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Why work at summer camp?

Why work at summer camp?

(photo from Camp Kalsman)

We know that today’s university and college students have lots of choices for summer jobs – but here are 10 reasons why working at a Jewish summer camp is the absolute best opportunity for someone who’s starting to think about a professional career.

1. Leadership skills

Regardless of your major, working at a summer camp puts you in a prime place to develop job-marketable skills. As a counselor, you’ll be overseeing large groups of children, and that work translates well into excellent management and personnel skills. You may also qualify for college/university credit, so check with your adviser.

2. Change campers’ lives

Campers love coming to summer camp, which many consider a second home. Summer camps hire fun, energetic people who are motivated to give campers the best summer ever and to make them want to come back, year after year. There’s no question that campers look up to their counselors more than anyone else. You’re directly responsible for helping young people learn about themselves, challenge themselves and explore their Jewish identities. During this formative time, you have the chance to become a camper’s hero.

photo - campers having fun (photo from Camp Kalsman)
(photo from Camp Kalsman)

3. The great outdoors

Most summer camps give you access to the best of nature. Set among the trees with an expansive view of the sky, you can hike, swim, mountain bike, zipline through the forest, stargaze, kayak and so much more. As far as offices and work locations go, it doesn’t get much better than that.

4. Opportunity to grow

Camp staff become a community within itself. You’ll end up inspiring and learning from one another, experiencing much of the same joy and wonder as the campers. Plus, you’ll make friends with people who live across North America and even abroad, as many Jewish camps hire summer staff from Israel.

5. Bigger than yourself

Jewish camp works. Those who attend and work at camp are more likely to feel a strong connection to their Jewish community, which can mean lighting Shabbat candles, feeling a personal connection to Israel and attending a synagogue. Camp gives you the skills to change the world and connect to something bigger than yourself.

6. Save money

Think of how much you’ll save when food and housing are provided for you!

7. Be nurtured and cared for

Camps take the health and well-being of their counselors and campers very seriously. For example, URJ Camp Newman, a Reform Jewish summer camp in Santa Rosa, Calif., applies the CARE philosophy to everything they do: the philosophy is based upon the principles of community, acceptance, role-modeling, and that each and every individual is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God.

photo - camper doing archery
(photo from Camp Kalsman)

8. Goals and interests

Because there are so many roles to fill and because you come with so many additional strengths and skills, camp directors will strive to match your passions to your role at camp so that you get the most out of your experience.

9. Jumpstart career

Camp is for the career-driven. Seriously!

10. Buzzfeed agrees

If you need even more reasons to apply for a camp counselor position, BuzzFeed has 20 more reasons working at a summer camp will be your best job ever: buzzfeed.com/sarahmcf/20-reasons-why-working-at-summer-camp-is-the-best-k6jl. 

For information on working at URJ Camp Kalsman, which is southeast of Arlington, Wash., about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Vancouver, visit campkalsman.org/work-at-camp.

Format ImagePosted on January 17, 2025January 15, 2025Author Alaina Yoakum REFORMJUDAISM.ORGCategories LocalTags Camp Kalsman, employment, Jewish summer camp, summer job, youth
Specializing in safety checks

Specializing in safety checks

Verify Digital’s Fred Ullrich, who served as sergeant of digital forensics at the Vancouver Police Department until his retirement this year, has extensive experience in search techniques. (photo from Verify Digital)

These days, especially, you can’t take any chances when you’re hiring someone to work for you, bringing them into your home as a service provider or taking them on as a tenant. What do they really think about Jews, about Israel and about the world? Are they a safe bet or a threat to your family and business? Most of us would do a Google search to check, or look at someone’s social media handles. What we don’t realize is that the information our searches reveal barely scratches the surface of what might be out there.

That’s why Vancouver-based Verify Digital was created by Fred Ullrich and Jewish community members Jamie Wosk and David Wosk: to conduct in-depth searches into individuals’ digital footprints and deliver a full perspective on their background and beliefs. 

The new business partners go back a long way.

In the late 1980s, David Wosk – who established and ran Wosks Coffee Service for almost 60 years – became one of the original members of the Vancouver Police Department’s Community Crime Watch, which is where he met Ullrich, who was a Crime Watch volunteer before becoming a police officer.

photo - David Wosk is as a business advisor at Verify Digital
David Wosk is as a business advisor at Verify Digital. (photo from Verify Digital)

The Vancouver Police Department awarded Wosk the 2024 Community Safety Leader Award for his decades of dedication to community service, crime prevention and public safety. He has received many other awards, such as the Attorney General’s Award, and commendations for his helpful role in various incidents.

Jamie Wosk – David’s son, who was general manager of Wosks Coffee while also serving as a Vancouver Lifeguard for more than 33 years – also has received recognition for his life-saving actions over the years.

In Verify Digital, Jamie Wosk oversees sales, while David Wosk acts as a business advisor. Ullrich, who served as sergeant of digital forensics at the VPD until his retirement this year, brings his extensive experience in search techniques to the company. He was tasked with doing some 1,500 pre-employment background files for the VPD.

“There were only a few where I was unable to find an online footprint, either because they were much older, or because they’d previously been involved in police services and knew they had to be covert online,” he told the Independent. “But, today, there’s not one young person without a social media footprint. And, if they’re not there, it’s because they’re using secret names or have deleted their profiles to prevent future employers from looking into their past.”

photo - Jamie Wosk oversees sales at Verify Digital.
Jamie Wosk oversees sales at Verify Digital. (photo from Verify Digital)

Verify Digital’s main clients are institutions who hire many new employees each year. But, out of care and concern for the safety of the Jewish community, Ullrich is offering basic and in-depth searches to individuals, too. 

“As a patrol officer, I spent many nights guarding synagogues and I responded to calls at Vancouver Talmud Torah regarding suspicious people on the school grounds. I also saw the firebombing at Schara Tzedeck,” he said. “The reason we’re doing this is that there’s a need, and it will help the Jewish community know who they are dealing with.”

Ullrich conducts all the background searches using a proprietary software that searches across some 28 social media platforms. It yields results you’d never find on a Google search, he explained, because Google is a marketing tool that provides results based on what it thinks you’re looking for.

“There’s a huge science behind finding material,” he said. “And, there’s a consistent percentage of people who have social media content that is embarrassing, inappropriate, highly offensive or simply does not align with the views of their potential employer, especially if they are hired to be in a position of trust.” 

Ullrich has had many of what he calls “OMG moments.” One individual who was applying for a position of trust had started a business in Richmond and was taking customer money while not providing a product. She was looking to extend her fraud through the new employer, and they were on the cusp of hiring her until they learned this information.

Another had a clean social media presence until Ullrich discovered he was using a secret username. That revealed six years of racist and misogynistic comments on social media that more accurately depicted his beliefs.

The cost of Verify Digital’s services depends on the kind of screening you need and ranges from $99 to $199 per person, with a two-to-three-day turnaround time. 

Ullrich said the “old way” of reference checking just doesn’t cut it anymore. “Social media tells a more complete, telling picture of a person’s character and beliefs,” he said. 

“I encourage my clients to do a search themselves, and compare what they find to what I find using proper systems, because there’s a big difference,” he added. “To find information, you really have to know where to look.”

For more on Verify Digital, visit verifydigital.com.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.

Format ImagePosted on October 25, 2024October 24, 2024Author Lauren KramerCategories LocalTags computers, David Wosk, employment, Fred Ullrich, hiring, internet, Jamie Wosk, safety, security, social media, Verify Digital, World Wide Web

Seeking institutional change

“I think what we should all take away from this incident is that we need to move closer to the institutions and find ways to move forward that are more inclusive and diverse,” Maytal Kowalski told the Independent.

Kowalski was fired from her marketing and communications role at the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver on July 25, the day after she disagreed with Federation chief executive officer Ezra Shanken at a meeting that included seven people from Federation and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and 25 to 30 members of UnXeptable, a group started by expat Israelis who oppose the Israeli government’s proposed judicial reforms. Kowalski recorded both the gathering, even though attendees were asked not to, and her dismissal. She shared the recordings with the Independent and other Jewish media. The story was broken by Haaretz, and followed by a piece in the Canadian Jewish News. As they did for the Haaretz and CJN stories, Federation declined to comment when contacted by the Independent, responding: “We cannot comment on individual employee matters due to privacy considerations.”

“I chose to approach Haaretz [first] and specifically Judy Maltz because, while this specific story is Vancouver-focused, this is an incident within a broader context of diaspora Jewish institutions throughout North America, and that’s a subject area that Maltz covers,” said Kowalski. “I didn’t want to single out Vancouver, because this is a systemic problem within our institutions, and my hope was, through Haaretz, maybe someone in

Edmonton or Winnipeg or Phoenix would read it and feel brave enough to come forward with their own story, or feel compelled to push for positive change within their own Jewish federation.”

Kowalski, who describes herself as “someone who really cares about the future of our Jewish institutions and the role they play in our Jewish community,” said a lot of the support she has received “explicitly or implicitly calls for progressive Jews to distance themselves from the institutions, and I want to say to those people that I think that’s the wrong approach.”

Both New Israel Fund of Canada and JSpaceCanada – on whose boards Kowalski sits – have supported her and, she noted, “if you look at how both of those organizations addressed the situation overall, they have talked about how we need to work together as a diaspora Jewish community to do better and be better.”

She said, “I know people will probably expect that I’ll distance myself from the community, but I’m going to do the opposite. I’ve been pushed out by the community before – I am the child of an intermarriage, and my mother’s partner after her divorce was also not Jewish, so I’ve only known being an intermarriage kid, and that was more contentious within our institutions back when I was growing up than it is today.

“But I’ve always stayed connected and, while they can knock me down, I’ll always get back up. Because building strong diaspora Jewish communities is important to me, and if I choose to walk away in defiance now, then it allows a system of discrimination to persist…. I hope that, if someone is reading this and also feels that we need to work for change, that they reach out. Maybe we can have these conversations within our shuls or other spaces that are open to it, and talk about how we use this story as a catalyst for change. If someone is planning to donate to this year’s annual campaign, they should ask about what concrete steps the Federation is going to take to make those changes.”

Born in Winnipeg, Kowalski’s family made aliyah in 1994. She lived in Israel until she moved to Toronto to pursue a degree at York University. “I lived in Toronto until March 2021, at which point my husband and I moved to Vancouver,” she said. “I have always worked in marketing and communications in the nonprofit/charity sector, and was with the Vancouver Foundation prior to coming to the Federation.”

She was with Federation for just under a year, having initially applied for a job with Federation’s Connect Me In team. “I had worked at the Miles Nadal JCC in Toronto early in my career and really loved working in my own community and I wanted to get back to that,” she said. “I was already very involved in other Jewish organizations on a volunteer basis and wanted to also be involved professionally.”

About recording the July 24 meeting, Kowalski explained, “I recorded or transcribed incidents that I felt could become contentious later on, since I didn’t have any workplace protections such as a union, so I felt I had to find means to protect myself.”

Parts of the two recordings have been cited in both Haaretz and the CJN, including that Kowalski was accused of “screaming” at the UnXeptable gathering. In the dismissal meeting, Becky Saegert, vice-president, marketing and communications, at Jewish Federation, says: “So, I heard last night that the registered speakers were passionate and articulate and compelling and my understanding is that you didn’t register as a speaker, but that what happened is that you interrupted our CEO and began, as several people have characterized it to me, and used the words, ‘began screaming,’ and then only stopped when asked by the moderator to sit down.”

Listening to her remarks, Kowalski does interrupt Shanken and speaks with emotion, but she doesn’t seem to be screaming, and she stops speaking once she has made her point, which she does in less than a minute. For Kowalski, that her manager told her several people had characterized her remarks as “screaming” was particularly important.

“It’s like that quote, she said, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ It’s so hurtful to me to know that all those people were good people who did nothing in this situation, which allowed for this deceitful narrative about my actions to be cemented. So, I think this should also be a learning moment where we ask ourselves, when we see something happening in our community that is wrong or unjust, what action will we take?”

Posted on August 18, 2023August 17, 2023Author Cynthia RamsayCategories LocalTags employment, Israel, Jewish Federation, Maytal Kowalski
Fighting for women’s equality

Fighting for women’s equality

Linda Silver Dranoff kicked off the four-part National Council of Jewish Women of Canada Women and Justice speaker series on Sept. 23. (screenshot)

National Council of Jewish Women of Canada started its four-part Women and Justice Speaker Series on Sept. 23 with retired family law lawyer Linda Silver Dranoff, who lives in Toronto.

The online setting allowed NCJWC members from across the country to be involved. The talk was opened by national president Debbie Wasserman, in Toronto, and closed by co-vice-president Debby Altow, in Vancouver; the question-and-answer period was handled by a committee chair, Bianca Krimberg, in Calgary.

Silver Dranoff’s talk was sobering, explaining how women in Canada have been defined by their subordinate role in the family, in relation to a man. She gave examples of laws that have reinforced this status, but also offered possible solutions, as legal reform has been an important part of her career. Among the books she has written is a memoir, called Fairly Equal: Lawyering the Feminist Revolution.

“Throughout human history, women were unprotected and vulnerable. Husbands controlled the purse strings, all property, any pension and the children,” she said. “A woman did not even own her own clothing, which was called ‘the wife’s paraphernalia.’ Women and children were property, not people. Once a woman was married, she was stuck, even if her husband beat or starved her. What we call domestic violence was considered, until very recently in human history, a private family matter that the state and the community did not get involved in.

“There was no divorce law in Canada until 1968,” she continued. “If a woman was guilty of marital misconduct, such as adultery, she could lose her right to have custody of her children and often even access to visit with them.”

Silver Dranoff became a lawyer in family law in 1974. At the time, she witnessed women staying in abusive marriages because they had little choice – if they left, they could become destitute and lose their children, too. “Marital misconduct ended any right to financial support, even if it happened after separation and divorce,” she said, explaining that settlement agreements often included a dum casta clause, a “while chaste” clause.

If a woman left her abusive husband, she said, anyone helping or harbouring her could be charged as a criminal. “This was an offence in our criminal law until the 1970s – that’s how recently it was. The law permitted a man to disinherit his wife and leave her destitute, no matter how long they’d been married and even if she was the model of a perfect wife.

“The husband controlled the wife’s reproduction. Contraception and abortion were criminal offences. A husband and wife were considered one person in law – the husband. This concept of the legal unity of husband and wife is what allowed a man to control his wife in every respect.” Until 1983, a husband could legally rape his wife – “marriage was considered consent to conjugal relations,” explained Silver Dranoff, who stressed that, of course, many men didn’t take advantage of their power – “but those who did could do so with impunity” and with legal sanction.

In addition to these restrictions, married women were discouraged from working outside the home. “In 1941,” said Silver Dranoff, “fewer than four percent of married women were employed. It wasn’t until 1955 that married women were eligible to be employed in the federal civil service. In any event, there was almost no publicly supported childcare – this actively discouraged women from employment. Even if women worked, usually out of necessity, there were no laws protecting them from discrimination in employment.” This meant that women could legally be paid less, disregarded for promotion consideration and fired if a man needed a job. “There was no law against sexual harassment in the workplace; it didn’t even exist until the early 1980s in law.”

In the public arena, said Silver Dranoff, “women were invisible.” While most women have had the right to vote since 1918 – a right won by the efforts of the first-wave women’s movement – government policy usually overlooked issues of concern to women. “Only five women were elected to Parliament before 1950,” she said. “It wasn’t until 1957 that the first woman ever was appointed as a federal cabinet minister. And a woman lawyer was a rarity – in 1951, there were 197 women lawyers in all of Canada out of a total of 9,000.”

This was the world in which Silver Dranoff grew up, and it energized and impelled her to action, as it did others. “I believe the most significant transformation allowing women a less dependent role in society came about when women could control our reproductive powers,” she said. “The birth control pill was developed in 1961. While contraception and abortion were still criminal offences, the pill gradually became publicly available in the 1960s, and that is when the second-wave women’s movement began.”

Women’s groups proliferated in the 1970s and 1980s. “The National Action Committee on the Status of Women comprised most of the major women’s organizations of the day, totalling, at its height, 700 women’s organizations that all gathered together to promote the rights of women with one voice.”

Silver Dranoff went to law school in 1969. She was a single parent with a 2-year-old and had been out of school for eight years. “Other women were also seeing a life outside the family as a possibility,” she said. “In my law school class, there were 14 women out of 300; we were five percent of the class. Had I attended eight years earlier, when I graduated from history, I would have been the only woman in a law school class in Toronto.”

With more women lawyers, there was more pressure for change and Silver Dranoff spoke about some of the advances that have been made in family law reform, Charter equality rights, abortion, violence against women, childcare, pay equity, and representation and power.

When Silver Dranoff came to the bar in 1974, women had no right to share property accumulated during a marriage, and spousal and child support amounts were “paltry and difficult to enforce.” By the 1980s across Canada, improvements had been made both in multiple laws and in their enforcement. “These changes enabled women to leave bad marriages and live independently,” she said.

However, there is more to be done. Husbands and their lawyers still “use the legal system and its processes and delays as a club to intimidate women.” As well, she added, “It is often too expensive to seek the rights which the law gives, and legal aid is severely underfunded.” Another problem is that mediation and arbitration are replacing the courts in some cases and, “as a result, women may be encouraged to make a deal that doesn’t give them the benefit of the laws we fought long and hard for.”

When the Canadian Constitution was repatriated from Great Britain in 1982, a new Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted. Women’s groups lobbied the government of the day, led by then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau, “to include constitutionally entrenched equality rights in the Charter – by the way, a right that American women still don’t have. Our women lawyers provided the wording to protect us, using the lessons taught by the ineffective Bill of Rights passed in the 1950s.”

One of those lessons was the need to make sure the rights were actually protected. “We had to lobby, we had to organize, we had to participate in court cases that would affect our equality rights. So, we founded the Women’s Legal and Educational Action Fund, known as LEAF, in 1985, when equality rights came into effect, to try and ensure that court interpretations of the Charter did not erode, but enhanced and ensured women’s equality rights.”

In the late 1960s, Trudeau, as justice minister under then-prime minister Lester B. Pearson, brought in amendments to the Criminal Code that permitted abortion under defined conditions. The amendments did not legalize abortion, but said the prohibition would not operate if a medical committee deemed a pregnant woman’s life to be in danger if she carried to term. This law did not work, said Silver Dranoff. Among other things, there was inconsistency among hospital abortion committees in rulings and there were no guidelines on what constituted endangerment.

“Dr. Henry Morgentaler became women’s champion,” she said. “He opened a clinic in Montreal and women traveled there from across Canada to be assured of getting and having a safe abortion.”

Morgentaler challenged the medical committee law, she said, and his goal was to get abortion removed as an offence under the Criminal Code; he also challenged provincial laws. “The main challenge was decided in 1988 by the Supreme Court of Canada,” said Silver Dranoff, “which agreed with defence counsel’s constitutional argument that the abortion provisions of the Criminal Code breached the rights of Section 7 of the Charter to life, liberty and security of the person and, therefore, was unconstitutional.”

There is no longer any federal law preventing or criminalizing abortion, or requiring anyone’s consent to the procedure other than that of the pregnant woman. There have been challenges to the change, though, including the federal government under then-prime minister Brian Mulroney, which tried twice – unsuccessfully – to form an anti-abortion law that wouldn’t violate the Charter.

“This shows how important it is to keep vigilant and organized and focused,” said Silver Dranoff. “There’s no such thing as a permanent victory, only a continuing struggle.”

A case in point is the progress that has been made with respect to dealing with violence against women. The courts used to accept the argument that, if a woman had ever had sex before with anyone, she probably consented to the approach by the accused. Victims can no longer be cross-examined on their previous sexual experience, unless the trial judge determines there is some compelling reason to allow it, said Silver Dranoff. However, “victims are still being mistreated by the courts,” she said. “As a result, many women are reluctant to complain.”

In addition to a need for more education of lawyers, police and others in the system before attitudes will change, Silver Dranoff spoke of the need for prevention, offering the example of proactive imprisonment, which is practised in some communities in the United States. Whereas a bail hearing assesses whether an accused is likely to flee before trial, this process assesses how likely an accused is to murder their accuser. If the risk of murder is high, the accused would be imprisoned until their trial and the victim (and their children) would be able to stay at home instead of having to seek shelter and protection, for example.

“I think it’s a plan that’s worthy of consideration in Canada,” said Silver Dranoff. “We also need gun control. In the hands of men who are violent against women, guns are dangerous. And the only way to control violent men using guns is to control guns. Canadian statistics show that access to firearms by an intimate partner increases the likelihood of murder by 500%.”

Childcare is another integral issue, she said. “I personally think that women will never be able to take their full place in our workforce unless we have proper health- and childcare. We need government-paid, government-subsidized childcare centres, regulated places for our children to go and be cared for while women are employed in the paid labour force.”

She said that, 50 years ago, in 1970, the importance of childcare was recognized in the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, “which called for a national childcare plan. The royal commission identified the care of children as the responsibility to be shared by mothers, fathers and society, without which, women cannot be accorded true equality. Just as true today as it was in 1970.”

She pointed to other instances in which a national childcare program had been recommended or dismissed by a federal government. Most recently, on Sept. 23, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government “announced plans for a significant long-term investment in a national childcare and early-learning system, including before- and after-school care, and built on the [publicly funded] Quebec model.”

Silver Dranoff warned that government announcements, and even the making of laws, do not necessarily translate into changes. In Ontario, for example, there have been equal pay laws since 1951, she said, while the Pay Equity Act, which applied to the federal public service, didn’t come until 1984. Changes to the various laws have occurred as a result of complaints from workers, she said, and different governments and employers have either progressed or hindered pay equity.

“Statistics tell the story, too,” she said. “In 1965, women earned, on average, 41% of men’s pay…. Today, Ontario women earn, on average, 70 cents for every dollar a man earns.” While an improvement, it took more than 50 years and it’s not good enough, she said. “These statistics repeat themselves all over the world. Women are still paid less than men in every country in the world, according to research by the World Economic Forum.” And the pay gap is even larger for Indigenous, racialized and immigrant women, she said.

Potential solutions include a law requiring pay transparency, wherein a wage is assigned to a particular job, not the gender of the person filling it, and requiring companies to get equal pay certification from the government or be fined. The latter policy has been implemented in Iceland, she said.

After a few more examples of ways to improve pay equity, Silver Dranoff moved on to her final topic – representation and power. She noted that, in 2013, there were six female premiers, now there is only one (Caroline Cochrane, in the Northwest Territories).

“We need more women in positions of power and we’re having great difficulty in achieving it,” said Silver Dranoff. One deterrent is that women in politics receive significantly more abuse and nastiness than male politicians. Much of this abuse is online in social media and even anonymous; two factors contributing to the fact that few perpetrators are charged or convicted.

She said, “The law could be strengthened in this way: make social media platforms legally responsible for the content they post, just as newspapers have a responsibility to ensure that the content they print is not defamatory.”

She noted there are no provisions in the Criminal Code for online bullying, online criminal harassment, online misogyny. “The Criminal Code only deals with in-person offences,” she said. Of course, to make these types of new laws work, she added, anonymity on the internet must be curtailed or eliminated.

To sustain the advances made by the women’s movement, she said, “Feminists must run for office and be elected. Parties must nominate feminists in electable ridings.”

In Silver Dranoff’s use of the term, feminists can be any gender, just as patriarchs can be any gender. Not every woman, she said, will stand up for the interests of women.

In addition to electoral reform – she believes that proportional representation of the mixed member proportional type is the best bet, “both for society as a whole and for women in particular because it requires consensus decision-making” – Silver Dranoff would like to see changes made in the corporate world, as well. She sees a need for things like mandatory quotas for women on boards, to ensure equal representation. “Voluntary doesn’t work,” she said.

Canada also needs a national women’s organization, she said, “like we had in the early days of the women’s movement. The National Action Committee on the Status of Women represented all of us…. We need that national voice to ensure that women’s issues are monitored and our interests are heard.”

Such an organization should not be dependent on government funding, she said, “which can be, and has been, withdrawn due to the ideology of the day. And, in fact, that’s what happened to NAC in the end. The National Action Committee was relying on government funding and an unsympathetic government removed it.”

Women cannot just accept the status quo, she said, or “that makes us complicit.”

She concluded, “My message to you all is carpe diem, seize the day. There is work to be done. It is, without a doubt, long past time for women to achieve equality and justice.”

***

Note: This article has been amended to make clear that it was married women who weren’t permitted to work in the federal public sector until 1955.

Format ImagePosted on October 9, 2020October 10, 2020Author Cynthia RamsayCategories LocalTags abortion, childcare, divorce, economics, employment, equality, healthcare, human rights, justice, law, Linda Silver Dranoff, marriage, National Council of Jewish Women of Canada, NCJW, pay equity, women

Roll out welcome mat

Bill 21, Quebec’s law that forbids most public employees from displaying any religious symbols like a turban, a Magen David or a hijab, may become an issue in the federal election. On CBC Radio’s political program The House last weekend, MPs representing the Liberal, Conservative and New Democratic parties all took effectively the same position: the law is discriminatory but provinces have the right to proclaim their own laws and, what’s more, the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause means Quebec can pretty much do whatever it wants.

There is a political calculation in all this, of course. Many Quebeckers support this law and any federal party needs to appeal to a chunk of these voters in order to succeed in the province during next month’s vote. As a result, party leaders are mostly making the right noises about this discriminatory law, while hoping to move on to the next topic ASAP.

With federal leaders basically throwing up their hands on the issue, which calls into question the most fundamental rights of Canadians of all religions, what can be done?

One individual interviewed on the program is a teacher who is Sikh. Her choice was to move from Quebec to British Columbia, where she could continue her chosen profession without diminishing her religious beliefs, which include wearing a turban.

If federal leaders will not act forcefully, perhaps leaders in the provinces outside Quebec can do something. Throughout history, Canada has been enriched by refugees and immigrants who sought freedom and opportunity – our gains roughly equating the loss to their places of origin. Why not apply the same principle to inter-provincial relations?

Perhaps provinces like British Columbia should roll out the welcome mat for teachers, school administrators, wildlife officers, Crown prosecutors and other civil servants from Quebec who no longer feel welcome there. Actively recruiting these experienced professional people of different cultures and religions would strengthen our communities and send a message to Quebec that cultural difference is an asset, not a liability.

In the absence of forceful federal leadership on this front, it would be encouraging to see provincial governments stepping up where they can.

Posted on September 13, 2019September 10, 2019Author The Editorial BoardCategories From the JITags Canada, diversity, economics, employment, immigration, politics, Quebec, racism

BBYO to West Coast

The Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver has partnered with BBYO to provide expanded opportunities for teens around the Lower Mainland. The partnership will enhance the connections of Greater Vancouver Jewish teens and link the local community to BBYO hubs across Canada – in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg – and in more than 30 countries around the world.

The JCC-BBYO connections were forged earlier this year at the JCC Festival Ha’Rikud closing party hosted by BBYO. With more than 80 teens from Vancouver, Miami and Israel, the JCC set the stage for fun and teen involvement. Since the party, a group of teens from Vancouver, White Rock and Richmond formed a leadership team and the JCC is looking for a professional to support them.

In partnership with BBYO, the JCC is currently seeking to fill the role of BBYO city director and JCC teen coordinator. The role will focus on programs that foster engagement and create meaningful connections among high school teens in the community. The professional will liaise with Jewish and secular community organizations working with youth, and will build BBYO chapters throughout the Greater Vancouver area.

“Each year, I get to see teens around the Jewish community grow and connect,” said Shirly Berelowitz, director of children, youth and camps at the JCC. “The JCC teen department looks forward to expanding these opportunities in our new partnership with BBYO. Our goal is to become a hub for Jewish teens to connect with each other in Vancouver and around the world. I couldn’t be more excited for the JCC to take on this role!”

This year, the JCC celebrates 90 years in Vancouver as BBYO celebrates 90 years in Canada – it is only fitting that the organizations celebrate together.

For more information on the coordinator position, contact Berelowitz at 604-257-5111 or [email protected].

Posted on July 20, 2018July 18, 2018Author JCCGVCategories LocalTags BBYO, employment, JCC, youth
Ever-changing job landscape

Ever-changing job landscape

Prof. Ilana Gershon’s latest book is Down and Out in the New Economy. (photo from Ilana Gershon)

An increasing number of people in their 50s and 60s are needing or wanting to find work – and are finding that next job elusive.

Indiana University anthropology professor Ilana Gershon has been researching the (often unsuccessful) ways in which job seekers look for work. One result of this research is her latest book: Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

Long gone are the days that employers just want an extra pair of hands to do a job, said Gershon.

“We used to have an idea of ourselves as workers, in which we imagined we owned ourselves, as if we were property,” she explained. “This was the metaphor – that we were renting ourselves to an employer for a certain period of time and, when the time was over, we’d get ourselves back. The idea of renting ourselves as though we were property really affected the ways you could have particular ideas, of what was a just work relationship.

“So, you thought you could have arguments about whether you should have a 40-hour work week or not, about how much time you should be able to rent yourself to an employer … and people would have legal cases and legislation around the boundaries of work. Should people be paid for putting on a uniform that would make them be work ready or should they put on a uniform in their own time, and should employers only pay for them once they put on the uniform?”

Gershon said this metaphor very much shaped how people thought about what was appropriate and what was not.

“One of the other consequences of that is that unions were able to argue that, in fact, people were not just renting a portion of their day,” she said. “Unions argued that they were renting a portion of their lives and, as a result, the companies owed them health insurance or a pension … that they should be reimbursed for giving over a portion of their lives to the company.”

On the other side of the equation were the companies, which were very interested in ensuring there was some form of company loyalty.

According to Gershon, in the United States and the United Kingdom, after Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher took power, respectively, things began to change. People began to imagine themselves as though they were a business – as a bundle of skills, assets, qualities, experiences and relationships that had to be consciously managed like a business. And, as a business, continual enhancement was required.

“When people are entering into an employment contract, that now means they are entering into a business-to-business contract, in which they are offering temporary solutions for market-specific problems a company experiences,” explained Gershon. “So, now you have all these self-help articles that talk about being the CEO of Me Incorporated.

“One of the other consequences of this is people now talk a lot about having a personal brand. Because, if you imagine yourself as a business, then you should have a personal brand, as businesses have brands. So, a lot of the ways in which people understand what the employment contract can now offer them is being shaped by this change in metaphor.”

book cover - Down and Out in the New EconomyGershon’s research on the topic began in 2012, with the interviewing of people around Indiana University and her attending one or two job search workshops available to undergrad students. In 2013/2014, while being a fellow at Stanford’s Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences, she did field work in the Bay Area in California.

Not everything regarding the job market is new, she said. “People already know a lot about hiring, because they participated in hiring in their previous workplaces … and they shouldn’t ignore everything that they already know.

“I was trying very hard not to make it a Silicon Valley project,” she said of her research. “I was very concerned about that, because, what I wanted to do was think about the hiring ritual in general. I interviewed people in the Midwest and East Coast about this – not as many people as I interviewed in the Bay Area, but I wanted to check if I saw any difference.

“The major difference I saw was that the people had a very different idea of how much time you should spend at a job. People in the Bay Area thought the ideal time you spend at a job was two to three years. And, in the Midwest, it was something more like seven to 10. On the East Coast, it was more like five to eight.”

According to Gershon, she worked hard to produce an “anti-advice book.” Her aim was to focus the book on the implications of thinking of yourself as a business and how that has changed hiring and affected what employment contracts have become. Further, she wanted to explore how one should present themselves as an employee, and what employers feel are desirable traits in candidates.

One of Gershon’s findings is that the new concepts are now standard fare in all job search workshops.

“People are being told to do this, but people in the trades and blue collar workers don’t seem to find this way of thinking terribly useful yet,” she said. “So, the people for whom it fits their situation best are going to be white collar workers for the most part.”

But, whether or not everyone finds the ideas useful, they are being encouraged.

“People working retail are constantly being told they have to brand themselves,” said Gershon by way of example. “I don’t think this particular way of trying to brand yourself constantly or imagine yourself as a business is making all that many people happy.

“If you haven’t been in the workforce for 15 to 20 years and you’re suddenly going to these job search places where they’re telling you everything is new and the ways you used to look for jobs no longer make sense … it’s all very confusing. I’m offering the context for that, explaining why things might seem new, and what’s genuinely new and what isn’t.

“I think figuring out how to get a job is actually something you have to do specifically for your particular industry,” she added. “People offer a lot of standardized advice, as though there’s a magic bullet that works in every context. What I’m talking about is how not to engage with that kind of standardized advice. Instead, figure out how to do the research so that you can understand those communities on your own.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Format ImagePosted on January 19, 2018January 17, 2018Author Rebeca KuropatwaCategories BooksTags economics, employment, Ilana Gershon
האם יש שכירות בחינם?

האם יש שכירות בחינם?

בתקופה האחרונה מתפרסמות מודעות מסוג חדש להשכרת חדרים ודירות משותפות בוונקובר, באתר האינטרנט עם לוח המודעות המקוון קרייגליסט. (צילום: theprovince.com)

האם יש שכירות בחינם?
לא בדיוק – השוכרת תאלץ “לענג” את המשכיר

בתקופה האחרונה מתפרסמות מודעות מסוג חדש להשכרת חדרים ודירות משותפות בוונקובר, באתר האינטרנט עם לוח המודעות המקוון קרייגליסט. המשכירים מטבע הדברים גברים מציעים להשכיר חדרים או דירות ללא תשלום. הם מבקשים לקבל “רק” קצת מאסג’ים או עינוגים אחרים מהשוכרות. במילים אחרות סקס במקום דמי שכירות.

לדברי פרופסור למשפטים באוניברסיטת יו.בי.סי, ג’נין בנאדט, הגברים המשכירים מנצלים את המצב הקשה בו השוכרות נמצאות, כיוון שמחירי השכירות בוונקובר מרקיעי שחקים וקשה מאוד למצוא חדרים או דירות להשכרה במצב השוק כיום. בנאדט: “לא מדובר במערכת יחסים בין בני זוג שחולקים דירה במשותף. שכירות תמורת סקס היא אקט לא חוקי והמשכירים יכולים להסתבך גם עם חוקי זכויות האדם והטרדות מיניות”. דוברת הארגון לסיוע לנאנסות ומקלט לנשים בוונקובר, סמנתה ריי, מוסיפה כי הגברים משתמשים בטקטיקה חדשה של מסחר בשכירות, עבור קבלת שירותי מין כדי לנצל נשים. ריי: “הגברים משתמשים בכוחם ומנצלים את הייאוש הכלכלי של הנשים בעיר. נשים צעירות ומהגרות יכולות בקלות ליפול בפח של המשכירים”.

לעומת זאת טוען דובר משטרת ונקובר, בריאן מונטגיו כי לאור צורת הניסוח המודעות, אין בהן משום עבירה על החוק. מונטיגו מציע לנשים להתעלם ממודעות שמציעות שכירות חינם תמורת שירותים מפוקפקים ואל להן לקחת סיכונים מיותרים.

האם יש גזענות בעבודה?
קורות חיים אנונימיים צפויים להגביר את שוויון ההזדמנויות בתעסוקה

קנדה נחשבת למדינה ליברלית ומכניסת אורחים כלפי זרים שמהגרים אליה ועבור פליטים שנקלטים בה. אך מתחת לפני השטח מתברר שכמו במדינות מערב אחרות, גם בקנדה המתקדמת אין בדיוק שוויון הזדמנויות בתעסוקה לכל האזרחים, ללא קשר למוצאם. לפי נתונים ממשלתיים המיעוטים בקנדה מהווים למעלה מ20% מהאוכלוסיה, אך לעומת זאת הם מקווים בקושי 14% ממצבת העובדים בשירות המדינה. מחקרים שונים שנערכו בארה”ב ובקנדה מצביעים על כך שלמועמדים לעבודה ששמותיהם אינם אנגלו-סקסים, יש סיכוי קטן יותר להיות מועסקים.

לאור זאת חבר פרלמנט מטעם המפלגה הליברלית, אחמד חוסיין, טוען שהגיע הזמן שקנדה תאמץ מדיניות חדשה בתחום התעסוקה, לפחות במגזר הציבורי, שבו יקלטו עובדים לפי כישוריהם באמצעות קורות חיים אנונימיים, ועל ידי כך תקטן תופעת האפלייה.

התזמורת הסימפונית של טורונטו אימצה לפני שנים את המדיניות לקלוט נגנים חדשים באופן אנונימי. המועמדים לתזמורת נבחנים בזמן שהבוחנים לא רואים את פניהם, לא יודעים מה מינם ומה שמם. כתוצאה מכך כיום לפחות 50 מהנגנים בתזמורת הם נשים, ורבים שייכים לבני המיעוטים. לאחרונה מספר בתי ספר בקנדה אימצו מדיניות דומה בוגע לבדיקת מבחנים ועבודות של התלמידים, שמוגשים ללא שם לבוחנים.

החיפושיות בהתכתבות
קורס באוניברסיטה על סיפור הצלחתה של הלהקה הבריטית

הביטלס ממשיכים להצליח גם באוניברסיטה של מחוז נובה סקוטיה. 66 סטודנטים נרשמו לקורס חדש בתחום המוסיקה שעוסק בסיפור הצלחתה של הלהקה הבריטית. לאור הפופולריות של הקורס הוא יתקיים שוב גם בשנה הבאה.

פרופסור למוסיקה באוניברסיטה קווין ברנקורסט, מעביר את הקורס המעניין שעוסק בחיי הלהקה ובתקופה בה היא פעלה. הסטודנטים יבחנו כיצד הביטלס נולדה ובתוך תקופה קצרה הצליחה בצורה אדירה והפכה להיות הלהקה המשפיעה ביותר בהיסטוריה של המוסיקה והתרבות בכלל. הקורס כולל צפייה בסרטים, וידאו קליפים וראיונות עם הביטלס. ברנקורסט מציין כי אף אחד לא היה מצליח לכתוב את סיפור הצלחתה של הביטלס שהיה כל כך בלתי צפוי, וזה לבד הופך את הקורס לכל כך מעניין.

Format ImagePosted on May 18, 2016May 18, 2016Author Roni RachmaniCategories עניין בחדשותTags anonymous CVs, Beatles, Craigslist, employment, Queen's University, racism, rentals for sex, Vancouver, באוניברסיטה קווין, גזענות, החיפושיות, ונקובר, קורות חיים אנונימיים, קרייגליסט, שכירות תמורת סקס, תעסוקה
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