Category: Rants (Page 1 of 12)

The speed of panic

January 12, 2020 / scadmin

I was up and making coffee when the alert came on my phone about an incident at the Pickering power plant. I read it, noted that this is several hundred km to the east of me and resumed making coffee. Once I made the coffee. I went online to several news sites and saw nothing about it.

Not surprising since the alert had just come out. I was about to journal (it’s been helping me focus) when I thought I would try a small experiment. Not that I am on social media often anymore but I would purposely stay off of it for at least an hour.

By that time I guessed the ‘alert’ would be rescinded but I wanted to predict how social media would react. Unfortunately, I was fairly accurate in my prediction.

What did I think the alert would be rescinded? The entire message threw up red flags. The alert system is supposed to be used for true emergencies, not for letting people know “there was a problem, everything is fine”. This total looked liked an accidental release and posting of a message; possibly during a disaster test of some sort.

I figured, within several minutes, people will be reposting the alert across social media, no matter where they live. Some of these will be attempts at humour. Several people will complain that they don’t see stories on mainstream media about this.

Within 10-15 min most mainstream media will have a story on their sites / feeds just repeating the original alert because that’s all they have at that point. Here’s something you may not know. Overnights and weekends, most media have a slimmed downed presence in their newsrooms – if at all. The assigned reporter on-call will have gotten the alert and have to quickly post something to their sites and feeds as they don’t want a competitor to ‘beat’ them to the story. They have nothing else to report as the authorities are still trying to figure out what is going on. If the alert was sent in error, the issuing agency is being pummeled by everyone trying to find out what’s going on. The staff working is trying to deal with this, but the fact that it’s not a weekday means the communications team who could deal with this is not there.

By now more people will be posting and retweeting, including the links to the media posts. In other words, the same information is being amplified. But now some people are thinking up theories about why no more information is being released and posting that. These are now being reshared and some misinformation is starting to show up. Since many people think everything they read on social media is the truth, they believe it.

After I wrote the above I rechecked the mainstream media sites to find reports that alert was sent in error. I then decided to log into Facebook and Twitter (first time for Twitter in weeks) to see the state of things. Sadly I was pretty well right on in my predictions….. Even more sadly, I was not surprised.

Several lessons.

If you get an alert note where it is coming from. Something several hundred miles away is not an immediate issue for you.

Don’t rely on a single source for the whole story, particularly if they are not an official source.

An official source is not “My sister’s best friend’s brother who knows someone who works in the area”.

Don’t amplify misinformation by reposting it. It doesn’t help anyone.

In this hyperconnected world, it still takes time for media to gather the information to do an accurate report. The media can do it fast or can do it accurately with all the information. You can’t have both.

This event has shown that the Ontario alert system needs further review, to ensure test alerts don’t get put out to the world. We’ve seen issues like this before so hopefully, a review will be done.

If a major event like this would ever happen. Ontario Power Generation and the province already have a set of procedures in place including notifying local authorities and the media. If you don’t believe me, ask your local authorities. Just like in business disaster scenarios are tested regularly.

Jobs now task force and transit

June 27, 2019 / scadmin

I read in the news that the Mayors “Jobs Now Task Force” has released their report. The members of that group include London Economic Development Corporation, the London Chamber of Commerce, Western University, Fanshawe College, London Region Manufacturing Council, and Knighthunter

To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Many have already commented on things the task force seems to have missed for people trying to find work in London.

Economist Mike Moffatt goes over some of the fundamental flaws of this report in far better detail than I ever could, but in this post, I want to drill down on one area of the recommendations, that being transit.

Recommendation #2 in the report is as follows.

“Get better public transit in place for our south and east industrial areas before the end of this calendar year. The lack of reliable service is a major reason why more than 1,000 production line jobs in those areas are unfilled. The problem has been identified and studied for years. For London, bus service that gets workers to our plants on time is an essential requirement for filling jobs. As such, this must be an immediate priority for London Transit and London’s City Council.”

Now I may not be a financial or economic wizard, but I do know a thing or two about operations and I am a bit of a transit nerd….. So let me throw out a possible scenario. If I’m wrong on any of these items, please let me know and I’m happy to correct things.

London Transit (LTC) has started to slowly make changes annually to improve services to those industrial areas. The big stumbling block is money. The LTC has also said they would require quite a jump in funding from the city just to maintain existing service. A fare increase (the first in 10 years) is also being looked at.

For a moment lets imagine the LTC is given the green light to extend service to these areas. What would that look like? To get workers to the plants on time as per the recommendation the service has to run when shifts start and stop. Many plants run shifts from 5 am to 11 pm (I’m not going to include the overnight shifts for this example). So the routes servicing those areas will have to run from 5 am to midnight to give workers time to get to the plants and leave at the end of their shifts.

But wait there is more.

The majority of the workers do not live on those routes servicing the industrial areas. They will have to transfer once and sometimes twice to other bus routes depending on where they live in the city. This means all the other bus routes will have to have their start and stop times extended.

These factors will result in additional costs for the LTC, including payroll costs as drivers will be needed for the longer times and possibly addition equipment (buses are not cheap). Also, note in this scenario I have not even talked about if additional routes to the industrial areas are required. Additional routes mean more costs both capital and payroll.

This is all in addition to what the LTC current budget is which is one of the lowest funded transit systems by cities of our size in the province.

As to the timing, there is no way a change with that sort of scope could be completed by the end of the year, particularly if additional equipment is needed. The LTC does amazing work but this would be quite a large ask.

The funding announcement recently made by the provincial government does not include any funding for additional service to these areas. And the funds assigned cannot be reallocated.

Several questions to the Mayor and the Task Force.

Was anyone at London Transit consulted on this? If not why?

Will council move to increase the LTC’s budget to accommodate this additional service as recommended in this report?

I and many other citizens of London are looking forward to hearing some answers to these questions.

Job fairs are not the magic bullet.

April 11, 2019 / scadmin

I’m seeing much chatter about jobs and unemployment in the last few days. I hav’nt contributed to the discussion in a while so time to put my 5 cents in.

I can mostly speak about me and my wife and the challenges we face. I realize our situation is not typical but it is not unique either. The other comments and observations are from others I have talked to or read about.

The issue of people trying to find work and employers trying to find people is not new, but the dynamics have changed. In the past, one person could work full time and make enough to buy a house, feed their family and live fairly comfortably. The job came with health and dental benefits so the family could remain healthy.

Things have changed thanks to lack of wage growth in relation to other expenses. As well there are fewer jobs and many of the ones that are now available are contract positions with low wages and no benefits.

Many Ontario communities have calculated a living wage figure. In London, it is $15.53 per hour. There are some assumptions built in. This is based on a couple both working full time with two younger children. So the actual family figure is $31.06 per hour. (Roughly $60,000 per year)

In our situation, my wife has several complex medical conditions including lupus and fibromyalgia This means she cannot hold down a full-time job and most part-time jobs are out of the question. This means I am the sole earner in the house. She cannot get any form of federal CPP etc as she only worked full time less than two years before she became sick. Because she is married to myself she cannot qualify for ODSP as I earn too much….

So what this means even though we don’t have children and those expenses that are calculated in the formula, we still have higher than normal medical expenses. I have to be working somewhere that pays me between the $15.53 for one via the $31.06 for two. If we cut the difference right in half it would be roughly $24 per hour. I haven’t even discussed benefits yet…

My experience so far with these jobs fairs are many employment agencies which are working for companies to provide contracts positions, typically with no benefits. There are also other companies there usually looking for entry-level positions. There may be some other places that are looking for some higher skilled positions but in my experience, both they and the agencies are typically offering lower wages for the skills they are looking for.

Other random job hunting notes / rants / comments.

As well I have directly experienced ageism. The belief that because I’m an older worker I’m not willing to learn or I will want more money. in my case, yes I can’t afford to keep a roof over my families head for the lower wages they are offering. but there are many older workers that if their partner works could go into the jobs. That’s why I don’t tend to apply for those lower wage positions. I have talked to many of these companies at these job fairs (most of the names you would know) and either been told ‘We have nothing for your skill set’ or seen my resume put in the trash when I leave.

“We are moving forward with a more suitable candidate’ is something I have heard several times since 2011” Quite often the following week I will see the same position open again.

This tells me several things.

They have not found a suitable candidate – I find this very hard to believe with the skill set of applicants in this area.

They are not offering enough money for the skill sets they want – I could write a whole separate post on employers who want a laundry list of skills but not willing to pay the market value for them.

They want a candidate to literally be fully trained up on the first day. This is not practical and many companies IMHO are missing out on excellent candidates because they may have to spend some time training them. Almost all workers are willing to learn you just have to give us a chance.

I would love to see at many of the job fairs for companies/agencies to state if the wages being offered for these positions due meet the criteria for a living wage. As well I’d love to see enforceable legislation that employers cannot continue to keep people on a contract for years. If you value the work the employee does then treat them properly. Companies seem to forget that having to retrain someone when they leave for a better job is far more expensive.

So in the end, if a company at this upcoming Job Fair is looking for an experienced skilled employee willing to learn and can offer full time with benefits for $24 per hour and up then let me know. Is anyone willing to bet if I’ll find one? I hope to be proved wrong….

Category: Rants (Page 1 of 12)

The speed of panic

Jobs now task force and transit

Job fairs are not the magic bullet.

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