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)
Sunday, June 05, 2022
HIS WORKFORCE REPLACEMENT
Musk Promises a Working Humanoid Robot in September
Elon Musk built Tesla (TSLA) - Get Tesla Inc Report with spectacular promises. This is his strength, say his admirers. It's his visionary side, they say, applauding.
But If he has kept some of these commitments, they were often not on time. It would be reasonable to say that the billionaire has almost always been late compared with the schedule he he'd laid out.
And one of his key promises has yet to materialize: autonomous vehicles. Musk had promised that Tesla cars would be self-driving in 2018.
"In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you're in LA and the car is in NY," the disruptor in chief said in January 2016.
Four years later, the electric-vehicle manufacturer continues to display the following warning on the webpage dedicated to full-self-driving, or (FSD, its driving-assistance system:
"All Tesla cars require active driver supervision and are not autonomous."
A Working Humanoid Robot in September?
Earlier this year the world's richest man again promised that Tesla vehicles would be self-driving, this time by the end of 2022.
But it is another promise on the agenda that's particularly noteworthy since it would revolutionize the daily operations at Tesla factories.
Musk has just postponed the second edition of Tesla Day, dedicated to artificial intelligence to the end of September from Aug. 19.
The reason? Musk promises to present a working prototype of Optimus, a humanoid robot that will replace people in Tesla's factories.
"Tesla AI Day pushed to Sept 30, as we may have an Optimus prototype working by then," Musk wrote on Twitter on June 2.
If Musk delivers on his promise, it would be the first time he's delivered on a commitment ahead of schedule.
The billionaire had said in January that a prototype Optimus would be ready by the end of the year and Tesla planned to market it from 2023.
"I think actually the most important product development we're doing this year is actually the Optimus humanoid robot. This, I think, has the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business over time," the tech tycoon said during the first-quarter-earnings call.
The latest news has energized the man's tens of millions of followers.
THE RESULT OF PUBLIC CRITICISM Musk backtracks on job cuts, says Tesla salaried staff to be 'fairly flat'
Yesterday 3:38 p.m.
(Reuters) -Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Saturday that the electric vehicle maker's total headcount will increase over the next 12 months, but the number of salaried staff should be little changed, backtracking from an email just two days ago saying that job cuts of 10% were needed.
"Total headcount will increase, but salaried should be fairly flat," Musk tweeted https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533176789022957568 in a reply to an unverified Twitter account that made a "prediction" that Tesla's headcount would increase over the next 12 months.
Musk in an email to Tesla executives on Thursday, which was seen by Reuters on Friday, said he has a "super bad feeling" about the U.S. economy and needed to cut jobs by about 10%.
In another email to employees on Friday, Musk said Tesla would reduce salaried headcount by 10%, as it has become "overstaffed in many areas." But "hourly headcount will increase," he said.
Tesla's shares sank 9.2% on Friday on the news.
According to a Tesla U.S. regulatory filing, the company and its subsidiaries had almost 100,000 employees at the end of 2021.
Ahead of his emails on staffing levels, Musk on Wednesday in an email to Tesla employees issued an ultimatum to return to the office for a minimum of 40 hours a week. Failure to do so would be taken as a resignation, he wrote.
Musk on Thursday said Tesla's AI day has been pushed to Sept. 30, and said a prototype of Optimus, a humanoid robot that is a company priority, could be ready by then and could be launched next year
(Reporting by Rachna Dhanrajani in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Tesla layoffs catch the attention of U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh
Brian Sozzi ·Anchor, Editor-at-Large Fri, June 3, 2022,
U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh says it's time for his new billionaire acquaintance Elon Musk to give him another phone call as the Tesla CEO eyes mass layoffs at the EV maker.
"I had a conversation with Mr. Musk about two months ago," Walsh told Yahoo Finance Live about potential layoffs at Tesla (video above). "I would love to follow back up with him about what more we can do as a government. Quite honestly, this is not just a government response. This is a business response as well [as a response to] where we are headed with the economy." NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 02: Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/WireImage)
In a new internal memo obtained by Reuters, Musk stated that Tesla would be pausing hiring and laying off 10% of the company's 100,000 global workforce as the world richest man had a "super bad feeling" about the economy.
"Certainly Elon Musk is a very smart person and he is looking at where he is in the economy, where the company is," Walsh said. "I am hopeful that won't happen out there. I am hopeful as we continue to move forward we will continue to see our economy get stronger."
Tesla stock fell nearly 9% on Friday as the news came as a surprise to the bulls with the automaker putting up a strong first quarter and noting strong order trends. The stock was the top trending ticker on the Yahoo Finance platform for the entire trading session.
The lines of communication have recently opened up between Musk and the Biden administration after a long stretch of iciness.
"We had a good conversation," Walsh told Yahoo Finance Live in May when asked about the meeting, which marked the first public olive branch by the pro-union Biden administration to the famously anti-union Musk.
"I'd like hereby to invite UAW to hold a union vote at their convenience," Musk tweeted on March 3. "Tesla will do nothing to stop them."
Elon Musk Has an Original Idea to End Manager-Worker Divisions
The CEO of Tesla is known for working to the extreme in his businesses.
Elon Musk doesn't like unions and does not hide it.
He is opposed to the creation of a union at Tesla, and will do anything to make unionization efforts fail.
His favorite argument is that the manufacturer of electric vehicles offers among the most attractive working conditions and wages and benefits.
His aversion to unions is one of the sources of tension with the Biden administration. President Joe Biden is a big supporter of the unions. He even hosted labor leaders after their April historic victory at Amazon, another anti-union stronghold.
"Chris Smalls is making good trouble and helping inspire a new movement of labor organizing across the country," the Democratic president posted on Twitter on May 11, referring to an Amazon Labor union organizer. "Let’s keep it going."
'Everyone Is a Worker'
But Musk has just put forward a very original idea which could well have the approval of the unions. The tech tycoon recommends abolishing the class system present in companies. Basically, Musk wants to end the famous distinction between managers and employees and everything that goes with it.
"There shouldn’t be this workers vs management two-class system," the serial entrepreneur wrote on Twitter on June 2. "Everyone is a worker."
Such an idea seems revolutionary, even Marxist, but Musk explains that at Tesla, the barriers were abolished between managers and employees. In Tesla factories, there is no special treatment for managers. Everyone is housed in the same boat, says the CEO.
"Everyone eats same food, uses same restrooms, etc – no executive chef or other ivory tower stuff," the tech tycoon said.
The system described by Musk somewhat resembles Toyotism, which is already found in tech companies where employees are supposed to have much more freedom to plan and execute their work. The workplace must be welcoming and friendly to retain employees.
In Toyotism, imported from Japanese companies, managers and executives participate in the execution tasks and the workers are called upon to give their opinion to improve the organization of work and productivity, often through so-called quality circles, for example.
Australian billionaire slams Elon Musk’s return to work order right as his $48 billion firm discloses a huge security flaw
Tristan Bove Fri, June 3, 2022,
Australian tech billionaire Scott Farquhar started a war of words with Tesla CEO Elon Musk over the latter’s return-to-work policies. But a Twitter feud with Musk might need to wait, as Farquhar’s $48 billion software company is dealing with a serious hacker problem.
“Remote work is no longer acceptable,” the subject of the email read, as Musk announced that white-collar Tesla employees who do not report to the office at least 40 hours a week can start looking for a new job.
Some tech companies, such as Farquhar’s Atlassian, appear to have taken that literally.
In a Twitter thread on June 1, Farquhar likened Musk’s proclamation to “something out of the 1950s,” and highlighted Atlassian’s move to fully embrace working from home as a “key for our continued growth.” He ended the thread with a link to Atlassian’s career page, inviting disgruntled Tesla employees to apply.
It wasn’t long before Musk responded to Farquhar’s provocation with a jab of his own: “The above set of tweets illustrate why recessions serve a vital economic cleansing function,” he replied.
Musk has a history of criticizing other billionaires on Twitter—having previously done so with Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. But he didn’t even mention the current controversy surrounding Atlassian’s security protocols.
Atlassian, which was founded in 2002 and now competes directly with established developers including Microsoft and IBM, scaled new heights during the pandemic, briefly hitting a $100 billion market cap last year. Now valued around $48 billion, it recently issued an advisory warning on June 2 about a “critical severity” security flaw in its products, having detected multiple instances of “current active exploitation” by external parties.
The bug is affecting Atlassian Data Center and Server, a collaborative “groupwork” software commonly marketed to businesses, and one of the company’s best-selling products. Confluence has been designed to enable and facilitate remote working, with its homepage on the Atlassian website emphasizing it as a “remote-friendly team workspace.”
The company released a fix at 10 a.m. on Friday, less than 24 hours after the advisory as posted. But the recently-discovered bug impacts older versions of Confluence dating back to 2013, according to tech news outlet The Register.
Atlassian has urged users not to expose their Confluence software to the internet until a patch is released.
It isn’t the first time that weaknesses in Atlassian’s Confluence server have been considered vulnerable to hackers. Last year, the Australian Cyber Security Center issued an alert to Confluence users warning of a “serious vulnerability” in the product’s privacy protocols that could allow attackers to access the server and execute code remotely without authorization or authentication.
Confluence’s security issues exemplify one of the persistent problems associated with companies allowing employees to work from home indefinitely: cybersecurity concerns. It has been a headache for CEOs throughout the pandemic, and for executives like Musk—who reportedly has a habit of destroying his phone once a year out of security concerns—security issues with essential remote-work products like Confluence are just another reason to ask employees to return to the office.
That’s not out of the 1950s.
June 3, 2022: This article was updated to reflect that the bug affected Atlassian Data Center and Server, and what time the company announced they fixed the bug.
Recruiters at major companies like Amazon are going after Tesla employees angered by Elon Musk's return-to-office demand: 'If the Emperor of Mars doesn't want you, I'll be happy to bring you over'
Grace Kay Fri, June 3, 2022, Maja Hitij/Getty Images Recruiters at major companies offer to hire Tesla employees who want to keep working remotely.
On Tuesday, Elon Musk told Tesla employees they must return to the office or resign, reports say.
Remote working opportunities have become a key benefit amid the great resignation. Tesla workers might not have to return to the office after all — if they're willing to jump ship.
On Thursday, tech recruiters put out calls to Elon Musk's employees who might be looking to dodge his return-to-work edict.
On Thursday, Zafar Choudhury, who identifies himself as a technical recruiting leader at Amazon Web Services on LinkedIn, issued a call for disgruntled Tesla engineers to join the tech giant.
"If the Emperor of Mars doesn't want you, I'll be happy to bring you over to #AWS," Choudhury wrote on LinkedIn, referencing Musk's fixation with colonizing Mars.
Choudhury didn't respond to a request for comment from Insider. Spokespeople for Tesla and Amazon also didn't respond to requests for comment.
The recruiter took aim at reports that Musk sent emails to executive staff on Tuesday, calling for the workers to stop "phoning it in" and come into the office at least 40 hours a week.
"If you don't like to be micromanaged by the Elon Musk's of the world, come to #AWSIdentity!" Choudhury wrote. "We'll find you a happy home here that respects you, your time and your profession. We will find you a team that treats you with dignity."
Last year, Amazon announced that it would let corporate employees work from home indefinitely. It has been one of several tech companies to make the shift from an office-centric work environment to a more distributed workforce.
Choudhury was one of several recruiters on LinkedIn who pushed for Tesla employees to join Amazon, as well as smaller tech companies, such as Insight and Bestow. A Microsoft recruiter also joined in on the hiring frenzy, The Next Web reported.
In a post that has since been deleted, Tiana Watts-Porter, who identifies herself as a technical recruiter for Microsoft, told Tesla employees they would be given more freedom at Microsoft. Watts-Porter did not respond to a request for comment from Insider.
The tech company has embraced a hybrid work environment. Last month, Microsoft announced that workers would be allowed to work remotely over 50% of the time so long as it was approved by their managers.
"You can do things your way, and be yourself here at Microsoft!" Watts-Porter wrote, The Next Web reported.
In his companywide email, Musk took a dig at companies such as Amazon that have allowed employees to work from home, Electrek reported.
"There are of course companies that don't require this, but when was the last time they shipped a great new product?" Musk said in a companywide email, the report said. "It's been a while."
The billionaire appeared to justify his decision to bring workers back to the office on Twitter, saying his ultimatum was part of an effort to promote equality between factory workers — who have been required to come to work in person throughout the pandemic — and executives.
Musk's stance on remote work could inhibit Tesla's and SpaceX's recruiting efforts. Remote working opportunities have become a key benefit amid the Great Resignation.
In March, a survey of 3,019 employees conducted by Blind, an anonymous employee community app, found that 64% of workers at employers such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google would rather work from home than receive a $30,000 raise.
"Companies simply cannot force people back to the office, especially when there are other remote jobs available elsewhere," Kyum Kim, Blind's cofounder, previously told Insider's Caroline Hronich and Ebony Flake.
‘One thing that human beings value above all else is our autonomy’: The gloves are off: Elon Musk is the latest CEO to tell workers to return to the office
Related video: Elon Musk Tells Tesla Workers to Get Back to Office
Tesla’s chief executive officer and founder responded Thursday to an apparent leaked email that called on employees to return to the office: “They should pretend to work somewhere else” were his choice of words on Twitter in the early hours of Thursday morning.
The email in question, dated May 31 and signed “Elon,” was candid, and was addressed to the electric-car maker’s executive staff. It was bluntly entitled: “Remote work is no longer acceptable.”
The Great Resistance has seen employees pitted against companies over whether they should return to the office full time after more than two years of working from home. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned people’s lives upside down and led to more than 1 million fatalities in the U.S. alone, but it has also given millions of workers a rare insight into the possibility of working remotely, and still being as productive as they were when they were in the office.
Tesla, which employs roughly 100,000 workers worldwide, has already received pushback in Germany, where it employs 4,000 workers and plans to expand to 12,000. The IG Metall union in the German state of Brandenburg Sachsen, where Tesla’s German plant is based, did not react kindly to Musk’s return-or-quit dictat, Reuters reported Thursday.
“Whoever does not agree with such one-sided demands and wants to stand against them has the power of unions behind them in Germany, as per law,” Birgit Dietze, the district leader for IG Metall in Brandenburg Sachsen, said per the news agency.
It’s not too surprising that some employees are pushing back hard against management’s expectations about returning to in-person work, even if most employees legal options are limited. “If we feel like somebody is trying to force us to do something we tend to push against that change with equal force,” David Schonthal, professor of strategy at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.
“One thing that human beings value above all else is our autonomy. Over the last two years, we lost the camaraderie and personal interaction with our colleagues, but we gained our autonomy where we can make our own schedule,” he added.
Employees may have legal grounds in the U.S. to work remotely under the Americans with Disabilities Act if they have a medical condition that makes them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. But unless the requirement to report to the office is at odds with a stay-at-home order in their state —which have long been lifted across the U.S. — even unionized workers who wish to work remotely are likely out of luck. ‘If we feel like somebody is trying to force us to do something we tend to push against that change with equal force.’ — David Schonthal, professor of strategy at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management
In the aforementioned Tesla email, Musk said that exceptional circumstances would be considered and reviewed directly by him, but noted that managers could not just show up at the most convenient Tesla office. The email also read: “Moreover, the ‘office’ must be a main Tesla office, not a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties, for example, being responsible for Fremont factory human relations, but having your office be in another state.”
For those who can work from home part- or full-time, this may be a luxury problem. Tesla’s factory workers do not have the privilege to work from home, and may have little appreciation for those managers who choose not to be on site full time. Similarly, teachers, medical workers, retail workers and service workers are, for the most part, working in-person. In fact, the Labor Department says only 7.7% of employees teleworked in April, although the Federal Reserve Board’s survey on Americans’ economic well-being released last month estimated a higher percentage of employees (22%) are working entirely from home.
Tom Murphy, professor of management at the MIT Sloane School of Management in Cambridge, Mass., said it’s hard to predict what Musk will say and do, and hard to say what will happen with Tesla, “but in the long run employees will vote with their feet and choose to work in companies which give them more flexibility about where and when they work. This is how the markets work: buyers and sellers find people they want to do business with — in this case, it’s happening with the labor market.” ‘Tesla is kick-starting its own local Great Resignation.’ — Nicholas Bloom, a professor in the department of economics at Stanford University
There will always be senior executives who feel strongly that workers should be in the office much or all of the time, and some companies may choose to work that way, he added. “But I think the tide of history is against that. More and more companies will give more and more workers more and more freedom about where they work. Technology makes it possible, in many cases, to be more or just as productive in a way that is time efficient and life-friendly for the workers.”
So how many workers — at Telsa and elsewhere — would actually jump ship? “In response to Musk’s demand, almost 60% of employees will return to the office full time,” said Nicholas Bloom, a professor in the department of economics at Stanford University, “but about 7% are likely to quit on the spot and about 30% actively look for another job.” That’s based on his own monthly poll of 2,500 workers.
“Typically, the folks quitting will be higher educated in hot areas like IT and finance, where many other firms are offering work-from-home for 2 to 3 days per week. So the majority of employees will return, but Tesla is kick-starting its own local Great Resignation,” Bloom added.
Other global surveys suggest a higher percentage of workers would consider leaving or have already found a new gig. But that also assumes they would be entering a still-strong jobs market. There is another game-changer that could cause workers to stay put: The specter of a recession. ‘Employees will vote with their feet and choose to work in companies which give them more flexibility about where and when they work.’ — Tom Murphy, professor of management at the MIT Sloane School of Management
However, Murphy said there is an important missing piece in the working-from-home debate — informal interactions that don’t happen in formally scheduled meetings. “These are things that happen in the hallway or next to the coffee machine. Those informal interactions can also be supported online.” Murphy said he was working on his own alternative to Zoom and Google Meet — a more intimate video chat called “Mingler” that works on open-source software.
Musk isn’t the first CEO to vent. JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon told workers at a Wall Street Journal event in May 2021 that remote work “doesn’t work for people who want to hustle, doesn’t work for culture, doesn’t work for idea generation. We are getting blowback about coming back internally, but that’s life.” But Dimon recently acknowledged in the bank’s latest annual report that “working from home will become more permanent in American business.”
What Musk tweeted likely reflects what many companies are thinking with respect to working from home, and the need to get workers back into the office, “but most wouldn’t take the risk of framing it as a blanket statement like that,” said Vanessa Burbano, an associate professor of business at Columbia Business School in New York.
“So as not to alienate or drive away employees who place a lot of value on flexibility and the ability to work from home,” she added, “companies that want to get workers back into the office will want to do so in a way that says to these workers, ‘We hear you, we understand that you place value in this, let’s find a compromise.'”
Ultimately, there is a valuable lesson for the next CEO like Musk or Dimon who chooses to throw down the gauntlet, Schonthal said. “Co-design a return to work with your employees instead of forcing your will or decision upon them,” he said. “When employees feel like they have authorship in the change or return to work, it diffuses any ‘reactance.’ They feel like they have a hand in it themselves, and it makes them much more receptive to change.”
Tesla reported having paid a PR firm to monitor employees online in 2017 and 2018
Tesla reportedly paid a PR firm to monitor employees online in 2017 and 2018. The firm focused on research conducted by labour organizers through a Facebook group.
Tesla sign on the building on car sales
MobileSyrup - Friday
The core reasoning behind Tesla bringing on a PR firm is due to its staff trying to form a union at the company’s Fremont, California factory. According to invoices and documents obtained by CNBC, MikeWorldWide (MWW) PR tried to identify conversations regarding workplace conditions. The monitoring covered anything from unfair labour practices to a sexual harassment lawsuit.
Via the report, three Tesla employees who worked at the Fremont factory were advised not to connect with high ups online. This extended to staff joining online groups without surveying the members. Additionally, two current employees are also cautious about Tesla continuing to monitor social media posts to this day.
Copies of Tesla’s current communication policies have also been seen. These reportedly state that managing personnel should not look into an employee’s social media presence without a notable reason drawing back to the company. However, the company also states that employees should not address labour issues online. Instead, they are “more likely to resolve concerns about work” through the company directly.
News of this comes at a time when Tesla CEO Elon Musk is very adamant about free speech online. In his bid to acquire Twitter for $44 billion, Musk has been outspoken about how the social media platform should be used for free speech. Prior to approaching a deal to purchase Twitter, Musk used the platform to complain about the state of free speech. The question of whether “a new platform is needed” was also brought into question.
Ultimately, this led Musk to purchase 9.2 percent of Twitter and later reach a deal to own the company. However, the acquisition has not gone through fully at the time of writing.
Permian Basin rivals Saudi Arabia, Russia in oil production
Bob Campbell, Odessa American, Texas Fri, June 3, 2022, 6:03 PM·3 min read
Jun. 3—The Permian Basin is now pumping more oil than every country in the world except Saudi Arabia and Russia and considering the multiple factors at play, its global status will keep rising.
That's according to Rystad Energy, an independent research and business intelligence company based in Oslo, Norway, which says the Basin will boom from the record 5.2 million barrels per day that it produced in May to 5.6 million bpd by the end of this year and 6.5 million bpd in 2023, or almost half of a record total U.S. production of 13.2 million bpd.
"The Permian has become the hot spot for U.S. oil production thanks to significant resources, low break-even costs and high oil content," said Espen Erlingsen, Rystad's director of upstream research. "This trend is only likely to continue as global oil markets struggle with supply constraints and the demand for oil shows little sign of easing."
Asked if 6.5 million bpd is realistic, Henry Resources President David Bledsoe of Midland said, "I think we can get there, but it depends a lot on how the major oil companies view their capital budgets and their interactions with Wall Street.
"The private companies will continue to drill."
With the Basin's rig count standing at 343, up from 225 a year ago and nearly half of the national count of 727, Bledsoe said, "It will be the best thing for the industry if we add a lot of production rates like we have in the past, drive the prices down and don't continue the wild ride of price volatility, which is hard on all of us.
"The reason we have seen an uptick in production in the last few months is that we were deciding to do that a year ago. It takes about a year from the decision to add production for that production to come online."
Society of Professional Engineers spokesman Steve Rassenfoss of Houston said the Basin's output is primarily a result of its technology. "You're achieving a huge amount of oil, which is indicative of the fact that you have gotten really good at technology and you keep getting better," Rassenfoss said Thursday.
"The Permian Basin has a great concentration of talented people who are very good at applying the new technology in new ways."
Rassenfoss said 6.5 million bpd "doesn't seem much out of line" if the needed equipment and fracking sand are found. "The Eagle Ford Shale Play in South Texas and the Bakken Formation in North Dakota had been shrinking, but now they're growing," he said.
"Get $100 oil and people get interested."
Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association President Ed Longanecker said the Basin's growth "is not overly surprising because the oil and gas producers have responded to the higher commodity prices and the call to increase domestic production and address the supply shortage and growing demand.
"The Permian is one of the most prolific formations in the world, so it's good to see how it stacks up to the producing nations around the world," Longanecker said Thursday from Austin. "You have the resources and infrastructure with the community and region that is accustomed to supporting the oil and gas industry."
Longanecker said reaching 6.5 million bpd "will obviously depend on a number of market factors.
"If the commodity prices remain high and nothing overly burdensome is enacted at the federal level, we should reach new records in Texas this year or next year, driven largely by the Permian," he said. "Growth in production could be affected by challenges in the workforce, shortages of materials and an adversarial federal policy environment."
Remote, hybrid work creating schism as popular option unavailable to many workers
TORONTO — Employees like Matt Fairbanks are one of the reasons the hospitality and restaurant industry is struggling to find workers even as the pandemic wanes.
The 34-year-old former bartender has moved from slinging beers in Toronto to selling software to restaurants for a Saskatchewan company — which he does remotely.
"I was always kind of one foot out of the hospitality industry and the pandemic really showed me how vulnerable the work was and the instability of it all," he said in an interview.
Gone are the harrowing commutes, while the additional flexibility has improved his work-life balance. Fairbanks's company allows employees to work from out of the country for up to 90 days, take unlimited vacation and travel or work from anywhere in Canada.
"I've actually encouraged a lot of my friends from the restaurant industry to kind of look at other options and change kind of how they're doing their life, too."
Remote work flourished during the pandemic as companies temporarily closed their offices, but it has created a schism among Canadian workers. While 40 per cent of work in Canada can be done remotely, experts say, that means 60 per cent of workers are unable to access this benefit because they are required to be on-site.
And that can create resentment and a backlash from workers viewed as essential, such as nurses, ambulance workers and retail employees, who were applauded during the pandemic but are unable to realize the benefits that come from working remotely, said change management expert Linda Duxbury, a Chancellor’s Professor of management at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business, who has studied remote work for decades.
"The problem we're going to have here is we're going to create two classes of workers — the haves and the have nots," she said in an interview.
Those who can work remotely, particularly professionals such as accountants, lawyers and tech workers, flourished financially during the lockdowns while those forced to work on-site were often overworked or lost their jobs entirely amid reduced capacity and businesses that shuttered for good.
That second group was told they were valued and important "and now they don't feel important," Duxbury said.
The ability to work remotely has been one of the pivotal moments in the history of work, even though its application is generally limited to knowledge workers, said Erica Pimentel, assistant professor of accounting at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University.
"So when 60 per cent of the workforce is excluded from this massive change, well that's obviously going to have some implications for society," she said, because it's very inconsistent in how it affects the population at large.
Related video: Help Needed: Remote work permanently changes workforce
Duxbury cautions that the jury is still out on remote work, or what she calls "enforced work from home." She constantly hears from businesses seeking best practices and examples of what others are doing. But she said it's too early to assess the work style as everybody is experimenting with different models.
"Remote work during the pandemic was one big giant experiment. Now we're moving to the second experiment, the follow up, which is hybrid work," she said.
The appropriateness of remote work is very job dependent. It isn't conducive to brainstorming, socialization, coaching, mentoring, onboarding, team-building and client satisfaction.
And while people who work from home put in far more hours — estimated at four to 10 additional hours per week — data suggests it hasn't increased productivity, Duxbury said.
"Just because we worked 100 per cent remote for the last two plus years doesn't mean it's a sustainable model for a lot of people and a lot of jobs moving forward."
Despite the drawbacks, remote work is being increasingly favoured, especially by generation Z, digital natives who have always had access to the internet and social media, said Pimentel.
This cohort is coming of age and joining the workforce with new attitudes about employers' duty to them and how different parts of their lives fit together that is different from millennials, generation X and baby boomers, who are in many cases now the bosses.
"And so there's this generational like mismatch between bosses and their employees and everybody is unhappy."
Many companies would rather have employees return to the office full-time, but are facing stiff opposition from workers who have grown to like working from home, said Duxbury. Faced with record job vacancies amid decades-low unemployment rates and threats of resignations, employers have been forced to be flexible.
That means employees with a skill that's in demand are able to negotiate better work conditions than somebody without those skills. Tech workers, who accounted for most of the three per cent of Canadians who worked remotely before the pandemic, are among those in the driver's seat now.
Demands to work remotely have gone from being the exception to the rule because it's so hard to compete for talent, said Kristina McDougall, founder and president of executive search firm Artemis that specializes in tech employment.
"Unless there is an absolute reason why you physically need to be present, like you're working on a robot or you need to be in the building, most organizations are having to be flexible," she said.
The growth in remote work has also transformed where companies source their workforce because people can work anywhere and don't have to be near a company headquarters. That widens the jobs an individual can consider, but it also gives companies a wider pool of candidates as well as increased competition with other potential suitors.
McDougall believes the movement to remote work is permanent for sectors like technology because the pandemic has proven that organizations can get things built with people working remotely.
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle. People are now finding it trivial that they might need to go into an office every day."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 5, 2022.
Ross Marowits, The Canadian Press
60 firefighters, 6 helicopters working to douse out-of-control wildfire in northwestern Alberta
CBC/Radio-Canada - 2h ago
More firefighters and air support have been dispatched to battle a wildfire that has been raging in northwestern Alberta for several days.
A fire ignited near Zama City, a hamlet around 700 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, on June 1 due to lightning, according to Victoria Ostendorf, wildfire information officer for Alberta Wildfire's High Level forest area.
By Saturday, Alberta Wildfire classified the fire as out of control and it had grown to 1,800 hectares. A team of 46 firefighters and five helicopters were dispatched to the area.
As of 11:30 a.m. Sunday, the wildfire has grown to 3,000 hectares and there are now 60 firefighters and six helicopters trying to extinguish the flames, Alberta Wildfire said in an update.
Firefighters, with help from air support, have been able to start establishing control lines on the south and east sides of the fire, the update says.
The wildfire, which is burning about 20 kilometres northwest of Zama City, Alta., poses no threat to the community, it adds.
There are no emergency alerts in effect Sunday morning, according to the Alberta Emergency Alert Index.
There are five other wildfires burning with Alberta Wildfire's High Level forest area, of which Zama City, Alta., is a part. Two are being held, the other three are under control.
The High Level forest area is currently under a fire advisory due to warm temperatures and little rain in the forecast.
Under the advisory, existing fire permits are still valid but may be suspended or cancelled if the weather conditions continue. New permits are being reviewed and approved on a case-by-case basis, Alberta Wildfire says.
Any burning — except for campfires — without a valid permit is prohibited under the advisory.
Up to 15,000 may join largest ever migrant caravan to walk through Mexico to US
Lillian Perlmutter in Tapachula Fri, June 3, 2022,
Photograph: Juan Manuel Blanco/EPA
Liozanys Comeja credits her survival to her teacup chihuahua, Mia. Originally from Venezuela, Comeja moved to Colombia five years ago, but decided to leave her new life behind this month due to the rising cost of living. She crossed the Darien Gap, a notorious stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama, with Mia tucked in her backpack, eventually making her way across eight countries. Now, Comeja is hoping the dog will help her make it through the grueling final leg of their journey.
Comeja has joined about 11,000 others who on Monday will leave Tapachula, a sweltering city on the Mexico-Guatemala border, and head north for the United States. It will depart as leaders from across the hemisphere gather in Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas.
“Whenever I get discouraged, Mia calms me down,” Comeja said. When they arrive at the US border, Comeja plans to cross the Rio Grande on foot.
This is not the first migrant caravan to leave Tapachula, but it may be the largest ever recorded in Mexico: its numbers are expected to swell in the coming days, and may reach 15,000 people – plus Mia the chihuahua.
“This is the largest mass human migration I have seen in at least the past 10 years,” said LuÃs Villagrán, an organizer of the caravan and director of the non-profit Center for Human Dignification.
Nearly 70% of its members are women and children, aged between infants to people in their 70s, said Villagrán. Huddled together for protection, they aim to walk the entire length of Mexico. Most have only one pair of shoes; some, just plastic flip-flops. The road they will travel, known as the coastal route, may be difficult to traverse due to mudslides left behind by Hurricane Agatha, as well as the overbearing presence of the sun.
The largest number of migrants in the caravan come from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua – three countries whose authoritarian rulers Joe Biden has conspicuously refused to invite to the summit. But there are also Haitians, Salvadorans, Hondurans, Guatemalans and even citizens of India, Bangladesh, and several African countries.
Earlier this month, the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM), wrote to Villagrán, expressing sympathy for the caravan’s members and pledging to help the most vulnerable among them. The letter also acknowledges that the caravan is a result of the stunning tsunami of migration from nearly every country in the Americas to the United States in the past few years, attributing this migration to elevated rates of violence and economic instability in the continent.
It is a striking response from the leaders of a bureaucracy that migrants often describe as routinely unhelpful and even deliberately dysfunctional.
But the letter also marks the first time the Mexican government has responded to a caravan before its departure, and may signal a shift in how the authorities respond to large groups of migrants.
But caravan members are well aware of the potential dangers they face. In recent months, Mexico’s National Guard has become increasingly violent in its response to migrants. When Villagrán led a smaller caravan in April, he was beaten and several of his teeth were cracked by National Guard troops.
In Tapachula, the National Guard is routinely used to corral, detain, and teargas unruly groups of migrants in front of the city’s INM office, where people often wait for weeks or months for the humanitarian visa needed to leave the city.
On Tuesday, thousands gathered at Tapachula’s city center to write their names on a list that Villagrán would submit to INM to secure visas for the group. At one point, an altercation broke out as migrants worried others would get to the list before them, and they would be left behind.
Before they depart, Villagrán and the migrants are demanding humanitarian visas be given immediately, so the group can pass through migration checkpoints without being arrested or attacked by Mexican National Guard, as happened in April. Anyone attempting to cross through one of the checkpoints without a visa is sent back to Tapachula and forced to wait months for papers that may never come.
Over the past three months, migrants have poured into Tapachula’s parks and shelters at twice or three times the previous rate. Migrant shelters that once housed no more than 400 people are now accommodating nearly 2,000. Bathrooms overflow, food dwindles until it is just one scoop of beans, and migrants sleep in the hallways, or on spread out sweatshirts in the jungle.
Grace, another traveller from Venezuela, said she only hoped that her five-year-old daughter, Bláiche, would not remember the scenes they had lived through in the crowded shelter.
“Of course I’m joining the caravan! I’m leaving as quickly as I can,” she said. “This place is a trap.”
THAT IS THE ROOT CAUSE
Analysis: Corruption in Central America frustrates U.S. plan to tackle migration 'root causes'
Fri, June 3, 2022 By Ted Hesson, Daina Beth Solomon and Matt Spetalnick
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than a year into U.S. President Joe Biden's sweeping effort to tackle the "root causes" of migration with aid to Central America, projects likely worth millions of dollars have been canceled or put on hold due to corruption and governance concerns, U.S. officials and others tracking the issue said.
The setbacks come as the Biden administration is hosting the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles next week, where the United States hopes to find common ground with other nations and issue a joint statement on migration.
At the same time, corruption in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras has also limited potential investment from U.S. companies, another prong of Biden's strategy, according to a group coordinating the effort.
In one striking example, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) abruptly suspended an undisclosed amount of funding tied to Guatemala's justice ministry in July 2021 after the firing of a special prosecutor targeting corruption days earlier.
USAID also redirected funding away from projects linked to the justice ministry in El Salvador weeks after El Salvador's Congress, dominated by lawmakers aligned with President Nayib Bukele, voted to remove top judges and the attorney general in May 2021.
Bukele tweeted at the time that the dismissals were warranted and that they were "cleaning house."
USAID declined to detail the specifics of the projects or say how much funding was suspended in both cases, but it likely amounted to millions of dollars in funding to strengthen legal systems, experts told Reuters.
As the efforts faltered in the past year, record numbers of migrants attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, fueling criticism by Republicans as they seek to gain control of Congress in Nov. 8 midterm elections. Migrants from the three countries - collectively known as the Northern Triangle - were caught crossing the border more than 300,000 times from Oct. 2021 to April of this year, according to U.S. government data, a quarter of all border apprehensions.
Biden, a Democrat who took office in January 2021, vowed to reverse the isolationist approach of his Republican predecessor, former President Donald Trump, who suspended aid to the region in an effort to strong-arm the countries into cracking down on migrants heading north.
Signaling the importance of the strategy, Vice President Kamala Harris was put in charge. She marshaled prominent U.S. companies to invest in the region and traveled to Guatemala in June 2021, where she heralded the start of a "new era."
But U.S.-Guatemala relations cooled a month later when Guatemalan Attorney General Maria Consuelo Porras fired the country's leading anti-corruption prosecutor. Relations grew more tense last month, when Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei reappointed Porras to her role, which led the United States to sanction her for corruption.
Giammattei's office, in response to questions from Reuters, said corruption is a historical and structural problem and the government has prioritized fighting it.
'DISINCENTIVE FOR INVESTMENT'
The tensions could spill over into the summit. Biden officials hope the hemispheric gathering, held every three or four years, will help reassert U.S. influence in the region after what Biden said is years of neglect under Trump, but it remains unclear whether Guatemala's Giammattei will attend.
Philip Gordon, Harris' national security adviser, said in an interview that the administration has been "honest from the start" about the challenges of corruption and that it "needs to be dealt with."
When asked about U.S. criticism over corruption in Guatemala's justice system, Guatemalan Foreign Minister Mario Bucaro said last week that the government was addressing the matter but would not allow outside interference affect the country's sovereignty.
The governance issues also have dampened the potential of the Harris-led private sector initiative to invest in the three countries.
The Partnership for Central America, a non-profit organization launched last year to coordinate the effort, in March pulled out of co-hosting an event with the Guatemalan government over the country's approach to corruption, said Jonathan Fantini-Porter, the group's executive director.
The partnership also has limited its engagement in El Salvador.
"Corruption's a big thing," Fantini-Porter said. "It’s a disincentive for investment."
With limited options for partners in the region, Harris flew to Honduras in January to attend the inauguration of President Xiomara Castro. Juan Orlando Hernandez, Castro's predecessor, was arrested and extradited to the United States on drug-trafficking and firearms charges.
The Biden administration requested $861 million for the Central America root causes effort last year, a more than 50% increase over the previous year and is asking for even more this year. But even some Democratic allies are skeptical of the push for more funds.
"We credit them with recognizing that supporting criminals is a bad idea," said Tim Rieser, a foreign policy aide to Senator Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "On the other hand, it's not yet clear what the plan is."
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Daina Beth Solomon in Mexico City; Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Washington, Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa, Enrique Garcia in Guatemala City and Nelson Renteria in San Salvador; Editing by Mica Rosenberg)
