- mik
- Oct 16, 2003
-
oh
|
Canada, Toronto, Ottawa, Ontario, Quebec, anglicised retard babble!
Mactaquac does sound kind of funny though.
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 00:03
|
|
- Adbot
-
ADBOT LOVES YOU
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2024 21:29
|
|
- Meat Recital
- Mar 26, 2009
-
by zen death robot
|
"Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!", what kind of retard talks like this?
*names everything after British royalty*
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 00:26
|
|
- Juul-Whip
- Mar 10, 2008
-
|
The best was when they brought back Riker's transporter clone. A brilliant reworking of the "Niceguy Kirk vs Evil Kirk" story.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 00:41
|
|
- P-Value Hack
- Apr 4, 2016
-
|
Why do Canadian place names always sound like retard babble anyway?
Wow, this is an impressive display of ignorance which I didn't think PT6A could ever achieve outside his usual subtle bs
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 00:48
|
|
- crowoutofcontext
- Nov 12, 2006
-
|
Wow, this is an impressive display of ignorance which I didn't think PT6A could ever achieve outside his usual subtle bs
At least it put a stop to #elbowgate chat and herald the slightly more important history of Canada place name chat
(I know a guy from Dildo, Newfoundland)
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 00:54
|
|
- Gus Hobbleton
- Dec 30, 2003
-
Can't post for 3 years!
|
Why do Canadian place names always sound like retard babble anyway?
I would ask the same of your posting.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 01:03
|
|
- namaste friends
- Sep 18, 2004
-
by Smythe
|
Like Winston Churchill
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 01:32
|
|
- Precambrian Video Games
- Aug 19, 2002
-
|
Another victory for free trade in North America:
quote:Inside Mexico's 'ghost' unions
It’s one of the cheapest places in the world to make things. But Mexican factory workers labour for long hours and little pay — and have nowhere to turn for help — as they churn out billions of dollars in goods for Canadians.
TIJUANA, MEXICO—Margarita Avalos wasn’t even aware she had a union — until she and her fellow factory workers asked for the pay they were owed.
Suddenly, she says, a union appeared. And they proposed a solution: lock the troublemaking employees in a room without food or water until they agreed to take three months’ unpaid leave.
Last year, men and women like Avalos churned out billions of dollars worth of goods shipped to Canada, with almost 80 per cent destined for Ontario — a trade relationship that has ballooned by more than 700 per cent since the North American Free Trade Agreement was implemented in 1994.
That agreement pledges to “enhance and enforce basic workers’ rights.” And on paper, Mexican workers are beneficiaries of some of the continent’s strongest labour laws. In the gritty border city of Tijuana, most belong to a union.
They just don’t know it.
These are Mexico’s “ghost” unions, organizations that live in the shadows of Mexican industry. Their purpose, critics say, is not to fight for fair pay or enforce labour standards, but ensure they are ignored.
Like many, Avalos moved to Tijuana at 18 from central Mexico. The factories along the jagged, corrugated wall separating the city from its northern neighbour offered the promise of a better life for those with little education and few options.
Avalos says she often worked back-to-back eight-hour shifts to meet production quotas at a foreign-owned clothing factory. The wages, she says, barely made ends meet. The chemicals from the dyes, she says, made her skin peel and her nails turn black.
To stay awake and dull the pain of grinding manual labour, she says she and her colleagues mixed coffee grounds and aspirin into bottles of Coke.
“That was when I asked myself whether the factory was the beautiful place I thought it was,” she said.
As Mexico’s population has surged, so too has the country’s poverty. There are an estimated 14.3 million more Mexicans living in poverty than when NAFTA was first signed. It is now the most unequal country in the OECD, a grouping of 34 relatively high-income democracies.
As Ontario’s manufacturing sector struggles, Mexico’s is booming. It has become one of the cheapest places on the planet to make things — even cheaper than China, according to a 2013 Bank of America study. The country’s so-called maquiladora program, which thrives along the U.S.-Mexico border, lures foreign companies with the promise of duty-free manufacturing.
In many of those factories — producing everything from Barbies to big-screen TVs — the organizations meant to protect workers are little more than phantoms.
“The only time (the unions) appear is when the workers want to organize themselves,” said Avalos, 34, who now leads the Tijuana-based independent workers’ rights group Ollin Calli — a role she says has led to multiple threats, including being physically attacked by an unknown assailant.
Lynn DeWeese-Parkinson, a former lawyer for the American Indian Movement who now works with Ollin Calli, says the first thing foreign companies do when relocating to Mexico is find a union and “hire a lawyer to be the president.”
Since unions are very difficult to displace under Mexican labour law, DeWeese-Parkinson says signing up a “ghost” union essentially serves as a protection contract for factories — ensuring that workers will never be able to independently organize.
Last month, Hassan Yussuff, head of the Canadian Labour Congress, penned a letter to the world’s largest trade union confederation, the International Trade Union Confederation, expressing “deep concerns” about the practice and its devastating impact on ordinary workers in Mexico.
“(Foreign companies) are there because there’s a competitive advantage,” he added in an interview with the Star. “This is unfair for Canadian workers who saw the loss of jobs — only to realize that this advantage comes because the Mexican government is in collusion with employers and unions to ensure the practice of protective contracts.”
From a sparse, dimly lit Tijuana office, the head of the Mexican Workers Federation of Industrial Unions, José de Jesus Pantoja, told the Star his organization is “invited” to represent factory workers by foreign companies’ corporate executives.
“Mexican workers don’t have the capacity to elect good leaders,” he said.
“If we left (union organizing) open, it would attract people who aren’t recommended, and who aren’t trustworthy. It’s a risk for the factory,” he added.
Businessman Gabriel Merino describes this as a “very good relationship.”
“I have never yet as a manager of a factory had any strike in my plant,” he said. “We like the unions.”
...
After several attempts, the Star gained access to one maquiladora on the pretence of looking for a job, slipping in through an unmarked door that did not name the company. The warehouse, where workers were slicing plywood, was hot and airless even on a cool, wet day. Workers wore cheap earphones to protect against the grating rasp of electric saws. The wages on offer were between 1,000 to 1,200 pesos for a 48-hour week — less than $2 an hour.
In a country with a daily minimum wage of 73 pesos, or about $5, that rate is still far more lucrative than many alternatives. But even with a weekly salary of 1,250 pesos, Alejandra Bartolomé, 26, cannot afford more than the home she and her family illegally cobbled together on the side of a four-lane Tijuana highway — part of an informal settlement where old garage doors and factory refuse substitute for bricks and mortar.
Bartolomé, who puts together sprinklers for export, says her wages are mostly eaten up by food and transport.
“I’ve worked in maquilas that are unbearably hot, or get freezing cold. They really pressure you. This one is a lot better because, compared to the other ones, they don’t treat you in an ugly way and scream at you.”
Pantoja says 95 per cent of Tijuana’s maquiladoras are unionized and that his organization supports workers while maintaining a “good image” with government and foreign companies. The Star interviewed five workers currently employed by maquiladoras. None of them, including Bartolomé, had ever heard of a union. One said she made as little as $1.25 an hour.
Without genuine union protection, critics say, workers are almost completely disenfranchised. In total, there have been 17 complaints of large-scale Mexican labour violations made under NAFTA; three are currently under review, but the body set up under the agreement to oversee labour standards has not issued a ruling for over 10 years.
“There has yet to be a single sanction imposed on Mexico,” Yussuff said. “The new (Trudeau) government certainly has the ability to start raising some effort on Mexico to say, ‘This is beyond the pale now.’”
In the meantime, the lack of basic workers’ rights in maquiladoras is Mexico’s yawning inequality, according to Marlene Solis, a professor at Tijuana’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
“I think there is a lot of violence — economic violence. When you have to fight day to day to feed your family, there is very little space to learn how to fight for your rights,” she said.
“It’s a problem of exercising your human rights. Workers don’t have that. The promise of progress is not working here in Mexico.”
“The factories say if they go, we’ll have nothing to eat, so we should be grateful,” Avalos added. “I’m not against factories. I’m in favour of dignified conditions.”[/b]
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 02:34
|
|
- namaste friends
- Sep 18, 2004
-
by Smythe
|
Where is bunny of doom now lmao
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 02:44
|
|
- Helsing
- Aug 23, 2003
-
DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU  JOE BIDEN
|
Something to keep in mind regarding the latest trade deal, the TPP, is that even it's supporters have real had to scramble to try and find justifications for a transparently terrible deal.
The Nation posted:
The TPP Is ‘Disastrous for Working Families’ and Central to the 2016 Campaign
A new report highlights the empty promise of a Pacific trade deal that swing-state voters justifiably oppose.
By John NicholsTwitterMAY 19, 2016
The popular fury over trade policies that have devastated American communities is rarely taken seriously by the political and media elites that keep trying to narrow the national political discourse into an endless loop of empty discussions about personalities and tactics. But trade is a huge issue on the ground in states where Americans actually vote.
The races for both the Republican and the Democratic presidential nominations have exposed the intensity of concern about the damage done by the North American Free Trade Agreement, normalization of trade relations with China and a host of lesser global agreements to workers in battleground states across the country. Indeed, the “surprise” results in Democratic primaries in states such as Michigan and Indiana can be traced in no small measure to a sense that the winner of those primaries, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, was firmer in his opposition to the next big trade deal: the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.
Voters are justifiably angry about past trade deals, which were written to favor the interests of multinational corporations over those of workers, the environment, labor rights, human rights, and democracy.
And they are justifiably frightened by the prospect that the TPP could make things much worse.
How justified?
The United States International Trade Commission has just released a long-awaited “report on what critics have decried as the NAFTA on steroids” proposal for a Pacific Rim trade deal. The report was expected to make a strong case for the agreement. Instead, it barely makes a case at all. So modest is the argument for the TPP that it was characterized by Politico as a “mildly positive” document with a “mixed” projection for how the TPP would influence the US trade deficit and the bad news that “the oil, coal, chemical, auto parts, forestry, leather and medical device industries could see slower growth than without the agreement.”
Lori Wallach, the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, points out that “This report spotlights how damaging the TPP would be for most Americans’ jobs and wages given it concludes 16 out of 25 US economic sectors…”
Instead of strengthening the argument for the TPP, the congressionally mandated study of how the sweeping agreement might help or harm the US economy is heightening the level of concern.
Economist Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and an internationally respected expert on trade and employment issues, notes that “The overall projected gains to national income by 2032 are $57.3 billion or 0.23 percent. Since this gain is realized over the next 16 years, it implies an increase to the annual growth rate of just over 0.01 percentage point. In other words, the USITC projects that as a result of the TPP, the country will be as wealthy on January 1, 2032 as it would otherwise be on February 15 of 2032.”
Baker also offers a cautionary reminder that the projected gains could be inflated. “It is worth noting that the USITC modeling exercises in the past have not been good predictors of the outcomes of trade deals,” explained the economist. “For example, their models failed to project the large increases in the deficit with Mexico following NAFTA, the increase in the deficit with China following PNTR, and the increase in the deficit with Korea following the US-Korea trade agreement.”
Critics of the agreement—which President Obama and Republicans in Congress are still trying to advance this year—are actually using the new report to make the case against the TPP.
“This ITC report is so damaging that any reasonable observer would have to wonder why the Administration or Congress would spend even one more day trying to turn this disastrous proposal into a reality,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:
quote:
Even though it’s based on unrealistic assumptions, the report could not even produce a positive result for U.S. manufacturing and U.S. workers. One of many shockers is just how meager the purported benefits of the TPP are. A mere .15% of GDP growth over 15 years is laughably small—especially in comparison to what we’re being asked to give up in exchange for locking in a bonanza of rights and privileges for global corporations. Even though the report fails to account for currency manipulation, wage suppression and the negative impacts of uninspected food imports and higher drug costs, the study still projects the TPP will cost manufacturing jobs and exacerbate our trade deficit.
Trade policy was already a big issue in the 2016 presidential race, and the ITC report will make it a bigger issue. Sanders will continue to denounce the TPP as “part of a global race to the bottom to boost the profits of large corporations and Wall Street by outsourcing jobs; undercutting worker rights; dismantling labor, environmental, health, food safety and financial laws; and allowing corporations to challenge our laws in international tribunals rather than our own court system.” And he will make demands for firm opposition to the deal a key focus of platform fights before and perhaps during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Sanders argues that it is essential for Democrats to be absolutely clear in their opposition to the TPP because Republican Donald Trump will continue try to attract working-class voters by railing against the “crony capitalist” deals. (It turns out that Trump’s the crony capitalist—Bloomberg reports that he actually invested in companies he has denounced for outsourcing—but his complaints about “bad deals” resonated in the Republican primary race, helping the billionaire to frame himself as an anti-establishment candidate.)
Pressured by Sanders and his supporters, and conscious of the threat posed by Trump, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton will continue to become more precise and focused in her criticism of the deal. The former secretary of state, who once suggested that “this TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements,” has grown increasingly ardent in her expressions of disapproval. Earlier this month, Clinton indicated that she is opposed to a post-election “lame-duck” vote by Congress to accept the agreement. “I have said I oppose the TPP agreement—and that means before and after the election,” she told the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign.
Even if political and media elites refuse to recognize how central trade issues have become in the 2016 campaign, the candidates are recognizing that, for voters across America, failed trade policies—and the more-of the-same threat posed by the TPP—have to be addressed as part of any serious debate about the future of the American economy.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 05:15
|
|
- PT6A
- Jan 5, 2006
-
Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
|
Wow, this is an impressive display of ignorance which I didn't think PT6A could ever achieve outside his usual subtle bs
Why's it ignorant? You'll notice I'm not actually criticizing aboriginal place names, but rather the half-assed and ridiculous sounding approximations thereof that the British used to name things.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 06:36
|
|
- PT6A
- Jan 5, 2006
-
Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
|
Some of the other places the British did this in have gone through the process of renaming their cities instead of continuing on with what the British thought sounded close enough. Given that we prefer more accurate transliterations now when naming things after words or place names in aboriginal languages, should we possibly consider this with names like "Petawawa" which is ridiculous sounding and doesn't mean anything in any known language?
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 07:16
|
|
- BattleMaster
- Aug 14, 2000
-
|
The Britisher were super bad about not caring enough to get foreign names right. For instance, Peking and Bombay.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 07:43
|
|
- PT6A
- Jan 5, 2006
-
Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
|
The Britisher were super bad about not caring enough to get foreign names right. For instance, Peking and Bombay.
Canton, Chungking, the list goes on and on. We can do better than goofy British approximations, that's all I meant to say. But I can see how my original post could've been misinterpreted. In my defence, I was quite drunk at the time.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 08:14
|
|
- BattleMaster
- Aug 14, 2000
-
|
How do you pronounce the 7?
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 08:47
|
|
- PT6A
- Jan 5, 2006
-
Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
|
tell us again how great free trade is though
or how much you love just buying poo poo off amazon or ebay or whatever
I like all of those things, and I would also support greater mobility for people as well as goods. The fact that we still have visa requirements for some EU countries is insane and they are right to be angry at us about it.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 09:49
|
|
- Brannock
- Feb 9, 2006
-
by exmarx
-
Fallen Rib
|
Oh good is it time to start calling people "pieces of poo poo" for several consecutive posts? I'm all oiled up and ready
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 14:07
|
|
- Gorau
- Apr 28, 2008
-
|
it is totally shocking that you are completely on board with systems that encourage and support oppression
this is a separate issue
It's actually not a separate issue. Free movement of labour is more or less the final form of a free trade agreement, and usually where most of the really major changes happen. If there was free movement for labour in NAFTA wages would look very different in all the member countries. They would probably be much higher in Mexico, slightly lower in the US and probably quite a bit lower in Canada. However, most economists would argue that the wage loses in Canada and the US would be smaller, probably by a considerable amount than the wage gains in Mexico. While it would take a few decades, free movement of labour in NAFTA would pull all three countries wages closer together and create a situation where regional average pay disparity would not be much greater than you see in the US now.
Whether or not we want to actually go through the incredibly painful adjustment period is another question.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 16:51
|
|
- namaste friends
- Sep 18, 2004
-
by Smythe
|
tell us again how great free trade is though
or how much you love just buying poo poo off amazon or ebay or whatever
whatever destroys canada is good with me idgaf
the sooner working class families from loving kitchener are eating dirt the better
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 17:16
|
|
- Adbot
-
ADBOT LOVES YOU
|
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2024 21:29
|
|
- Pixelante
- Mar 16, 2006
-
You people will by God act like a team, or at least like people who know each other, or I'll incinerate the bunch of you here and now.
|
I'm gradually warming up to the idea that there's a valid reason for starting every humanities-type conference/event/project with thanks for the Coast Salish People for use of their unceded territory but it still feels a bit heavy-handed. One of my courses has a thanks written into the syllabus.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 19:08
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2016 00:03
