Perry Work Report, June 20, 2014

June 20, 2014

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Asbestos: Top On-the-Job Killer in Canada

"Asbestos is the top on-the-job killer in Canada. But a Globe and Mail investigation has found that this stark fact has been obscured by the country’s longstanding economic interest in the onetime ‘miracle mineral.’ Even though Canada’s own asbestos industry has dwindled from pre-eminence to insignificance -- the country’s last two mines closed in 2011 -- the federal government has dragged its feet as other nations have acknowledged asbestos’s deadly impact and moved to protect their populations from it.”

"By striking both blue-collar workers and white-collar workers, like [John] Nolan, mesothelioma has racked up a record as the most common cause of workplace deaths in Canada for every year between 2007 and 2012, with more than 1,200 successful claims for fatality benefits made in that time, data from the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada show. Asbestosis (fibrosis of the lungs, which impairs breathing, but is not typically fatal) is the fourth-most common claim."

The Globe and Mail, June 14, 2014: “Asbestos; no safe use,” by Tavia Grant

Click here to listen to John Nolan’s story, a worker battling mesothelioma, a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.

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Job for Life?

"Job stability isn’t a ‘thing of the past,’ but rather is stronger now than ever before, a new report finds."

"Indeed, says the study by Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the number of Canadians who have been with the same employer for at least five years is now at a record level."

“‘The job market of the ‘new economy’ was supposed to permanently alter employer-employee relationships and workers were seen as becoming increasing disposable, with the implication that job stability would tumble,’ said [Benjamin Tal, CIBC’s deputy chief economist], who conducted the study with his colleague Nick Exarhos.”

"Having said that, of course, Canada is home to more than 1.3 million unemployed, with a jobless rate of 7 per cent."

"Here’s what their study found, and some points are worrisome:

  • The ‘likelihood of maintaining employment from one year to another,’ at over five years, tops 90 per cent.
  • As a share of total employment, those with the same employer for at least five years is more than 50 per cent.
  • The ‘probability of maintaining employment beyond first year’ is now greater than 60 per cent, and the highest since at least 1977.
  • But employment growth in Canada ‘doesn’t look good,’ with a six-month moving average showing the month-over-month change down sharply from last year.
  • At the same time, the number of those without work for at least 27 weeks is still ‘elevated,’ which means ‘the sticky unemployment rate of the past couple of years is largely due to stagnation in long-term unemployment as opposed to an increase in the number of newly unemployed.’"

"And troubling, indeed, for those hunting for jobs: ‘The abnormal relationship between recent vacancy rates and unemployment suggests that large swaths of those unemployed are not what employers are seeking.’”

The Globe and Mail, June 18, 2014: “‘Jobs for life’ not so far-fetched, new CIBC study finds,” by Michael Babad

CIBC’s Economic Insights, June 18, 2014: “Canadian Labour Market -- The Roots of Budding Change,” by Benjamin Tal and Nick Exarhos (4 pages, PDF)

Statistics Canada’s latest Job Vacancy Survey adds to the growing consensus that Canada has few broad labour shortage problems.

"Canadian businesses reported 206,000 job vacancies in March, down 17,000 compared with 12 months earlier. For every job vacancy, there were 6.8 unemployed people, up from 6.3 in March 2013, the result of fewer job vacancies."

Statistics Canada’s The Daily, June 17, 2014: “Job vacancies, three-month average ending in March 2014”

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A New Bill Aimed at Ending the Exploitation of Unpaid Interns

"The NDP is hoping to end the ‘Wild West’ exploitation of unpaid interns with a new private member’s bill that would cap the hours an intern can work for federally regulated employers."

"The bill, introduced today [June 16, 2014] by New Democrat MP Laurin Liu, would grant interns the right to refuse dangerous work."

"If enacted, it would also set conditions for the use of interns and offer them protection from sexual harassment."

"The NDP bill is limited to federally-regulated workplaces and would not affect interns working in businesses or government institutions regulated by the provinces."

"But it’s better than having no protections at all, which is what currently exists, said [NDP MP] Andrew Cash, who is co-sponsoring the bill with Liu."

"The use of unpaid interns has been hotly debated both in Canada and the United States, where some young people work for free -- often for months at a time -- in the hope that their internship will either give them experience in the workplace or turn into a paid job."

CBC News, June 16, 2014: “Brother of deceased intern Andy Ferguson hopes NDP bill will prevent abuse”

Canadian Intern Association, June 16, 2014: “The Intern Protection Act: a new private member’s bill to protect intern’s rights,” by Claire Seaborn

Bill C-620 -- Intern Protection Act: An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code (training without remuneration) (click here for the full text of the bill)

“The House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance has released a report entitled ‘Youth Employment in Canada: Challenges and Potential Solutions.’ We are thrilled to announce that the report contains a recommendation explicitly addressing unpaid internships:

Recommendation 9: That the federal government collect data on unpaid internships in Canada and work with the provinces and territories to ensure the appropriate protections under relevant labour codes. Moreover, the government should study the impacts of unpaid internships."

"On March 27, 2014 President of the Canadian Intern Association Claire Seaborn was called as a witness before the finance committee to provide submissions on issues facing interns in Canada.”

PDF downloads:

Canadian Intern Association, June 16, 2014: “HOC Finance Committee Report recommends changes to protect interns”

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Private Corporations Help Widen Inequality Gulf

"Income inequality in Canada is more pronounced than previously believed, a new report reveals, because many of the country’s wealthiest people are funnelling their income through private companies that are not included in standard measures of individual earnings."

"A study by three leading academics says Canada’s top 1 per cent of income earners took home an average of $500,200 in 2011 -- including income from private corporations they control directly or indirectly through holding companies. That is 39 per cent more than the $359,000 figure calculated when traditional individual income tax data are used."

"Dr. [Michael] Wolfson, a former assistant chief statistician at Statistics Canada [and one of the study’s authors], said he realized years ago when he worked for the federal Finance Department that many individuals were setting up private companies -- known in tax parlance as Canadian-controlled private corporations (CCPCs) -- because there were numerous tax advantages to the structure."

"As a result, he said income data has been understated because income earned by these private companies was not included in published material derived from personal income tax returns."

"Researchers have long found it difficult to measure income for top earners and that has led to an inaccurate picture of the degree of income inequality between the rich and the poor. Including CCPCs has given a better portrait of high income earners and revealed the sizeable impact of these private holdings."

Dr. Wolfson will be presenting this paper at the 2014 Waterloo Tax Symposium, taking place June 19th-20th, in Toronto. Click here for more information.

The Globe and Mail, June 16, 2014: “Private corporations helping widen inequality gulf: study,” by Janet McFarland

PressProgress, June 17, 2014: “Canada’s rich are richer than you think... 39% richer”

University of Waterloo, June 2014: “Piercing the Veil -- Private Corporations and the Income of the Affluent,” by Michael Wolfson, Mike Veall, and Neil Brooks (25 pages, PDF)

Economic Policy Institute, June 12 2014: “CEO Pay Continues to Rise as Typical Workers Are Paid Less,” by Lawrence Mishel and Alyssa Davis (click here to download the PDF, 12 pages)

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Canada's Doctors: The Best, the Brightest -- and the Burned Out

"These are trying times for young doctors."

"An editorial in the most recent edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal puts the rate of burnout among residents as high as 50 per cent -- with symptoms such as emotional and physical exhaustion, a detached attitude, and a belief that they can no longer work effectively with patients.”

"The human cost of burnout is almost unfathomable. Health professionals with burnout make more mistakes and their patients are at greater risk of being injured as a result of their errors. There’s also a good chance the patient who is going through a traumatic event like the loss of a loved won’t get emotional support because the burned out doctor doesn’t have any to provide."

"One may wonder how a profession as ethically grounded as doctoring has so much trouble taking care of its own. I think it’s time we recognized that, collectively, we bear responsibility for the current state of affairs."

"More accurately, the medical culture that fosters us is the problem. It’s a culture that implies you should strive to be perfect even though you’re human -- one that encourages you to run from your feelings even though you can’t hide from them."

The Globe and Mail, June 16, 2014: “Canada’s doctors: the best, the brightest -- and the burned out,” by Brian Goldman

Canadian Medical Association Journal, June 2, 2014: "Physician burnout: Who will protect us from ourselves?,” by Michael Fralick and Ken Flegel (1 page, PDF)

Psychology Today, March 17, 2014: “Maxed Out Doctors: The High Cost of Burnout in Medicine,” by Paula Davis-Laack

The Atlantic, February 21, 2014: “For the Young Doctor About to Burn Out,” by Richard Gunderman

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Words of Wisdom for Getting In and Graduating

Before you graduate university or college, you need to get in, and part of the application process often includes writing an admissions essay.

"[But w]hen it comes to college admissions, our society has tumbled way, way too far down the rabbit hole, as I’ve observed before. And in the warped wonderland where we’ve landed, too many kids attach such a crazy degree of importance to getting into the most selective schools that they do stagy, desperate, disturbing things to stand out. The essay portion of their applications can be an especially jolting illustration of that.”

"It’s an illustration of something else, too: a tendency toward runaway candor and uncensored revelation, especially about tribulations endured and hardships overcome, among kids who’ve grown up in the era of the overshare. The essay is where our admissions frenzy and our gratuitously confessional ethos meet, producing autobiographical sketches...."

The New York Times, June 14, 2014: “Naked Confessions of the College-Bound: Oversharing in Admissions Essays,” by Frank Bruni

"June is convocation month, a time when the parents of university students spend hours crammed into the nosebleed seats of auditoriums waiting for the fleeting moment when their child struts across the stage wearing a square hat to collect a hard-earned and expensive roll of paper."

"It is also the time of year when notable and accomplished Canadians take the stage to deliver nuggets of wisdom in the form of convocation addresses."

The Globe and Mail’s Kate Hammer pulls together a few themes from some of the best in her article, including “graduation is just the beginning,” accompanied by these words from astronaut Chris Hadfield:

"You did not get here by yourself. Even if you paid your way through and you live by yourself, even if you’ve been a significant progenitor of what’s happening and got you here to today, you did not give birth to yourself. You didn’t nurse yourself. You didn’t build this building ... But you are that recipient and now I challenge each of you to recognize that you have an absolute obligation to give that opportunity to somebody else at least once in your life."

The Globe and Mail, June 16, 2014: “Chris Hadfield, Holly Cole, David Dodge and others offer sage words for this year’s graduates,” by Kate Hammer

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Provincial Economic Outlook Spring 2014

"Oil-rich Alberta will lead Canada’s economy over the next couple of years as British Columbia and Manitoba also gather steam. But the country’s industrial heartland will continue to lag, a new study suggests."

"What’s more, the Conference Board of Canada warned the manufacturing-heavy provinces of Ontario and Quebec in its report today [June 17, 2014] that they still face ‘their fair share of challenges’ where provincial finances are concerned."

"Interesting, too, is that while British Columbia’s fortunes are improving, Canada’s westernmost province remains ‘in the shadow’ of Alberta."

"The Conference Board also cited an ‘unprecedented influx of migrants’ to Alberta, with a record addition of 102,000 people last year. That will fall this year, however, as other economies improve, though there will still be a ‘strain’ on the jobs market."

“‘Alberta continues to be a magnet for out-of-province and international workers, but a gradual improvement in the economies of British Columbia, Quebec, and Ontario will slow the number of people relocating to Alberta,’ the study said.”

Click here to read the report (18 pages, PDF) from the Conference Board of Canada.

The Globe and Mail, June 17, 2014: “Alberta to become less of a people ‘magnet’ as other economies perk up,” by Michael Babad

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Aboriginal Early School Leavers On- and Off-Reserve: An Empirical Analysis

From the abstract: “The 2001 master file of the Aboriginal Peoples Survey is used to analyze the determinants of leaving school before completing high school for Aboriginal persons, separately for different age cohorts and for those living off-reserve and on-reserve. Relationships that are particularly important from a policy perspective include the fact that rates of leaving school early are negatively related to being able to attend high school in one’s community, learning about Aboriginal history and/or about Aboriginal peoples, and having an Aboriginal teacher or teacher’s aide. Decomposition analysis of leaving school early by residential status indicated that most of the higher dropout rate for those living on-reserve is attributed to observable characteristics, many of which are subject to a degree of policy control such as through improved employment opportunities and a culturally sensitive curriculum and learning environment.”

Canadian Public Policy, June 2014: “Aboriginal Early School Leavers On- and Off-Reserve: An Empirical Analysis,” by Danielle Lamb

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Academics' Joke Puts Presidential Pay in the Spotlight

"The current president and vice-chancellor of the University of Alberta, Indira Samarasekera, is leaving at the end of this month. This means that her job, which pays at least 400,000 Canadian dollars (about $368,500), is up for grabs. I’m sure the search committee expected a lot of top talent in the application pool -- but they probably didn’t expect 56 Canadian academics, fed up with a highly paid administration in the face of country-wide austerity’ measures, applying for Samarasekera’s job in groups of four."

"The elaborate and serious joke -- an HR performance piece, if you will, that would also happen to have spectacular results if it actually worked -- is the brainchild of Dalhousie University professor Kathleen Cawsey and three friends, a Gang of Four whose pointed (and hilarious) cover letter has become a Canadian media cause celebre.”

"The stunt comes on the heels of recent revelations that some of the United States’ highest-paid college presidents also oversaw some of the biggest increases in student debt (and, in some cases, increased hiring of low-paid adjunct faculty)."

"Academics all over North America complain about the corporatization of the university and ‘administrative bloat,’ but Cawsey and co. are actually brave enough to put their names on a collective action that is equal parts brazen and good-hearted."

Slate, June 16, 2014: “The Clever Stunt Four Professors Just Pulled to Expose the Outrageous Pay Gap in Academia,” by Rebecca Schuman

"Still, Cawsey doesn’t want to be the president at U of A. She wants to make a point, and I submit that she may have made an even better point than she intended, because the problem isn’t what we pay presidents; it’s how we think of the job they do. And until we get back to putting real, gutsy, iconoclastic academics at the head of our academic institutions, each of our universities will continue to decline from a unique centre of learning to just another bland commercial enterprise."

"And that’s no joke."

Maclean’s, June 11, 2014: “U of A won’t want four profs sharing president job,” by Todd Pettigrew

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Linked: Academia, the Prison Industry, and Orange is the New Black

"American universities do a fine job of selling themselves as pathways to opportunity and knowledge. But follow the traffic of money and policies through these academic institutions and you’ll often wind up at the barbed wire gates of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the two largest private prison operators in the United States."

"The clearest link between havens of higher education and private prisons, are direct investments of a university’s endowment in CCA and GEO Group."

"The most public display of such nefarious investments has been at Columbia University, where in June 2013 a group of students discovered that their university owns 230,432 shares of CCA stock worth $8 million."

"These connections are glaring, the less obvious ones go by the names of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and other members of the ‘million shares club’ -- companies that own more than one million shares of CCA and GEO Group, and which collectively own more than two-thirds of these private prison companies."

"They all have directors and CEOs who sit on the boards of wealthy universities like Stanford and Columbia, and these top universities hand over healthy wads of endowment cash to them too. The full list of mega-powerful conglomerates that take stock in incarceration can be viewed here.”

"20 percent of schools reported conducting criminal background checks on prospective students, most of these hire private companies to do the dirty work. You don’t even have to follow any money to see how such practices launder the legitimacy of the prison industrial complex through the sterling reputation of colleges and universities."

"In particular, barring young people with criminal records from having a shot at a college education means lending credence to a juvenile detention system which locks away more young people than that of any other industrialized nation, and institutionalizes inequality and racism in America (black youths are incarcerated at a rate five times that of their white peers; Latinos at two to three times the rate).”

Rolling Stone, June 18, 2014: “5 Links Between Higher Education and the Prison Industry: The worlds of academia and incarceration are close than you may think,” by Hannah K. Gold

Orange is the New Black

"Is it possible to feel more ambivalent than I do about Orange Is the New Black? I love the actors and most of the writing and direction. I especially love that it is about a culture of women. It is good to see a light shed on the disgraceful situation of jails and prisons in this country, where there are more than two million inmates (mostly black and Hispanic) and five million more under correctional supervision, and where so many nonviolent offenders are thrown into a dangerous and frightening world that inflicts what cannot by any stretch of the imagination be construed as a just response to their crimes.”

The New York Review of Books Blog, June 6, 2014: “Caged Laughter,” by April Bernard

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What Happens If You Have No Welfare and No Job?

"A few weeks ago I wrote about how the welfare reform of the 1990s led to many poor mothers being kicked off welfare rolls. While some poor adults could still receive help from food stamps and disability insurance, the ‘Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act’ dramatically cut how much cash aid they could collect. The hope was that they would find work, but many didn’t.”

"Meanwhile, spending on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, the only cash assistance program that non-disabled, non-elderly, poor single mothers are eligible for, has dropped precipitously: It was lower in 2007 than it had been in 1970.”

"That left me wondering -- what happened to the moms who had neither jobs nor cash assistance through TANF, which comes with strict time limits?”

"The Urban Institute recently released a fascinating new qualitative study that aims to answer that very question. Relying on 90-minute interviews with 29 unmarried women in Los Angeles and 22 in southeast Michigan, the nonprofit examined the lives of these so-called ‘disconnected’ women -- meaning they get neither income from work nor TANF money."

"The study authors found that most of the Michigan women had been on TANF at some point, but a third had hit the 48-month time limit. Others didn’t apply for the program because they found the paperwork daunting, or they were already on food stamps and thought they couldn’t collect more than one type of government benefit at a time. Most of the Los Angeles women had never used TANF, and many of them falsely believed enrolling in the program could disadvantage their families in bizarre ways -- such as leading to the forced military conscription of their sons."

"The most devastating part was learning how the women tried to eke out a living without a regular source of income:

  • The jobs they were qualified for were not in any way flexible
  • They pieced together side jobs to get by
  • Childcare was a major hurdle
  • TANF was described as more arduous to enroll in than other programs
  • Housing was cramped, informal, and unstable
  • They have no spending money
  • They’re depressed
  • They rely on dangerous ‘last resort’ sources of income: ’Gina sold plasma on a regular basis; she was such a regular that she had a debit card from the donation center that would be loaded with cash after each trip,’ the report authors write.”

The Atlantic, June 13, 2014: “What Happens If You Have No Welfare and No Job?,” by Olga Khazan

Urban Institute, June 2, 2014: "Understanding the Dynamics of Disconnection from Employment and Assistance,” by Heather Sandstrom, Kristin S. Seefeldt, Sandra Huerta, and Pamela J. Loprest (click here to download the PDF, 126 pages)

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Entrepreneur Barbie

"With more than 150 careers under her belt, Barbie has never been afraid to try new things. When the original fashion doll started out in 1959, her early roles were the broadest stereotypes possible: model, ballerina, flight attendant, candy striper, nurse. In the decades that followed, however, she’s been everything from a surgeon to a NASCAR driver, a paleontologist to a computer engineer and even a presidential candidate."

"Now, she’s taking on a new job that will sound awfully familiar to anyone in Silicon Valley (the place or the show): entrepreneur."

"The doll’s marketing backstory explains that she has partnered with 10 female entrepreneurs, who serve as her ‘Chief Inspirational Officers.’”

“‘You can’t be what you can’t see,’ says Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, a nonprofit devoted to gender parity in computing and other STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and one of Barbie’s ‘CIOs.’ ‘Unfortunately we live in a culture where girls are bombarded with images of male coders and engineers that just don’t look like them. When you ask a girl what a computer scientist is, she usually pictures a geeky guy typing away. And then we wonder why girls don’t pursue careers in tech! We have to change popular culture and start showing more women, more cool, dynamic, creative women, in these roles.’”

"While Entrepreneur Barbie doesn’t teach specific skills the way girl-oriented engineering toys like Goldieblox do, it’s selling something else: what Don Draper might call female entrepreneurship as a lifestyle. That is, it isn’t about realities so much as fantasies and possibilities -- by associating a glamorous, traditionally attractive woman with concepts of leadership and success, it arguably encourages girls to add ‘entrepreneur’ to their aspirations alongside more fanciful ones like ‘princess.’ (As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently told a puppet on Sesame Street, ‘Pretending to be a princess is fun, but it is definitely not a career.’)”

Wired, June 18, 2014: “Your First Look at Entrepreneur Barbie, Smartphone and All,” by Laura Hudson

"The doll is being promoted on social media, with a Twitter discussion around the hashtag #Unapologetic and a LinkedIn profile for Barbie.”

"Mattel is not the first company to realize that progress away from the stereotypical is needed in toys’ depictions of females. Earlier this month, LEGO announced it will release a Female Minifigure Set featuring professional female figures like chemists, astronomers and paleontologists.”

The Huffington Post, June 18, 2014: “Is Entrepreneur Barbie The Doll We Have Been Waiting For?,” by Cavan Sieczkowski

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Understanding Cuts to Public Pensions

"In the past several years, fears that underfunded public pensions are a growing burden on taxpayers have led to calls to cut employer-provided pension benefits through increased employee contributions, increased retirement ages, reduced cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs), or other changes. But too often news reports on proposed or enacted pension cuts either overplay the rationale behind them, or minimize the impacts on affected workers. The latter is especially true with changes that do not decrease take-home pay but reduce future retirement benefits and thus may be harder to quantify."

"This primer is intended to help organizations understand both the rationales behind and the details of proposed cuts to public pensions. It provides tools for assessing and understanding the true underlying health of public pension plans, the history behind any actuarial shortfalls, and the impacts on workers and taxpayers of proposed or enacted legislation that reduces pension benefits. The primer is organized as a series of 10 steps, although all may not be relevant in every situation. While it ends with a specific example of the percentage change in lifetime benefits, measured in real terms, received by a prototypical worker under four different pension plan changes, it provides guidance on using alternative measures as well."

Economic Policy Institute, June 9, 2014: “Understanding Cuts to Public Pensions,” by Monique Morrissey (click here to download the PDF, 19 pages)

"In the face of Detroit’s tumultuous bankruptcy proceedings, in which multiple parties are quarreling to protect their interests, the city and its unions have negotiated a scaled-back pension plan that could serve as a model for other troubled governments."

"One of the most closely watched issues of the case is whether a government pension plan can be legally cut in bankruptcy. Detroit, saddled with a pension system it cannot afford, has introduced a new plan with the cooperation of its unions, which have been among the most vocal opponents of cutbacks."

Click here to read the new hybrid plan (16 pages, PDF).

The New York Times, June 18, 2014: “Detroit Rolls Out New Model: A Hybrid Pension Plan,” by Mary Williams Walsh

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Our Technology and Theirs

"This special section of Dissent begins where other critiques of digital technology have left off.”

"How do we see technology’s power and demonstrate it to others? E. Alex Jung documents ‘Wages for Facebook,’ one artist’s attempt to clarify for users how the company extracts value from their interactions. Inspired by the 1970s feminist campaign ‘Wages for Housework,’ the project reveals how what once was viewed as natural social behavior and pleasure-seeking has now been turned into labor.”

"At the same time, some tech companies are turning labor that once was paid into amateur work done ‘for fun.’ That is the subject of Melissa Gira Grant’s investigation into Kink.com, a San Francisco-based pornography company that specializes in live events. With the arrival of the Internet, Kink began broadcasting sex parties. The firm laid off organized sex workers in favor of amateur participants who would do it for free, while generating a profit for Kink. Much as Facebook functions as a platform for other kinds of socializing, Kink functions on the principle that no one gets paid, but millions still get made.”

"Back in the Valley, Atossa Araxia Abrahamian details a strange new fad: homelessness. An obsession with playing at homelessness and with individual homeless people has been evident on tech industry blogs and events for some time now. What about this particular brand of suffering inspires the self-made entrepreneur?”

"Finally, historian Colin Gordon takes on the common notion that advances in technology cause people to lose their jobs and breed greater inequality in modern societies. His careful dissection of arguments made by both liberal and conservative economists establishes that the problem is not in our computers but in our politics.”

Dissent, Spring 2014: “Introduction: Our Technology and Theirs,” by Sarah Leonard and Kate Losse

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Book of the Week

Burnout at Work: a Psychological Perspective, edited by Michael P Leiter, Arnold B. Bakker and Christina Maslach. New York: Psychology Press, 2014. 174 p. ISBN 9781848722293 (paperback)

From the publisher: "The psychological concept of burnout refers to long-term exhaustion from, and diminished interest in, the work we do. It's a phenomenon that most of us have some understanding of, even if we haven't always been affected directly. Many people start their working lives full of energy and enthusiasm, but far fewer are able to maintain that level of engagement. Burnout at Work: A Psychological Perspective provides a comprehensive overview of how the concept of burnout has been conceived over recent decades, as well as discussing the challenges and possible interventions that can help confront this pervasive issue. Including contributions from the most eminent researchers in this field, the book examines a range of topics including:

  • The links between burnout and health
  • How our individual relationships at work can affect levels of burnout
  • The role of leadership in mediating or causing burnout
  • The strategies that individuals can pursue to avoid burnout, as well as wider interventions.

The book will be required reading for anyone studying organizational or occupational psychology, and will also interest students of business and management, and health psychology."

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