Thursday 9 December 2021
Business for social benefit - join TorontotheBetter's call
Beyond calling out the bad, like the Amazon firings featured earlier in our blog, it is TorontotheBetter's mission to promote the goods in enterprises, if/where they exist. Unfortunately, "profit at all costs" motivation means we have more of the former than the latter. It's beyond time for an economic environment where core values like worker participation, environmental protection and societal benefit are part of standard business operating principles. It can happen; and it should. There was a time not so long ago when there were no workplace health and safety standards but through union activism they became required for all businesses, though, to quote Shakespeare, often honoured more in the breach than the observation.
Now is the time to move business standards from do less harm to do good. If health and safety are now required in return for society's opportunity to do business then so too should be societal benefit. Join TorontotheBetter in our quest for mandatory societal benefit standards for all enterprise. Environmental preservation and worker health are not discretionary values to be left to the profit constrained will and whims of individual enterprises and businesses. Support TorontotheBetter's promotion of enterprise societal benefits. Contact postmaster@torontothebetter.net with socialbenefitsnow in the subject line.
Make Amazon Pay
On COVID-19 and inequality
It's been 2 years since the COVID19 pandemic started and resistance is growing. The well-off, and some governments have the financial resources in reserve to survive the crisis while their media focus on occasional “hard luck” stories. But for the poor, especially those in poor countries without economic shelter room the reality is much grimmer. Social unrest and resistance are the necessary results. Over the last two years strikes, demos and protests have doubled, with 5000+ turning violent as pre-existing inequalities are intensified in the eye of the pandemic’s economic storm. Citizens are taking in countries large, like Portugal and France and small, like the Solomon Islands. Activists and civil organizations such as farm based Agrounia, are stepping up their actions in response and their resistance is being penalized. A Polish Amazon worker who postered her workplace about working conditions was recently fired. Pandemics are bad for the majority but they are worst for the worst off. The story must be retold loudly as mainstream media skim surfaces and ignore the deep story. Pandemics only intensify pre-existing conditions of inequality. Thanks to TorontotheBetter's European correspondent for news about developments in Poland and beyond. For news about more Amazon firings see:Amazon workers stage 'sick out' rally to push for warehouse changes (nbcnews.com)
Friday 3 December 2021
FairBNB comes to Toronto
Been looking for a progressive alternative to the short term accommodation options offered by Airbnb and other commercial operations? Fairbnb (fairbnb.coop) home sharing coop, originally founded in Europe some years ago, has chosen Toronto as its first location in North America. Alongside our established cooperative and non-profit housing sectors Fairbnb promises to fill an important gap in Toronto’s long ignored stock of affordable shelter.
“Clearly” greenwashing
A visit to a local eyewear store on Toronto’s popular Queen Street West turned out disappointing today when their website claims about in-house COVID precautions turned out to be false. For a local store such lack of attention to basic preventive measures in a pandemic call into question their several claims to social and environmental responsibility. TorontotheBetter supports efforts to improve better vision for all through the donation of glasses and the recycling of plastics into frames, as the enterprise reports, but finds it hard to fully endorse enterprises that, in the interest of financial gain, clearly disregard the health of the community in which they operate.
Wednesday 1 December 2021
Better world 2021
TorontotheBetter, www.torontothebetter.net, the non-profit programme of libra Knowledge and Information Services Co-operative, was created to enable progressive change in Toronto and beyond, through commercial transformation, promoting social goals among Toronto-based enterprises. And given the number of enterprises now espousing such enterprise values, our initiative, with those of similarly focused organizations and individuals has been successful. See our website for partners who have contributed to TorontotheBetter's better world actions.
But – and two “buts” are necessary here, unavoidable opportunities were thus created for values appropriation. With major corporations, like McDonalds and A&W publicly declaring themselves to be in the ranks of the “ethical” a sizeable chunk of cynicism is natural and necessary when our growing climate of social unrest and strike activity by the many ignored workers and communities is acknowledged. But corporate me-too-ism opens up an opportunity for vigilance and critique that must not be ignored. TorontotheBetter has always combined its promotion of good local actors with a calling out of the bad. Further, and here is our second “but”, our activity to socialize enterprise was never conceived or intended as a rejection of political routes to change. A political strategy for socio-economic transformation is a must have for socially and economically targeted change agents like TorontotheBetter. As we head into an end-of-year period of reflection required by ongoing pandemic disruptions all must remind ourselves that economic and political, state and non-state, initiatives must support each other. Progressive movements in history have often foundered because they excluded key agents and factors. Some political movements have ignored the basic needs of the people in whose name their movements were launched, while economic change agents have found their actions ignored and marginalized by the engineers of political power. At another moment of massive change like the present TorontotheBetter reminds all, including ourselves, that our work must be holistic and inclusive to achieve lasting change. A movement is always a collaboration and the successful ones are those that accommodate all brothers and sisters, indigenous and non-indigenous, genuinely committed to a common aspiration for a better world. "Reconciliation" is not enough. In 2021 and beyond TorontotheBetter continues to seek transformation.
