Racism rocks PSAC Montreal office

MONTREAL - The anonymous letter shattered what had started as a normal Monday morning at the office for "Joel," a union organizer at the Montreal office of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
"SPEAK NEGER BLACK," it started.
The rest of the letter was in French.
"It's well-paid we have all the jobs that pay. Where and when we want. INCOMPETENCE INCLUDED," it read.
Copies of the racist screed - obtained by The Gazette - were placed in the mail slots of the office's only two black employees on Feb. 21.
The hate mail has brought to light troubling allegations of racism in the public-sector union's Quebec division.
Both employees say they believe the letters are linked to a controversial incident that created deep divisions between PSAC's employees in Quebec and those in the rest of Canada.
On Dec. 16, 2009, PSAC staffers from Quebec read a poem and showed a film titled Speak White to colleagues at a national conference in Ottawa. The 1980, six-minute film by nationalist filmmakers Pierre Falardeau and Julien Poulin - based on the 1968 poem of the same name - includes shocking images of the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi genocide. It denounces exploitation of Quebec's French-speaking working class, which it compares to the plight of U.S. blacks and other oppressed minorities.
However, the Quebec staffers did not explain what the film meant or provide a translation, so many visible-minority employees found the images racist and disturbing.
In January 2010, the Canadian Union of Labour Employees (CULE), which represents workers at PSAC, filed a grievance on behalf of employees who found the film out of line with PSAC's obligation to provide a respectful and racismfree work environment.
CULE lost the grievance and has requested arbitration.
Joel (not his real name), then a union organizer in Ottawa, was one of three employees on whose behalf the union filed the grievance.
In December, he transferred to PSAC's Montreal office for family reasons.
He said he had to wait several weeks for a computer and a desk, and was not given an assignment until January.
When the hate letter arrived, Joel said he was struck by the similarity between its wording and the Speak White incident.
"It has to be coming from someone who has a certain knowledge of the situation," he said.
The letter, stamped "Personal," was in a white business envelope with his name and PSAC's Montreal address affixed by tape. The stamp was franked by Canada Post but on close inspection, the transparent tape was on top of the franking marks.
"Luc," a second black employee, also received an envelope containing the same letter as Joel along with a second letter.
Both men, who are francophones, requested that their names not be used for fear of consequences for their future careers.
Luc's envelope was stamped but the stamp was not franked.
The second letter reads: "Speak Black it's Better."
It continues, in French: "You work when you like, you have the big JOB. The big Cash, no one asks you for anything. Always on the weekend."
Police did not check the letters or envelopes for fingerprints, the men said.
Joel said he called police after opening the letter and was told to take it to a police station. The duty officer at the station near PSAC's St. Laurent office told him police would not investigate because the letter contained no threat of violence.
Both men have been on medical leave since receiving the letters.
Two days after the letters arrived, regional coordinator Bertrand Lavoie announced a staff meeting to discuss ways to improve the work atmosphere.
In an email reply to Lavoie obtained by The Gazette, regional union organizer Mathieu Dumont refused to attend the meeting. Dumont wrote that despite his disgust for the letters, "all my sympathy stops (here). I refuse to be (...) taken hostage by rumour, calumny, popular opinion or the peanut gallery that obeys the dictates of the moment."
Dumont said Quebec should not be blamed for a situation that goes beyond its jurisdiction. He added: "I will not participate and I encourage my colleagues to do the same."
However, PSAC president John Gordon said the organization is "very disturbed" by the hate mail.
"We're viewing this as a very, very serious issue and we want to get to the bottom of it," he said.
Gordon added that PSAC is investigating the Speak White incident but refused to comment on that investigation.
Luc has worked in PSAC's Montreal office for four years. On Jan. 17, he returned to work after a sixmonth medical leave that he said was related to workplace harassment. He had been working three days a week and was about start a four-day work week when the letter arrived.
Luc said that when an opportunity came up to volunteer for a certain assignment, other employees were given a chance to apply but he was kept out of the loop.
When the Quebec staff planned the Speak White presentation, they did not reveal the plans to him or to the only other black employee, who has since resigned.
Luc said no one in the office said anything when a union member who frequently visited the office remarked that he got his job because he is black.
When staff dine out together, black employees are often not included in the conversation, he said.
"You come to realize that you're not part of the gang and you never will be," Luc said.
Other employees frequently badmouth anglophones and other minorities at work, Luc said. They say: "Those têtes carrées. Why should we have to follow their directives?"
Luc said that colleagues often criticize employment equity programs for favouring minorities. "They say, 'Why give jobs to blacks?' "
Luc said one staff member called Arab union members "dogs" and said of the executive of a union: "I'm going to kick out those damn Arabs!"
Both men said they have received sympathetic messages from colleagues across Canada since the hate mail arrived but - aside from a supportive note from regional coordinator Lavoie - not a word of support from their Montreal coworkers.
Jérôme Turcq, PSAC's executive vice-president for the Quebec region, said this is the first time to his knowledge a staff member in the Montreal office has been the victim of racism.
"I don't think they come from my employees," he said of the letters.
PSAC represents about 35,000 workers in Quebec employed by the federal government and universities.
mascot@montrealgazette.com

Researh tools

I have noted earlier that going into academia is a long quest and require high levels of dedicaiton, perseverance and commitment. This is not enough, one needs a toolbox to proceed with.

I would put here a lot of the items that are extremly important for any research discsipline. I will follow with another list of tools that are needed for financial reaserch.

For any kind of research one needs:

1. Strong exposure to research methodology, ethics, and norms
2. Solid comprehension of statistics and statistical measures, tests and appropriate interpretation
3. Clear style for reviewing the literature
4. Access to academic scholary databases and libraries 
5. Critical understanding and assessement of literature
6. Ability to narrow down on a resaerch topic that is not too wide and not too narrow. 
7. Ability to classify and organize readings on the go

The approaches I suggest to fulfil the above:

1. Following a strong reaseach methodology course with an experiences professor. Unfortunately, I have seen so many methodology courses that fit anywhere but in a methodological paradigm. Students coming from different backgrounds into the Phd program, needs refined methodological courses that help them find their way into the academic research areana and fix their feets. I had to read a lot on my own to cover this gap in my studies. Yet, I can not claim that I mastered the methodology I should follow.
   
   
2. Invest enough time to grasp all the required stastical concepts and know the ins and outs of the statistal package mostly used for that discsipline. It would save you tens of hours in modeling and debugging if you really know the tool you are using extremly well.
   
   
3. Work with an experienced researcher on the literature review part in order to improve your skills and learn the tricks that others are following. This would be a great step to get you on track with something that is easier to collect, classify, digest and then reproduce from your resaerch point of view. There are a lot of tools that would help succeed in doing a great literature review. One of my supervisor advised me to get this book: "Fink, A. (1998). Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From Paper to the Internet. Sage Publications, Inc.". It is available on amazon but I have borrowed it from Concordia University library. There is another resource to hint on how to conduct your own review at this page:
   
   

   The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It

   
   
4. The last point I woudl like to mention in this area is the access to a rich collection of books and electronic resources. Your unversity library should have a lot of what you are looking for. Do not let books sitting on cold dark shelves. Go on and use those books. We are paying a lot for these collections and more than 80% of it goes by unnoticed for many years. In the golden age of libraries, we used to find books with torn pages. Now, I get a lot of books untouched. Really brand new. I would like to note that Concordia Library has one of the richest collections I have even seen in a Library especially for some disciplines that students rearely goes into. We are very lucky in Montreal, if the book is not available in Concordia, McGill is there, HEC or even UQAM. A wealth of knowlege waiting for someone to dig and mine into its pages.

In addition to that, one needs real tools to get the job done. I will not talk about these tools in details now. I would just list them:

• Fink's book
  
• Statistical Packages (Matlab in my case)
  
• Firefox and Zotero (For bibliographical referncing). I prefer Zotero over RefWorks or EndNotes.
• mediaWiki (Really? Are you sure? Yes absolutely)
  

TRAC: a better future for TA and RA in Concordia University

Two years ago, the idea started as a dream. Few friends were looking forward toward building a new bargaining entity for Concordians. It was an opportunity and a threat at the same time. A lot of research and teaching assistants regarded the act as a new problematic spot to be added to our box of conflicts with the administration. Everybody was afraid of the revolutionary policy of Lajeunesse in Concordia and students expected the worse.

Very few accepted to live up to the challenge and we started collecting the individual signatures to support the demand in front of the Quebec Labor Board. It was a really tough quest and the credibility of the team was not very high. We needed to tackle a lot of traps and overcome plenty of obstacles to reach department by department. A lot of students had personal conflicts with the organizers and a lot of students hate unions and unionization for the very simple fact that they came from countries where unions build a negative impression.

Although I agree with the opposers' point of view, I preferred to continue supporting the union because I believe that anything can be good or bad depending on how it is managed. TRAC faced Murphy's law consequences and what we expected to go wrong, did go wrong. At first, the university resistance lead to cutting off a good percentage of research contracts that were converted into bursaries. Students' opposition was too strong to stop the plan. Friction with the left wing affected the plan as well because the historical performance of left wingers (who jumped to the right side at the expense of the left) destroyed their credibility.

However, we continued to build the confidence with major groups of people who trusted some individuals working on the project, and, consequently, eventually, gradually we realized the dream.

Visit: http://www.trac-union.ca

GSA Elections voided

Fortunately or unfortunately, the university did not accept the elections because of too many violations. I expected that but I am not sure whether this is positive or negative.

Selfishly enough, we would be happy to get this because we can prove ourselves next time.

However, on the long run, this means that students are no longer independent in their decision and this means that we are always asking for the mercy of someone who is lazy enough to select good people to make good decisions.

GSA Elections gone

It is over now and waiting for results.
Meanwhile, I have to finish my final due today

Another day passed

Long hours and long days but finally the joy comes from the fact that people appreciate the good actions and judge correctly the bad ones.

The elections is going and three teams are doing their best to gather the maximum support. One team, however, is not accepting the fact that we are in Canada now. There is a huge cultural gap between what things should be and how things are done.

Some of the best examples on this, are the comments I am getting on this blog from one of the candidates and an ex-executive. Another executive was reported to the police also for his misbehavior and the violation of human rights and the distribution of hate speech.

After all, this is an election and will go like other elections. I have been through several ones and I still have positive feelings for our campaign. We are running by the rules and trying to win the trust of people before their votes. We could play a dirty game also and still win votes. However, this defeat the purpose the students activities are there for.

Tomorrow is the last day and counting would start after 8:00 pm. Let us see where the people trust is. Basically, if we win we will continue our life as regular. Otherwise, we would congratulate the winner and go back to our struggle for a better political environment in Concordia.

Another disaster might happen :) and the council might be filled with empty chairs that is used from time to time by some people getting cheques and accusing others of selfishness and cheap objectives.

Winning for us is a mandate that we are liable and accountable for. Winning was a game for others and sometimes an opportunity to insult the ones who supported them and basically showed them the way.

However, people are of two metallic bases. While fire create value out of noble metals, the value of low metals got deteriorated with the first test.


Let us wait till tomorrow and Good luck for United

First day of GSA Elections

It starts finally :)

Though we are trying our best to keep a fair game, one of the competing team is about to explode to win right away.

The problem is not related to the project or the ideology of each team, on the other hand, the problem is rooted in the racial mentality of some people who are distributing hate emails around Concordia to ask people to vote for them and not for others.

It seems that they lost the campaign effect and the project synergy and now trying their last resource to raise hate speech and play on the racial profiling line. This was reported to all authorities hoping for a logical intervention. I do not think the dean of students would like to intervene because his best wish is to see a (Yes Sirrr) team there.

As for United team, we are enjoying our campaign and having a lot of fun meeting new people we would not meet them otherwise.

Some of the observations that strike the voters:
* Violation of several by-laws
* Creation of a hate environment instead of making the elections a democratic exercise
* Closing gaps between some respectful parties and widening the trouble hole with other hard minded teenagers.

All in all, I feel that all these games reflect a sign of chock and loss with one of the team and I am sure this uncontrollable reaction is due to their lost nerves.

GOOD LUCK for United

Concordia Graduate Students Association (GSA) Elections

If one follows the trends in students' life, she/he would be amazed to see the extreme shocks in the dynamics of one-to-one relations.

Now, people are fighting and sacrificing extremely expensive time to support their slates at the undergraduate levels. I admired this spirit since I was in my late teens at my undergraduate college in Lebanon. I joined Concordia as a graduate students and I missed all the beauties of this life.

I tried to delve into the electoral activities at the graduate level but it was a total disappointment because mature students are trying to imitate the mistakes of young teens instead of bringing some of their experience to the table.

For the first year, I really enjoyed working with a Leftist group who brought the GSA above the sea level and people start to think about this association and its services.

Some students vote for their ideology, political stand, race, color, language or religion only without thinking about competencies of candidates. As a result, the most incompetent team arrived and got over the council. They start fighting within each other directly. The president accuses the VP finance and the VP advocacy accuses the president. VP external accuses everybody and the council members selected one adored VP and accused everyone else.

This is another aspect of civilization clash in a civilized world without civilized manners.

The executives were soon accused of corruption and illegal usage of money and were requested to leave or cooperate. None of this work because of not enough evidence and because both teams are to be blamed and both are of course playing on one side to get rid of something on the other side.

The council members formed a weird collection of some leftists, right wing, arrivists, and left-jumping-to-the-right guys. The mix has some dynamics but their chemistry could not mix with the chemistry of the executive members at all.

I can not blame any of the two parties for their attitude against each other but I surely blame them not to call for an early election to re-start from the beginning instead of fighting each other and get kicked out from the office because the dean of students does not want to babysit them.

What is even worse, the same people who got drifted out last year would like to come back to GSA to abuse the resources again!!!
In here, I do not mean one side only because people from both sides are running again and both of them had the chance to abuse and (have done it maybe) but both of them could not prove their competence to fix such a position.

Whom you are going vote for?
Of course, you vote for United :)

Intrapreneurship in Hi-Tech Firms

Several hi-tech companies shifted to decentralized structure in order to create entrepreneurship profit centers within its premises to motivate employees to innovate. These companies believe in the importance of entrepreneurial learning curve in order to revive its strategic business units and improve the competencies of the firm in the cutthroat knowledge-based industry. This will also improve the firm’s value-added chain and help the firm respond faster to macro environmental changes.

Change Agents

Companies intrapreneurial programs relies heavily on change agent programs that host talented employees who have a different vision and can propose short-term projects that enhance the core competencies of the company. Strategic business units that provide training and initial investments for these projects are highly rewarded by the headquarters. In addition, the change agent programs allow the intrapreneurs to acquire business skills and to visit successful entrepreneurship companies such as Microsoft, Intel and Silicon Graphics.

Intrapreneurship is not just fashionable but a major component of corporate life and major ingredients of growth. Yahoo Flicker represents a major example of the importance of intrapreneurship in established companies. Having lost the competition with Google, Yahoo gained some of its market share by reshaping its business logic according to the suggestion of a fellow employee who was acquired with the Flicker project. This idea would be applied now to the whole Yahoo directory and it is expected that its revenues from the web directory service to improve by 35% at least in the coming year (According to Business 2.0-December 2005).

Large organizations corporate culture does not welcome entrepreneurial spirits usually unless it introduces disciplined reporting and enhanced communication means. Most large firms are afraid of allowing innovations within the employees’ body because the risk of the firm would increase because of the entrepreneurship atmosphere and this might deteriorate the profitability and share price. In addition, a manager would loose his promotion chances if he proposed a project and the project fails. In addition, entrepreneurial thrust can destroy loyalty within the firm because the manager believing in his project would try to push for his project instead of applying the firm strategy.

However, companies still recognize the importance of intrapreneurial spirits and several large companies such as Google, IBM, and Yahoo still rewards successful entrepreneurs within their staff. Other companies face difficulties identifying successful projects or motivating talented employees and they loose high level of chances to compete in the modern global economy.