Not too long ago, when we were actually in the office, lighthearted arguments centered around sports. On Monday morning the person who had the winning football team would brag and tease her coworker whose team lost. Over the last few years, things have quickly changed. Politics and social issues have eclipsed good-natured kidding around over sports. Traditionally, heated discussions concerning politics took place over the dinner table or at the local bar. Now, it’s become commonplace to talk about serious social issues at work.
Exploring this trend, Gartner, Inc., a leading research and advisory company offering business insights, conducted a survey of 3,000 employees “regarding social issues in the workplace.”
The results showed that “three-quarters of employees expect their employer to take a stance on current societal or cultural issues, even if those issues have nothing to do with their employer,” and “demands have only become more urgent during recent protests demanding social equity and justice.”
Gartner found that “68% of employees would consider quitting their current job and working with an organization with a stronger viewpoint on the social issues that matter most to them.” It turns out that “employees whose employer has taken a strong stance on current societal and cultural issues are twice as likely to report high job satisfaction.”
Brian Kropp, chief of research in the Gartner HR practice said about the study “Times of social and political change and uncertainty affect individuals across their lives, and introduce distraction, disruption and division into the workplace,” and “The recent events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, the U.S. presidential election, Black Lives Matter movement and Brexit, have created numerous opportunities for increased tension among employees.”
The same passion, anger and friction found on social media has permeated into the office. Gartner points out that “In November 2020, more than one-third of U.S. employees (36%) reported that the U.S. presidential election had led them to argue about politics with co-workers,” and “Forty-four percent of employees said the election had led them to avoid talking to, or working with, a co-worker.” Nearly 70-percent of workers said that they “were very satisfied when their organizations took action in response to the protests and demonstrations against racial injustice.”
Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Silicon Valley-based cryptocurrency exchange and broker Coinbase, which plans to go public at a valuation of about $100 million, has a different take compared to the study. Armstrong explicitly told his employees that he won’t stand for political-oriented debates at the office. He took one step further by offering severance packages to employees who aren’t comfortable with the new corporate policy of “political neutrality” in the office.
In a corporate blog, Armstrong wrote “Everyone is asking the question about how companies should engage in broader societal issues during these difficult times, while keeping their teams united and focused on the mission. Coinbase has had its own challenges here, including employee walkouts. I decided to share publicly how I’m addressing this in case it helps others navigate a path through these challenging times.” He added, “I want Coinbase to be laser focused on achieving its mission, because I believe that this is the way that we can have the biggest impact on the world.” Armstrong told his staff “Life is too short to work at a company that you aren’t excited about,” and if you are not happy, “Hopefully, this package helps create a win-win outcome for those who choose to opt out.”
His stance runs counter to the narrative at many other prominent tech companies. A large percentage of Silicon Valley-based corporations tend to lean left, allow and encourage their employees to get involved with social, racial and political causes.
Sometimes the views are very forceful. In a tweet that has been deleted, Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo wrote “Me-first capitalists who think you can separate society from business are going to be the first people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution. I’ll happily provide video commentary.”
Facebook and Google both had to enact policies and procedures to deal with heated conversations on their respective internal message boards. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company will update policies to prevent clashes over potentially divisive hot topics, such as politics, racial justice and the Covid-19 pandemic on the company’s message board.
Facebook spokesperson Joe Osborne said “What we’ve heard from our employees is that they want the option to join debates on social and political issues,” and “We’re updating our employee policies and work tools to ensure our culture remains respectful and inclusive. Facebook is strengthening its harassment policy so that employees from under-represented communities don’t face hostile work environments.”
Similar activities are taking place at Google too. The company requested employees to moderate internal message boards, as there’s been an increase of posts flagged for racism or abuse. In response to this matter, the online search giant is enhancing its content moderation program. This will entail owners of discussion groups to step up their moderation and oversight, take mandatory moderation training and create a charter to clarify the group’s purpose.
Google rules state, “While sharing information and ideas with colleagues helps build community, disrupting the workday to have a raging debate over politics or the latest news story does not.” The company’s guidelines also indicate, “Our primary responsibility is to do the work we’ve each been hired to do, not to spend working time on debates about non-work topics.”
Both tech titans are trying to walk the fine line of allowing employees to speak their minds, while also ensuring that comments aren’t offensive nor distract people from their jobs. It seems, according to the companies, that the heightened level of hostility grew during the work-from- home time period.
Recently, a small group of Google employees felt that the company did not do enough for social causes. They decided to form the Alphabet (the parent company of Google) Workers Union. Whereas traditional unions utilize their collective bargaining strength to negotiate higher salaries, better health benefits and pensions, this new union is focused on social issues. It calls for workers to join the union and “fight the systems of oppression that persist to this day.” The union envisions, “All aspects of our work must be transparent, and we must have the freedom to choose which projects benefit from our labor.” The union contends, “Alphabet can make money without doing evil. We must prioritize the well-being of society and the environment over maximizing profits.”
Back in July 2019 online home goods and furniture retailer, Wayfair, had hundreds of employees complain to management for selling about $200k of bedroom furniture to a government contractor that operates immigration detention centers on the U.S. and Mexico border. When Wayfair’s CEO Niraj Shah refused to comply with the workers’ demand to cancel the sales, employees protested by staging a walkout. The anger and frustration was highlighted by employee Madeline Howard’s statement “We don’t want our company to profit off of children being in concentration camps.”
This trend is only growing stronger. Companies are going to have to make tough choices. Do they go the route of Coinbase and say that they won’t tolerate political and social causes in the offices or will they promote the values that their employees stand behind? Corporate management may follow the lead of Facebook and Google by walking the fine line of promoting robust conversations but ensuring it doesn’t exclude or marginalize groups who disagree with the prevailing viewpoints.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
