'IT'S TIME TO GET BACK TO WORK'

It’s always a mistake to read the news. Reading local news tends to be worse still. I know this and yet I do it anyway. Here’s just one of many gems from today:

'It's time to get back to work': Staff shortages in a post-COVID Victoria

Unemployment levels soared throughout the pandemic, and now that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, many employers are having a hard time getting back to normal staffing levels. Staff shortages mean an easy search for those seeking employment, with the addition of extra perks.

In response to staffing shortages, the University of Victoria and the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce put on a hiring fair from March 9 to 10. The fair is geared towards part-time jobs for students, but chamber CEO Bruce Williams says there is something out there for everyone.

“There are thousands of jobs available in this economy right now.” Williams attributes low staffing levels to early retirements, decreased immigration, and fewer students in town.

“Those who are unemployed could probably look around and have their pick of what they want to do, quite honestly, because pretty much everybody is hiring right now,” he said.

He adds that this includes cruise and tourism companies. "It’s time to get back to work,” Williams said. Downtown Victoria is quiet for now, but on April 6, a cruise ship will arrive with thousands of tourists. They’ll flood the city, ready to be entertained by tourist companies.

Anna Poustie, chair of the Victoria Cruise Industry Alliance, says the organization is holding a job fair on March 19 to fill 150 tourism jobs. ”We have to find a significant amount of employees in a difficult market,” Poustie said.

In a city-wide fight to hire employees, Poustie hopes higher wages will serve as an incentive as the cost of living surges.

Where, oh where, to begin with this? The first thing to notice is that this is either an advertisement or, at best, opinion and nothing like the “news” it's presented as. That seems obvious.

Then, on the COVID front, the “light at the end of the tunnel” the author speaks of is most likely a train coming the other way. We are in the middle of this pandemic and with countless countries and cities around the globe hitting their highest case, hospitalization, and death counts in many months or of the entire pandemic. Globally we're seeing twice as much virus in the world as our Delta peak. That's very bad news, not a sign of good things coming. Today's COVID news headlines alone include:

• “China locks down city of 9 million amid spike in COVID-19 cases.”

• “’It’s like we are being left to die’: Hong Kong tackles deadliest Covid wave.”

• “The number of people in Scottish hospitals with Covid is at its highest for 13 months.”

• “ONS infection survey confirms cases increasing in all regions of the UK in March.”

• “The ONS estimate one in 13 people in Northern Ireland were carrying the virus on any given day in the week to March 5 — nearly as many as at the height of Omicron.”

• “One in ten Icelanders now with Coronavirus.”

• “Germany in ‘critical’ Covid situation, warns Health Minister.”

• Finland: “Covid patients at all-time high, no plans for new restrictions.”

• “Vietnam’s daily COVID-19 cases hit new record.”

• “South Korea reports all-time high, 282,987 new COVID-19 cases.”

• “New Zealand battling Omicron as pandemic crosses 300,000 confirmed cases.”

And then there's the the labour assessment by the Chamber of Commerce CEO. “Williams attributes low staffing levels to early retirements, decreased immigration, and fewer students in town.” I attribute low staffing levels to: the total absence of the most basic (and effective) COVID mitigations; what are, according to the BC Human Rights Commissioner and leading bioethicists, unethical business practices; pay rates extraordinarily dissociated from the cost of living (we have median household income $10k below Regina, Saskatchewan, where homes are almost free, at a median of $300,000, while ours sit at $1,220,000); employers demanding commitment to company well-being while offering effectively nothing in return (it’s common to find job ads from national or international $100M or $1B companies paying minimum wage and with stated benefits such as: parking, on-the-job training, “benefits”, discounted food, or hourly wage + tips…)

As far as I can tell, we're living in a chaotic anti-social delusion here and attributing it to conventional economic trends. And we do all this while pretending we aren't deliberately engineering the end of our culture. What are you seeing? All I know is the tremendous pile of ridiculous things I’ve read could fit Mount Everest in its shadow (at noon) and yet “Those who are unemployed could probably look around and have their pick of what they want to do, quite honestly” finds a place among the silliest. I’d like to ask Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce CEO, Bruce Williams, if he's ever had a job or read a job ad? As someone with 3.85 degrees, with awards and award nominations, with a pile of great references and 26 years of work and volunteer experience across a dozen industries (and who is also unemployed), I can assure Mr. Williams that the above is perfectly and obviously false.

So much of the problem is papered over by having created a business culture of make-believe dominated by employers egregiously misrepresenting themselves and what they do, and all by default. That is what I see out there. I mean, do sales teams know what their product is or where it sits in the market? Do employers or HR teams know what their employees actually do and has anyone ever written a job ad that describes a job? And is there any doubt that this falseness and ridiculousness encourages employees and prospectives to do more of the same? Seriously, has a resume ever been produced that isn’t in part or wholly fiction? And why is this the standard we demand?

(On that note, there’s a great little Twitter thread by Robert Komaniecki, assistant professor at the University of Iowa, offering examples he has seen of folks taking “extreme liberties” on their CVs and bios. He highlights things like: a letter-to-the-editor being offered as an example of one’s academic publication record; TAs pretending they were a prof; student musicians being conducted by someone noteworthy for one minute and referring to this experience as “studied under”, “performed with”, or “shared the stage with...” Of course, this list is bottomless.)

But all of this makes sense as we have a 'fake it ‘til you make it' culture that promotes confidence and appearance over skills and experience. We pair with this the insistence that someone updating a website, posting on social media, publishing a newsletter, putting together some PowerPoints, or making posters be labelled a “Communications Officer” requiring a “Communication, Journalism, or related degree” with “3-5 years demonstrated professional proficiency using Adobe Suite.” Do you see how this falseness feeds itself? Effectively no businesses or government departments claiming to require the services of a Adobe expert with degrees and certifications to prove it actually need the services of a Communication or Adobe expert. I know people with these jobs and have read these job ads. This a very real and tremendous society-wide problem.

And yet the fiction goes deeper than that. All of government and industry claim they can’t find good people and are aggressively seeking to bring in folks from abroad. (Williams' aforementioned minor and momentary lull in immigration.) But neither government nor our major industries, institutions, or top employers are at all interested in mining our local schools for talent. In other parts of the world, civilized parts of the world, they don't fail in this way and it's stingingly obvious.

I even have a recent personal anecdote. I received highest available distinction when graduating from grad school, with additional recognition of the writing and research skills demonstrated in my thesis. Did anyone my own or adjacent departments or fields communicate with me in any way? With all their many linkages and collaborations, did anyone within my own school or any other, any agency or institution, any NGO, corporation, or local business or group get in touch with me for any reason at all? No way. Did I receive so much as an insincere informal offer to do some inconsequential research for anyone? None. Did anyone seek to get me to write something, or do the grunt work co-authoring something with them? No. A offer of any kind of loose, non-committal mentorship or vague guidance of any sort? No. An invitation to submit a grant proposal to do more work in vein of my thesis? Nope. Did anyone say "Hey, you should totally pay us a pile of money to study further in our School of Ridiculous Studies"? They didn't. Did someone propose I come work as an unpaid intern for five years at their non-profit? Of course not. And why is that?

Well, it could be because my work was shit. However, I didn’t self-administer my distinction nor nominate myself for an award. All of that was done by the top academics in my program, people who see dozens of students each semester. So, though plausible, my work being total garbage seems less likely. An alternative hypothesis: not only do government, business, and schools not communicate, which is bad enough, but none are even seeking locals with skills either. Sadly, this is not a hypothesis, we actually know this and there are whole documentaries about it.

More than that, anyone who's been to a coffee shop, bookstore, or pub is certain of this, of course. These places are full of not-so-young people with undergraduate and graduate degrees earning far below median income (with benefits like a pay cheque, 30hrs/wk, two-weeks unpaid vacation, and day-old muffins for $1 ...and, thus, with no prospects for home ownership or retirement or anything they grew up being told they could expect – wild things like going to the dentist, having a washing machine, or being permitted to keep a pet.) I met just such a person today at my neighbourhood cafe. Without a doubt her Master of Arts in Communication informed her fantastic latte art.