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)
Saturday, April 23, 2022
Wife of Assange urges UK to block his extradition Julian Assange's supporters accusing Washington of trying to muzzle reporting of legitimate security concerns (AFP/JOHN THYS)
Sat, April 23, 2022
Stella Assange, wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, urged the British government on Saturday not to sign his extradition order to the US, saying his fate will have repercussions throughout Europe.
A UK court on Wednesday issued a formal order to extradite the WikiLeaks founder to face trial in the United States over the publication of secret files relating to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The final decision now rests with interior minister Priti Patel, although Assange could yet appeal.
"This is a political case, it has always been a political case," Stella Assange told AFP on the margins of a demonstration in support of her husband in Brussels.
"The trick that has been played by the various governments the UK Government, the Australian Government, the US government, is to say it's before the courts," she added.
"Now that the UK courts have issued the extradition order, there is no excuse. It is squarely in the political domain."
The ruling Wednesday by a magistrate in central London brings the long-running legal saga in the UK courts closer to a conclusion.
But Assange's lawyers have until May 18 to make representations to Patel and could potentially launch further appeals on other points in the case. -- 'Democratic values at stake' --
The case has become a cause celebre for media freedom, with Julian Assange's supporters accusing Washington of trying to muzzle reporting of legitimate security concerns.
Washington wants to put him on trial in connection with the publication of 500,000 secret military files relating to the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Stella Assange said the grounds to appeal against extradition in the United Kingdom are very narrow," with the treaty "heavily tilted in favour of the United States".
The matters being raised "go to the heart of what it means to have a free and open society of having a free press", she said, and raised the possibility of taking the matter to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.
"It is the soul of European values -- of democratic values -- that is at stake," she added.
"Julian has been in Belmarsh prison now for three years. He is in an increasingly weakened state of health. He had a mini-stroke in October."
The British government "is condemning war crimes in Ukraine, but it is going to show whether it is prepared to extradite a journalist for having exposed war crimes", she said.
jug/er/pvh/jj
ECOCIDE
Explosion at Nigerian illegal oil refinery kills over 100
Author of the article:
Reuters
Tife Owolabi
Publishing date:
Apr 23, 2022
Article content
YENAGAO — More than 100 people were killed overnight in an explosion at an illegal oil refining depot in Nigeria’s Rivers state, a local government official and an environmental group said on Saturday.
“The fire outbreak occurred at an illegal bunkering site and it affected over 100 people who were burnt beyond recognition,” the state commissioner for petroleum resources, Goodluck Opiah, said.
Unemployment and poverty in the oil-producing Niger Delta have made illegal crude refining an attractive business but with deadly consequences. Crude oil is tapped from a web of pipelines owned by major oil companies and refined into products in makeshift tanks.
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The hazardous process has led to many fatal accidents and has polluted a region already blighted by oil spills in farmland, creeks and lagoons.
The Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre said several vehicles that were in a queue to buy illegal fuel were burnt in the explosion.
At least 25 people, including some children, were killed in an explosion and fire at another illegal refinery in Rivers state in October.
In February, local authorities said they had started a crackdown to try put a stop to the refining of stolen crude, but with little apparent success.
Government officials estimate that Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer and exporter, loses an average of 200,000 barrels per day of oil – more than 10% of production – to those tapping or vandalizing pipelines.
That has forced oil companies to regularly declare force majeure on oil and gas exports. (Writing by Julia Payne and MacDonald Dzirutwe, Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Ros Russell)
ECOCIDE
Scuba diving boat sinks off Ecuador's Galapagos Islands
Handout picture released on march 10, 2022 by the Parque Nacional Galapagos press office showing a 'Chelonoidis chathamensis' turtle at the San Cristobal island, Galapagos islands, Ecuador on August 2, 2019 (AFP/-) (-)
Sat, April 23, 2022
A scuba diving boat sank Saturday off one of Ecuador's ecologically sensitive Galapagos Islands but damage was minor and no one was hurt, officials said.
The boat was carrying about 47 barrels of diesel fuel that left a "superficial" slick, the Environment Ministry said.
The sinking was first reported by the state-run oil company Petroecuador, which did not specify how much fuel may have spilled.
Galapagos National Park confirmed the sinking of the vessel called the Albatroz and said it was used for scuba diving excursions in waters of the islands, which are a protected natural heritage site.
Containment booms have been set up around the area of the accident in an effort to control the spill, the company said.
The four crew members on the ship are safe, it added.
The national park suspended tourism activities around the city of Puerto Ayora, where its headquarters is located.
Located in the Pacific about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) off the coast of Ecuador, and famous for their giant tortoises, the Galapagos are a protected wildlife area and home to unique species of flora and fauna.
The archipelago was made famous by British geologist and naturalist Charles Darwin's observations on evolution there.
The Galapagos marine reserve, in which industrial fishing is prohibited, is the second-largest in the world. More than 2,900 marine species have been reported within the archipelago, which is a Natural World Heritage Site.
In 2019, a barge carrying a small amount of diesel sank off another Galapagos island, San Cristobal, causing a small spill but damage was insignificant.
In 2001 and Ecuadoran flagged vessel carrying 240,000 gallons of fuel also sank off San Cristobal. That spill did cause environmental damage that harmed several marine species.
sp/yow/md
LANGUAGE OF WORK IN QUEBEC New controversies arise over French language in Canada AFP - 4h ago Do French-speakers face discrimination in Canada, despite its status as an official language along with English?
A string of recent leadership appointments and statements has revived the controversy over the French language's place in Canada, prompting a response from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The latest blow: There are no longer any directors on the corporate board of Montreal-based CN, Canada's largest railway company, who speak French.
The question of whether Canadian corporate leaders should be bilingual received a lot of attention last fall, after the president of Air Canada, Michael Rousseau, said he did not have the time to learn French. He had to publicly apologize for those remarks a few days later.
Under Canadian law, state-owned businesses, such as CN and Air Canada, as well as airports and federal ministries, are required to provide services in both French and English to clients.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this week that he was frustrated by the situation with CN.
"French-speaking Canadians across the country should see themselves reflected in our major national institutions," said the bilingual prime minister, who also asked the responsible government ministers to ensure CN works quickly to rectify the situation. The recent controversies are a reminder of the French language's precarious position in a North American ocean of English-speakers, as well as previous battles to protect its status as an official language, which has been included in the Canadian constitution since 1982.
But according to some French language proponents in Canada, where the total population of 37 million contains 8 million francophones, the government has failed to meet expectations.
- Less than 20% of Canadians are bilingual -
"There is clearly a hypocrisy on the part of Trudeau," said Stephane Beaulac, a law professor and codirector of the University of Montreal's National Observatory on Linguistic Rights.
He pointed out that while the prime minister is bothered by the CN saga, he chose last year to appoint a non-French speaker as Canada's governor general, who serves as Queen Elizabeth II's official representative in the country.
Mary Simon, originally from the Nunavik area in northern Quebec, is the first Indigenous Canadian to become governor general, but only speaks English and the Inuit language of Inuktitut.
This week, Canada's Commissioner of Official Languages also rebuked the prime minister's office for not having all video streams on their official Facebook page subtitled or dubbed in French.
According to recent opinion polls, more than 90 percent of Canadians strongly support bilingualism, which they consider to be a part of Canadian culture, but less than 20 percent are fluent in both languages.
"Everyone must be able to be served in their preferred language since few Canadians are truly bilingual," says Stephanie Chouinard, a political science professor at the Royal Military College of Canada. But, she adds, Canadians "have been waiting for the modernization of the Official Languages Act since 2019."
Beaulac, the law professor, notes that "for a long time, to defend French meant you were flagged as pro-separatist."
"Things have changed today, so people are more daring to challenge the domination of English."
Referring to the recent CN appointments, linguistic law professor Frederic Berard explains that "people are angry, shocked, and this anger is justified."
"However, today this kind of situation is relatively rare," especially in Quebec, adds Berard, who chaired Canada's national consultations on the reform of official languages.
But the situation is much more complex for Francophones who do not live in Quebec, he adds, even if there have been advances in recent years.
tib/rle/des/md
Ex-Guantanamo Prisoner Sues Canada Over Alleged Role in His Detention
Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Guantanamo Bay prisoner who wrote a best-selling book about his experiences in the military prison, poses on Oct. 18, 2016 after he was reunited with his family in Mauritania on Oct. 17 after 14 years of detention.
MONTREAL —
A former Guantanamo detainee who spent 14 years without trial and whose story was told in the hit film The Mauritanian, is suing Canada over its alleged role in his detention.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 51, claims that Canadian authorities provided false information concerning the period when he was a permanent resident in Montreal in 1999, which led to his arrest and subsequent torture at the infamous U.S. prison, according to his complaint filed on Friday and reviewed by AFP.
Slahi is seeking $28 million for the damages he suffered.
In the lawsuit, Slahi says he faced "physical beatings, sleep deprivation, forced standing, incessant noise, sexual assault, mock assassination, death threats, religious humiliation, and more" while at Guantanamo.
"Slahi's detention and maltreatment were prolonged because the receipt and use of forced confessions by Canadian authorities validated the continued torture and detention," his lawyers said in the complaint.
Slahi's story was a best-selling book that was adapted for the screen.
The film, starring Tahar Rahim and Jodie Foster, accurately depicts the extreme conditions on the American base.
Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Slahi came under suspicion of involvement in an unsuccessful plot to bomb Los Angeles in 1999.
Arrested in 2001 in Mauritania, he was then successively imprisoned in Jordan and Afghanistan, before arriving at Guantanamo in 2002, in what he called in his book a world tour of torture and humiliation. He was released in 2016.
USA
How People-Based Special Purpose Credit Programs Can Reduce the Racial Homeownership Gap
Rapid home price appreciation has built considerable wealth for homeowners, but it has made homeownership less attainable for first-time homebuyers. This concern is especially acute for Black households because the Black-white homeownership gap is as large today as it was before the passage of the Fair Housing Act.
To narrow this gap, fair housing advocates are increasingly calling for the use of special purpose credit programs (SPCPs), which allow lenders to offer credit on favorable terms to borrowers of a protected class who have suffered economic disadvantages. SPCPs reach these borrowers by offering special purpose credit either directly to them (people based) or in places where many of them live (place based).
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) provides useful context. Born out of the civil rights movement, the CRA aims to redress the effects of redlining by encouraging banks to lend in low- and moderate-income (LMI) neighborhoods. Despite these goals, Black borrowers in LMI neighborhoods receive a disproportionately small share of home loans.
Similarly, several proposed programs would direct assistance toward historically redlined neighborhoods. But Black people are only the third-largest racial group—behind white and Latinx people—in redlined areas, and those Black residents make up only 8 percent of the total Black population in the US.
Because of considerable variation in these neighborhoods’ demographics, some formerly redlined areas with mostly Black residents may be strong candidates for place-based SPCPs. But nationwide data suggest that targeting allpreviously redlined neighborhoods may not have the disproportionate impact on Black homeownership that proponents hope, especially in cities where Black households are geographically diffuse.
People-based SPCPs may be a more effective way to close the Black-white homeownership gap because they enable lenders to direct a program exclusively toward Black borrowers.
Race-based lending barriers show the value of people-based SPCPs
Despite the structural barriers that make it harder for Black applicants to access mortgage credit than white applicants, many homeownership programs (e.g., Fannie Mae’s HomeReady and Freddie Mac’s Home Possible) are based on income rather than race.
Our analysis of 2020 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data shows Black applicants are more likely to be denied than white applicants at all income levels nationwide. Even Black applicants with incomes above 150 percent of the area median income (AMI) have a higher denial rate than white applicants with incomes between 50 and 80 percent of the AMI. These patterns hold across high- and low-cost markets, though the racial gap is generally smaller in expensive cities—likely because prices are so high that even white households with high incomes have difficulty purchasing homes.
For example, in San Diego, California—one of the most expensive metropolitan areas in the country—Black applicants experienced mortgage loan application denials 1.5 to 2.3 times as often as white applicants, depending on income. Among those with the highest incomes, Black applicants were almost twice as likely as white applicants to be denied.
In Milwaukee, a relatively affordable housing market, the differences are even more stark. Black applicants were between 2.3 and 3.4 times more likely than white applicants to have their applications denied, and the biggest difference is in the highest income group.
These differences in denial rates, even after controlling for income, reflect generations of exploitative practices that have had a lasting impact on wealth and creditworthiness, which justifies race-conscious people-based SPCPs.
How can lenders design people-based SPCPs to narrow the Black-white homeownership gap, and what resources do they need?
Analyze the denial reasons of their target populations to determine what kind of assistance would most effectively increase access to homeownership.
Because homeownership barriers vary considerably across race and geography, understanding the barriers facing the target population is essential to presenting solutions. Credit history was the most frequently listed denial reason among Black applicants nationally. But in San Diego and Milwaukee, credit history–related denials were only half as common, while debt-to-income ratio and collateral, respectively, were most prevalent. Understanding these patterns enables lenders to tailor SPCPs to the distinct challenges of the communities they serve. Places that have denial reason profiles like what we observe nationally may benefit most from flexible credit underwriting standards; in communities like San Diego and Milwaukee, down payment assistance could have a larger impact.
Fill data gaps.
Before launching an SPCP, for-profit lenders must show that the borrowers they intend to serve are unlikely to receive credit—or would have to pay more for it—under traditional standards. HMDA data are currently the best publicly available data that lenders can use, as they include information on borrowers, loans, and property characteristics for most mortgage applications annually. But these data have limits.
Some potential buyers aren’t reflected in the data because they may be discouraged from applying for a mortgage in the first place, a trend exacerbated by low supply, increased competition from investors, tight underwriting standards, and pandemic-related financial setbacks. Without information on these potential homebuyers, it is difficult for lenders to know how to address their specific challenges.
Additionally, although credit history is the most common reason for mortgage denial nationally, publicly available HMDA data do not include loan-level credit score data because of privacy concerns. These data are essential in constructing SPCPs to serve consumers who were denied because of their credit score, as near-prime applicants who are almost qualified for a loan will have different needs than subprime applicants who require more assistance.
As such, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could provide this information at least for small-scale geographies (e.g., census tracts), if not at the loan level.
Increase lenders’ awareness and provide guidance and support.
Many lenders are still unaware of SPCPs. Along with increasing lenders’ awareness, three advances could further facilitate them to initiate SPCPs: (1) a repository of well-documented evidence to support and inform lenders designing SPCPs; (2) greater sharing of examples and best practices, along with clearer guidance from federal regulators; and (3) established securitization pathways via the secondary mortgage market (e.g., the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac).
The recent interagency statement assures lenders that SPCPs are permissible under the Fair Housing Act. As more lenders initiate SPCPs, we hope to gather more evidence on how these programs can effectively reduce the racial homeownership gap.
The Urban Institute has the evidence to show what it will take to create a society where everyone has a fair shot at achieving their vision of success.
STATEHOOD OR INDEPENDENCE
AOC Slams Supreme Court for Limiting Puerto Ricans’ Access to Disability Checks
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez listens to speakers during an event outside Union Station June 16, 2021, in Washington, D.C.WIN MCNAMEE / GETTY IMAGES
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) pushed back on a Supreme Court decision that limits Puerto Ricans’ access to government benefits on Thursday, condemning the decision for advancing the U.S.’s colonialist grip over the territory.
In an 8 to 1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Puerto Ricans do not have the constitutional right to access the same government disability benefits as people living in the U.S. mainland. The ruling rejected an appeal from a Puerto Rican resident who was sued for $25,000 by the government for receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments when he moved to Puerto Rico. Ocasio-Cortez, whose family is from Puerto Rico, decried the decision. “2022 Imperialist Neo-colony Vibes: when my cousins can be drafted into war by a government they don’t even have a right to vote for and denies them benefits, yet that same government can exploit their land into a tax haven for crypto billionaires and tax evaders,” she wrote on Twitter. She went on to deflect comments from those who say that granting Puerto Rico statehood would solve the issue. “[B]efore people start trying to explain this away as a status/statehood issue, ask yourself why *any* U.S. citizen is denied the right to vote because of where they live,” she said. “Even U.S. citizens living ABROAD have the right to vote but U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico cannot. It’s colonialism,” she concluded, adding, “And in the case of D.C., racism.”
As Puerto Rican advocates have pointed out, the Supreme Court ruling is the result of a hypocritical decision by President Joe Biden to continue former President Donald Trump’s argument that the territory’s residents shouldn’t receive SSI disability payments. This is despite Biden’s statement on the campaign trail that specifically condemned Trump’s appeal of an earlier decision that Puerto Ricans were eligible for the program.
“[Biden] could have prevented this and chose not to fulfill his campaign commitment. Passing the buck to Congress is not an excuse,” wrote Power 4 Puerto Rico, a group made of diaspora allies that advocates for Puerto Rican self-determination. “What Puerto Rico needs is Admin and Congress to stop imposing, looking away from economic roadblocks like the Jones Act and austerity program.” The Jones Act was the 1917 bill that established Puerto Rico as a territory of the U.S.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the only dissenter in the Court and the only justice of Puerto Rican descent, wrote in her dissent that the majority opinion “is utterly irrational.”
“Congress’ decision to deny to the U. S. citizens of Puerto Rico a social safety net that it provides to almost all other U.S. citizens is especially cruel given those citizens’ dire need for aid,” she wrote. “Equal treatment of citizens should not be left to the vagaries of the political process.”
As Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, Puerto Rico has been increasingly exploited by wealthy people as a tax haven; government officials have placed incentives for wealthy people who normally reside stateside to hide their money in Puerto Rico in order to dodge taxes. A recent move to restructure the island’s debt — known as the Plan of Adjustment under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) — will come at the cost of citizens and economic stability, and will serve mainly to benefit foreign capitalists, Truthout reported earlier this year.
While some Democrats have pushed for statehood for Puerto Rico, the New York lawmaker has pushed instead for Puerto Ricans to be able to determine their own path for the island. Last March, Ocasio-Cortez introduced a bill that would create a pathway for self-determination, calling for the creation of a “status convention” that would allow Puerto Ricans to decide on whether or not they want to become a state, become independent from the U.S., or otherwise.
Starbucks CEO Pushed Managers to Thwart Unionization Efforts, Leaked Video Shows
People hold signs while protesting in front of Starbucks on April 14, 2022, in New York City.
Leaked footage of a video call in which Starbucks’ billionaire CEO urges managers to step up their efforts to thwart worker unionization is yet another sign of the company’s growing desperation, labor advocates said on Thursday.
In the undated video published by the pro-worker media organization More Perfect Union, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz — who earlier this month became the company’s CEO for the third time — implored managers “to encourage [employees] to really understand what it might mean to vote for a union.”
Offering no evidence, Schultz — who referred to unionizing employees as “so-called workers” and “a new outside force that’s trying desperately to disrupt our company” — said, “I wasn’t there, but there are stories that people potentially had been bullied not to vote.”
Starbucks North America president Rossann Williams also appears in the video, telling managers that it’s their “number one responsibility” to “do your role” to ensure that employees “get balanced information about what’s going on.” Williams also implored Starbucks employees to be skeptical of accounts published by workers who say they’ve experienced corporate retaliation and union-busting.
“Don’t believe everything you see in social media,” she said. “For those of you that have reached out, it’s heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking for me to see and hear how some partners are talking about the company that I love.”
According to More Perfect Union, Starbucks has “regularly shut down stores, isolated new workers, held captive audience meetings, and subjected workers to a barrage of emails, texts, and videos with anti-union rhetoric.”
Starbucks Workers United, the union behind the organizing efforts, says it has filed more than 80 unfair labor practice complaints against the company with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
On Wednesday, Starbucks filed its own unfair labor practice charges against members of Starbucks Workers United, accusing them of a “consistent pattern of disturbing behavior.”
In response to the complaints, the union said that “Starbucks is getting desperate as it loses this war in battle after battle, because we — the Starbucks partners — continue to organize and fight for a real voice within the company. These charges are just the latest example of that desperation.”
NLRB prosecutors on Friday formally accused Starbucks of illegally firing a group of activists seeking to unionize their Memphis, Tennessee store. On Tuesday, the NLRB filed a third lawsuit against Starbucks for alleged labor violations against unionizing workers in a Phoenix store over the past four months. Starbucks’ pushback against organizers comes amid a nationwide wave of barista unionization. Earlier this week, workers at five Richmond, Virginia stores voted to unionize, and on Thursday employees at a flagship location in the company’s hometown of Seattle elected to join Starbucks Workers United.
Since Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York filed for a union election last summer, employees at more than 200 stores across the country have sought to unionize.
“We can resist and thrive,” said Seattle organizer Brennen Collins, “even among a storm of disinformation and fearmongering perpetrated against our best interests.”
Egypt gig economy workers face rough ride
CAIRO, April 24, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Young men on bikes and scooters zip through Cairo, Egypt's sprawling megalopolis, dodging cars to deliver more than a million orders each day, with little physical or legal protection.
Egypt's digital gig economy is growing, as economic pressures push more of its key demographic -- educated, urban youth -- into the work-on-demand model.
Engineer Mohamed Sherif, 37, joined online food ordering company Talabat as a bicycle courier in Alexandria three months ago because he couldn't find a job.
"They bleed you dry left and right, but there's nothing else to do," he told AFP.
In early April, Talabat couriers called a two-day strike to demand higher wages, with only a fraction of the 12,000 workforce joining.
The work stoppage reflected, however, the state of Egypt's sizeable, app- based gig economy.
Inflation has climbed to a three-year high of 12.1 percent while the Egyptian pound plunged to 18 percent of its value.
The mounting economic hardships come as global commodity prices have soared following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
A courier who declined to be named said commissions have been stagnant since 2020 at 9-18 Egyptian pounds (50 cents and $1).
"You can work a nine or 10-hour shift, and just not get enough orders," Sherif told AFP.
After paying for gas, oil and other expenses, "you could end up only making 30 or 40 pounds that day".
In Egypt, where 60 percent of the 103-million-strong population are under 30 and 14.5 percent of university graduates are unemployed, digital labour platforms have attracted 100,000-200,000 workers.
Uber alone employed 90,000 drivers in 2019, all without contracts, insurance or social security.
- 'Taking advantage of vulnerability' -
Fairwork, a project by the University of Oxford, worked with the American University in Cairo to rate the working conditions of seven of Egypt's largest digital labour platforms.
Uber, Talabat and grocery app Mongez scored one out of 10, while ridesharing startup Swvl -- which made headlines for its $1.5 billion Nasdaq debut earlier this year -- scored just three out of 10.
Omar Ramadan, whose home maintenance and cleaning services startup FilKhedma rated highest at five out of 10, said working conditions are seldom discussed in the tech ecosystem.
"It's very rare to talk about how much we're paying people, if this is fair or not, if we're taking advantage of people's vulnerability."
A third of Egyptians live in poverty, and nearly the same number are vulnerable to falling into poverty, the World Bank says.
The average family's monthly income is 6,000 EGP ($325).
Following the strike this month, Talabat said in a statement that couriers earned around 4,000-6,000 EGP per month, and up to 10,000 EGP "if they work eight hours or more".
But couriers say this excludes the cost of petrol -- which has gone up by three percent in recent days -- and paying for and servicing the scooter or bicycle they use.
Couriers using motorcycles earn up to twice as much as those making their deliveries by bicycles or on foot, said Sherif.
- A legal grey area -
Couriers also put their lives at risk as they navigate the chaotic streets of Cairo, where traffic rules are more than often disrespected and accidents happen almost daily.
Talabat Egypt's public affairs head Asmaa Khalil denied claims made by some couriers that they have no adequate insurance to protect them.
According to her, Talabat pays into accident and life insurance, but the schemes are handled by external contractors that recruit and manage their couriers.
Bicycle courier Sherif criticised this method, calling it a way by employers "to get rid of the dirty work".
Khalil said that, legally, Talabat has "no obligations" towards its couriers and offers insurance and other benefits only "out of goodwill".
For Wael Tawfik of the Legal Collective to Promote Labour Awareness, the best recourse for workers is to set up a trade union.
But Sherif said it would be a tough task for couriers to set up a union because "unlike factory workers who all work in the same place, couriers only meet each other by coincidence".
Only 13.6 million people receive state-sponsored social security benefits in Egypt, where 63 percent of the workforce are employed in the informal economy, according to the International Labour Organization.
"Employment law, tax law, social security, it's all unclear how the gig economy is supposed to behave," Ramadan said.
"Everyone in the gig economy is in a grey area," he added.
Work Sucks. Here’s The Real Reason You Hate Your Job
Work should help us thrive, but our jobs leave us hopeless, exhausted, and deflated. Where did we go wrong?
Economist and mathematician John Maynard Keynes made a bold prediction about the future of work. Back in 1930, he said that within 100 years — by 2030 — we’d be working a 15-hour workweek.
We’ve still got time, but things aren’t looking too good.
Keynes’ prediction isn’t as silly as it sounds, though. When he made it, working hours were in a steady decline. It was easy to follow the trend lines to their logical conclusion. Union efforts were winning battles to shrink the workweek and new technologies were making workers more productive in less time.
A much shorter workweek was a reasonable conclusion.
But by the late 1940s, the workweek stopped shrinking. It leveled off into the 40 hours a week we still know — and loathe — today.
For a while, the growing productivity meant growing wages, too. Productivity and worker pay grew together. But by the late 1970s, it all began to come undone. Since 1979 — because of tax cuts for the wealthy, aggressive financial deregulation, less frequent raises to the minimum wage, and other intentional policies — productivity has continued to increase while worker pay has generally stagnated.
There isn’t a labor shortage.
Now — even though our system relies on there being more workers than jobs — we’re facing a nationwide labor shortage. The coronavirus pandemic shook the labor market hard, particularly in low-wage service industry jobs. Many were laid off or furloughed, and now they aren’t coming back.
Some are complaining that “nobody wants to work anymore,” but the problem is not that there’s a lack of people looking for jobs, too strong a social safety net, or too rich of benefits. People are just fed up with bad jobs.
The same is true of the white-collar office workers now resigning. As companies call their staff back to the office, employees are refusing to return to toxic work environments. They’re looking for less stress, more meaning, and better pay, too.
It’s been called the Big Quit, the Great Reset, the Great Reshuffle, and a dozen other not-so-great names. Organizational psychologist Anthony Klots was the first to call it the Great Resignation when he was quoted in a Bloomberg article on how to quit your job. That one stuck.
People are burned out. And after the pandemic, many are rethinking the place of work in their lives, reflecting on what gives them meaning and happiness.
And work isn’t it.
Increased productivity didn’t translate to time off, instead, we got bullshit jobs.
Our economy has perverted the notion of work, distorting its purpose. Specifically, useful jobs are made unrewarding. The pay is low, the benefits are next to nil, and the hours are grueling. On the other hand, the pencil-pushing jobs that don’t create any tangible benefit for society are often incredibly lucrative.
This is the thesis of anthropologist David Graeber’s 2018 book, Bullshit Jobs. In it, Graeber observes something we all knew deep down was true. Some jobs are pointless. They exist solely to make the rich more money and to keep us busy. Work is adult daycare.
“Only a little more than half of all workers — and less than half of millennials and Gen Z — feel that their job makes a meaningful contribution to the world.”
Contrary to what Keynes predicted — that as technology improved, automation would ease our work week to fewer and fewer hours so we can more completely enjoy life away from the labor needed to maintain it — companies have filled the hours gifted to us by increased efficiency and productivity with bullshit jobs.
These new jobs do nothing to improve the human condition. They serve no real purpose other than accelerating the accumulation of wealth and power of a greedy few while keeping us busy, cooped up at a job all day. Think of the movie Office Space. Essentially, these frivolous jobs exist for their own sake.
From the movie, Office Space, Twentieth Century Fox
The numbers back Graeber up. According to a 2021 poll by YouGov, only a little more than half of all workers — and less than half of millennials and Gen Z — feel that their job makes a meaningful contribution to the world. Nearly a quarter of US adults firmly believe that their job is meaningless.
The essential workers we spotlighted and celebrated during the height of the pandemic (but didn’t pay more or learn to appreciate) aren’t the ones working bullshit jobs. Their work, as it turns out, is foundational to our collective survival.
Bullshit jobs are the ones that keep us busy most of our waking hours doing work that’s hard if not impossible to connect to any collective, societal good. They alienate us and exhaust us. They leave us without the energy to fight for any meaningful change.
Paradoxically, these pointless jobs are often white-collar jobs with big salaries. The highly-valued and highly-paid jobs are the most likely to be unfulfilling, useless dead ends that do nothing to make the world a better place.
“Imagine what we could achieve if we committed our labor to actually improving the human condition.”
If things were different, if we cast off these pointless jobs, our entire system would start to come undone. The 40-hour workweek, minimum wage jobs, regular economic crashes, a permanent pool of the unemployed that we cycle in and out of, unaffordable housing, homelessness, funneling wealth to a small group of billionaires and oligarchs — none of it would be justifiable if we eliminated our attachment to the profit motive as the primary driver of our economy.
If we all worked exclusively to improve the human condition, we could all work less.
We could choose a different world; work less and enjoy life more.
Work is an essential fact of life. However, it’s not what life is about. Our purpose on this planet is not to endlessly toil for the benefit of an elite few. We don’t live to work, we work to live.
The point of work should be to guarantee our ability to experience life. We only get one shot at it, and there are so many things to enjoy — from community and the love of friends and family, and appreciating or creating art and eating good food, to say nothing of forming new friendships or bettering oneself. A good job can offer some of these things, but work for its own sake has taken over most of our waking hours.
Every president in the last 100 years has promised to create more jobs and better-paying jobs, but that’s not what we need. More jobs don’t always make things better, especially if those jobs are pointless, alienating, dangerous, or demeaning.
“We can achieve all the necessary benefits and even rich fruits of our labors with far fewer hours.”
What we need is a better understanding of the role work is meant to play — creating a world where we all can thrive — so we can make jobs better reflect that. Jobs shouldn’t be a means to mere survival while we shovel more money to billionaires.
Imagine what we could achieve if we committed our labor to actually improving the human condition. By replacing the profit motive with the drive to improve the human condition, we could set about building infrastructure in forward-thinking and sustainable ways, ensuring everyone is housed and receiving any necessary medical care, building our green energy capacity, focusing on tangible, positive changes for our communities. These kinds of projects are rarely profitable and that’s why we don’t see many of them today.
Under our current system, work exists solely to generate profit for someone else. And since there is no natural cap to how much profit is desirable, nor how much work is necessary, we just work more and more. We can achieve all the necessary benefits and even rich fruits of our labors with far fewer hours. But, to do this, the aims and outcomes of work must be focused not on profit, but on improving the human condition.
We could work far fewer hours for far fewer years of our lives and in far better conditions. The only reason that we don’t is that a profit-based economy simply does not function that way. In a world of abundance, we’ve been made to endlessly toil for tyrants whose names we often don’t know — unless they are Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg — building their wealth, their mansions, their compounds, and their futures.
We must dismantle the system that abuses work for the benefit of a vanishingly small few. Fighting for a world where we are all prosperous is the most fundamental of human endeavors.
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