US recognises Cyprus’ right to develop resources in its EEZ – state department

By Staff ReporterAugust 25, 2022

The US state department has reiterated its support for Cyprus to develop the resources within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and that they must be shared fairly between the two communities.

“The US policy for the exclusive economic zone of the Republic of Cyprus is long-term and has not changed,” a spokesperson for the state department said, commenting on the recent Eni-Total announcement.

The spokesperson further said that the US is committed to working with partners and allies to ensure European energy security and reducing the region’s dependence on Russian resources – maintaining pressure on the Kremlin.

Cyprus’ right to develop the resources within its EEZ was also reaffirmed and added: “We believe that Cyprus’ oil and gas resources, like all its resources, should be shared fairly between the two communities.”

The comments come just days after Italian multinational oil and gas company Eni announced that it had made a significant gas discovery in the Cronos-1 well, located about 160 kilometers off the coast of Cyprus in block six.

Preliminary estimates indicate about 2.5 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of gas in place, with significant additional upside that will be investigated by a further exploration well in the area.

Polish teachers threaten to strike as talks with government stall

By Bartosz Sieniawski | EURACTIV.pl
Aug 24, 2022

The unions want to prepare a multi-union protest committee. If these measures do not help, the protest alert could turn into a strike. The last such strike in Poland took place in 2019. [Shutterstock/BearFotos]

The Polish Teachers’ Union (ZNP), the country’s largest trade union for education workers, has said it plans to launch a warning “state of strike emergency” for September, which could escalate into a nationwide general strike.

The unions want to prepare a multi-union protest committee. If these measures do not help, the protest alert could turn into a strike. The last such strike in Poland took place in 2019.

Teachers are demanding pay rises of 20%, tying their salaries to the national average wage, as well as an increase in spending on upbringing and education.

The teachers’ unions have been at loggerheads with the Polish government for a long time as they remain one of the lower-paid public service professions in the country. Three years ago saw the biggest strike in Polish education since the 1990s, which did not bring the expected results in terms of pay rises.

Polish education is struggling with many problems, including outdated forms of teaching, the ideologically-biased core curriculum, the mass departure of teachers from their jobs and teacher shortages. According to ZNP and their calculations, there is a shortage of 20,000 teachers.

The ministry of education is defending itself because, since May; all budget sectors have had their salaries raised by 4.4%. From next year, another increase of 9% is also expected. However, this does not satisfy teachers who are already underpaid and suffer from inflation.

Despite the announcement of the ZNP threatening a strike, the organisation’s chairman, Slawomir Broniarz was more restrained. In an interview with OKO.press, he said, “it would be irresponsible to talk about a strike today or to give a specific date. We have various proposals for protest actions, including ones that do not involve the teachers’ budget and do not require extraordinary commitment.”

According to the trade unionists – the strike itself would have to wait about a month from the date of its announcement.

Severe drought in Europe is ‘worsening’: EU experts


EURACTIV.com with AFP
Aug 22, 2022

An aerial view taken with a drone shows a field being watered in Saint Denis Bovesse, Belgium, 22 August 2022. According to the Royal Meteorological Institute (RMI) of Belgium, the country has been victim of extremely high temperatures in July 2022, the driest in 137 years.
[EPA-EFE/OLIVIER HOSLET]

A severe drought hitting swathes of Europe is “worsening” and, while rain is helping some regions, accompanying thunderstorms are causing their own damage, EU researchers said in a report Monday (22 August).

The latest monthly analysis by the European Union’s Global Drought Observatory (GDO) highlighted the risk of ongoing soil dryness caused by successive heatwaves since May and a “persistent lack” of rainfall.

It maintained its warning issued with the previous report that nearly half of the EU’s territory is at risk of drought, and noted that shrivelling rivers and shrinking water sources are impacting energy generation at power plants and reducing crops.

“The severe drought affecting many regions of Europe since the beginning of the year has been further expanding and worsening as of early August,” said the report, published by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.

Severe drought could cancel out gains in EU food production

Just under half of EU territory is at risk of severe and prolonged drought, according to a new European Commission report amid warnings this unprecedented heatwave may negate gains in food production supposed to help plug the gap left by the Ukraine war

Increasing “drought hazard” was predicted for big chunks of Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Romania and Hungary, as well as non-EU countries Britain, Serbia, Ukraine and Moldova.

In all, it calculated that 17% of Europe was now in its red-alert category, higher than the 11% given in July.

“Recent precipitation (mid-August) may have alleviated drought conditions in some regions of Europe. However, in some areas, associated thunderstorms caused damages, losses, and may have limited the beneficial effects of precipitation,” it said.

Mediterranean parts of the EU should expect “warmer and drier than usual conditions” up to November, it said.

Regions hit with rain “anomalies” in the past three months included parts of Portugal, Spain, southern France, central Italy, Switzerland, southern Germany and much of Ukraine.

The GDO report said that normal levels of rain were likely to now come to parts of Europe between August and October but they “may not be enough to fully recover from the deficit cumulated in more than half a year”.

Parts of Spain, Portugal and Croatia may continue to suffer “drier than normal weather conditions” however, while dry conditions in the Alps were likely to ease.

The report said that atmospheric conditions linked to the sort of heatwaves baking Europe were, over May, June and July, at their highest since 1950.

Driest July in memory imperils Europe's crops

As much of Europe bakes in a third heatwave since June, fears are growing that extreme drought driven by climate change in the continent’s breadbasket nations will dent stable crop yields and deepen the cost-of-living crisis.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/murder.htm

Murder of the Dead by Amadeo Bordiga 1951 

In Italy, we have long experience of “catastrophes that strike the country” and we also have a certain specialisation in “staging” them. Earthquakes, volcanic ...

PROUDHON'S PEOPLES BANK

Credit unions battle big banks to attract younger Canadians

Leah Golob, The Canadian Press

Kayla Rourke's first banking experience was with Conexus Credit Union but left to try the Bank of Nova Scotia in her teens, hoping to take advantage of the Scene points program to earn free movie tickets.

She later tried another bank or two but eventually, the 29-year-old Regina-based teacher returned to Conexus five years ago because of its no-fee chequing account, customer service and focus on helping local communities. In 2021, for example, the credit union reinvested more than $1.9 million back into Saskatchewan communities through their Community Investment Program.

“I feel really happy staying with a credit union because I want to make life better where I live,” Rourke said.

“It feels like at a bank I’m always trying to be sold something,” she added. “I feel like at a credit union, I’ve had such good discussions on how to build wealth or save for particular goals while keeping it realistic. I love how they’ve checked in with me to see how it’s going … I feel like at a bank I was a customer and at a credit union, I feel like a client.”

Disha Soni, a 32-year-old self-employed financial adviser, said in her case it made more sense to go with a bank rather than a credit union because they’re well known around the globe and have many physical branches.

“They are well established and I had more confidence giving them my money,” she said. Soni, who immigrated to Ottawa in November 2021, was also attracted by the offers that banks have for newcomers.

In recent years, the Canadian Credit Union Association has been promoting credit unions to millennials and Generation Z. According to a report entitled “Credit unions and millennials” published by MNP, attracting and retaining millennials and Generation Z is vital to sustaining the Canadian credit union system, especially as it faces an aging member base. 

Ipsos’s Customer Service Index Survey conducted over 2021 revealed that 59.2 per cent of credit union members are over the age of 55. Only 12 per cent of credit union members, on the other hand, were 18 to 34 years old. 

With banks, the survey showed that 17.5 per cent of customers are 18 to 34 and 45.6 per cent of customers are 55 and over. 

Annette Bester, national leader of credit union services at MNP, said there’s a lot of education that needs to be done around credit unions to spread awareness on what they are and what they do. This awareness can vary by geography, she said.

For example, while credit unions are more known in parts of the country such as Saskatchewan, there may be less awareness in Ontario, where most of the country's major banks are headquartered. 

There are some misconceptions about credit unions, such as if you join a credit union that operates in one province, you won’t be able to access funds elsewhere if you’re travelling, Bester said.

“Credit unions have access to ATM networks across the world and they’ve got mobile banking apps. They’ve got all the same things that the big banks do but maybe it’s not known,” she explained.

Credit union members can use any ATMs that belong to the Exchange Network free of charge but will have to pay a surcharge using ATMs that are not part of the network. 

Pamela George, a financial literacy counsellor at Sand Dollar Financial Literacy, said the biggest downfall for credit unions is that they don’t have a big budget for marketing like banks do.

Otherwise, both George and Bester believe that the financial co-operative, community-focused nature of credit unions would be appealing to young people if they understood more about how they worked. 

For example, customers of credit unions are called members, and profits go back to the credit union to help set up better interest rates and lower fees for members, George said. 

Where banks have the upper hand is with better technology on their apps and websites. They lead the way in this area, George said. 

When deciding the right fit for them, young people will have to weigh digital technology and the availability of physical locations Canada-wide against whether they’d want to bank with a financial co-operative with a community focus. 

Stiglitz says rate hikes that are too steep may worsen inflation

Carolynn Look, Bloomberg News

Central banks that hike borrowing costs too aggressively to tame supply-driven inflation risk exacerbating price gains, according to Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.

As activity restarts following pandemic lockdowns and countries like China struggle to restore normality, the global economy is enduring something “we’ve never done before,” the Columbia University professor said in an interview in Lindau, Germany. 

“Raising interest rates doesn’t solve the supply-side problems,” he said. “It can even make it worse, because what we want to do right now is invest more in the supply-side bottlenecks, but raising interest rates makes it more difficult to make those investments.”

Policy makers are counting on tighter monetary policy taming the fastest inflation in a generation and keeping expectations about the future trajectory of prices in check. Stiglitz isn’t so sure.

With the US economy and others showing clear signs of “market power” -- where companies can raise prices without losing business -- standard economic models suggest rate hikes can lead to even more inflation, he said.

He cited the US housing market, where there’s evidence that landlords pass higher interest costs on to tenants through rents, stoking price growth.

“How will raising interest rates lead to more food, more energy, and solve the chip supply problem? Not at all,” Stiglitz said. “They won’t go at the basic source of the problem -- and the real risk is that will make things worse.”

Royal Bank CEO asks workers to come to the office more

Kevin Orland, Bloomberg News

Royal Bank of Canada is asking employees to come to the office more often, an early sign that the country’s big banks may follow their US rivals in cutting back on remote work. 

While many types of work can be done productively from outside the office, “technology can’t replicate the energy, spontaneity, big ideas, true sense of belonging and fun” of being together in person, Royal Bank Chief Executive Officer Dave McKay said in a memo to employees Tuesday. 

While McKay’s memo didn’t include specifics about how often employees will be expected to show up at the office, Royal Bank spokesman Rafael Ruffolo said in an email that hybrid arrangements will involve working in person two to three days a week for most office jobs. Those practices already are in place for some teams and regions, and the bank is aiming to have any new arrangements in place by the end of September, he said.

“For hybrid to continue to work effectively, we need to get the balance right and be a bit more deliberate about when and how we organize on site,” McKay said in the memo. “That’s why, as we move into the fall, I’m asking our leaders and colleagues to come together more often in person to work and collaborate.”

Bankers in Toronto, Canada’s financial capital, have typically faced less pressure throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to return to the office than their counterparts on Wall Street, where leaders like JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s David Solomon have been vocal proponents of in-person work. 

Many of Canada’s financial institutions have started bringing workers back into the office on a regular basis in only the past six months. Bank of Nova Scotia began to allow workers to come back to the majority of its Canadian offices on a voluntary basis in March, and started a phased return the following month. Manulife Financial Corp. also began a full return in April, while Toronto-Dominion Bank started allowing employees back in offices around the same time and aimed for workers to officially transition to new working models by June.

Royal Bank, Canada’s largest lender by assets, has about 89,000 workers around the world, according to the memo.

“We’re a relationship-driven bank,” Royal Bank’s McKay said. “To put it another way, direct human connection is core to our culture and how we bring our purpose to life for all those we serve.”

'Boomerang employees' are going back to the old jobs they quit

Charlie Wells, BNN Bloomberg

Forget return to office. In this economy, many employees are returning to previous employers, breaking taboos about workplace loyalty and bucking assumptions about the so-called Great Resignation.

Their numbers are up. In the US in the first quarter of this year, 4.2 per cent of all new hires for companies that advertised jobs on LinkedIn were boomerangs, compared to 3.3 per cent in 2019, the social-media firm said.

Their reasons for returning are varied. What’s more, their returns are being brandished by firms large and small, who are boasting everywhere from social media to Slack that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

So-called “boomerang employees” embody the economic ambiguity of the moment. Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the US labor market added 528,000 jobs in July, beating forecasts more than twofold. Yet just the week prior, data showed that the US economy shrank for a second straight quarter, amplifying concerns about a recession.

All the while, employees and employers are locked in a standoff over perks, pay, remote policies and the very meaning of work itself.

 

RETURN PERKS

“I just realized that startups don’t really offer a lot of family benefits that larger companies do,” said Rachel Bentley, a 31-year-old from Austin, Texas, who recently boomeranged back to Duo, a two-factor authentication company owned by Cisco Systems Inc., after stints at Microsoft Corp. and a smaller startup she joined in 2021. 

It was a mix of cultural comfort, pay and concern about the economy that drew Bentley back to Duo, whose employees she stayed in touch with on Slack even after she left the firm. It paid off: Bentley says by returning, she was not only able to rejoin colleagues she loves, but also double her pay. 

Others are doing the same, particularly at a moment when career risks — such as joining a startup in a new industry — may begin to lose their appeal. Although the job market is still strong, firms that once seemed like surefire bets in a stay-at-home economy are laying off staff or freezing hiring.

In June, crypto firm Coinbase Global Inc. said it would lay off 18 per cent of its workforce. Robinhood Markets Inc. said this month it would eliminate nearly a quarter of its staff. Even Apple Inc. laid off many of its contract-based recruiters, and firms from Peloton Interactive Inc. to LinkedIn Corp. have also recently shed staff. 

“The hard reality is that at 30, 40, or even 50, it’s really hard to change careers and maintain the lifestyle you’re used to,” said Adam Kail, founder and chief executive officer of Harrison Gray Search and Consulting in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “I’ve seen people switch careers drastically but in a short period of time realize, ‘I’m not as happy doing something I like more, but with my pay a third of what it was before.’”

MANAGER APPROVAL

In contrast to decades past, firms are now happy to take their old employees back. And they aren’t being quiet about it. LinkedIn is filled with posts from companies including Deutsche Bank AG, EY and Deloitte touting returning employees, often with elaborate blog posts, pictures and videos showing happy staff back at their companies. 

“On social media, you can very easily click back in and say, ‘Hey, I’d love to talk to someone again about maybe reengaging in employment with the firm,” says Dan Black, EY’s global leader for talent attraction and acquisition.

Social-media posts from boomerangs can help with recruitment in a still-tight labor market by showing the firm is a good place to work, according to Catherine Shea, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business who co-authored a 2021 study on returning employees.

But Shea and her team found that boomerangs come with a cost. They analyzed two groups of employees at a US professional services firm: Workers who had boomeranged and similar workers who had never left. They found that boomerangs were paid more but performed on a similar level as employees who stayed. Still, boomerangs tended to spend more time on long-term projects, which might benefit firms because it indicates they have a deeper level of commitment to the company. 

Matthew Wragg, CEO of engineering and tech recruitment firm Gattaca, says he’s hired six boomerang employees in the past three months. 

“You’ve got that cultural cognizance,” he says. “They know the culture. They know the operating processes.” 

They also tend to change little between their first and second tours of the company, according to a study that John Arnold of the University of Missouri conducted with a team of other researchers. They examined some 30,000 boomerang and traditional employees over eight years. They found that in general, employees who performed well in their first stints also performed well in their second. Those who underperformed at first continued to underperform when they returned. 

STAGING A COMEBACK

This is why companies considering bringing back a boomerang candidate need to investigate carefully why he or she left in the first place, says Paul McDonald, a senior executive director at recruiter Robert Half. Red flags might be dissatisfaction with upward mobility, concerns about management, or poor cultural fit. Those issues are unlikely to have changed in the interim. On the other hand, salary, benefits and non-monetary perks are all issues that can be solved, within reason. 

Candidates looking to boomerang should carefully consider whether going back to an old employer is the right move, says Mark Royal, a senior director at consultant Korn Ferry. Some may look to jump back too soon without giving their new jobs enough of a try. 

Those who do decide to jump back should cast their time away in a positive light, he says.

“You want to be framing it in terms of what you’ve learned in the role you’re now leaving and what you can bring back to your former employer and why that will be valuable for you both,” says Royal.

The rise of the one-day workweek for office commuters

Jo Constantz, Bloomberg News

Despite calls from bosses at Peloton and other companies for employees to get back to their desks, the number of people commuting into the office once a week has soared, according to data from Basking.io, a workplace-occupancy analytics company. 

A full 50 per cent of office visits globally were just once a week in the second quarter, up from 44 per cent in the first quarter, according to Basking.io. At the same time, fewer people made the commute four to five days a week, especially in large cities. 

Recession fears have many wondering whether a return-to-office crackdown might be around the corner. Major companies like Tesla Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are at the forefront of this effort, and even bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell has said people need to be in the office to have a “ sense of belonging.” Yet, many employees still feel comfortable ignoring mandates in the tight labor market, with the demand for workers far outpacing the supply. 

“Even with most firms implementing a ‘three days in the office hybrid policy,’ most employees prefer visiting the office just once a week,” Eldar Gizzatov, Basking.io’s chief executive officer, wrote in the report. “The pandemic has accustomed people to work remotely and there is not a concrete reason in most professions to return to the offices.”

​While the number of days workers were in the office fell, the the duration of visits rose, according to ​​Basking.io, which analyzed Wi-Fi data from 100 offices of seven organizations around the world to measure changes in office space utilization.

Work-from-home habits are settling into industry-specific patterns. About 55 per cent of workers are in-person full-time, mostly those in frontline jobs like retail, food service, and manufacturing, according to separate research from Stanford economics professor Nicholas Bloom. Roughly 30 per cent have hybrid arrangements, typically managers and professionals, while 15 per cent of workers are fully remote, largely in support roles like payroll and information technology.

World's largest four-day workweek trial: This is how it's going

Daniel Johnson , BNN Bloomberg

The world’s largest-ever four-day workweek trial is nearing its midpoint and the organizers behind it are sharing some insight into how it is going.

Charlotte Lockhart, the managing director and founder of 4 Day Week Global, said there have been statistically significant improvements across a range of well-being indicators.

“Anecdotally, companies are suggesting there’s been an overwhelmingly positive experience with revenue and productivity levels, [that have] either maintained and in some cases improved,” said Lockhart in a video interview Aug. 8.

Improvements have been seen across well-being indicators, including stress, burnout, sleep, family and work-life balance and life satisfaction. Anecdotally, Lockhart said the reduction in working hours does not appear to have negatively affected productivity at this time and in some instances, said productivity has improved.

“Everything we're finding so far is backing up what we've always said which is interesting. But I think that the important thing with this research is that we will have empirical data that feeds into that,” said Lockhart.

The trial is being conducted in the U.K. through partnerships between 4 Day Week Global, and researchers at Cambridge, Boston College and Oxford University. Around 3,300 workers are participating in the pilot across 70 different companies, with all of them agreeing to have employees work 80 per cent of their usual hours, with no changes in compensation or productivity.

The trial began in June and will continue until November. It is based on a research framework created by Juliet Schor, an economist and sociologist at Boston College. 

1932

 

WHAT THE PILOT IS LIKE

Dr. Rupert Dunbar-Rees, the founder and chief executive officer of Outcomes Based Healthcare, said in a video interview on Aug. 17 that the company was looking for ways to improve productivity before it joined the world’s largest four-day workweek trial.

“The four-day week is really a culmination of that exercise of trying to improve our productivity and really think deeply about what we're doing and how we're doing it,” said Dunbar-Rees on the company’s efforts to drive productivity.

The U.K.-based company has 11 full-time employees participating in the trial who are working in a hybrid setting.

Implementing the shortened week was not without its challenges, however. Dunbar-Rees said that overall, it has been “fairly smooth.”

Early challenges included determining how the company would serve clients, while best positioning the trial for success. The company also had to navigate human resources policies, specifically if the eliminated workday should be counted as annual leave and what to do with part-time workers who are already working four-day weeks. 

During the adjustment period, Dunbar-Rees said being agile was a top priority.

“You always anticipate failure, but then you have to plan around the failure,” he said, comparing the adjustment to the company’s work of producing software for the National Health Service.

Despite minor challenges, employees benefit from reduced working hours, Dunbar-Rees said. He reported the change felt like a “proper three-day reset.”

“In terms of the plus side, certainly everyone on the team…they've been managing to do lots of things that they just would never have done and come back much more refreshed on a Monday,” said Dunbar-Rees.

“So people are doing eye tests and going to the dentist and doing endless amounts of life admin that would otherwise not get done,” he said.

The shortened workweek is not about cramming five days' worth of work into four, according to Dunbar-Rees

“Half of the solution to a sustainable four-day week has been about looking for efficiencies and productivity improvements,” he said.

Once key efficiencies are found, the other half of the solution involves identifying and eliminating low-value actions, which involves “ruthless prioritization.”

Dunbar-Rees said it is likely the four-day week will continue beyond the trial period.

“I don’t want to prejudge the outcome of the pilot, but I'd be surprised if we got to the end of this and said, ‘right let's go back to our old way of working,’” he said.  

BOTTOM-UP APPROACH

The trial’s operating principle dictates employees receive 100 per cent of their pay while working 80 per cent of total hours, with 100 per cent productivity. This allows companies to measure and support employees on an individual basis, according to Lockhart.

“How that [principle] is achieved is at the essence of what we talk about in our program, in that it needs to be bottom up,” said Lockhart.

Typically, organizations that dictate from a top-down perspective how employees will navigate the shortened week are the ones that become unsuccessful in adapting, according to Lockhart.

Inefficiencies exist and manifest in various ways, Lockhart said, commonly surrounding meeting times. 

“What we’re looking for, particularly, is to define productivity rather than busyness,” she said. 

 

TRIAL PROCESS 

Organizations that participate in the trial begin by working with the researchers to identify baselines, Lockhart said, in order to determine where the organization is ahead of the shift to the shortened week.

The next step is getting executives committed to making a pilot successful. 

“They don't necessarily have to make the reduced-hour work thing successful. All they have to do is commit to resourcing and empowering the pilot appropriately,” Lockhart said. 

After that, an organization can begin to determine how the pilot will work, while executives take an “empowering backseat,” she said. 

After a pilot is designed, flexibility becomes key, Lockhart said.  

POTENTIAL BENEFITS

John Trougakos, an associate professor of management at the University of Toronto, said productivity can be held steady amid reduced hours, as it incentivizes organizations to become more efficient and reduce wasted time.

He said it also leverages the benefits of increased employee rest times.

“I think that's the other side of the coin when it comes to the benefit of the four-day workweek. That one, it increases efficiency and two, people can work a lot more productively when they're feeling better and when they're more energized and when other elements of their life are in balance,” Trougakos said.

Reductions in employee burnout and sick days are among the reported benefits, according to Lockhart.  

“It's all about how you are empowering your people in their own jobs and giving them the autonomy that they need to do that, point number one,” said Lockhart.

“Point number two, you're removing the irrelevant busyness from people's lives. And so, what we find, statistically, is that people feel that they can do their job better in less time. So, that helps with the whole burnout thing.”

4 Day Week Global is a not-for-profit organization that has been working to support the adoption of a four-day work week since 2018.

SERIOUSLY?!

Tim Hortons offers coffee and doughnut as proposed settlement in class action lawsuit

Brett Bundale, The Canadian Press

Tim Hortons has reached a proposed settlement in multiple class action lawsuits alleging the restaurant's mobile app violated customer privacy, which would see the restaurant offer a free coffee and doughnut to affected users. 

The settlement, negotiated with the legal teams involved in the lawsuits, still requires court approval.

The coffee and doughnut chain would also permanently delete any geolocation information it may have collected between April 1, 2019 and Sept. 30, 2020, and direct third-party service providers to do the same.

"We think that it's a favourable settlement because it offers compensation that has a real value," said Joey Zukran, a lawyer with the Montreal-based law firm LPC Avocat Inc., which filed the class action in Quebec.

"Privacy cases across Canada are never guaranteed a win," he said. "Here we have some form of guarantee, some form of recovery ... as opposed to uncertainty that could last."

It's unclear how many customers used the app during the 18-month period ending Sept. 30, 2020, and would be eligible to receive a free hot beverage and baked good.

Restaurant Brands International Inc., the parent company of Tim Hortons, said in an investor presentation in May that it had four million active users during the three months ended March 31, 2022. 

"I think people who receive this will think it’s paltry, but class action settlements are often paltry for the end consumer," said David Fraser, a privacy lawyer with McInnes Cooper in Halifax.

While the individual compensation may not seem like much, he said given the number of people potentially involved "it may be reasonable in aggregate."

Still, others may feel it's not high enough to "act as a disincentive to further mischief," Fraser said. 

"Any time you settle, there's going to be a compromise," he said, adding that the case "reflects how weird privacy harms are."

"If you used that app and Tim Hortons collected your location information without your adequate, informed consent but nothing has happened with that information, you actually haven't suffered what would be considered a tangible harm," Fraser said. 

"You're trying to compensate for the feeling of ickiness, the creepiness somebody might feel knowing that their information was collected without their knowledge or consent."

The proposed settlement comes after an investigation by federal and provincial privacy watchdogs found the mobile ordering app violated the law by collecting vast amounts of location information from customers.

In a report released last month, privacy commissioners said people who downloaded the Tim Hortons app had their movements tracked and recorded every few minutes — even when the app was not open on their phones.

The investigation was launched after National Post reporter James McLeod obtained data showing the app on his phone had tracked his location more than 2,700 times in less than five months.

In a statement, Tim Hortons said it's pleased to have reached a proposed settlement in the four class action lawsuits filed in Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario.

"All parties agree this is a fair settlement and we look forward to the Superior Court of Quebec’s decision on the proposal," the company said in a statement. 

"We are confident that pending the Quebec court’s approval of the settlement, the courts in British Columbia and Ontario will recognize the settlement."

The company said the allegations raised in the class actions were not proven in court and the settlement is not an admission of any wrongdoing.

Tim Hortons said it would be emailing customers Friday to inform them of the proposed settlement.

Tim Hortons said the retail value of a free hot beverage is $6.19 while the value of a baked good is $2.39, plus taxes, according to court documents. 

Customers would be provided with a credit for the items with a coupon or through the Tim Hortons app, documents said. 

Details on the distribution of the free hot beverage and baked good would be provided if the court approves the settlement, Tim Hortons said. 

A hearing has been scheduled in a Quebec court on Sept. 6 to consider the proposed settlement.