and how it was important to not only never forget, but to never let it happen again.
- Brian E. Rosson, Fort Worth
Sting operation is such a relief
On the sting operation focusing on contributors to “the forces of evil” — adult men and some teenagers attempting to pay for sex — at least six agencies were involved in this roundup (Oct. 12, 1A, “Authorities arrest 115 men on suspicion of soliciting prostitution”). Thanks to Gov. Greg Abbott and our Legislature, these suspects can now be charged with felonies.
This will continue as an ongoing operation, so it’s nice to know that our taxpayer money is being judiciously spent and that our local war against the “oldest profession” is under way. Perhaps we would be even better served if a bounty were available for informants who snitch on anyone considering this heinous act.
- David N. Snider, Arlington
Let’s encourage people to read
The Editorial Board says that we could use more books for school libraries and that we must find ways to raise students’ reading levels (Sept. 28, 7A, “Want more Fort Worth kids to read? Spend more on school libraries. This is not hard”).
This was a problem before COVID-19. We cannot force people to read, but we can at least encourage them. Make sure they try books a little above their reading level so they are challenging themselves.
A beginning reader should spend at least 20 minutes a day reading to or with someone. One way to get children interested in reading is to have parents read to them before they get to grade school. It’s time to encourage young students to improve their reading.
- Ethan Koehne, Haltom City
New low for Pence, Haley
I’ve discovered recently that Mike Pence and Nikki Haley would be tremendous limbo stick contestants. Surely no one else could stoop as low as they have in kissing up to Donald Trump, ostensibly to curry favor with his followers. They have set a new low bar.
- George Aldridge, Arlington
Alberta referendum puts embattled premier in spotlight
THE RESULTS OF THIS AND THE SENATOR ELECTION WILL BE RELEASED OCT 26
FILE PHOTO: Alberta Premier Jason Kenney speaks during a news conference after meeting with Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Parliament Hill in Ottawa
Nia Williams Mon, October 18, 2021
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Alberta held a referendum on Monday asking whether Canada should remove a commitment to redistribute wealth among provinces from its constitution, but the vote envisioned by Premier Jason Kenney as a tool to gain leverage with Ottawa could backfire against the deeply unpopular leader.
The nonbinding referendum on equalization payments fulfills Kenney's 2019 election promise to stand up for Canada's main oil-producing province. But it comes as Alberta relies on help from other jurisdictions to tackle a deadly fourth wave of COVID-19 and Kenney faces calls to resign for his handling of the pandemic.
The vote taps into a refrain among core supporters of Kenney's United Conservative Party (UCP) - that Alberta, whose oil sands make Canada the world's fourth-largest crude producer, is unfairly treated by other provinces despite helping power the Canadian economy.
Equalization payments are enshrined in the Canadian constitution as a way of addressing fiscal disparities among the 10 provinces. They are a long-standing grievance in Alberta, and opposition has grown in recent years as volatile oil prices rocked the provincial economy.
Critics say it is unfair that Alberta contributes billions to dollars to equalization every year, while some provincial governments benefiting from the system oppose the development of crude export pipelines that boost Alberta government revenues.
A poll last week from the University of Alberta showed 43% of Albertans support removing equalization from the constitution. But the same poll showed the "no" camp gaining ground and some political scientists warn Kenney's unpopularity means the referendum may become a proxy vote on his leadership.
"This referendum is now putting Kenney's leadership on the line. He has a lot to lose," said Jared Wesley, political science professor at the University of Alberta.
Kenney faces a leadership review in the spring, which was brought forward from next autumn to stave off revolt within the UCP caucus. Many Albertans are furious with Kenney for failing to bring in stronger public health measures over the summer when COVID-19 cases first started to rise in the western Canadian province.
In a social media post on Sunday, Kenney said a resounding "yes" to ditching equalization would give him a strong mandate to negotiate on behalf of Alberta, although the vote alone will not halt equalization because it is embedded in the constitution.
"The referendum is a chance for Alberta to say 'yes' to our request for a fair deal," Kenney said.
The referendum question is attached to municipal elections taking place across Alberta, and the results will be announced on Oct. 26.
'BACK WAY INTO NEGOTIATIONS'
Equalization, which started as a federal program in the late 1950s, transfers federal tax dollars collected from "donor" provinces to those whose ability to raise revenues falls below the national average.
Alberta was an equalization recipient in the mid-1960s, but has since been a donor and currently contributes about C$11 billion-C$12 billion a year. Four other provinces are currently donors, but among them, only Saskatchewan, another resource-rich, conservative-leaning western province, has publicly considered a referendum on the issue.
The referendum is a key part of Kenney's "Fight Back" strategy, in which he promised voters he would stand up for Alberta's oil and gas industry, the cornerstone of the provincial economy.
"He is using the constitution as a back way into negotiations over oil and gas legislation that Alberta is not happy with," said Duane Bratt, a political science professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
While the "yes" camp is expected to win Monday's vote, what happens next will depend on how other premiers across Canada and the federal government negotiate with Alberta.
One risk to Kenney is that he could win the referendum but still fail to win concessions from the rest of Canada, which may reinvigorate calls among some right-wing Albertans for the province to leave the federation, Bratt said.
Part of the reason Kenney first promised the referendum was to appease the separatist movement on the conservative right that could leach support from the UCP.
"This is all about generating anger in Alberta and I don't think he has fully thought about all the consequences of doing that," Bratt added.
(Reporting by Nia Williams; Editing by Peter Cooney)
CLASS WAR
Walgreens cited shoplifting as rationale for closing 5 stores in San Francisco, but local officials, data, and experts cast doubt on that explanation
Morgan Keith
Customers walk by products locked in security cabinets at a Walgreens store that is set to be closed in the coming weeks on October 13, 2021 in San Francisco, California. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Walgreens said it's closing some San Francisco stores because of an increase in retail theft.
Police data obtained by the Chronicle did not show high rates of shoplifting reports at the closing stores.
One expert said people moving out of the city during the pandemic could've hurt Walgreens' business.
Walgreens announced Tuesday it would be closing five of its San Francisco locations due to "organized retail crime," but police department data, local officials, and policy experts are casting doubt on that reasoning, according to a report published by the San Francisco Chronicle on Saturday.
While the report said the chain has experienced retail theft, other factors like the COVID-19 pandemic and oversaturation of stores were cited as potential factors behind the decision to close the stores.
Walgreens spokesperson Phil Caruso said retail theft across its San Francisco locations has increased in the past few months to five times the chain's average, SFGate reported.
However, San Francisco Police Department data obtained by the Chronicle contradicts Walgreens' claims, with one of the stores slated to close reporting only 23 shoplifting incidents since 2018. Some incidents of shoplifting likely go unreported, but the closing stores had on average less than two shoplifting reports per month since 2018.
"Organized retail crime continues to be a challenge facing retailers across San Francisco, and we are not immune to that," Caruso told SFGate. "During this time to help combat this issue, we increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city to 46 times our chain average in an effort to provide a safe environment."
San Francisco Mayor London Breed pushed back against Walgreens' stated reasoning for closing the stores.
"They are saying (shoplifting is) the primary reason, but I also think when a place is not generating revenue, and when they're saturated - SF has a lot of Walgreens locations all over the city - so I do think that there are other factors that come into play," she told reporters last week.
Dean Preston, supervisor of San Francisco's 5th district, which will be impacted by a store closure, said the pharmacy chain is "abandoning the community" and has "long planned to close stores," the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
"Odd that some are so offended that I would suggest that a massive corporate chain might be closing retail locations for the exact reason they told investors they would close locations, rather than the reasons stated in their external PR," Preston said in a tweet on Friday.
In a 2019 Security and Exchange Commission filing, Walgreens announced it would launch a "Transformational Cost Management Program" that would shutter 200 stores in the US in order to save $1.5 billion in annual expenses by 2022.
A May study published by Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom found 15% of residents left San Francisco during the pandemic and have not returned, which he told the Chronicle could explain Walgreens' waning customer base in the city.
Walgreens did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
EXXON UNION BUSTING Exxon tells Texas refinery workers lockout will end if contract approved or union removed
FILE PHOTO: Exxon Mobil Beaumont locks out refinery workers Erwin Seba Sun, October 17, 2021,
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp on Sunday told workers at its Beaumont, Texas, refinery their six-month lockout will end if they ratify the company's contract offer or remove the United Steelworkers union (USW) as their representative.
"As we have told the Union, the conditions which would end the lockout remain the same: the company will end the lockout when we have a signed, ratified agreement," Exxon said in a message posted on-line.
"This has not changed, and anything said to the contrary is untrue. Additionally, if employees were to decertify, the company would return employees to work."
Decertification is the process to remove a union from representing employees at a given location. The U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is reviewing a petition signed by at least 30% of the locked-out workers that could lead to a vote to decertify USW Local 13-243 in Beaumont as their representative. No date for a vote has been set.
Workers at the 369,024 barrel-per-day (bpd) Beaumont refinery and adjoining lubricant oil plant, which makes Mobil 1 motor oil, are scheduled to vote on Tuesday on the company's contract offer.
Bryan Gross, USW international representative, said the company chose to begin the lockout on May 1.
"The company asked, 'What has the union done?' The union has helped with groceries, assisted with bills, and is now providing health insurance for all of the 'world-class employees' at a multi-billion dollar oil company put on the street instead of bargaining in good faith for a fair contract," Gross said on Sunday.
The USW has urged workers at the refinery to reject the contract offer in Tuesday's vote.
The union filled a complaint with the NLRB in June alleging the purpose of the lockout was to remove the union.
Exxon said it began the lockout to prevent the disruption of a possible strike.
(Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
'Hours of my life I'm never going to get back': As offices reopen, workers resist bringing back the commute
Charisse Jones, USA TODAY
When Wendy White, 57, quit her job in March, a key reason was her company's insistence employees return to the office in the midst of a pandemic.
White, the single mother of an 11-year-old son, had no child care options and was fearful of taking public transportation while COVID-19 was spreading. Now she is considering two job offers, one that would allow her to continue working remotely with occasional travel, and another in New York City, less than twenty-five miles from her Madison, New Jersey home.
"The commute plays so heavily into my decision,'' says White, adding she will probably take the remote position. "The job in New York would probably be easier, but I don’t want to have to commute four hours a day ... I've commuted in and out of Manhattan for the better part of 30 years, so I'm just kind of done.''
As many offices reopen after being shuttered during the COVID-19 health crisis, roughly 40% of workers say they want to continue working remotely according to a Harris Poll survey for USA TODAY. And for some, not having to commute on crowded trains, slow-moving buses, or in their cars, is one of the biggest perks of working from home.
In a survey of 2,100 remote workers taken between March and April, 84% said shedding their commute was the most significant benefit of working outside the office, while 58% said they would seek a new job if they couldn't continue doing their current job remotely, according to FlexJobs, a career service specializing in remote and flexible work.
"They see commuting as wasting their time and adding to their stress levels when they can do their jobs really well from home, avoid the stress caused by the daily grinding commute, and find more time for their families, all of which leads to improved mental health," Brie Reynolds, FlexJobs' career development manager, said in an email.
Commuting can be costly
Upwork, an online freelancing platform, says that working remotely during the pandemic saved many Americans not only time but money.
Between March and August of last year, employees who drove to their jobs before the pandemic and then began to work from home saved $758 million per day overall, for a total of $90 billion, according to an Upwork study.
The study's calculations were based on consumer survey data on commute times per day gathered from a range of sources, including AAA, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the National Household Travel Survey. The total savings included estimates of personal savings on gas, broader savings due to reduced risk of accidents, and how individual households valued an hour of their time.
In 2018 the average commuter spent 54.2 minutes getting back and forth to work each day, or 4.6 hours a week, according to the Upwork report.
Survey respondents who were able to cut out their commute starting in mid-March and work from home saved nearly 50 minutes a day on average, or more than four days' worth of time over a roughly five-month period.
“The commute to work is extremely costly both to households and to society, and remote work has helped reduce that cost significantly,'' says Adam Ozimek, Upwork's chief economist.
But as businesses ramp up in the wake of the pandemic's widespread shutdowns, many employers want workers back on-site because they believe it will boost productivity and profits.
Now, employers are grappling with a historic labor shortage as they try to match skill sets with open positions, and workers hold out for jobs that offer better pay and stronger benefits, and more flexibility.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.3 million people - or 2.9% of the nation's labor force - quit their jobs in August, the highest ever reported by the BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey series.
Flexibility is the top reason workers are quitting, whether they want to work remotely or to have more relaxed start times, says Andy Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement company.
Amtrak makes a station stop at Alexandria, Virginia, on Aug. 7, 2016.
“Companies that have tried to go back to 9 to 5, five days a week, really run into a resistant group of workers,'' says Challenger, adding that hesitation is strongest among working parents with young children who are dealing with unpredictable child care and school schedules. "There's definitely some pushback.''
While having a better work-life balance is the main goal for many workers who want less rigid work requirements, commuting is also a concern, Challenger says.
“I think certainly a huge swath of American workers got used to a life without a commute,'' Challenger says, "and a reversal of that feels really much more difficult than it did two years ago.''
'It's something I endure'
White lives just 23 miles from Manhattan. But when she commuted to work before the pandemic, it took at least one hour and 45 minutes, including the ten minutes spent wading through the crowds at Penn Station as she made her way to the street.
"I’ve been doing It for years and it’s taken hours of my life that I’m never going to get back,‘’ White says of her commute.
Evan Terwilliger, 31, a senior faculty support specialist at Harvard Business School, was looking for a new position last March. “Then the world turned upside down and like many folks, I sheltered-in-job,’’ he says.
Terwilliger was able to work remotely and leave behind his 30 to 45-minute rush-hour commute to Cambridge from his home in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
Now, he’s back on campus three days a week, and as he resumes his job search, being able to work remotely full time is a priority.
Evan Terwilliger says that he would like to work remotely full time when he finds a new job.
“It’s something I endure,’’ he said of his current drive back and forth to the university. "I feel more productive when I don’t have that commute. That commute zaps energy …It’s like you’re doing (another) job.’’
Benefits on the other side of the commute
Given the current competition for workers, employers may want to accommodate employees who ask to keep working remotely, or at the very least, allow them to work from home part of the week if it won't negatively impact the business, says Theresa Adams, senior HR knowledge advisor for the Society for Human Resource Management
If commuting is a particular concern, some workers’ schedules can be coordinated around traffic patterns, she says. For instance, they might come in on Monday and Friday, if that’s when traffic tends to be lighter.
“There is a major war for talent now so retaining employees is a major goal for employers,’’ Adams says.
The consulting firm PwC recently announced that its 40,000 client services workers, the majority of its staff, can choose to work remotely for good.
In addition to meeting the needs of current employees, such flexibility can make the company more appealing to prospective hires in a tight labor market, says Yolanda Seals-Coffield, PwC's deputy people leader.
"We knew the future of work was going to look different,'' she says, "so as we thought about coming out of the pandemic, and looking at what was going on in the job market, it became clear that people wanted choice.”
Commuting, however, wasn't a particular concern voiced by PwC's employees, she says. And she added that many staffers are eager to return to the office.
"A lot of our people are anxious to get back ... and are looking forward to collaborating with colleagues in person, so we expect many of our client service staff will be back on site,'' she says. "But we're also aware some people will want or need to remain virtual ... We'll see in the coming months how the numbers actually play out.''
Adams of SHRM agreed that employers may want to remind their staff of the benefits of being in the office.
"Certainly there are silver linings in being in person ... that people have possibly forgotten after working from home for so long,'' Adams says. "You get to develop personal relationships at work. You have face-to-face contact... and office parties. And all those things can be a motivator to return to the office.''
Challenger says there also appears to be a generational divide between workers who want to work remotely and those who want to be back on site.
"I’ve talked to workers that are in the later stage of their career, and there’s a real nostalgia for coming into the office and a nostalgia for the commute,'' he says, adding that some enjoy having time in the car or on public transportation to listen to music or read a book.
Terwilliger says he knows some people see their commute as a welcome way to shift in or out of work mode.
"For some folks having that commute benefits them,'' he says, "but I think a majority of folks looking for remote work in the future say, 'Nah. I can ... keep a separation between home and work and I don’t need a drive to do that.’’
Tiffany Chen had always wanted to be a clothing designer. When she was an undergraduate studying fashion at New York City’s Parsons School of Design, she dreamed of having her own clothing line. “I was like, ‘Oh, it'd be nice to have my own line someday and sell out Barneys,’” she said on a recent Tuesday morning over coffee at Mah-Ze-Dahr bakery in Greenwich Village. “[But] now that we saw what happened with Barneys, maybe it was a good thing it didn't work out that way.”
The path seemed simple enough: She would work for someone and gain the necessary knowledge and experience. But over time, her passion diminished. “It’s a lot of work to [start a clothing line] all on your own, and it’s very hard to enter the industry on your own as well,” she said. She’s a first-generation Taiwanese American who was raised to believe that hard work and making your own way are “admirable.” Though her parents wholeheartedly backed her dreams, they expected her to be able to take care of herself financially. “They were very much of the mindset [that] once you’re an adult, we’re not going to support you anymore,” she told me. “You’re kind of on your own. I agree with them. I think that’s the way it should be.” “Less money does come with its own stresses, but I would rather deal with those than the stresses of the previous work environment.”
Chen, who is 30, worked in the fashion industry for two years, but the long hours and the questionable ethics of the work clashed with her personal ideals. Working for a company that created cheap attire and emphasized ever-changing style trends became unsustainable. “I care a lot about the current ongoing climate and environmental crisis, and I definitely believe fashion has [played] a huge part in that,” she told me. “For budget reasons and ease, we would choose the cheapest materials possible in order to produce the garments.” So she quit this past May. She now brings in between $30,000 to $40,000 a year as a freelance photographer, which she said is close to what she earned when she began her career in fashion. It’s not much, but it’s “survivable,” she told me. She still lives alone, in the same apartment, and is much more conscious of her spending now. She’s bought health insurance through the Affordable Care Act and cooks with friends instead of going out. “Less money does come with its own stresses, but I would rather deal with those than the stresses of the previous work environment,” she told me.
And she’s not the only person who feels this way. In a mass exit dubbed the “Great Resignation” by psychologist Anthony Klotz, nearly 4 million people left jobs this past June, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Another 4 million left in July, the fourth consecutive month of such high departure rates. In August, 4.3 million people left their jobs, a record number, according to CNBC. Labor economist Julia Pollak, who works for ZipRecruiter, told me that in normal times, “there are typically 3.5 million people quitting a job any month … That’s a substantially higher number, and employers are really feeling it.” Karin Kimbrough, chief economist at LinkedIn, told me in a recent interview that the “social contract [of] work is being rewritten,” and the balance of power that exists between employer and employee “is shifting towards the worker.”
Her team has seen people leave one job in favor of something better — they’ve deemed this time of “unprecedented” change the “Great Reshuffle.” “We can see when people change from Job A to Job B, and what we're seeing is that these transition rates are well above the prepandemic levels,” she said. According to Kimbrough, there are several industries in flux because of worker shortages, including healthcare, transportation, and logistics, which can encompass “everything from truck drivers to warehouse inventory to the people managing supply chains, which we know are, by the way, a big deal because supply chains are bottled up.”
With so many American workers imagining a new relationship to their careers, I set out to talk to people who either had already quit or were planning to quit their jobs. Hundreds of responses to a BuzzFeed News callout flooded in. The common theme among respondents was that they had all reached a tipping point where the job that they had became much more emotionally and, sometimes, physically taxing. Some people I spoke to quit their jobs entirely while others opted for freelance work so they could exert more control over their lives.
Amber*, 30, lives in North Carolina, near the Outer Banks. In the last year, she has quit three restaurant jobs. (According to Department of Labor statistics, many of the employees who have quit their jobs recently worked in the food service and hospitality industries.) “I was always treated like I was disposable,” she told me during a phone call in early September. The first workplace she left was a brewery. She had worked there as a server for “about a year,” but quit because she had to wait tables outside where it was “really hot out and really miserable.” She left and later landed a new gig at a traditional dine-in restaurant, where she was under the assumption that she would be a server. But she was soon required to take on hosting and bussing duties instead, which meant making $10 an hour instead of $400 a night during the summer season. In a follow-up email, Amber told me that the establishment’s “reasoning was that they were just too short-staffed to accommodate that demand and that everyone had to pick up hosting [and] bussing duties.” So she left to work as a cashier at a juicery, where she “did a little bit of everything,” but the owner “didn’t want to pay taxes.” This put Amber in a bind because she wants to buy a house someday, which would require documents showing her current employment. “It makes it really difficult if I look like I'm on unemployment,” she said.
She feels like her labor isn’t valued and employers have sometimes explicitly said as much, she told me. “I'm constantly having the fact that I'm replaceable just being shoved in my face. If I felt like I mattered, I would care more. I would do a better job,” she said. Because of her difficulty in finding stable work, Amber said she has “lost a lot of respect” for many jobs. “I would love to work for a place I was loyal to, but I don't think that that exists anymore,” she said. For now, the future is uncertain. She’s back to waitressing again, this time at a new restaurant, and is “just taking it day by day,” she told me. “Some days I get almost scared, but for the most part I’m grateful for everything and I know it will all be fine.”
Taiece, a 27-year-old living in Pittsburgh who chose to be identified only by her first name, had been working as an assistant general manager at a craft brewery for two years. In a way, it was like a dozen different jobs in one. “I could realistically be doing anything from trying to catch a trapped bird in our warehouse to pulling weeds in preparation for a 150-person wedding,” she said. She also hired and fired people, trained new employees, orchestrated the weekly schedule, helped plan release dates and branding for new products, and managed the business’s social media. “I'm constantly having the fact that I'm replaceable just being shoved in my face.”
The role took its toll. Staff reductions during the height of the pandemic meant the company went from a 12-person management team to a trio. Taiece was “promoted out of sheer necessity,” and her role at the company “changed several times.” She discovered that there were significant pay disparities. The person who previously held her position, she told me, made $45,000 — $10,000 more than Taiece said she was making at the time, a frustrating yet common occurrence for working-class Black women. Then, while on medical leave for two weeks due to a condition that rendered her physically unable to perform her job, the brewery hired someone to fulfill her tasks. Taiece said the new hire didn’t have adequate experience and was also hired permanently, making the same amount of money as her even though the company purportedly had no money to give Taiece a raise. “That was one of the most sickening blows I could have ever imagined,” she said. “That was the moment that I decided I was not going back to that job.”
Taiece, who studied graphic design in college, has now become a freelance graphic designer. She’s making enough to live on but did receive unemployment insurance, about $350 a week, while she was underemployed. Talking about her current work, she said, “You sell a $500 website, and then you sell a $1,200 branding suite, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, that’s my rent for the month plus enough money to pay all my bills and have money left over.’”
With her freelance design and branding company “thriving,” her decision to stand on her own has been “reassuring,” she said. “I am so much happier and I feel so much freer,” she said. She described her relationship with her former workplace as toxic. “I’m not someone who cries. I'm not someone who raises my voice. I don't get angry. I don't really do the intense swinging pendulum of emotional responses to things, but I found myself being angry and lashing out at people that I care about or being so much more quick to cry or to feel vulnerable than I have ever experienced. And I realized it was because a lot of my life became centered around that place,” she said. “I needed to step away from that in order to be able to reevaluate my position in life. I expect so much less from myself, and that's OK.” “I am so much happier and I feel so much freer.”
Eric*, a 28-year-old self-proclaimed workaholic, recently quit his job as a program manager at a tech startup in San Francisco. (Eric declined to give his last name to protect his privacy.) He understands that it’s a privilege to quit a white-collar job and said he knows he can get another job in a few months because of his network. But he’s become disillusioned with the industry and wants to “recalibrate my priorities, my lifestyle, my health, and be more present for myself.” Though his job paid $100,000 annually, it was demanding. Each week, there were 16 hours of meetings at a minimum, and because he was still working from home, office hours often bled into personal time. Though he liked his colleagues, he realized he was no longer “growing or learning” in his profession, “and the demands became too great.” Setting himself a short-term budget of $4,000 a month to cover living expenses, the jaded tech worker plans to tap into creative pursuits — “take a pottery class, painting class, learn how to play the guitar, you know, go on dates” — while unemployed. “Now I can reclaim that time for myself,” he said.
When I spoke with Barbara, a 61-year-old former truck driver — “off and on since 1981” — who now lives in New Mexico, she told me about how her morning started. “I was at the Grand Canyon this morning watching the sun come up,” she said. “And now I’m getting ready to go through Las Vegas and go over Hoover Dam, and then I’m gonna drive through Yosemite.” A Californian for most of her life, Barbara told me she had never been to the famed national park, but since quitting her job in May, she has been taking in the country’s natural beauty. “My thing is, everyone should be paid a fair wage so that [they] would want to go back to work.”
She used to haul lumber from Eureka, California, to the Bay Area. Barbara told me she worked every day, usually 15 hours, traveling more than 550 miles each trip. When drivers started returning to the road after a pandemic lull — around November 2020, she recalled — the experience became much more stressful. “I literally almost got in an accident every single day because people were just crazy, and rude and obnoxious,” she said. As someone who used to wake up at 3 a.m. to start her days, she finally got fed up and decided to quit. The world of trucking was male-dominated, and she found it had become so politicized it was hard to have a conversation with anyone, she told me. “Everything became so divisive out here,” explained Barbara, who identifies as a liberal. “A lot of truck drivers are conservative, [and] I felt like I just couldn't be who I was. I couldn't say anything because I didn't want people not to like me anymore. The divide in the last four years just became worse and worse and worse, and that is another reason I decided to quit. I just felt like I couldn't be my authentic self,” she said. There were also growing concerns about supply chain issues. In a few short months, she noticed the price of lumber tick up, which would have meant fewer trips for Barbara. She ultimately decided to get out of the industry before the problem became worse.
Barbara rents out her home in Ukiah, California, which she said brings in $700 a month, and she sold her truck and trailer for an additional $80,000. She now lives in a one-bedroom casita on her brother’s land in Santa Fe for free in exchange for “a little bit of work trade” like helping him tend to the property they live on. “I ended up doing well. However, I quit everything. I quit my life,” she said. Inspired by the nomad movement after her husband died last year of pancreatic cancer, she often travels with her pets, a dog named Girl and a cat named Bella. She’s supportive of the Great Resignation. “I think it’s great,” she said. “I have a Republican brother and I have another friend that’s Republican, and they’re always complaining that the people on unemployment need to go back and work. My thing is, everyone should be paid a fair wage so that [they] would want to go back to work.”
Employers now face the challenge of figuring out how to retain talent. Some employers are attempting to lure employees back by giving them more money. For example, some warehouse employers, according to Pollak, the ZipRecruiter labor economist, have chosen to give signing bonuses. “If you're making $15 an hour, getting that signing bonus of $1,000 is equivalent to moving to a job that pays $22 an hour,” Pollak said. “[It’s] a substantial change in your compensation. This is a big deal. It's very attractive to workers, especially in these low-wage jobs.”
Kimbrough, the LinkedIn chief economist, said that white-collar and blue-collar workers are also demanding that employers meet their needs regarding flexibility. Office workers might want to choose which days to come into the office, while those whose work is physically demanding might want more control over the timing of shifts. “They want better pay, but they want work-life balance,” Kimbrough said. “That’s the number-one priority.”
Matt Sanford, 35, became a stay-at-home father in July when he decided not to return to his job as a stage supervisor at a performing arts theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a job he had held for a decade. Sanford was furloughed at the start of the pandemic. After being home with his 7-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son, he discovered what he had been missing. “When the pandemic hit and I was pulled away from these 55-, 60-hour workweeks and got to truly know and experience my children in a very direct way that I really hadn't up until that point, this massive feeling of young fatherly responsibility — love and joy and a lot of sadness and disappointment about having missed so much of that — just really subsumed me,” he said.
Sanford’s wife has a full-time job working with students at the New Mexico School for the Deaf, but they save where they can, often cooking meals at home instead of going out to eat. It hasn’t been easy, though. “We didn’t have a lot of savings at the beginning of the pandemic,” he told me. The mortgage for their home was put in forbearance, which helped a lot, as did the federal stimulus and some assistance from their families. “We were able to establish a consistent enough savings account where we were like, ‘We’re going to be OK for 18 months before either of us really have to start making some big decisions around significantly gainful employment,’” he said.
Millions of people are reevaluating what kind of life they want to have. From working-class individuals who refuse to continue letting a 9-to-5 burn them out to white-collar workers deciding it’s time to unplug for a while, people are on a journey to rediscover who they are outside of their skills as workers. As Chen, the photographer living in New York City, put it, “I think we're kind of remixing the American Dream.”
“As I've gotten older, work is definitely [still] really important, but I think I've started to see it less as my identity,” she said. “What's really important to me is to be able to carve out the time and the space to build important things for me outside of work.”
*Names have been changed to respect the privacy of the people who were interviewed. ●
