Today marks Administrative Professionals Day in the United States and Canada. Formerly known as 'Secretaries Day', this "holiday" provides corporations (and their public sector collaborators) a much-needed break from abusing their employees, making them work unpaid overtime, cutting their benefits and pensions, and lobbying for tax cuts to take money out of government programs their staff might need, like health care or public education for their kids. Sometimes treating the underlings to an expense account write-off lunch or a cheap bouquet of flowers is a welcome change from beating them into submission.
Another "perk" that large employers give office workers is to send us on 'retreats'. This page recalls one retreat that a former employer "rewarded" me and my co-workers with: several hundred of us from similar institutions were herded into a hotel ballroom, fed some kind of diseased rubber chicken, and lectured to about the importance of "doing more with less" and "taking responsibility for own wellness". A few days later, as part of the Klein government's austerity program, many of us were served with "position abolishment" notices and escorted off campus by security guards.
Seriously, this page hasn't felt the love since. The only card I can be bothered to look at today is my union card.
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