Author: Olivia

For context, I am not a teacher but work as support staff for a charter school. ​ “I’m unsure if anyone checks this box, but on the off chance that it is still in use, there is a strong need for these issues to be heard by the administration. From my own sentiments and from speaking to other teachers and staff, I can safely say that the employees of [School] are frustrated, depressed, and overall unhappy. The majority of staff are not being given the support, resources, or the respect that we need to continue working at this school. This isn’t something you can fix with free donuts in the kitchenette or a 30 minute staff meeting. It is time that grievances are aired and certain issues are dealt with properly instead of being swept under the rug. It is time to actually listen to the requests and feedback of…

I was a team leader at a food processing facility years ago. We made “gourmet” TV Tray Dinners. They were actually really good. Never frozen and all made from quality ingredients from scratch. Anyways, we had 3 shifts. 1st and 2nd was for production. 3rd was for a sanitation crew. The company was ran by a billionaire from NY and his rich buddies. They had no idea what they were doing besides the fact they had an excellent chef. We worked on average 60-80 hours a week. More times I can count I clocked in 100+ hours in one week. I did this for 3 1/2 years. We had no set time to leave and a lot of us had a one car family. I remember countless times my infant daughter and her mom waiting in the parking lot to pick me up 3-5 hours. The icing on the cake…

This is silly and seems trivial but I don’t want to give in. I started a new job as a fitness instructor at a gym, and I’m told I have to buy the cord to plug my phone into the speakers to play music for my class. Every instructor needs this when they’re teaching a class (and it seems so far most people have complied.) But I can’t get past why I need to buy this piece of equipment when it’s practically the foundation of every class?! I can’t teach a class without music. There is ONE cord currently that can be shared between any of the five fitness classrooms. While I don’t want to purchase this cord because I have no use for it in any other aspect of my life, I am nervous because I’ll be teaching on Saturdays and if that cord is missing or used by…

academic, i know, but important to know. “know your enemy”, and in this case the enemy is the field of macroeconomics and its dogmatic thinking. real economists, some of whom have radically rethought their professions following the 2008 economic crisis, have a paper out talking about wage repression – how the economic structure keeps wages down even in the face of increasing productivity. again, these aren't outsiders, these aren't upstarts – these are respected, established, tenured faculty looking askance at the field and revisiting their assumptions and finding them lacking. the paper: https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/Taylor-Memo-Wage-Repression-Caused-Macro-Inequality.pdf and a video from the authors going over the charts and findings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQtXU15NpTc it's important to know that this is real, that this isn't just made up, and it's big, structural, and catastrophic. unwinding it will be a long, hard slog. but knowing the forces of economics – which, by the way, are entirely constructed, even though…