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features

global perspectives on the great recession:

Saints or scabs? The impact of volunteer labour in New Orleans
By Sara Falconer

Two-tier workforce: South Korea’s migrant underclass bears the brunt
By Steven Borowiec

Hong Kong’s women workers & the fight for a minimum wage
By Jillian Kestler-D’Amours

organizing in tough times
Should labour unions hunker down or go on the offensive?
By Sarah Ryan

will write for food
The dismal state of freelance journalism
By Andrea Crummer

cutting the global economy down to size
The nature of work & the green-collar workforce
By Robin Tennant-Wood

Supplement: Resources to fuel the shift to a green economy

work less, live more
Renegotiating our relationship with work
By Anna Kirkpatrick

days of smoke & roses
Fighting fire in the Big Wild
By Angela Street

are governments doing enough to address the global jobs crisis?
Global Jobs Pact a blueprint for change
By Stephanie Dearing

departments

letter from the editor
Turtles and teamsters, ten years on

review

Aziz Choudry et al’s Fight Back: Workplace justice for immigrants
Reviewed by David Koch

quotes from the underground
Thus spake Stephen Harper

parting shots
The coming austerity
By Simon Enoch

luz: girl of the knowing
(Luz returns next issue)

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Subscribe to our digital edition.

A home in the Lower Ninth Ward being rebuilt by Common Ground Relief volunteers. (Photo: Sara Falconer)

By Sara Falconer
Briarpatch Magazine
November/December 2009

It’s not easy getting a cab to the Lower Ninth Ward. Even now, with most of the former population cleared out, some drivers still won’t cross the Claiborne Avenue Bridge unless it’s to take a carload of tourists to gawk at Hurricane Katrina’s Ground Zero. So when the third cab stops, it’s with some impatience that I ask if he knows the way.

“Oh sure, sweetie,” he drawls. “Born and raised. Born and raised.”

Norman is a retired firefighter who now drives cab to supplement his pension. Four years ago, after Hurricane Katrina, he patrolled the flooded streets by boat to pull survivors from rooftops and attic windows. When he learns that my companion and I have travelled from Toronto to volunteer with a grassroots rebuilding project called Common Ground Relief, chatty Norman gets very quiet. He reaches over, turns off the meter and looks at us intently. “I want to show you something,” he says.

Although it’s late, he drives several blocks past our destination, his headlights occasionally framing the sagging ruin of a house or an exposed foundation, the structure either washed away or bulldozed by the city. He distractedly points out the levees where the water first broke through, just steps from these front doors. Finally he stops at a cheery bungalow, its porch light blazing, a tidy little oasis of normalcy in the darkness.

“This is my home,” Norman says, his gruff voice choked with emotion. “Volunteers rebuilt it for me.”

He hopes his return will encourage his neighbours to come back too but there is much that stands in their way. With their homes and jobs long gone, we wonder, what incentive is there for anyone to return? And how much of a difference can small groups of parachuted-in volunteers make when there is such substantial work to be done?

The jarring reality, we will soon discover, is that volunteers like us are, unwittingly, at least as much a part of the problem as a part of the solution. Real change in New Orleans - the kind that will give the rest of Norman’s community a reason to return - is going to require solidarity of an entirely different kind. It’s not the “thousand points of light” feel-good charity work that Bush (senior) championed. Rather, it’s the rebirth of a civil-rights-era approach that put thousands of activists on the front lines of struggles, in direct confrontation with the State.

Since 2005, much of the city has been rebuilt, particularly in the wealthy Garden District and French Quarter. The Lower Ninth Ward, though, remains a wasteland. Of the 19,000 people who lived there when Katrina hit, only 3,600 have come back. Many of the rest have been mired in red tape trying to access insurance or relief funds for so long that they can no longer afford the trip home. The city seems to actively discourage resettlement, routinely levying large fines against absent homeowners for infractions such as excessive grass length, eventually going so far as to expropriate and demolish the offending homes.

The intentional displacement of low-income communities from this area is nothing new, says Jay Arena, a long-time activist in the fight to defend public housing in New Orleans, both before and after Katrina. “The city had wiped out half of the public housing even before the storm,” he explains, from 14,000 to 7,000 units during the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2008, under the guidance of the Bush (junior) administration, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) destroyed another 5,000 low-income apartments. Charity Hospital, providing care to tens of thousands of uninsured, was also shut down - all part of a push to replace public services with for-profit ventures.

“It’s about dismantling the public sector and letting charity groups address the ensuing social ills,” Arena fumes. “That has been the neoliberal agenda of the elite, local and national, post-Katrina.”

Arena is critical of the role of non-profits, foundations and universities in underwriting that agenda. With the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) poised to destroy public housing (which they label “concentrated poverty” to justify their efforts to eradicate it) across the country, New Orleans became the latest victim of an all-out offensive on the public sphere - a political and economic onslaught that swept the Global South in recent decades, under International-Monetary-Fund-imposed austerity measures, and that is now coming home to roost in the Empire’s backyard.

As Naomi Klein reports in The Shock Doctrine, only days after the hurricane struck, the Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing think tank, released recommendations for rebuilding the city on a privatized model. Among 32 changes that were quickly implemented by the Bush administration, the Foundation urged a disinvestment in the public school system. Vouchers are now issued by lottery to allow a limited number of low-income children to enroll in private school, leaving other students on waiting lists or simply languishing in underfunded public schools.

Meanwhile, thousands of families who used to live in public housing now live in privately owned apartments, paying more than 30 per cent of their income towards the rent and utilities that HANO’s “Section 8″ vouchers fail to cover. “These were plans they had already drawn up,” Jordan Flaherty, a former union organizer and editor of Left Turn magazine, tells Briarpatch. “The storm was their opportunity.”

“What happened with Katrina is not just an attack on poor folks, but also an attack on black political power in the city,” he says. “Pre-Katrina, the teachers’ union was the largest and most influential in the city, and a source of middle-class black political power. After Katrina, everyone who worked in the school system, from janitors to teachers, was fired, and the union contract was cancelled.”

That shift in political power has also been evident in the changing demographics and political representation of the city, as the majority black city council was slowly replaced by a majority white council.

Arena suggests that despite the best of intentions, the thousands of student, faith-based and other volunteers who still flock to the city to gut and rebuild houses actually contribute to the neoliberal project of dismantling the public sphere. “We have Habitat for Humanity building a few private houses, while thousands of public homes are being destroyed,” he points out.

Similarly, Teach for America volunteers were brought in to fill the positions of unionized teachers who were fired, while volunteer health clinics now care for some of the thousands of patients abandoned by the closing of Charity Hospital. Describing the same trend in her native India, Arundhati Roy has called this phenomenon the “NGO-ization of politics”: “[Non-governmental organizations'] real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right” (Public Power in the Age of Empire, 2004).

Such volunteerism, Arena points out, is also a form of scabbing that drives down wages for workers. “These are jobs that could be performed by Katrina survivors who desperately need them,” he says. Louisiana’s unemployment rate, at six per cent, is still the lowest in the country, but is rising quickly, with 15,700 jobs cut in the last year as the recession began to take its toll on the state. Despite the potential jobs that construction could offer, most new houses are prefabricated out of state and shipped in, using local labour for only a few days at a time.

Meanwhile, the over 130,000 people who were displaced from New Orleans have had to seek work in other cities, particularly Baton Rouge, Gulfport-Biloxi, Mobile and Jackson. Many of these workers abandoned their skilled professions to work as cab drivers, short-order cooks and other low-paid positions. The “right of return” movement championed by grassroots community groups like C3/Hands off Iberville, with which Arena was previously involved, advocates the creation of jobs and the repair and expansion of public infrastructure to enable the displaced to come home.

Arena believes that some developers have been “icing out” black workers from what little construction is actually taking place, pitting migrant Latino workers against black locals. C3/Hands off Iberville is demanding the enforcement of Section 3 of the 1968 Housing Act, which stipulates that on HUD-funded construction work, at least 30 per cent of jobs must go to local workers. “This is by no means an anti-immigration campaign,” he says. “We’ve been fighting for a public works plan that would be open to all - documented, undocumented. There’s plenty of work to be done.”

The New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice (NOWCRJ), an advocacy group formed in the aftermath of Katrina, echoes Arena’s concern that black workers were “locked out” of the rebuilding process while immigrant workers were “locked in” by companies that falsely promised them security and permanent status for their sacrifices. NOWCRJ aims to organize across race and industry lines to build political power, encouraging the inclusion of labourers, guest workers and homeless residents in campaigns against inter­national human labour trafficking, for the protection of day labourers engaging in dangerous work, and more.

Both Arena and Flaherty agree that such movement-based volunteerism, rooted in the civil rights tradition, is key to the solution. It is true solidarity, rather than the “thousand points of light” variety of volunteerism, that is needed, Arena says. “In the midst of this whole assault, we’ve had more than a million people come to the city [to volunteer]. We would have preferred to see people come down and support the struggles for public housing and public services.”

A failed attempt by the AFL-CIO to unionize hospitality workers several years before Katrina demonstrates the importance of taking cues from local leadership in establishing such solidarity, Flaherty adds. “If you’re not doing something with the guidance of those most affected, it simply won’t work.”

Make no mistake: volunteers are needed in New Orleans. Its poorest residents - and some of the most vibrant, warm and strong people you will ever meet - have been abandoned by a city and a society that is being deliberately rebuilt without them. But misguided efforts to help only mask the sources of their suffering. With “solidarity, not charity,” as a mantra, there is an opportunity for visitors who really want to make a difference to lend their time and skills to support grassroots groups that are taking a stand against a system of exploitation.

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Korean citizens gather in Seoul to protest the ruling Myung-Bak Lee administration, February 2009. (Photo: Steven Borowiec)

By Steven Borowiec
Briarpatch Magazine
November/December 2009

On May 2, 2009, Korean police apprehended Torna Limbu and Abdus Sabur. The arrests were separate but connected. Both men had long been active in South Korea’s Migrants’ Trade Union and had just been elected to the respective positions of president and vice-president. That evening, as they made their ways home from the union meeting, they were taken into custody and eventually deported.

South Korea’s export-led economy has been hard hit by the global economic crisis, and the country’s migrant workforce has made a particularly easy target for politicians looking for scapegoats. South Korea has historically been ethnically homogeneous and has had a tepid relationship with outsiders even in prosperous times; during times of hardship, these workers face even greater scrutiny and discrimination.

The South Korean government’s first measure in its crackdown on migrant workers, most of whom come from Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, was to slash the number of permits to be granted to foreigners who enter on the country’s E-9 and H-2 visas (for unskilled and semi-skilled workers, respectively). The number of permits was cut from over 100,000 in 2008 to just 34,000 in 2009. By June 2009, all 34,000 visas had been issued, creating a labour shortage in the construction and manufacturing industries.

The government then introduced an incentive system for firms that fire migrant workers and replace them with Koreans. A bonus of 1.2 million Korean won ($1050) is given for each fired migrant. According to Young-sup Jeong of the Migrants’ Trade Union, “It’s a racist policy meant to target the vulnerable. Migrants had been getting fired without notice, just showing up at work one day and told that the boss didn’t need them anymore.”

The Migrants’ Trade Union has never been granted formal union status under South Korean law and thus has never enjoyed the legitimacy and benefits that union status provides. Their application was denied in May 2005. An appeal is currently pending in the country’s Supreme Court.

The court battle, says Jeong, “has been made more difficult by the right-wing government. They’ve intentionally delayed the decision.”

South Korea has a strong union culture. The global economic crisis had a markedly different effect on the government’s dealings with South Korean unions than with foreign workers. While Korean and foreign workers made similar demands for stability and ethical treatment, one group was listened to and the other brushed aside. South Korean labour groups argued that the hardships accompanying the global downturn would require the government to take a more active role in legislating fair standards of employment.

The current paucity of permanent positions being protested by Korean unions has its roots in the last financial crisis to hit East Asia. As the econ­omies of East Asia slumped in the late 1990s, the South Korean government introduced more temporary positions in an attempt to jump-start growth, moving away from the permanent positions common in the region. The effect of these changes, though, has been to limit access to stable employment and heighten inequality. These changes were implemented in spite of strong opposition from union groups, which continue to
demand that they be reversed.

Under pressure to create more perma­nent positions, the ruling Grand National Party has negotiated extensively with opposition parties and the country’s leading unions to reach an agreement on a measure to improve conditions for irregular (Korean) workers. A proposed measure that would require companies to make temporary workers permanent after two years is pending and expected to pass.

The government also plans to offer cash incentives to small and medium-sized firms who make workers permanent. Irregular workers who are fired can appeal their termination with a number of government committees and seek unemployment protection. Foreign workers, however, would be privy to none of these benefits.

Limbu and Sabur are now back in their respective home countries of Nepal and Bangladesh. Both have chosen to remain home rather than attempt a return to Korea. In their absence, their former co-workers continue to struggle as the fallout from the economic crisis continues. According to Jeong of the Migrants’ Trade Union, “Our only choice in this situation is to build solidarity and together ask who is really responsible for the economic crisis and demand our jobs and improvement of our working conditions.”

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Lin Shiu: “I will work as long as I can work.” (Photo: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours)

By Jillian Kestler-D’Amours
Briarpatch Magazine
November/December 2009

The Hong Kong government has promised to look into introducing a statutory minimum wage, but so far, no concrete implementation plans have been made.

Lin Shiu, 65, walks into the small Hong Kong Women Workers’ Association office, still sweating from her morning shift.

Wearing a blue suit, baseball cap and fluorescent green mesh vest, she gratefully accepts a glass of water. In an hour, she must get back to work cleaning a luxurious Hong Kong mall.

“For my age, it’s difficult to find another job,” says Shiu, who works eight hours a day, six days a week, and makes $3,600 Hong Kong dollars ($505 CAD) each month.

“I will work as long as I can work.”

No minimum

Shiu is one of many female cleaning workers in Hong Kong who must deal with low wages, dangerous work environments and discrimination on a daily basis. She is also a board member and part-time organizer in a cleaning workers’ union, working to improve conditions in the sector. Shiu says that instating a minimum wage is the first, necessary step to improving the lives of cleaning workers.

“[The Hong Kong government] doesn’t really care about the workers. The policy is not for the people,” she says. “The minimum wage would help us.”

In 2006, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Donald Tsang introduced the Wage Protection Movement, a government program that encouraged corporations to offer cleaning workers and security guards wages at average market rates.

The Wage Protection Movement depended on voluntary participation, which was not forthcoming. The initiative shut down in 2008 due to insufficient involvement.

Today, the Hong Kong government has promised to look into introducing a statutory minimum wage, but so far, no concrete implementation plans have been taken.

Structural problems

In recent years, the number of women entering both universities and the workplace in Hong Kong has been on the rise. But according to Mei Lin Wu, the coordinator of the Hong Kong Women Workers’ Association, although more women are entering the workforce than ever before, most fall into the “working poor” category.

“This means that their income is less than the minimum wage of grassroots work,” she explains. “The gap between the poor and rich is the biggest in Hong Kong’s history and the number of poor families is increasing.”

In 2006, Hong Kong’s Gini coefficient (GC), a measure of income disparity, reached as high as 0.533, surpassing that of Canada, the United States, and most Asian countries.

During this same period, the proportion of lower-skilled jobs decreased from 56.9 to 50.6 per cent.

“There is a structural problem,” says Wu, adding that the present economic downturn and age discrimination also make finding employment more difficult for women with little or no formal education.

“Having working skills doesn’t mean you’ll find a job. The opportunity for women is not much, and opportunities are not equal among women,” she says.

In 2005, 31.5 percent of Hong Kong residents aged 65 and over lived in low-income households.

“[Hong Kong is the] most free economy in the world, but what does that mean? Those that do not have money are not free. It means that labour, gender, human rights and just issues are not easy to raise,” Wu says.

An uncertain future

Soon after Mary Songsirisakul Malee fell while cleaning a glass window at a Hong Kong shopping mall, she was told she had to return to work or risk being fired.

The 50-year-old, who still has health problems related to the accident, now works part-time cleaning offices and earns $1,200 HKD ($170 CAD) each month.

Like Shiu, Malee believes that a minimum wage would greatly benefit cleaning workers who, she says, are often further disadvantaged by the subcontracting systems prevalent in the industry.

“The policy does not take care of the workers. That’s why the workers always become the losers,” she says.

She adds that in today’s economy, paying into her retirement fund has been a struggle, even though her son provides her with some financial support.

“I will go back to Thailand if I can retire,” says Malee, who came to Hong Kong 30 years ago from Bangkok. “But I can’t imagine my retirement. I would have no safety, no security. I can’t imagine it.”

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Photo: Jonah Gindin

Play offence or defence? That is the question facing unions during this economic crisis.

By Sarah Ryan
Briarpatch Magazine
November/December 2009

Being a bike courier was the first job Mark Hayward had that he not only liked, but loved. But times are tough: if he were offered a better job tomorrow, he’d be gone.

“For the first time ever, work was so slow, couriers were complaining they didn’t have enough money for food,” says Hayward. He sees joining a union as one answer to these tough times. As a result, he has been helping with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) campaign to unionize bike and car couriers in Toronto.

The tough economic times are not only affecting couriers. According to Statistics Canada, the number of jobs nationwide declined by 45,000 in July of this year. Since October 2008, manufacturing employment has dropped by 218,000 jobs, or 11.1 per cent. During this same period, the unemployment rate has increased by 2.3 per cent to 8.6 per cent, its highest level in the last 11 years. Many of these unemployed workers are former union members.

“We’re definitely seeing an increase in people who have been laid off due to bankruptcies,” says Karen Dick at the Workers’ Action Centre, a Toronto-based workers’ advocacy centre. “We’re seeing a lot of smaller companies just going under.”

But unemployment is only part of the picture. The quality and quantity of work also changes - usually for the worse - during an economic crisis. Dick says many workers who come to the Workers’ Action Centre have had their hours cut back from full time to two or three days per week. “They don’t want to quit a job, but can’t survive on two days of work a week.”

Offence or defence; that is the question facing unions during this economic crisis. Do they hunker down and weather the storms, defending their current membership as best they can? Or do they take a risk and reach out to organize new members who could benefit from the protection a union can offer?

Unions dealing with the crisis

Most union activists agree that organizing needs to be a priority during an economic crisis. “During difficult economic times, it’s even more important so workers have protections against employers’ actions to reduce costs,” says George Floresco, third national vice-president at the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

Unions representing workers in manufacturing, construction, warehousing and forestry have been hit especially hard by the economic crisis. “Almost all the sectors we represent workers in have been hit hard by the recession,” says Alan Tate, executive secretary at the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP). “For us as a union, there’s a renewed commitment to organizing.”

Finding the resources for such a campaign, however, can be a particular challenge during a recession. “If a union has lost 10 to 15 per cent of its membership, it’s hard to get support for organizing [new members] from the current membership,” says John Aman, director of organizing for the Canadian Auto Workers.

“A lot of unions are just trying to survive and maintain their current bargaining units,” says Floresco. “I think unions are caught between mobilizing collectively against some of the government and corporate initiatives and their ongoing representation and servicing work with their members [on the one hand] and organizing new workplaces [on the other].”

Though little in-depth research has been done into the resources unions commit to organizing, according to a 2003 Human Resources Development Canada study, unions estimated they put 6.8 per cent of their resources into organizing. Fewer than half of unions surveyed had someone with the overall responsibility of organizing.

A good time for organizing?

Do uncertain times make workers more or less likely to organize?

“There’s always fear with an organizing campaign,” says Tate. “It’s hard to tell whether it’s past the normal fear.” According to Tate, the CEP has actually seen an increase in interest in organizing. He says workers from traditionally non-union workplaces like the technology sector have been approaching CEP about organizing. “These are people who didn’t think they needed a union and who are now beginning to see the result of the recession in their sector.”

Hayward has seen a similar spike in interest in his work with bike couriers. “As far as trying to pitch a union, it’s a pretty good time, because you don’t make enough money,” he says. “It highlights all the things that are wrong with your job situation.”

The statistics don’t bear out this anecdotal evidence, however: the number of applications for union certifications filed in Ontario so far this year is actually down, according to Voy Stelmaszynski, board solicitor at the Ontario Labour Relations Board. This is particularly true in the industrial sector, covering manufacturing and service industries.

Former Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) organizer Aalya Ahmad sees this as a case of vulnerable workers being fearful of rocking the boat. When there are layoffs everywhere and not as many jobs available, says Ahmad, many workers get fearful of doing anything to attract the attention of their employer. “It’s inescapable that people will be less willing to risk much.”

Many union organizers believe the fear induced by the crisis can be countered through conversations and building trust. “The single biggest enemy of effective organizing is people’s apathy and fear,” says Ahmad. “You have to speak to that and challenge it.” Ahmad argues that it becomes increasingly important to emphasize that collective organizing makes workers stronger, not more vulnerable.

“The economic crisis has really reminded people of class issues,” says Ahmad. “We have the ability with the economic crisis to engage in discussions about class, inequality and social injustices.”

Learning to adapt

Going forward, unions are looking for ways to adapt their organizing drives to changing circumstances.

CUPW, for instance, has decided to go after the entire courier sector as opposed to targeting specific companies. The union recently opened a Courier Worker Centre in Toronto that offers support on employment issues for bike messengers and car couriers. According to Floresco, the union has decided to focus on a longer-term strategy by “talking to the workers about their issues and what they think is important, and building the trust between the workers and the union.”

The Workers’ Action Centre, funded by various foundations, the city and unions, relies on a similar strategy. Recently, the Workers’ Action Centre won changes to Ontario employment legislation dealing with temp agency workers.

Dick credits the leadership role played by temp workers themselves for the success of the campaign to change the legislation. “I think it’s essential that those workers we’re trying to organize are sitting at the planning table, are directing the campaign and the organizing,” says Dick. Throughout the campaign, temp workers were organizing, telling their stories and talking to the media and politicians.

Ahmad thinks unions need to focus their organizing efforts where they are needed most. “I would love to see more service workers being unionized, more immigrant workers being unionized. I think that’s where the next great passion of the union movement is going to happen.”

First, though, some changes are needed to make union organizing more inclusive and sustainable, says Ahmad. “That would involve making organizing less macho, would involve more attention being paid to building strong relationships, toward building the union, rather than just going for the certification.”

The economic crisis brings new challenges to organizing. Some of those challenges are difficult to overcome. “But at the same time, difficult economic times illustrate the need for a union in the workplace to offer a solution,” says Floresco.

Hayward agrees. “A lot of people are ready to discuss the idea of a union. A lot of people are angry they don’t have any control over the situation.”

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Illustration by Andrea Wan

By Andrea Crummer
Briarpatch Magazine
November/December 2009

It’s an unremarkable Tuesday evening in mid-October and I’ve just entered a second-floor meeting room at the Northern District Library in downtown Toronto.

I’m feeling optimistic. I’ve driven in from Brantford to attend my first Professional Writers’ Association of Canada event, which is supposed to help me decide whether I’ve got what it takes to become a freelancer. I’m putting my money - all $10 of the entry fee - on Writers Association member, writer and lecturer Paul Lima and his “(Almost) Everything you wanted to know about Freelance Writing” workshop.

I take a seat beside a young, friendly looking woman with a blond pixie cut. I peg her as a student who, like me, is hoping to break into the world of freelance, but it turns out she’s just back from England where she interned for a bioenergy research publication. She is now pursuing a freelance public relations career while working for the CBC on the side.

A few rows in front of me are two older women. One seems shy and almost grandmotherly; the other sports a black leather hat and Pink Floyd T-shirt. Looks can be deceiving: grandma has been published in Bikers Monthly, while the Pink Floyd enthusiast writes human interest features for her community newspaper.

The room is filled with community newspaper reporters, occasional magazine contributors, corporate tech industry authors, a self-help ghostwriter and, as I find out later at the pub, a few first-timers hoping to leave behind careers in acting, home inspection and real estate for a taste of what the freelance world has to offer. However varied their interests, their aspirations are the same: get published, build a reputation and earn a living.

That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

The problem, though, isn’t that freelancers are asking too much; it’s that they’re getting too little. Too little recognition, too few assignments and wages that don’t even come close to providing a decent living. The average freelancer in Canada today makes $24,000 a year.

Most accept the meagre wages in the name of pursuing a career in which they can take pride, all the while relying on part-time employment in other sectors or partners with full-time jobs and benefit packages to carry them through.

A few, though, take a more collective approach and look to the Canadian Freelance Union to get a better deal. Launched in 2006 by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, the Canada-wide local has signed just over 500 members to date, a mere fraction of this unregulated and unquantifiable workforce.

The perks

Toronto freelance writer Margaret Webb spent seven years in senior editorial positions at magazines such as T.O. Magazine, enRoute and Vista before venturing out on her own. Although she acknowledges full-time staff positions have their advantages, she also says that being her own boss allows her the freedom to organize her work in a way that best fits her lifestyle. “I probably work longer hours than I did at a full-time job, but I don’t have to commute to work,” she says. “I can work when I want, and if I want to take an hour off at lunch, I can. My time is used more efficiently; it’s not just face time.”

The freedom to set one’s own hours and avoid daily office commutes is an undeniable perk in every freelancer’s career. Other draws include the variety of assignments, the freedom to be creative and some significant tax breaks. According to Artbooks, a Toronto-based accounting firm that caters to artists and independent types, freelance journalists can write off large portions of expenses such as office rent (including insurance and utilities), car expenses, telephone and cable fees, and travel costs, all of which can help sweeten the deal. “If I were to go to work full-time, I’d make more money,” Webb says. “But the taxes make the difference. It’s a major advantage.”

The tax incentives and flexible working hours aren’t the only pluses. Freelance journalist Paul Gains has covered sporting events around the world since 1983. Although he’s occasionally wondered where his next paycheque would come from, he says the range of stories he covers and the chance to explore the world make it all worthwhile.

“I turn assignments into vacations,” he says. “I’m not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ll sometimes tack on three or four days at my own expense at the end of a project. I’ve been to Japan six times, Morocco, and Libya, Lisbon, Rome, London - all over the place.”

For her part, Webb loves to write, but she also loves food and travel. By combining all three of her passions, she’s been able to land countless magazine articles in Toronto Life, Saturday Night, Chatelaine and several international travel magazines. Her latest project, a culinary travel book called Apples to Oysters, is a testament to what happens when a good idea and the enthusiasm to see it through come together.

“I just finished off this book, which allowed me to travel right across Canada, stay in places I would not normally stay in,” she says. “A shack in Alberta while I was rounding up cattle, a prospector’s tent in the bush at an organic veggie farm in the Yukon; I went fishing on a scallop and lobster boat. . . . I was able to work on a project I was passionate about, in a literary way, which allowed me to use my voice in a way I hadn’t before. It was a fabulous experience.”

For freelancers like Gains and Webb, it’s neither money nor security that drives them. It’s their passion for writing. Like many up-and-coming actors and scriptwriters to whom they’re frequently compared, freelancers are willing to make financial sacrifices and accept part-time employment in related markets to offset the often paltry living they squeeze out of their freelance pursuits.

Even well-established freelancers feel the push to look outside the industry for financial stability. Webb, for example, teaches a course in magazine writing at Ryerson University. She also supplements her freelance income by writing books. And if that’s not enough - and it isn’t - she relies on her partner’s benefits package to fill the gaps inherent in most freelance employment.

While the cost of living continues to rise, most freelancers are paid the same rate today as they were almost 40 years ago. “Most commercial magazines pay $1 per word, which is horrifying,” says Shelley Ambrose, executive director of the Walrus Foundation and co-publisher of The Walrus. “It’s been that way since 1970. It’s one of the only the jobs on earth that has not adjusted for inflation.”

Most publishers, especially those who work for newspapers, will claim they simply can’t afford to pay freelancers more. The industry’s operating margins have been squeezed to new lows recently, and someone somewhere has to take the hit. Because full-time staff writers tend to be unionized, unprotected freelancers make an easy target when times get tough.

Not only are freelancing rates outrageously low, but the contracts freelancers accept often give publishers the right to print and reprint a single article in as many newspapers and magazines as they please. Given the extent of Canadian media conglomeration today - just four of the 98 dailies in the country are independently owned - freelancers hoping to sell their work to more than one source are finding fewer and fewer doors to knock on.

Of course, contracts only become an issue after a writer has sold their story to an editor. For those new to the industry, the sale may be the hardest part. Many established freelancers say that getting editors to notice their work and give them a shot isn’t something that happens overnight. “Once you can wallpaper your bathroom in rejection letters,” says one veteran, “you’re ready to be published!”

Herding cats and other organizing tactics

While generating ideas, getting buy-in on stories and staying motivated are just a few of the challenges independent writers face, some have taken a more collective approach to dealing with the bigger obstacles of wages and copyrights by joining the union. But the numbers are telling. Canadian Freelance Union president Mike O’Reilly acknow­ledges that while forming a union to support the collective needs of freelancers is a great idea in theory, getting people to sign up hasn’t been easy. When the union was formed in early 2006, he anticipated a membership of 600 by the end of the year. To date, just over 500 have joined. A freelance writer himself, O’Reilly appreciates the hesitancy many independent writers have demonstrated so far. “Freelancers are busy people trying to make a living,” he says. “Most don’t have time for this kind of silly politics.” And then there’s the newness of it all. O’Reilly likens the process of organizing freelancers to the task of “herding cats.” “It’s never been done before because it’s a very hard thing to do.”

Something else that’s rarely been done is paying freelancers by the hour rather than by the word. But that’s something the union is hoping to change. O’Reilly disagrees with per-word payments for one simple reason: “A job that takes me four days to research and write could take someone else two hours.” In other words, no two freelancers work at the same pace and what might be a good rate for one freelancer, says O’Reilly, could be “utter junk” for another. “No other contract worker charges this way. It would be like plumbers charging per foot of pipe used. It’s a crazy way to think about running a business.”

Although wages and copyright problems have worsened in the last 10 years due to what O’Reilly calls a “through the roof” increase in media convergence, he says low wages for freelancers are a perennial problem. “Fundamentally, it comes down to a market issue. Publishers are big, freelancers are small; at the negotiation tables, publishers win. It’s a matter of balance and power, and unfortunately, the imbalance is just getting worse.”

The grim economics of freelancing, says O’Reilly, are making people realize that going it alone is not going to be a viable option for much longer. A 2007 freelance union newsletter states that in the past 30 years, freelance writers and journalists have seen their income drop 163 per cent. Based on actual income data collected in a 2006 Professional Writers Association of Canada survey, 61 per cent of freelancers now make under $25,000 per year. Forty per cent make less than $10,000. Just to have kept up with inflation, a freelancer’s annual income would have to be around $55,000 today. Instead, it averages less than half of that.

Nancy Sont, a former freelance travel writer who lives in the Ottawa region, says she gave up her freelance career after she filed her taxes one year and realized she had only made $8,000. Sont, one of the lucky ones not completely reliant on her freelancing as her sole source of income, viewed her assignments more as an opportunity to see the world and have a good time. She explains that her husband is a university professor who supported what many in the freelance realm refer to as their “dirty little secret.”

Today, Sont enjoys a slower pace. On summer days she can be found lying in her hammock, building teepees and listening to the stream that runs past her country home. The rest of the year she drives a school bus, a part-time job she took up because she “wondered what it would be like.” On the matter of joining a union for freelancers, something which may have helped Sont in her freelance pursuits, she’s skeptical. “I guess I would join,” says Sont, “but it probably wouldn’t work. Freelance writers, especially freelance travel writers, are very competitive and unfriendly to one another. Everyone wants something.”

On their own?

O’Reilly, on the other hand, believes that despite low union membership to date, the message of solidarity and support among freelancers is finally starting to gain traction. “Economics are driving people to realize that we need to join together,” he says. It’s either “float together or sink on your own.”

The union president is baffled by the fact that more and more schools have begun to offer journalism programs, given that there are fewer media jobs than ever before. He worries that students will be unprepared for what awaits them when they graduate. “The reality for most is that if they’re going to be working, they’re going to be freelancing.” As a result, O’Reilly believes, a union will make even more sense in the coming years.

So why have so many hesitated to sign up? Those who count themselves among the minority of freelancers making a decent living from their jobs may not see the value in it. In fact, some of the better-paid worry the $50-per-hour minimum rate the Canadian Freelance Union plans to set will force down their own rates should they agree to join.

Gains, for one, doesn’t quite understand how a union would work. “When I hear what some of these papers pay, $100 to $200 per story, if that’s going to be the norm, and I’m making three times as much, it doesn’t help.” But O’Reilly says setting a minimum hourly rate is intended to raise standards, not bring down individual rates. Freelancers who feel their work is worth more are still encouraged to negotiate a higher rate.

Setting the record straight on minimum rates and getting freelancers to work together haven’t been the freelance union’s only struggles. Making publishers listen and take action is another uphill battle. “Publishers continue to not give us the time of day,” O’Reilly says. “They won’t return calls, and won’t talk to us.”

He says independent freelancers have tried to argue for better treatment from many angles, including the ethical case and the need for Canadian creativity and content, but none of that seems to be working. “Doing the right thing doesn’t seem to be important” to publishers, he adds. What is important is the bottom line. “If they can squeeze harder, they will. Sadly the only way we can change their minds is to unionize, as labour has always unionized, by organizing and collectively saying no.”

But it’s that very word, collective, that seems to be the problem.

As the Professional Writers Association of Canada meeting wraps up and I head to the pub across the street with the Pink Floyd wallflower and Biker Grandma, I wonder how such a diverse group can even dream of working together toward a common goal. Driving home later with the city behind me, I can’t help but fear that freelancers, like the line of work they pursue, are truly in this on their own.

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Illustration by Ben Clarkson

By Robin Tennant-Wood
Briarpatch Magazine
November/December 2009

For over a century, we’ve thought of work as the use of human labour and technology to transform natural resources into tradeable goods. This economic model has brought us unparalleled prosperity - and exhausted the planet’s capacity to support us. Building a green economy, Robin Tennant-Wood argues, requires nothing less than a fundamental change in how we understand work and a complete overhaul of the global economy.

If you are the big tree,
we have a small axe.
Sharpened to cut you down,
ready to cut you down.
-Bob Marley

When the global financial system went in to a tailspin in September 2008, western governments, faced with the spectre of collapsing industries and rising unemployment, acted quickly and decisively to secure the manufacturing and construction sectors of the economy. Emergency measures like the auto industry bailout in the U.S., massive injections of cash into the construction sector in Australia and similar support for the manufacturing sector in the U.K. were meant to protect jobs in the face of the potential collapse of these industries.

But massive cash injections can only sustain these industries for so long. Inherent in the concept of sustainability is a recognition that there must be limits to growth if we are to ensure that the present generation does not harm future generations by exhausting available resources. With global supplies of key resources such as oil, copper and steel tightening, we are rapidly approaching these limits, and may soon reach the point when continued expansion of industry becomes not just ecologically perilous but economically impossible.

The global economy has been built on the backs of industries that are neither environmentally nor, in the long run, economically sustainable. We are faced, then, with two unworkable options: allowing these industries and their massive labour forces to disintegrate, precipitating a calamitous increase in unemployment and widespread economic hardship, or continuing to pour vast amounts of public money into an economic model on the brink of collapse. Neither option is tenable, but a third option is emerging that involves rethinking not just the role of work in the economy, but the role of the economy in society.

The nature of work under scrutiny

The place of work in society, especially for the lower classes, has remained largely unchanged since the Industrial Revolution. Technology has dramatically altered many traditional jobs, rendered others obsolete and created new ones, but labour as the primary factor of production has remained unchanged, particularly in industries that rely on a large unskilled or trade-based workforce. These are the jobs that governments rushed to save in late 2008 and early 2009: the jobs of workers dependent upon a production system that uses human labour to transform natural resources into consumer goods. When this system was developed, natural resources were in cheap and plentiful supply. This is no longer the case.

As more people begin to recognize the unsustainability of our economic system, an alternative view of work has been steadily gaining traction. The purpose of work, according to this emerging paradigm, should not be subverted to the demands of a constantly expanding economy - growth for growth’s sake - but should be dedicated to enriching the social fabric, natural ecosystems and public infrastructure that sustain us.

Contemporary British philosopher Alain de Botton notes in The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work that we have become completely distanced from the labour that goes into the things we use in our everyday lives, including our food. There is no acknowledgment of the Kenyan woman who picked the tea, the Philippine pieceworker who sewed the jeans, the Korean factory worker who spray-painted the car, the Egyptian farmer who grew the oranges or the Chinese teenager who assembled the plush animal that wears your football team’s jersey. Unrecognized, too, are the hundreds of pairs of hands that the goods pass through between origin and destination: forklift and truck drivers, commercial shipping and wharf labourers, baristas and retail clerks are all providing the labour that creates global capital.

This chasm between the production and consumption of almost everything we use is being challenged by a growing movement to source goods and services locally. This drive to localize helps foster a grassroots system of production-consumption-production that reconnects people with the pro­cesses that sustain them, puts minimum pressure on resources and reduces the ecological footprints of urban areas. It also is fueling the emergence of a new “green-collar” labour market consisting of jobs that are socially and environmentally useful and that contribute to a sustainable economy, rather than one based solely on the creation of wealth.

From blue-collar to green-collar

Green jobs focus on sectors such as renewable energy, food production, transportation and recycling and waste minimization, seeking to build healthier social and environmental systems rather than simply to promote economic growth. Retrofitting old buildings instead of demolishing them to make way for new ones, creating urban food forests, organizing the office carpool and bike fleet, or designing wildlife and biodiversity corridors in cities are jobs that didn’t exist 25 years ago. Now, they are part of a transformation in our understanding of labour and how it can contribute to sustainability.

Van Jones is the author of The Green Collar Economy, and served recently as special adviser to the White House on green jobs. He is also the co-founder of Green for All, a U.S. organization that works “to build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.” Jones sees a green-collar workforce as the “upgrading” of blue-collar employment to “better respect the environ­ment: family-supporting, career-track, vocational or trade-level employment in environmentally friendly fields.”

Green-collar jobs encompass a wide range of skill sets. The Australian Conservation Foundation and Australian Council of Trade Unions recently released a paper promoting green jobs. It included blue-collar areas of work, but also upgraded white-collar jobs such as procurement or purchasing officers, office managers and education officers. Far from the bucolic ideals of the back-to-the-land movement, these jobs are fully enmeshed in the urban, tech-savvy, 21st-century economy. If one thing unites them, it’s that they contribute to the economy not by exploiting natural resources, but by pursuing initiatives that conserve or rehabilitate natural resources.

Most local governments in Australia are already creating green-collar positions. As recently as five years ago, local governments saw environmental services as primarily concerned with regulatory aspects of planning and development. Increasingly these jobs are being geared towards educating and engaging the community.

Debra Bell is the sustainability officer for the city council of Queanbeyan, a city of 37,000 in southern New South Wales. One of Bell’s biggest recent successes was a two-day sustainability expo organized in response to community requests for information.

Does Bell see a future for “greened-up” white-collar jobs in local government? “Absolutely. This area is growing all the time. It would be great to see all [local government] positions sustainability-based and community-driven.”

Working out of the same office as Bell is Geoff Pryor, project coordinator for the South East Resource Recovery Regional Organisation of Councils (SERRROC). Pryor facilitates a co-operative venture to sustainably manage waste across a region consisting of 12 rural and regional councils that represent a population of around 170,000. The project is based on the premise that small local governments do not have the clout or resources required to reduce and divert waste cost-effectively. As a co-operative, the 12 councils share resources and programming and work with industry on measures to reduce waste. Pryor is optimistic that SERRROC can even have some influence on federal government policy regarding electronic waste, in particular.

From a national policy perspective, if green jobs are worth creating when the economy is good, why, when the economy goes bad, are national governments so fixated on protecting jobs in old resource-extraction and polluting industries? The green employment sector at the local government level is growing rapidly, but at the national and international level, governments continue to undervalue the environment as a resource in its own right and pour money into protecting jobs almost exclusively within industries that are contributing to serious environmental problems. Diverting that investment into retraining and education for displaced workers or creating jobs in areas such as renewable energy, information and communications technology, plantation timber production or recycling and resource management would have a far more positive long-term effect.

Looking to the grassroots

Rather than taking a linear view of labour as part of the conveyor belt that transforms natural resources and human labour into consumer products, the emerging view of green and local economies sees labour as cyclical: part of a system that directly addresses social needs from source to sale to disposal, building community in the process. Sustainable labour systems should be based on the same sort of cyclical processes that govern natural systems: complementary, overlapping, mutually beneficial processes. In much the same way as we are coming to see one sector’s waste as another sector’s valuable resource, labour in one field complements a need in another. In a grassroots sense, this view of labour is personal, direct and empowering: no job is without value.

Holistic approaches to work and the economy can take many forms. The mantra of the early green movement, “Think globally, act locally,” is reflected in the rise in popularity of such initiatives as Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS), farmers’ markets, co-housing initiatives and power generation co-operatives. Within these operations, work is co-operatively managed to ensure that each participant is part of a process in which their contribution is visible and valued by all others in the system. In the case of LETS, for example, goods or services are traded directly rather than for money. Replacing the flow of capital with the direct provision of goods and services creates a sense of shared responsibility among traders, building both social capital and local economies.

The local food movement in particular has been gaining ground in recent years. Farmers’ markets are growing in size and number as city dwellers turn their backs on imported and processed foods and look for locally grown, fresh, seasonal produce. The biggest such market in Australia is held each Saturday morning in the national capital, Canberra, where up to 5,000 people buy fresh fruit and vegetables, wines and oils, bread, dairy produce, meats, patisserie and plants directly from more than 100 growers and producers. After only five years in operation, the demand for direct purchasing of food in Canberra has been so great that a second, Sunday-morning market has been established and is flourishing on the opposite side of town.

One of the Canberra market founders, Dave Pentony, has seen a huge shift in the way people are thinking about their food purchases. Pentony and his family have a small farm on the outskirts of Canberra and sell organically grown salad greens at the markets on Saturdays and Sundays. Pentony has also opened a direct outlet for local growers in a suburban shopping centre. Based on the Japanese tradition of farmers selling directly to consumers, his store, Choku Bai Jo, which translates as direct selling place, has created five jobs in retail and provides a point of sale for up to 20 local urban, peri-urban and rural growers.

In Europe, power co-operatives have provided local communities with access to power from renewable energy, particularly wind power, through co-operative ownership of the infrastructure. On the Scottish Isle of Gigha, for instance, three wind turbines generate about two-thirds of the local community’s power. The net profit of the venture goes into improving the energy efficiency of the local housing stock, which is owned and operated by the Gigha Heritage Trust, itself a co-operative arrangement that gave ownership of the once privately owned island to its residents. The upgrading of the housing stock is creating local employment in a small community where unemployment and poverty are common.

Taking control of work

At a time of upheaval in the traditional labour and capital markets, there is surprising resiliency in local economies, where individuals have relatively more control over their economic well-being rather than being locked into a linear and hierarchical labour system. Within the traditional capitalist labour hierarchy, each participant in the workforce is dependent upon the level above for decisions and the level below for implementation. The higher the level, the more abstract the decisions and the greater the distance from their implementation and consequences. Each worker has less autonomy to direct their energies to responding to the needs of their community or the environment.

Workers in a local economy, on the other hand, can better assess what they need to get from their job, their contribution to their community, the needs of those around them, the wider social or environmental benefits of their job and its long-term impacts and consequences. This greater responsiveness helps to ensure that each participant in the local economy is able to meet his or her own needs while contributing to the common good.

The green economy is gradually emerging as a true alternative, but real change is coming much more slowly than the urgency of our situation demands. For substantive change to really take hold, governments must recognize that socially useful and environmentally sound work will also be economically viable, and invest and regulate accordingly. Local communities and local governments are already beginning to do so.

If the global financial crisis has taught us anything, it should be that, to paraphrase Einstein, problems can’t be solved by using the same kind of thinking that created them. The nature of work and how we organize it must be in accord with the nature of the society we wish to build. The hardship that accompanies economic recession can be greatly reduced through creative investments in green labour and local economic initiatives.

For more information, please see “Resources to fuel the shift to a green economy.”

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This resource list accompanies the article “Cutting the global economy down to size: The nature of work and the green-collar workforce.”

Books

Sharon Astyk, Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front, New Society, 2008

Walden Bello, Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy, Zed, 2005

Kevin Danaher, Shannon Biggs and Jason Mark, Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grass Roots, PoliPoint, 2007

The Environmental Careers Organization, The Eco-Guide to Careers that Make a Difference, Island Press, 2004

Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, Chelsea Green, 2008

John Ivanko and Lisa Kivirist, ECOpreneuring: Putting Purpose and the Planet Before Profits, New Society, 2008

Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, Harper Collins, 2008

Chris Laszlo, The Sustainable Company: How to Create Lasting Value Through Social and Environmental Performance, Island Press, 2005

Woody Tasch, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered, Chelsea Green, 2008

Online resources

Richard Norgaard, “Values and Valuation in a Rapidly Changing World,” address to the American Institute of Biological Sciences, May 2006

Food Secure Canada

Rob Hopkins, explaining the Transition Initiative

Transition TV - South East New South Wales Transition Towns

The Rocky Mountain Institute - Colorado-based international organization for urban sustainability initiatives

Local Governments for Sustainability (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives)

Green for All - Van Jones’ organization to build a green economy

Van Jones highlights specific ways to create jobs while greening the planet

Arun Shrivastava, “KIA: The US Neoliberal Invasion of India” (pdf) - a local economy view from the developing world

$3.09 billion: The economic impact of farmers’ markets in Canada in 2008 (pdf)

Establishing a farmers’ market association (New York)

Establishing and operating a community farmers’ market (University of Kentucky)

The “Dancing Ladies” of Gigha - a power co-op model

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (available as DVD)

A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions from Curitiba, Brazil (available as DVD)

“A verdant spot springs forth from concrete” (article from the New York Times about the creation of an urban oasis and community reconnection)

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Conrad Schmidt helped found the Work Less Party as a way to spark a discussion about the value of work.

By Anna Kirkpatrick
Briarpatch Magazine
November/December 2009

Work is a blessing and a curse. At its best, work gives our lives meaning and purpose. Many of us derive our self-identity from our work. More than just a means to an income, work can provide an opportunity to contribute, interact and connect with others.

Yet at the same time, work can be demeaning drudgery. Meaningless employment can sap us of dignity and creativity, leaving us drained and diminished. British economist E.F Schumacher was well aware of this dual nature of work, advising in his book Good Work that young people “should be taught that work is the joy of life and is needed for our develop­ment, but that meaningless work is an abomination.”

What, then, makes work meaningful? What is good work and how do we find it?

Some see moderation as the key. Back in the 1930s, British philosopher Bertrand Russell complained that “a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work.”

Vancouver-based writer and activist Conrad Schmidt agrees. Schmidt, author of Workers of the World, Relax, helped found the Work Less Party as a way to spark a discussion about the value of work. Among other things, the Work Less Party advocates a reduction of the standard work week from 40 hours to 32 hours.

Schmidt points out that countries with a shorter work week tend to have a higher quality of life and to be more egalitarian. “When you have a society where people are empowered and have more time to think, more time to read, more time to communicate with their neighbours, you create a more empowered society that is better able to challenge social injustice like the income gap,” Schmidt told Briarpatch.

Schmidt thinks a shorter work week would have both social and ecological benefits. Less time spent working means that fewer consumer products are manufactured and less garbage and pollution are created. Schmidt suggests that some of the time that was once devoted to paid employment could be re-directed to self-improvement and community development. “People need time to get involved in community and create a healthier, stronger society. The more we work, the more we produce, the more junk just ends up in a landfill.”

Schmidt thinks the popular definition of work is far too narrow. Our understanding of work, Schmidt believes, should include all the diverse and important tasks needed for a healthy community, including raising children, meeting neighbours and engaging in political activism. According to Schmidt, we need to redefine our concept of work to include a much broader spectrum of activities. “Everything we do is work. Our definition needs to be more than heading off to offices and trying to fill up landfills with junk that we don’t need. Essential work that creates a stronger society is just not happening because, as far as we’re concerned, it’s not work.”

Schmidt clearly is not advocating sloth. Instead, he calls for a more rigorous, thoughtful approach to work. And he’s not alone.

Peter Blanchard, founder of GoodWork Canada, the country’s largest environmental job board, is also reimagining employment, though from a slightly different vantage point. Blanchard started GoodWork Canada after becoming disillusioned with his own career path. Blanchard believes that any work that is personally meaningful can be good work, but is quick to add that finding good work is about more than fulfilling personal ambitions. “I would say a vital determinant of good work is that it is to some degree for the greater good. If you have a job that is great for you but you are working for an evil corporation that is really doing less than environmental things, maybe that is not truly good work,” says Blanchard.

Good Work Canada provides an online listing of environmental jobs in both the private and public sectors. A wide range of careers are represented, including entry-level and highly skilled positions. Blanchard maintains that it is fully possible to find paid employment that is meaningful and socially beneficial, but admits this may require stepping beyond the boundaries of the conventional job market. “If people tried harder to find meaningful work for organizations that are doing good things, I think we would see some fundamental changes in society,” Blanchard says.

For Schmidt and Blanchard alike, persistence and creativity are the keys to finding meaningful employment and to building healthy communities. For those willing to go off the beaten path and live on less, the opportunities to contribute are numerous.

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