Joy's of a monopoly, company has the upper hand, as the workers are deemed essential by law, so their strike action is pretty limited but still seems doable to cause some disruption to life labs operation, most likely working to rule, doing nothing beyond what is required by the old contract, working to rule can be pretty effective as most union workplaces people still do more than they are actually required to do to keep things running smootly.

When I worked for an airline in the US, airline employees are covered by the railway labor act which makes it near impossibe to strike, so what airlines will do is let the contract expire as by law the old contract remains in effect until a new one is signed, draw out negotiations for 3-5 years, then settle for a few % increase in pay, a signing bonus, but the 3-5 years at the old pay rates is financially benefifical to the airlines, but nothing the union can do, airline employees can't strike until federal mediator declares a 30 day cooling off period, and only after that point, can airline unions legally strike, but it takes years before the federal mediators will do that.

Even if federal mediator declares the cooling off and employees choose to strike, the US President has the authority to order them back to work, which happens most of the time when airline work groups vote to strike, although Bill Clinton let the Northwest Airlines pilots strike in 1998, but in 1998 Clinton didn't allow American Airlines pilots to strike, and I GW Bush ordered some airline back to work, don't think Trump had any airline woes in his term, and I can't remember if Obama did.

But working to rule can bring an airline almost to it's knees, because working to rule means not working over-time, not covering open shifts etc, and most airlines rely on work groups doing OT and picking up shifts to operate smoothly.

US Labor at the moment is at a breaking point, and I would not be surprised to see more unions strike, and more places go union potentially, labor is getting pretty fed up with low wages and reduced quality of life with high inflation.

10,000 workers at John Deere in US on strike.

1,400 strikers at Kellogg went on strike over 7 day work weeks and a 2 tier pension system (one of those where old school gets a nice cushy pension, but younger generation gets crap.)

That is just 2, other unions are planning strikes and walk outs as well.

In California and Hawaii, Kaiser (major healthcare provider) may have upwards of 52,000 employees including nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists, part of the issue is Kaiser wants to have a 2 tier payscale for anyone hired in 2022 and beyond which will result in significant decrease in pay for anyone hired 2022 onward.

Hollywood averted a strike at the last minute, but some 60,000 in TV and movie production had planned to strike.

pilots from American Airlines are doing informational picketing at airports, they are not at this time permitted to strike.

And non-union workers are pulling their labor from employers not offering pay and salaries labor wants.


The theme here is often reduction in pay and benefits, all the while the costs of housing, food etc climb, I am not math whiz, but if everything else is going up in price, wages going down means more difficult life for workers.

https://www.kcra.com/article/us-hasn...ades/37980657#



Its likely not hugely better in Canada, lots of people on the Canadian reddit groups about not getting raises, grocery bills up significantly, so workers here seem to have anger brewing as well.


New inflation numbers out today, still hitting highs not seen in nearly 2 decades, and no sign of slowing down, we have the same food budget every month as our income doesn't go up with inflation, and every month we are bringing home less and less food, even flyer shopping isn't netting great savings.

Things not looking so rosey these days...

Is bone density a thing?

Definitely. No brain at all, bones.

Definitely, and a big indicator in some forms of cancer and also in osteoporosis.

It certainly is. As you age you lose bone density, some people a lot more than others, especially females. This causes osteoporosis, which means bones can break extremely easily. As you age a broken hip, or in my mum’s case a broken femur, can easily lead to death.

Life Labs and the union couldn't reach an agreement and talks have collapsed.

More than 1,500 workers at LifeLabs will begin taking job action at 7 p.m. PT on Friday, after talks over the last three days collapsed. The strike will begin with a refusal to work overtime, effective Saturday.

They are not allowed to outright strike so appears they will doing work to rule, so expect possible delays at the lab collection points, and double check their website as closures may occur.

I can say first time I went to Canadian Tire, it wasn't what I expected. I expected an auto parts store, not an auto parts/mini home depot/mini sporting goods/garden/wal-mart/whatever they are trying to be today store.

The smell though, more then 20-30 minutes in one, I get a headache, must be the tires but I dunno Canadian stores have the most consistent weird smell of any retail store I have been in.

That Canadian Tire looks way bigger than any I have been in as well.



I miss having a dishwasher so much, I started watching videos about dishwashers.

I've lived in houses and apartments that never had dishwashers. We have one in our home that the former owner installed brand new when she put the house up for sale. The paperwork is still in the dishwasher. We've not used it once in the 8 years we have lived here.

Since our daughter went to uni we rarely use a dishwasher. A year ago we bought a new one, simply because we were redoing the kitchen and I wanted matching appliances. The only time I have used it was Christmas Day,

The big advantage of a dishwasher is the dirty dishes are out of the way - and out of sight - instead of clogging up the sink and draining rack.

I actually quite like (hand) washing up but not drying or putting away. There's a certain comfort in having your hands in warm soapy water and a satisfaction in getting stuff clean.

But unless everyone in the household signs up to keeping the sink and draining rack free, a dishwasher at least keeps it out of the way.

No advantage if you wash them and don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink. It would take us a week to fill the dishwasher. For 2 people, unless you use an awful lot of dishes, it’s not worth using a DW IMO.

I wanted to order some cheap t-shirts from Giant Tiger.
Yesterday I tried but in-store pickup was the only option. None were available for home delivery.
Since it was a new flyer week starting today, I thought I'd have another go. Sure enough, home delivery was an option where it failed yesterday and I had a few in the cart, delivery charges showing up in the total cost.

I logged in and my cart emptied.
That's never happened on any site before.

So I began the process of putting the original t-shirts back in the cart. Guess what. Home delivery not available on any of them.

I signed back out but I couldn't get back to a completed cart in my history. So I had to put them all back in again with home delivery back as an option.

I completed my order, without signing in and using a different email address - from other experience sites have recognised the email address and insisted on signing in and no way was I doing all that yet again.

So order completed, signed out, while signed in I couldn't even get anything in the cart.

There are only 2 of us now, and we have a full size dishwasher which gets turned on every 4 or 5 days. There's space for 11 large dinner plates, 12 salad plates or 2 casseroles on the bottom rack, plus bowls, small plates and glasses and cups on the top rack.

We have a 12 piece service (plus 6 extra dinner plates) which was a wedding present over 50 years ago, and has been in daily use since. Only the dinner plates have lost some of their pattern, all the other pieces are still in excellent condition although most of them are used every day and put in the dishwasher.

We do rinse plates, casseroles and bowls well (without using washing up liquid) before putting them in there, especially the first ones in the cycle, as anything left on them hardens before the wash cycle begins and is still there when they are taken out. It is then all but impossible to remove as it is baked on.

We've never found pans wash well in the dishwasher, and anyway we only have 2 large and 1 small that we use frequently, so not really any point. We also don't have enough cutlery in everyday use to keep those in the dishwasher, so they also get washed by hand.

We managed for years without one, until some time in the 80s, it paid for itself in making life easier for all 3 of us back then, and its replacement is still worth the money!

I think if we'd had a smaller china service, we would have bought an apartment-sized dishwasher when we redid the kitchen about 12 or so years ago. In other words we would still have been using a dishwasher.

Dishwasher's are superior to handwashing in several ways.

1- Dishes are sanitized since the machine heats water to 145-150F and high pressure which cannot be done via handwashing.

2- The kitchen sink is filthy at a microbial level, and you might be surprised what you might find if you do a swab and cultured it from the sink.

3- A modern energy star dishwasher uses less than 3 gallons of water from start to finish, handwashing uses a lot more water. (based on our energy star rated machine in our last apartment, older non-energy star dishwashers use closer to 6-7 gallons)

For me its the lack of ability to sanitize dishes when washing by hand, which leads to more risk for food borne illness and less clean dishes, just because it looks clean doesn't make it so.

Typical kitchen sink is filthy even if you think your cleaning well, where a dishwasher gets sanitized every wash so stays clean.

If like our place the kitchen sink is one tub and tiny, you end up having to run the water non-stop which is about 1 gallon per minute, so 20 minute washing by hand is a heck of a lot more water used.

This guy did a bacterial culture of various things in his house, kitchen sink was the worst, I did this in high school, kicthen sink in the school cafeteria was the worst, even worse than the students toilets, I was surprised then, you don't even want to know what is on a sponge if your not using a clean fresh wash towel each time.

If you enjoy spending time washing by hand, your choice, it's just not my cup of tea.

You sound like a dishwasher salesman

I was curious about the germ thing, having seen similar claims before. Here's a list of germ laden items. 13 dirtiest
Computer keyboard, kitchen sponge, cellphone, bathroom sink, pillowcase, kitchen towels, toothbrush holder, kitchen sink, coffee machine, water bottle, cutting board, shoes, remote control.

Best to avoid bed, bathroom, kitchen, drinking, eating, phoning, going out and watching TV.
Perhaps the newspaper is safe and a good option after all.