WAGE THEFT
Bed Bath & Beyond stiffed thousands of workers on severance pay

Story by Nathaniel Meyersohn • Yesterday 

In early February, Diane Zaccagna learned that the Bed Bath & Beyond store in New Jersey where she had been working for 18 and a half years was closing and she would be laid off.

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Why Bed Bath & Beyond is in big trouble

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“We knew Bed Bath was in trouble, but we thought we would have at least a couple more years,” said Zaccagna, 50, who started out as a part-time employee and climbed her way to a merchandise supervisor.

Zaccagna loved working for Bed Bath & Beyond and said the company treated her well. Even during the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, when the deadly virus was spreading and Bed Bath & Beyond temporarily closed stores to customers, she showed up to help ship out online delivery orders.

Managers initially told Zaccagna and around 25 employees at the store that they would receive severance pay. Bed Bath & Beyond has been on bankruptcy watch and has been closing hundreds of stores since late 2022.



 Bed Bath & Beyond store in Clifton, New Jersey, in February. The company laid off more than 1,000 workers in the state days before a new severance law took effect.

 - Kena Betancur/VIEWpress/Getty Images

Laid-off workers at previously shuttered stores received severance packages, and so Zaccagna assumed it would be the same for her store. The severance plan for full-time workers laid off in earlier rounds of Bed Bath & Beyond closures was one week of regular pay for each year of service, with a maximum of 10 weeks severance. For supervisors, the maximum was 12 weeks of severance pay.

But Bed Bath & Beyond never paid severance to Zaccagna and her co-workers. The company also told employees it would not match annual contributions to their 401(k) retirement savings plans they paid into for all of 2022.

“In the end, I’m heartbroken. I’m very disappointed in how they handled it,” she told CNN. “It was a punch in the gut.”

She feels the company abandoned her and co-workers and that their years of loyalty meant nothing at the end.

But the timing of the layoffs angered her most.

Gaps in severance protections

Bed Bath & Beyond, based in Union, New Jersey, laid off 1,295 workers in its home state, including at Harmon Face Value stores, just days before a new law kicked in that mandates severance pay — equal to one week of pay for each year of employment — for workers who lose their job in mass layoffs at large employers in New Jersey.

The law also requires that large employers, defined as businesses with more than 100 workers, must give workers at least 90 days notice for mass layoffs, up from 60 days. Prior to the law’s enactment, employers in the state were only required to pay workers severance if they failed to notify employees they were being let go within 60 days. The law also expands severance benefits for part-time workers and includes other worker protections.

“Knowing the law took effect a week after — it’s even worse,” said Zaccagna, who is job hunting and plans to start a new career outside of retail. “Every single person in New Jersey knows it’s wrong.”

Bed Bath & Beyond said in a statement that, as a practice, it does not comment on specific employee matters.

“Every decision over the past several months has been the product of diligent analysis, advisement, and consideration,” the company said. “The difficult but necessary decision to reduce our workforce impacted valued colleagues and is one of many crucial actions taken to enable Bed Bath & Beyond to improve our financial position and serve our customers well into the future.”

The company did not specifically address not paying severance.

New Jersey is the first state in the country to implement guaranteed severance pay protections for workers at large chains. The law was inspired by Toys “R” Us, Sears and Forever 21 and other chains that filed for bankruptcy and attempted to avoid paying workers severance, said New Jersey State Sen. Joseph Cryan, who introduced the legislation.


 Toys "R" Us store in Totowa, New Jersey, in 2018. Toys "R" Us and other chains that filed for bankruptcy have been criticized for failing to pay workers severance. - Julio Cortez/AP

Bed Bath & Beyond’s timing was deliberate and designed to get around the new legislation, Cryan charged. “It is intentional, it is calculated, and it is disgraceful,” he said.

Business Insider first reported the layoffs in the state.

There is no federal requirement for severance pay, although some collective bargaining agreements with unions cover severance agreements. Senior executives often have multimillion-dollar severance plans with employers and receive lucrative retention bonuses to stay with companies if they file for bankruptcy.

At Bed Bath & Beyond, CEO Sue Gove is eligible for $7.1 million in severance pay and former Bed Bath & Beyond CEO Mark Tritton is suing the company for $6.8 million in unpaid severance.

The absence of severance pay requirements for frontline workers in the United States is “one of the many holes in our protective workplace legislation,” said David Weil, a professor at Brandeis University and administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division under former President Barack Obama.

It can also be difficult for rank-and-file workers to claw back unpaid severance once a company files for bankruptcy.

“It’s all about the bankruptcy court’s jurisdiction,” Weil said. “The Labor Department has little authority to demand severance.”

Policy approaches for laid-off workers have tended to focus on unemployment insurance programs, he said, but severance protections help soften the economic hit for displaced workers as they search for a new job.

‘This was our reward’

Some Bed Bath & Beyond employees recently laid off in other states did not receive severance pay either, as first reported by Bloomberg.

A former Harmon store manager has filed a proposed class action lawsuit alleging the company did not give him and others required notice of mass layoffs and denied severance pay.

In late January, Bed Bath & Beyond store manager Norman Frisch, 65, got a call from a regional vice president notifying him that his St. Louis store would close in 10 to 12 weeks and the store’s roughly 20 employees would be laid off.

Frisch, who had been with Bed Bath & Beyond for 12 years and ran a top-performing store that company leaders used as a model for other stores in the area, was told that there would be severance pay and was given talking points to inform employees of the closing.

He sat down with each of his employees individually and explained to them that they should stick around to help close out the store. He assured them a severance package was coming.

Frisch reached out to human resources three times over the next month to ask for more details on the severance plan. Each time, he was told they were on the way.

Bed Bath & Beyond store set to close in Paramus, New Jersey, shown in February. All items were on sale for 10% off. - Ted Shaffrey/AP

But in late February, he got a call from a supervisor saying there would be no severance. He was stunned and felt the company lied.

“My store was the only perfect 5 store in the region, meaning our rating was the best of the best,” he said. “And this was our reward.”

Frisch had been planning to pay his credit card and car bills using his severance, but will instead dip into his retirement savings.

Bigger than the financial hit, though, was his guilt. He felt he personally misled his loyal employees.

“I’m the guy who sat down face to face with each one of these people, and now I had to tell them they weren’t going to get anything,” he said. “I still feel that I betrayed them. They deserved so much more.”

Additionally, the store closing date was moved up, so workers had less time to find new work than they had been led to believe. And they found out the company was not matching 401(k) contributions.

During his final weeks at the company, he made it his job to help his employees find other work. All but two found work by the time the store closed for good in March.

Before Frisch’s email was shut down, he reached out to Gove, the CEO. The way the company handled the layoffs was wrong and workers deserved better, he told her.

“When people invest their life in something, they should be treated right,” he said.

He never heard back.

US West Coast port union, employers reach tentative agreement on some issues

Story by Reuters • Yesterday

(Reuters) - The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) said on Thursday it had reached a tentative agreement with an association representing the U.S. West Coast employers of port laborers on some key issues.

Negotiations over a new deal have dragged on for roughly a year since the contract between the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and the union expired on July 1, 2022.

Any strike in the absence of a deal may prove costly as supply chain issues persist, and high inflation takes a toll on consumer spending, compounding challenges for many companies that are bouncing back from a pandemic slump.

In anticipation of a possible action, major shippers - including suppliers to retailers such as Walmart Inc and Home Depot Inc - have been diverting cargo from the West Coast to rival seaports on the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico to avoid potential work stoppages.

Terms of the tentative agreement announced on Thursday were not disclosed, but the parties had previously struck a deal on terms for maintenance of health benefits.

The agreement that's being negotiated will cover more than 22,000 longshore workers at 29 U.S. West Coast ports.

(Reporting by Priyamvada C in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

COMMODITY FETISH

First T. rex skeleton sold at auction in Europe fetches less than expected price

Story by Sam Riches • Wednesday

Koller auction house director Cyril Koller gestures next to the skull of 'Trinity' prior to the sale of the skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus-Rex (T-Rex) by Koller auction house in Zurich, on April 18, 2023

A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, comprised of nearly 300 bones excavated from three different sites, was recently purchased for 4.8 million francs (about $7.2 million) at an auction in Switzerland.

The skeleton, which measures 11.6 meters long and 3.9 meters high, had been expected to fetch between $7.5 million to $12 million, reports The Associated Press.

According to the Koller auction house in Zurich, the sale marked the first time a T. rex skeleton was auctioned in Europe and only the third time worldwide that a T. rex skeleton of “exceptional quality” had been up for sale.

The skull of the T. rex, dubbed “Trinity,” remained next to the podium all day as more than 70 lots went under the hammer.

Koller told AP the skull was particularly rare and well-preserved. So why the drop in price?

'Very misleading': Christie's calls off auction for T. rex skeleton after questions raised

Lawren Harris paintings sell for $1.2M each in record-breaking Paul Allen collection auction

“It could be that it was a composite — that could be why the purists didn’t go for it,” said Karl Green, the auction house’s marketing director. “It’s a fair price for the dino. I hope it’s going to be shown somewhere in public.”

Vertebrate paleontologist Thomas Holtz told AFP that Trinity, which is made up of bones from three dinosaurs excavated between 2008 and 2013, “really isn’t a ‘specimen’ so much as it is an art installation.”

The buyer, identified only as a European private collector, was also on the hook for additional fees, like the “buyer’s premium,” which pushed the final sales price to 5.5 million francs (about $8.2 million.)

Trinity was built from bones found at sites in the Hell Creek and Lance Creek formations of Montana and Wyoming.

The same areas were also home to T. rex skeletons that have been auctioned for substantially higher prices, including Stan, the most expensive fossil ever sold. At more than 70 per cent complete, Stan sold for US$31.8 million at auction in October 2020.

Stan was out of the public eye for more than two years, and some researchers began to fear it would remain that way, until it was announced last March that Stan would have a new home at a natural history museum in Abu Dhabi , which is slated to open in 2025.

In 1997, another T. rex, named Sue, sold for about $8.5 million at an auction in New York. Sue is currently on display at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and is the largest and most complete T. rex skeleton ever found, at around 90 per cent complete by bone volume.

Sue contains 250 of the approximately 380 known bones in the T. rex skeleton, and a team of museum preparators spent more than 50,000 hours preparing the skeleton and building the exhibit.

Sue Hendrickson unearthed the specimen during a commercial excavation trip to South Dakota in 1990.

Big John, the largest known Triceratops skeleton, went for $7.7 million at an auction in Paris in 2021 . Big John was discovered in the Hell Creek Formation in 2014.

Last year, a T. rex dubbed Shen was expected to sell for between $21 and $34 million in Hong Kong before questions about its authenticity led to the auction being called off .

Peter Larson of U.S. fossil company, Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, noted that Shen had similar features to Stan, mainly holes in the lower left jaw. Despite the sale of Stan, the company retains intellectual property rights and sells polyurethane casts of the skeleton for about $16,000.

Larson told the New York Times that he believes Shen’s owner purchased the cast from his company to replace some of the missing original bones.

Christie’s auction house later pulled the listing and said in a statement that Shen was on loan to a museum.

Despite Trinity’s less-than-expected price tag, auctioneer Cyril Koller told AFP that the event was a success, as the skeleton was displayed for two-and-a-half weeks in the concert hall in Zurich and attracted more than 30,000 visitors.

The lowered price point might also be a good thing for science, as experts warn that soaring dinosaur prices may cause such specimens to end up in the hands of private collectors and limit research opportunities and public viewings.

That doesn’t seem to be the case for Trinity, according to Koller.

“I’m 100 per cent sure we will see Trinity in the future somewhere again,” he said.

Dinosaur-killing asteroid did not trigger a long 'nuclear winter' after all

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs did not trigger a long-lasting impact winter, scientists have found — a discovery that raises new questions about what happened on Earth just after it hit.

 Mark Garlick via Getty Images

Story by Joanna Thompson • LIVE SCIENCE - Yesterday 

One spring day 66 million years ago, a 6-mile-wide (10 kilometers) asteroid smashed into the Yucatán Peninsula and upended life on Earth. This event, called the Chicxulub impact, triggered a mass extinction that wiped out 75% of species, including all non-avian dinosaurs.

But how exactly it killed the dinosaurs is a bit of a mystery — after all, they weren't congregated beneath the asteroid, waiting to be squashed. For decades, scientists speculated that the impact tossed so much dust and dirt into the atmosphere that it triggered an "impact winter" (similar to a nuclear winter) — a period of prolonged cooling during which global temperatures plummeted.

However, a study published March 22 in the journal Geology tells a different story.

Related: Largest asteroid ever to hit Earth was twice as big as the rock that killed off the dinosaurs

"We found that there was no evidence for the 'nuclear winter,'" Lauren O'Connor, a geoscientist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and first author of the study, told Live Science in an email. "At least, not in the resolution of our study," which would have detected temperature declines spanning 1,000 years or more.

O'Connor and her team analyzed bacteria fossilized in coal samples from before, during, and after the Chicxulub impact. In response to temperature changes, these bacteria thicken or thin their cell walls "like putting a blanket on or taking one off," she said.

The researchers found that in the millennia after the impact, the bacteria didn't seem to be bulking up for winter. Instead, they found a roughly 5,000 year warming trend that stabilized relatively quickly. These hot years may have been the result of super volcanoes belching CO2 into the atmosphere in the millennia leading up to the Cretaceous period's abrupt end.

This doesn't mean that an impact winter is off the table altogether, Sean Gulick, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin who was not involved in the study, told Live Science. The blanket of dust kicked up by the asteroid may have only lingered in the atmosphere for a decade or less — not noticeably changing global temperatures, but plunging Earth into darkness. "It doesn't even need to be that long," said Gulick. "If you just had months without the sun, it would be enough to kill most of the plants in the world."

With so many plants gone, herbivores would have struggled to find enough food to eat. As these species died, it would have sent shockwaves up the food chain, killing off large carnivores and other species that depended on them. This event, while devastating, would have been a blip in the fossil record. "It's really, really fast geologically," Gulick said.

O'Connor's team agreed that there likely was a short period of cold and darkness at the start of the end-Cretaceous extinction. But it doesn't seem to have set off a long-term cooling trend.

Their findings indicate that Earth may be capable of rebounding from a climate-changing event faster than previously thought — but not without triggering a mass extinction, O'Connor said.

The researchers now plan to investigate coal from more sites in the U.S. in order to piece together a record of temperature changes in the millennia leading up to the asteroid impact. They hope these data will help them disentangle the effects of volcanism from the Chicxulub impact, and that the parallels to volcanic warming give us a clearer idea of what to expect in our current climate crisis.

An end to the reading wars? More US schools embrace phonics

Story by The Canadian Press • Yesterday 

Move over “Dick and Jane.” A different approach to teaching kids how to read is on the rise.



For decades, two schools of thought have clashed on how to best teach children to read, with passionate backers on each side of the so-called reading wars. The battle has reached into homes via commercials for Hooked on Phonics materials and through shoebox dioramas assigned by teachers seeking to instill a love of literature.

But momentum has shifted lately in favor of the “science of reading.” The term refers to decades of research in fields including brain science that point to effective strategies for teaching kids to read.

The science of reading is especially crucial for struggling readers, but school curricula and programs that train teachers have been slow to embrace it. The approach began to catch on before schools went online in spring 2020. But a push to teach all students this way has intensified as schools look for ways to regain ground lost during the pandemic — and as parents of kids who can't read demand swift change.


OK, CLASS. TIME FOR A HISTORY LESSON.

One historical approach to teaching reading was known as “whole language.” (Close cousins of this approach are “whole word” and “look-say.”) It focused on learning entire words, placing the emphasis on meaning. A famous example is the “Dick and Jane” series, which, like many modern-day books for early readers, repeated words frequently so students could memorize them.

The other approach involved phonics, with supporters arguing students need detailed instruction on the building blocks of reading. That meant lots of time on letter sounds and how to combine them into words.

In 2000, a government-formed National Reading Panel released the findings of its exhaustive examination of the research. It declared phonics instruction was crucial to teaching young readers, along with several related concepts.

Whole language had lost.

What emerged, though, was an informal truce that came to be known as “balanced literacy” and borrowed from both approaches. The goal: Get kids into books they found enjoyable as quickly as possible.

But in practice, phonics elements often got short shrift, said Michael Kamil, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University.

“It wasn’t a true compromise,” said Kamil, who had sat on the national reading panel. The approach often led to students learning how to guess words, instead of how to sound them out.

Now, as schools look to address low reading scores, phonics and other elements of the science of reading are getting fresh attention, fueled in part by a series of stories and podcasts by APM Reports. Textbook makers are adding more phonics, and schools have dumped some popular programs that lacked that approach.

WHAT IS THE SCIENCE OF READING?

While the phrase doesn’t have a universal definition, it refers broadly to research in a variety of fields that relates to how a child's brain learns to read. Neuroscientists, for instance, have used MRIs to study the brains of struggling readers.

In practice, this science calls for schools to focus on the building blocks of words. Kindergartners might play rhyming games and clap out the individual syllables in a word to learn to manipulate sounds. Experts call this phonemic awareness.

Students later will learn explicitly how to make letter sounds and blend letters. To make sure students aren’t just guessing at words, teachers might ask them to sound out so-called nonsense words, like “nant” or “zim.”

Gone is rote memorization of word spellings. Instead, students learn the elements that make up a word. In a lesson using the word “unhappy,” students would learn how the prefix “un-” changed the meaning of the base word.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

For some kids, reading happens almost magically. Bedtime stories and perhaps a little “Sesame Street” are enough.

But 30% to 40% of kids will need the more explicit instruction that is part of the science of reading, said Timothy Shanahan, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Other kids fall somewhere in between. “They’re going to learn to read,” said Shanahan, also one of the members of the 2000 panel and the former director of reading for Chicago Public Schools. “They’re just not going to read as well as they could be or should be.”

Complicating the situation, colleges of education often have stuck with balanced literacy despite concerns about its effectiveness. That means teachers graduate with little background on research-backed instructional methods.

The upshot: Parents often pick up the slack, paying for tutors or workbooks when their children struggle, Shanahan said. Extra help can be costly, contributing to racial and income-based disparities.

As a result, a growing number of NAACP chapters are pushing for wider adoption of the science of reading, describing literacy as a civil rights issue.

WHAT IS DYSLEXIA'S ROLE IN THE READING DEBATE?

Parents of children with dyslexia have led the push to use the science of reading. For them, the issue has special urgency. Kids with dyslexia can learn to read, but they need systematic instruction. When the wrong approach is used, they often flounder.

“I can’t even tell you how many screaming fits we had,” recalled Sheila Salmond, whose youngest child has dyslexia. “My daughter would come home and say, ‘Mom, I’m not learning.’ And then it became, ‘Mom, I’m stupid.’”

Salmond found herself testifying before Missouri lawmakers, taking a graduate class so she could tutor her daughter and eventually moving her from a suburban Kansas City district to a parochial school. She now is making progress.

WHAT IS CHANGING?

Just a decade ago, it was rare for a state to have laws that mentioned dyslexia or the science of reading.

Now every state has passed some form of legislation. The laws variously define what dyslexia is, require that students are screened for reading problems and mandate that teachers are trained in the most effective strategies, said Mary Wennersten, of the International Dyslexia Association.

States often look to duplicate what has happened in Mississippi, which has credited reading gains to a curriculum revamp that started a decade ago. The multi-million dollar effort includes training teachers on the science of reading.

The changes have put some curriculum programs in the crosshairs.

Some Colorado districts, for instance, have ditched instructional materials that didn’t pass muster under a state law that requires schools to use scientifically based reading programs. New York City, whose mayor often talks about his personal struggle with dyslexia, is making changes in its schools as well.

WHAT DOES THE SCIENCE OF READING MEAN FOR PARENTS?

Should they be researching the tenets of the science of reading? Do they need to help their children form letters out of Play-Doh? What about drilling their kids on nonsense words? Flashcards?

Only if they want to, said Amelia Malone, director of research and innovation at the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

What parents must do, she said, is read to their kids. Otherwise, she recommends helping teachers when they ask for it and pushing for evidence-based practices in their children’s schools.

“Parents can be part of the solution," she said, "if we educate them on why this is kind of the movement we need.”

___

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Heather Hollingsworth, The Associated Press

Resurgence of matriarchy pushes issue of violence against Indigenous women onto the UN stage

The Canadian Press 

There is a resurgence of matriarchy in First Nations communities, said Assembly of First Nations National Chief RoseAnne Archibald, and that is why the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls is being voiced on a world stage.

Archibald was joined by two other women leaders on a five-member First Nations panel from Canada that spoke to media during the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York April 19.

Addressing violence against Indigenous women and girls, said Archibald, was one of the priorities that “has driven us from our home fires all the way here to New York City to this global forum…There are families that are affected directly and those families need a space internationally.”

“Now we see traditional women in leadership coming to the forefront… and that’s why, I think, we’re talking more about our missing and murdered Indigenous sisters and two-spirited relatives,” said Vice Chief Aly Bear of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations.

However, she added, having three women representing First Nations from Canada appears to be a “contradiction” between women leadership and the violence Indigenous women and girls and two-spirited people still face.

Bear spoke about the death of Linda Mary Beardy, a 33-year-old woman originally from Lake St. Martin First Nation, whose body was found in a Winnipeg landfill site. Winnipeg police ruled the death not suspicious in nature.

“We are not trash. We are not garbage. We deserve to be valued,” said an impassioned Bear, a mother of two girls. “Traditionally our women held high respect in our communities and it’s that colonial violence that came here, that colonial mindset that came here and put us to the lowest of the hierarchy.”

Former Neskonlith First Nation chief and panelist Judy Wilson agreed.

“Indigenous women in communities in Canada are facing a crisis,” said Wilson. “With the disruption of the colonial cloak … and the Indian Act, it displaced that role (of Indigenous women), and the Indian residential schools that removed our children broke down the families.”

As the first woman to hold the position of national chief, Archibald said “these spaces are particularly difficult for women, especially at this juncture, and being the first is always a really difficult place to be.”

With women making up half of the Indigenous population, only about 25 per cent of the chiefs are women, said Archibald. So while there is a resurgence there is still not parity.

However, low numbers haven’t discouraged women leaders from speaking out.

“We are bringing forward those issues that have not been discussed in the past. This is the second United Nations forum where I have spoken about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls,” said Archibald.

Also part of the panel were Chief Joe Alphonse of Tl'etinqox First Nation and Grand Council Chief Reg Niganobe of Anishinabek Nation.

Windspeaker.com

By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

B.C. First Nation sues port firm, others for disrupting ancestral remains

Story by The Canadian Press • Yesterday 

VANCOUVER — A First Nation is suing the British Columbia and federal governments and the company behind a railway terminal port in the province's Interior, claiming it wasn't property consulted about the project it says has "desecrated" its ancestral territory.



Bonaparte First Nation Chief Frank Antoine said inland port development by Ashcroft Terminal Ltd. over the First Nations' ancestral remains continues unabated with the support of the federal and provincial government.

The nation filed a lawsuit Wednesday, saying it has been wrongfully misled and shut out of the development process.

In June 2021, Antoine said members of the Bonaparte staged a sit-in protest on the site of Ashcroft Terminal's inland port, where expansion activities unearthed ancestral remains and other culturally significant artifacts.

"They just put it in a box, put it in a trailer and left it there until our membership decided to say enough is enough," Antoine said. "From that day forward, since June, we've been trying to sit down and have these open discussions and honest discussions with them and it just seems that they don't want to sit down with us. They just keep moving forward."

The Bonaparte First Nation lawsuit names Ashcroft Terminal Ltd. and several others, claiming railway infrastructure development for the inland port has destroyed and disturbed ancestral burial grounds.

In a notice of civil claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court, the First Nation alleges Ashcroft Terminal misled the band about the scope of construction activities for the 300-acre railway terminal port.

The lawsuit alleges the terminal is on the site of Bonaparte's historical village, which it says carries deep spiritual and cultural significance to the band and its members.

The First Nation claims the site contains "numerous" burial grounds and carbon dating places the Bonaparte on the territory dating back nearly 8,000 years.

The lawsuit says Ashcroft Terminal's construction and excavation activities have disturbed the remains and other archeologically significant artifacts on the site.

The allegations in the lawsuit have not been tested or proven in court and the defendants have yet to file responses to the claim. Ashcroft Terminal Ltd. and the federal government did not immediately provide comment on the lawsuit.

B.C.'s Ministry of Transportation said it could not comment on a matter before the courts.

Antoine said the companies involved in the expansion are "bypassing" what they want them to stop doing and will "keep pushing forward until this terminal is completely built."

Months after Bonaparte members protested at the site, Ashcroft Terminal signed an investment deal with Canadian Tire Corp., giving the company — which is not a party to the lawsuit — a 25 per cent stake in the project.

Antoine said things "went quiet" afterwards, leaving the First Nation, again, shut out of discussions about development activity on their unceded traditional territory.

"We have a list of stuff that we want to work with them on, and if this is what they call UNDRIP or Truth and Reconciliation, they're definitely doing it on the wrong side of the tracks," Antoine said, referring to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. "They're not working with us; they'd rather work away from us."

The lawsuit alleges the provincial and federal governments failed to adequately consult the band about the project, which has received millions in subsidies since development plans were unveiled back in 2006.

The Bonaparte First Nation claims in court that they were misled about the size of the inland port development plans, alleging Ashcroft deceptively presented the 300-acre terminal as "small-scale, piecemeal, bite-sized mini projects and proposals."

"Each of which posed a small fractional threat to (Bonaparte First Nation's) interests compared with the true scope of (Ashcroft Terminal Ltd.'s) development," the lawsuit states.

Antoine said the Bonaparte's attempts to have a dialogue with governments and Ashcroft Terminal have been unsuccessful, leaving him and the First Nation's approximately 1,000 members with little other choice than to take the matter to court.

"They need to understand that they can't just bypass us anymore. We're not a group of Indigenous people that doesn't understand the government, how government works," he said. "We are part of government now and we want to be self-sufficient, we want to be independent and we want to be partners and build a relationship. They just don't seem to want to build that relationship."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2023.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press

Canadians aren’t confident the government is doing enough for affordable telecom services: poll

Story by MobileSyrup • Apr 13

A new poll shows the majority of Canadians are concerned about monopolies and the way they impact prices.

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE



The data from Mainstreet Research shows 92 percent of those surveyed blame market concentration for higher prices across grocery and telecom sectors. A further 69 percent said current competition regulations are benefiting large companies at the expense of consumers.

Results are based on automated telephone interviews conducted between March 29th and 30th. The sample consists of 1267 adults residing in Canada and represents the country’s voting population.

According to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s 2019 monitoring report, the big three (Bell, Rogers, and Telus) controlled 91 percent of the mobile and internet services market, and Canadians believe this is a problem.


Polling results show 72 percent of Canadians aren’t confident the government is doing enough for affordable and competitive telecom services in Canada; the results label 44 percent as “strongly not confident.”

 A majority of respondents who felt this way reside in Alberta and Ontario.

“Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne just permitted the Shaw buyout, crowning Rogers the single largest company in our telecom sector in one of the biggest buyouts the country’s ever seen,” OpenMedia Campaigns Director, Matt Hatfield, said.

“These clear poll results should be setting off alarm bells in government offices across the country: band-aid solutions aren’t enough.”

The Minister’s approval was the final step Rogers needed to complete its $26-billion takeover of Shaw. Vidéotron was also approved to take over Freedom Mobile from Shaw in an effort to create a fourth leading wireless provider. Despite the approval, critics have voiced their concerns about the merger, arguing the approval will come at a cost to Canadians.

The poll further shows 83 percent of Canadians believe the current costs of internet and mobile services are impacting their budget, with 44 percent labeling the action as significant.

Source: OpenMedia

Indigenous youth groups are ‘lifelines’ in their communities and Ottawa is failing to support them

Story by The Canadian Press • Yesterday 

Indigenous youth organizations doing vital work in their communities deserve sustainable funding and a means to hold Ottawa accountable for upholding financial support, a new report says.

The report, titled A Labour of Love: The Unpaid and Exploited Labour of Grassroots and Community-Based Indigenous Youth Groups, calls out Ottawa for what it deems a failure to value the work of young Indigenous organizers who support youth in their communities.

The report was published on April 17 alongside a panel hosted in New York City for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the UN’s central body on global Indigenous concerns and rights.

Gabrielle Fayant, one of the report’s co-authors, told Canada’s National Observer that Indigenous youth organizers are in New York City to give voice to groups that are overworked, overwhelmed and underpaid.

“I hope that we can put pressure on the federal government to at least meet with us and see the amazing work that we're doing,” said Fayant, who is also an organizer for the Ottawa-based Assembly of Seven Generations, an urban Indigenous youth organization that delivers cultural support and empowerment programs.

The report centres around the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action 66, which urges the federal government to provide multi-year funding for community-based youth organizations to deliver programs to other youth.

Between June and October 2022, a team of eight facilitators and writers heard from 10 diverse youth groups and collectives, visiting each group in their territory and community. The report found the current funding system, propped up by short-term project grants, is failing Indigenous youth groups and leading to exploited labour, stretched budgets and funds not reaching the youth themselves.

Much of the work done by Indigenous youth groups identified in the report happens on a volunteer basis or through month-to-month contracts. Many organizations cannot employ full-time staff members, it found. Part of the demand from the report’s authors is ensuring that Indigenous youth groups have full-time employment, community space and, most importantly, land for programming.

“That's why we need that volunteer funding. We need to be able to plan the year ahead,” Fayant said.

Indigenous Services Canada told Canada’s National Observer the federal government provides multi-year funding through a pilot project with the Canadian Roots Exchange, a national Indigenous youth organization that provides programs, grants and funding.

Canadian Roots Exchange CREation is currently running a pilot program that provides short-term grants of up to $5,000, medium-term grants worth $30,000 and multi-year funding at $150,000 over two years.

But Fayant and her co-author Brittany Matthews told Canada’s National Observer the funding won’t cover the needs of Indigenous youth groups, particularly land-based programming and office space.

The $150,000 grant over two years may only cover the costs of one or two full-time staff per year and low salaries, never mind benefits for staff or programming funds.

Fayant and Matthews also said the youth groups would need an outside trustee, such as a designated board member, to be eligible for funding, creating a further barrier. Many youth groups aren’t eligible today for this reason.

“The report is clear — funding must be multi-year and based on the best interests and needs of Indigenous young people,” Fayant and Matthews said.

“We have heard this rhetoric from Canada for years with little changing.”

Much of the work Indigenous youth organizations do involves at-risk youth, Fayant said. Many of those young people are descendants of residential school survivors and struggle with the impacts of intergenerational trauma.

“It's a lot of crisis mode,” she added.

Fayant described Indigenous youth groups as “lifelines,” noting the burden of their communities’ challenges falls on their shoulders.

“It's almost like we don't have a choice to do this work, even though it's so draining, and it just feels so, so hard,” Fayant said.

At the panel in New York City, which was live-streamed on YouTube, Fayant described youth organizers as facing “ongoing poverty,” forced to patch a living together through a trickle-in of short-term grants.

Indigenous youth groups don’t have the same privileges or outcomes as other non-profits because of unreliable and inadequate grants, the report found. The result is inconsistent and underpaid employment among Indigenous youth organizers, with compounding effects such as low credit and inability to secure a mortgage, it added.

Fayant said the progress on the TRC call to action is “in limbo” while she and other youth organizers struggle to make ends meet, working precariously or on a volunteer basis. Fayant can’t imagine what a permanent Indigenous youth panel would look like, noting that Indigenous youth haven’t been given the platform to create it.

Fayant notes the irony: the work of Indigenous youth will always be put on panels and lauded, but those same grassroots youth are stonewalled when they ask for stable funding.

“We’re not even at the table yet; we’ve just been completely ignored,” she said.

Matteo Cimellaro, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

Canada has a dental assistant shortage. Experts worry it’ll only get worse

WOMEN WORKERS SHORTCHANGED

Story by Katie Dangerfield • Tuesday

A dental assistant works on teeth cleaning for a young Syrian girl who has never been to a dentist before.© Sarah Kraus / Global News

A shortage of dental assistants across Canada may cause a backlog in oral health care and could impact dentists' capacity to take on new patients, experts warn.

The dental assistant shortage has been happening for years now, according to Lynn Tomkins, president of the Canadian Dental Association (CDA), and with the federal government's new dental care plan for Canadians, she worries that without proper staffing, many dentists may not be able to meet the patient demand.

"The shortage of dental assisting is the number one issue for dentists across the country," she said. "So dentists have had to alter their hours, in some cases reduce their hours because they don't have the support staff, just like operating rooms and hospitals. They don't have the nurses, you can't do the treatment."

Even before COVID-19 hit the health-care system, there was a shortage of dental assistants in Canada, she said.

The CDA states that in 2019, up to a third of Canadian dental offices were looking to add a dental assistant to their staff.

"COVID-19 exacerbated this problem," Tomkins said, noting that the pandemic pushed the Canadian health-care system to the brink, causing front-line staff workers, including dental assistants, to leave the profession.

"People have perhaps gone into other areas to work remotely and dentistry cannot be done remotely," she said.

Tomkins estimates that there is a current "shortage of almost 5,000 dental assistants" in Canada.

Video: Calgary dentists raise concerns about new federal dental benefit

A 2022 survey conducted by the Canadian Dental Assistants Association (CDAA) and shared with Global News highlighted this problem amid the pandemic.

The survey found that during the height of the pandemic, around 57 per cent of dental assistants said their work environment became increasingly stressful and difficult and around 21 per cent felt the expectations of their employer became unreasonable.

The survey also showed that during the height of the pandemic, around 42 per cent of the respondents said they felt unfairly compensated given the higher level of risk they experienced at work.

One of the main drivers behind the shortage of Canada's dental assistants is a lack of proper compensation and benefits, said Kelly Mansfield, a board member of the CDAA.

Mansfield, who worked as a certified dental assistant for more than 30 years, said the shortage isn't because dental assistants are not graduating, it's that many are choosing to leave the profession.

"It's very hard to raise a family on a dental assistant salary. I was a certified Level 2 assistant for over 10 years and worked in private practice and I left because I just couldn't live on the salary of a dental assistant," she said.

"So I did take my oral health education and I went into a different profession."

There are other professions a dental assistant can go into, rather than working at a dentist's office, she said, such as working in dental insurance, sales or public health.

"There are many jobs that you can use the dental assisting profession, that will offer you better benefits and better compensation," Mansfield said.

Whether it's patient care, assisting with a dental procedure, sterilizing equipment or taking X-rays, Tompkins said the role of a dental assistant is crucial.

"We do rely on them a great deal," she said. "In many cases, they're like a surgical scrub nurse, working right beside the dentist, mixing materials, handing instruments, keeping the material dry. So it is actually quite a challenging job."

Without proper staffing, Mansfield and Tomkins believe dental offices may not be able to run at full capacity.

The risk is that many Canadians won't be able to receive oral health care, as "dentists cannot work without dental assistants," Mansfield warned.

"Although the biggest risk would be that dentists are hiring untrained individuals that are being hired to fill the role. This is a significant concern to dental assistants and a significant concern to the general public," she said.

And now that the federal government plans to roll out its Canadian Dental Care Plan, Tomkins said there is even more of a need for dental assistants.

In its March budget, the federal Liberals announced plans to expand its dental plan to provide coverage for an estimated nine million uninsured Canadians with an annual family income of less than $90,000, with no co-pays for those with family incomes under $70,000, by the end of 2023.

With an expected increase in demand for dental appointments because of federally funded dental coverage, Tomkins said the CDA wants to ensure the staffing capacity is there.

Earlier this year, the CDA published a policy paper asking the government to develop an oral health staffing strategy in preparation for the increased dental service for nine million more Canadians.

"There will be a gradual rollout of this national dental care program. And it will give us some opportunity to increase our capacity. But we do need to recruit more dental assistants. We need to find ways to make them stay in the field," Tomkins said.

She said other ways to recruit and keep dental assistants in the office are to provide more mental health support services and give the option of distance learning in order to reach people in remote communities.

"We also need to make dental assisting aware to new Canadians, because it's a relatively short educational path, six months to nine months to a very good job that's very much in demand."