Time To Write Another Blog

I enjoy sitting down and writing something that interests me. I hope you enjoy it as well, dear reader, when I post it on my website.

I really do not have an approach to try and convince you to accept my point of view. I just do not write all kinds of articles on one subject just so that you will understand my point of view and go along with me. No, what I do these days is take a look at things that are in the news that gain my attention or something that I have found out. Then, I sit down and write something about it.

Clearly, I write a lot about personal issues, usually at the beginning of most Blogs. As you may know, I do this not only for myself but for my readers as well to try and give people ideas that might be helpful to them. I just talk about some things that are interesting to me which you might find of value as well. While I do not ask for your “approval,” I hope that you appreciate my position and let me give you a position on what you might think about doing if something similar has an impact on you.

This year has been a very interesting to me. It really is the first year when I have figured out how old I really am. I never really thought about “age” before. For some reason, this has now happened. I guess I always had “work” to carry on whether I was working for an employer, for myself with clients or for the online newspaper. Even after I recovered from my illness, I was still carrying on a “job” to bring myself back to normal.

However, things have changed. I look at the world in a completely different way now. In fact, what has surprised me quite a bit is that I now appreciate that all the big changes that are supposedly taking place now really are not all that different from how I used to live as a child so many years ago. Oh sure, as an example, we might be able to get delivered goods for a fee to our house from a supermarket soon. However, when I was younger, I know that quite often my family bought groceries from one of our neighbourhood stores and they delivered it to us later in the day at no charge.

I will probably talk more about this subject later on, dear reader. I just wanted to tell you now how different, and yet the same, so many things seem to be to me at this point in my life.

Now for some matters that I want to talk to you about.

HOORAY, IT IS NOW OVER

My problem was finally solved. It was not a problem that I caused but I one that I suffered for quite a bit of time with a lot of aggravation.

As I am sure you know if you do this kind of work, and I am not going into great details about it, a number of online survey websites joined together into one big organization recently. All of the people who belonged to the individual websites became part of the large one. Nothing really wrong with that because it seemed to make a good idea. That is, until it completely did not seem to come together properly for me at all. I must admit that I do not know how many other people suffered as I did but I suspect that there were many others who did.

The restructuring of the websites that I belonged to was a rather simple matter it seemed. All these websites were to become part of one major one. One would still have the same kind of surveys that one liked to work on and even seemed to receive a better points system so that one could earn reward points more easily. Regretfully, for several reasons, that did not happen to me.

I had nothing more than one mess after another for about two weeks. I just did not seem to be able to transfer points from the closing websites to the new one. This was rather serious because I was working on one project on one of the websites that took a month from start to finish and would award me a very large prize after it was finally completed.

As I said, I have no idea if other users of the websites had problems similar to mine or not. My problems, which I did not think were all that severe, just did not seem to be able to be cured. Day after day I talked to the technical people at the website owner and tried to resolve all the issues. However we just seemed to be unsuccessful in doing so.

The good news which finally took place is that the problems were mostly solved and solved well. I received the credits for my points and was able to move forward in a better mood. The reason for it was that the people I was working with, especially one of them, spent so much time and effort to help me out it was unbelievable. We actually communicated with each other fairly quickly rather than the way systems seem to work i.e. send a comment and wait for a reply in a day or two. We tried to figure what the problem was and look at different ways to solve it.

Unfortunately, not everything could be corrected that quickly it seemed. One of my issues that dealt with the month-long project somehow had problems that could not be resolved in the short term. I just could not get entrance to the relevant webpage so that I could complete my month-long project. It meant a pretty big loss, something that did not make me all that happy.

Then something different seemed to happen that made me feel pretty good. I received a note from the Survey Support Team department who admitted in all honesty that there was a flaw that could not be fixed short-term. They expected however to be able to do so later on.

Here though is what they said that made me quite happy when I read it. They expected that I had completed most or even all of the work I was supposed to have done, which was true, and they said that my work would be credited to my account! To be direct about it, I was thrilled to see that because it was given to me without me asking for it.

As I am certain that you probably know if you have done this kind of work online, the prize is not an enormous one. But that does not matter to me. It is just fun to collect an award after completing a number of online surveys for a website. It is my “new job” now that I have retired.

I would be very happy, dear reader, to let you know who this new survey company is if you want to join them. Just write to me and I will give you the information. Now please excuse me. I have another survey to finish.

UAW HELPS CAW

I see that Unifor, the old Canadian Auto Workers, is on good terms these days with the American United Auto Workers. Both organizations are fighting against General Motors who wants to cut staff in plants across North America. As you know, in Canada, it means closing down the GM plant in Oshawa. Here is the beginning of a news story that I saw recently that explains the situation:

“UAW joins Canada autoworkers' call to boycott GM cars made in Mexico

The UAW is joining Canada's autoworkers' union, Unifor, to apply pressure on General Motors to keep five plants in North America running.

The UAW is calling for consumers to buy GM cars only if they are assembled in the United States and Canada.” (Jamie L. LaReau, Detroit Free Press, February1, 2019) 

Here is something else that you might find interesting in this story:

“The UAW noted that it supports purchases of GM cars assembled in Canada, but not in Mexico, China and Poland.”

Accordingly, it appears that the US and Canadian Unions are in good terms with each other to try to achieve their desired results. Here again is something involving Unifor that is quite serious:

“Unifor has held rallies, workers have walked off the job in protest and its president has met with GM leaders to offer suggestions to keep the Oshawa plant running.

GM CEO Mary Barra has held firm that the plant will close. In its latest effort, Unifor has urged consumers to not buy GM cars that have a vehicle identification number starting in "3" because that car was built in Mexico.”

Here though is something that I have been wondering. You may be thinking something similar, for Canada anyway. Does Unifor really expect to be successful to keep this Oshawa plant open or is there something else that is going on behind closed doors? I have to admit that I wondered about that. Take a look at this story to see what I mean:

“...the head of Unifor has for more than two months been expressing a deep frustration about how General Motors has broken one promise too many with its plan to close its Oshawa Assembly Plant.” (Canadian Press, February 11, 2019) 

But, take a look at the title to the story:

“Unifor's high-profile campaign against GM is a also a fight for its future”

Could it mean that Unifor never really expected to be successful in this battle but is trying to make sure that something like this never happens again to other locations in Canada not only in the automobile industry but in other industries in which it has union workers:

“It’s really understandable why Unifor is all-in on this one,” said Steven Tufts, an associate professor at York University who studies labour.

“For Unifor as a union, to make them more relevant, even to members outside of the auto sector, they have to show they can fight.”

Here is more:

“The campaign also raises questions about priorities and focus at the union itself. Autoworkers only make up about 13 per cent of the membership...

“It’s really about them fighting for the definition of what is the union based upon, and where is it going in the future,” said Tufts.”

It should be very interesting to see what happens. GM is taking a very tough position so far not to knuckle under to Unifor. Or so it seems anyway. Let us see what happens as the dispute between the organizations will probably increase in the next little while. Let us see if some agreement is signed down the road and what it will do.