Janelle's Journal

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09/03/2007 11:18 #40906

Labor Day Ponderings
Category: life

Some thoughts as we celebrate Labor Day with barbecues and low, low prices at the stores!

US companies like Google and Wal-Mart are actively fighting current attempts by Chinese labor activists to reform Chinese labor laws that would afford Chinese laborers labor rights similar to those rights in the United States.

Los Angeles is close to replacing New York City as the sweatshop capital of the world.

Made in America labels are meaningless. One case in point below:

The US territory of the Commonwealth of North Mariana Islands is exempt from the minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards act and is partially exempt from the Immigration and Naturalization Act and gets to put Made In America Labels on the clothes produced in the territory.

Social workers, English professors, clerical staff/secretaries are just a few of several professions that had relatively higher pay in the days when those fields were dominated by men.

Alright, (e:peeps)! You can catch Drew and I at the Amvets on Elmwood Ave today trying to fight the man by buying thrift store clothing! That's our Labor Day celebration, lol!

janelle - 09/03/07 22:54
(e:mike): Look a little deeper into the North Mariana Islands and it gets a lot worse than exemption from minimum wage provisions and "Made in America". 16 hour work days; abort the baby you're pregnant with or you get shipped back to China; substandard housing condiitons; and oh so much more of interest for a place that is a US territory.

mike - 09/03/07 21:18
that is very interesting on the made in america in those island things. I bet nothing is actually made here anymore!

jason - 09/03/07 20:31
Wowsers, I am very, very impressed. Your compassion is admirable, Janelle.

I do not expect people all over the world to behave like we would like them to. It isn't true when it comes to Iraq, and it isn't true in many, many other applications. It is when the workers have literally no dignity, a la the labor camps, a la forced labor, a la diamond workers, garment workers, and many other people, when we should really become enraged. The thing is, most people are compassionate with their mouths and not their hearts or wallets. Made in China is ubiquitous.

Incidentally, my fave Bible verse is Jeremiah 29:11, and it is impossible to not think of them when you read it.

janelle - 09/03/07 19:40
Wow,
I should have let you write the post ;) Your work sounds interesting. I'd be interested to hear more about it. maybe in a post?
Wal-Mart stifling labor activists was just recently in the Buffalo news-either this past Sunday or the previous Sunday. The paper ran a lengthy article about China being on the brink of some major labor reforms. Major US companies, including Wal-Mart and Google, actively lobby the government not to pass the reforms. It is up to the Chinese government to pass the labor law, but it must be difficult for them when Wal-Mart and Google threaten to move to India if they do. But it sounds like you have much more knowledge of labor in China, so maybe you can give some insight on that.
I, agree, that paying Chinese workers in China according to US wage standards is not going to happen. Do people still think that's for real? I think maybe I thought that way up until highschool when I learned a few things about economics. I just think it would be nice to improve their work environment, working hours, etc... And I don't think it's the United States business to do that, but I also don't think US companies should exploit weak labor laws in other countries. And I have the right to express my concern by not shopping at Wal Mart.
The biggest issue that I don't like is sweatshop labor in the US. It was hard, but but after reading about the sweatshops in New York City fueled by illegal immigrants from the Fuzhou province of China, I finally made a commitment to almost exclusively buy thriftstore clothing. Ocassionally we shop at Marshalls/Big Lots when we really need something and we make this compromise under the impression that the company is still taking some loss by selling their clothes to a discount store.
Drew and I are both passionate about "oppression of workers" and I try to think about how I treat the staff I supervise. One of my favorite bible verses is James 5:1-6.
And a final word to you arrogant rich: Take some lessons in lament. You'll need buckets for the tears when the crash comes upon you. Your money is corrupt and your fine clothes stink. Your greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within. You thought you were piling up wealth. What you've piled up is judgment.
All the workers you've exploited and cheated cry out for judgment. The groans of the workers you used and abused are a roar in the ears of the Master Avenger. You've looted the earth and lived it up. But all you'll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse. In fact, what you've done is condemn and murder perfectly good persons, who stand there and take it.

joshua - 09/03/07 17:55
Its funny how a few of these items are right up my alley - I am a social compliance auditor and we are the #1 auditing firm for the Big Gray Box in North America... and we regularly audit in China. Without saying too much, I can tell you that by FAR the largest issue that comes out of China relates to working hours. Almost every company in China has double books and its on nearly every single audit report that our company writes.

I'm unaware of any attempts by Wal-Mart to try to stifle labor activists in China. To be honest, ultimately those sorts of decisions are made by the Chinese government, and I can tell you with virtual certainty that the Chinese government is interested in some reforms, but not widespread. Wal-Mart could decide to simply not source from China, but that is a virtual impossibility. To a degree I think Wal-Mart is interested in social compliance but the code is extremely weak in comparison to codes like SA8000, WRAP, Levi Strauss and FLA. When it comes to issues like payment, alot of people are idealistic about the idea of paying Chinese workers American wages (also known as "fair" wages) - its simply never going to happen.

LA IS the sweatshop capital of the world. We work there a ton. If not LA, then definitely a couple cities in Pakistan could measure up. LA's garment district is shocking. The biggest issue in LA usually revolves around the legal status of the workers that are there, but ultimately we aren't the INS. We only report about whether or not the I-9 forms are filled out properly - that is the extent of our jurisdiction when it comes to legal status, but its an important enough issue that if we aren't satisfied then it means a virtually guaranteed revisit and another $2000 fee that the company pays us as a contractual obligation to companies like The Big Gray Box.

I'm not surprised that the FLSA isn't applicable in that island group you mentioned. The thing about labels is tricky - its actually illegal to domestically import something and not have the correct country of origin on the tag. We've seen it before, and companies that do this can get into a world of legal trouble - the doors can be closed and we've also seen that. The rules in between are a bit of a labrynth, but what I can say is that "Made In America" is a dying concept and I've personally been to dozens of American suppliers that are now out of business due to Chinese competition.

Activists drive our industry, and I'm glad that they are around, but ultimately they really don't know a whole hell of a lot about social compliance, how it works and the limitations... which at times are very real and very frustrating.

fellyconnelly - 09/03/07 11:42
oh yeah and as per your post... damn the man!

fellyconnelly - 09/03/07 11:42
oh man amvets... i love thrift store clothing....

08/31/2007 15:29 #40862

Not Abuse?! WTF?! Long Rant...
Category: work

I've spent a joyful week in orientation for work.
Not particularly informative or interesting to someone who has already worked in this field a bit and could probably teach the orientation class. But my ears perked when I heard the following during my incident reporting training...

The state office of mental retardation and developmental disabilities (OMR/DD) does not require social services agencies to report client on client abuse unless it is of a sexual nature.

Let me give you some background. Most states require mental retardation (MR) social service agencies to report a number of different situations to the state to ensure that social services agencies aren't allowing for/causing the abuse/mistreatment of individuals. These situations include: injuries, hospitalizations, abuse and neglect allegations, criminal victimization. Anything bad.

These regulations are a reaction to the big state hospitals of the past that were a world unto themselves with very little accountability where very horrible, awful things happened to the mentally retarded people who lived in them.

One of the awful things that happened in the institutions is clients would hurt one another. Some clients had severe behaviors and hurt people because they didn't know any other way to express themselves. Some clients were predators and bullies. Some clients severely injured and even killed other clients. Staff to client ratios were sometimes 1 staff to 30 clients so staff had little ability to provide the necessary oversight.

So back to present day. An MR agency does not have to report if one of their clients physically beats the shit out of another client whether because of a behavior or because the client is a mean nasty person who likes to hit people (the resulting injury if severe enough might be reported, but not the abuse). The optimistic part of me wants to believe that an agency with integrity will take steps to reduce and prevent these incidents. But the cynical part of me knows that social service agencies have thin financial margins (I have a whole other rant about how the non-profit social services sector should move into the for-profit sector, but that's for another day) that sometimes influence their thinking, so it bothers me that there is no state oversight in this area. I don't care if it's a slight shove or slap or a beating, an individual has the right to live free from such harm and the state should make sure of it.
Ok, rant finished.

lauren - 09/01/07 10:30
My mother is a uh...for lack of knowing the actual title, a secretary for the ARC. Basically, she is employed by the state of NY and handles a good deal of paperwork involving mentally retarded clients or consumers.

fellyconnelly - 09/01/07 08:46
i don't know what she is... but no not a nurse.

janelle - 09/01/07 08:42
Oh, right...<blush> Lauren's mom must be a nurse?

fellyconnelly - 08/31/07 22:41
BMs as in Bowel Movements. polite way to say 'make a poopie.'

janelle - 08/31/07 22:39
(e:tinypliny). Good analogy and good questions.

Yes, there could be a tendency to underreport instances of client to client abuse to lower the numbers.

What prevents the under reporting of such incidents is that agencies undergo annual surveys where the state comes through and combs through all forms of documentation. If they find an instance of possible abuse that wasn't reported, they cite the agency for failure to report abuse. Failure to report abuse is a significant enough issue to place an agency on "probationary" status which means they'll be surveyed again in 6 months and unless everything is up to snuff they could risk losing their license and the program is shut down.

If an agency did report every instance of abuse, there would be both censure and supportive intervention. The state would fault the agency for the abuse if it appears that the agency is not doing anything to prevent the abuse (i.e. client A keeps abusing client B on a weekly basis). In some instances, agencies can request more money from the state to help alleviate the situation. Worst case scenario is that the agency says we can no longer serve the client without endangering other clients and the client will go to a program better suited to his needs.

And for clarification, I don't work in the mental health world, I work in the mental retardation world. There are some similarities, but there are a lot of differences too.

janelle - 08/31/07 21:07
I'm guessing BM=Behavior Management, but not sure. Lauren will maybe answer.

tinypliny - 08/31/07 20:57
BMs? Bone Marrow Biopsy? How would those help?!
Confused.

tinypliny - 08/31/07 20:47
Hmm.. I am not sure I got any behavioural management technique training. It was a psychiatric ward where patients hardly stayed for more than 2 weeks at a maximum, so we didn't have many chronic patients. Many of them were cases of severe depression and suicidal tendencies (non-organic delusional, bipolar, schizophrenic, psychosis episodes), kept under observation. My only contact with them was talking to them to get their case histories. The entire time I spent in the wards was training on how to get reliable histories and get the acute patient to open up enough to talk to you.

Again, I am not sure whether the ward was overpopulated/ understaffed - I didn't think so. However, there were a couple patients that only the senior consultants were allowed access to. I think one of them had attempted to jump out the window and the other had tried to choke the patients on the adjacent beds.

So I guess the ward I was in was, indeed, a very different scenario to what you usually deal with.

That said, (and since I am somewhat curious about how the system you suggest might work) I gather your argument is that if the people managing the wards (or facilities) were required to report instances of inter-inmate violence to the higher authorities, they would be more sensitive to the issue and avoid looking bad by preventing these incidents or actively intervening to reduce these incidents? That could work - but what if, as you mention in your post, the institutions lacked any integrity to begin with? Would they not be then tempted to supress information anyway?

In trying to understand this argument, let me draw a parallel with infectious diseases. If each county was required by law to report every instance of polio symptoms, and if the county were overly conscious about its health infrastructure image, might it not try to under-report possible suspicious (but unconfirmed) cases of polio symptoms (Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP), an early symptom of Polio, is not unique to Polio - it can be a result of other viral infections/asthma etc.)?

Even if it did report every instance of AFP, would the state be forced to take measures to better fund the health-infrastructure of that particular county or would the county be blamed for the lacunae in its health infrastructure?

What do you think would be the situation in the mental health world? Would the organizations that report these violations be censored and reprimanded or would it lead to a supportive intervention from the higher authority?

lauren - 08/31/07 20:26
This may be totally off base, but this reminded me of watching one of those "inside our prison system" specials wherein the officers on duty will not attempt to break up fights between inmates, even or perhaps especially of serious injury or death may occur, because their own lives are at stake. In your case however, it seems that the consumers or clients should be the number one priorty and unless your own personal safety is in jeopardy, something should be done to prevent it. I of course also have no idea about the mounds of paperwork that must be sorted through on a daily basis, but according to my mother she has records of every clients BM's, so is abusive behavior less of a priority?

janelle - 08/31/07 18:56
Okay, I'm going to try to be succinct. Also, I've never managed a psych ward, so I'm coming from the perspective of someone who manages group homes which provides a little bit of a different environment, but there are some similar principals of human rights.
An agency realistically cannot guarantee that it will 100% prevent client on client abuse. Agencies do have the responsibility to decrease incidents and they can do it by considering how they place individuals together; using behavioral support plans and training the staff appropriately. I think that the incidents need to be reported to the state on a regular basis or an agency and its staff may begin to regard client on client abuse as a given and let it grow to dangerous levels. Or is that a slippery slope argument, lol?
When you worked in a psych ward with patients were you trained in behavioral management techniques? Just curious. My guess is that you weren't trained in those techniques but the nurses and other staff were.
My other guess is that isolation got used on the psych wards you worked in when the ward was understaffed or over populated.
Also, in the MR field we do consider isolation to be a form of abuse and it's rarely to never used.

tinypliny - 08/31/07 18:11
Okay - I have never been into social services but I have worked in psychiatric wards with patients before and here's what I don't get. How will you ensure that the clients don't continue to be abused by other inmates (also clients) if they are hurting each other? You could isolate the violent client - but isolation could also be a form of abuse. Where do you start? Where do you draw the line?

08/28/2007 21:55 #40793

The sounds of Tuesday night
Category: house

It makes me smile that one of the evening noises I now associate with living on Lexington is the sound of the grocery store carts being pushed up and down the street by individuals sorting through people's recycling bin. Blends right in with the crickets.

I make my angry face, however, at the college students who stayed up until 4am last night drinking and talking loud on their front porch waking me up several times through out the night. I guess I'm becoming one of those old cranks who likes to be well rested before work.

janelle - 08/28/07 22:19
I dunno, if you think what you're hearing is a gunshot, I wouldn't be surprised depending on where you live.

tinypliny - 08/28/07 22:18
LOL - so that's what it is -- the metallic grating sounds on Tuesdays! I assumed it was the sound of some special cleaners that the city had hired to scrape the gunk off the streets. It did seem odd to me that they would do it before the garbage day rather than after it. Nevermind that the whole idea was atrocious. My brain doesn't think logically, quite often.

Yeah, I am an old crone already. I wake up to every small thud and creak all through the night. Sometimes, I think I hear gunshots in the middle of the night. Some people told me it might be just backfiring from old cars. Who knows...

08/27/2007 19:35 #40763

As promised......
Category: pets

Bad Cat, Fat Cat and Devious Dog.
Also known as Tatanka, Nealie and Buckley.

Anyone want the bad cat? No really, bad cat is just a nick name, she doesn't really terrorize the house....<shifty eyes>

fellyconnelly - 08/27/07 22:48
holy laser eyes batman!
our bad black cat likes to perch on unsuspecting shoulders with every claw of his fuzzy little paws.

tinypliny - 08/27/07 22:18
...and that is why cats and dogs are a distinctly different species. A case in point is their different responses to the photographic flash. While the members of the feline family generally disinter their demonic ocular powers, the canine lot just close their eyes and take the moment to reflect on their lives.

janelle - 08/27/07 21:28
Seriously, (e:Libertad). We're at 265. Feel free to knock or say hello if you see us!

janelle - 08/27/07 21:21
Kewl, so neighbor (e:Libertad) do you want to be neighborly and rescue us from our state of beerlessness?

libertad - 08/27/07 21:09
I want bad cat! Except he would eat my rabbit and my rabbit eats me out of house and home already, but he is worth it. btw I live on the same street as you.

lauren - 08/27/07 20:13
Awww, your bad cat looks like (one of two of) our bad cats, laser eyes and all!

theecarey - 08/27/07 19:42

This is really a great pic with them standing there as if in a line up. Which one is guilty? I say not Bad Cat, as it looks like Bad Cat has laser death-ray-soul eating capabilities.And probably opposable thumbs. *niiiice kitty*

08/27/2007 19:32 #40762

My friends from Pittsburgh
Category: life

The weekend before last I took my Pittsburgh MR/DD friends and their staff into our home and out and about for the weekend.
We went to The Anchor Bar which they loved, because, well, they love eating, and they really love eating fried things.

The next day we took them to the zoo. I hate to poo on my new city, but the Buffalo Zoo...really not so fabulous. But I understand that they have big plans for the future so I'm looking forward to that.

Jim, Marianne, Patty, Nelson, Patrick and Dennis in the Elephant House:

Marianne was the bravest of all and fed a cracker to the Giraffes. By the way, it costs a fricking dollar to feed a cracker to a giraffe, but you gotta charge that when you're building a new elephant house, I suppose.

Nelson, myself and Dennis on the carousel. Nelson's my buddy and wanted to share a horse with me, but I told him that Drew would be jealous so he would need to ride his own horse.

I also took them to the American side of the falls. I thought the American side was really nice, but people are always doggin' it!
I really love this view:

The whole crew at the falls:

Everyone picked out cheapy souveneirs and the ladies got hats that said "Cutie" and "Foxie"!

Patrick loved our dog, but Nelson would screach, "Son of a Bitch" if our dog even looked at him sideways!

All in all good time. Next year, I want everyone to get passports and secure permissions from guardians and then I'll take the whole crew to the Big City in Toronto!