Soundbites
The guys on the roof Roofing was, they joked, “second from the bottom on the job list … one up from shark bait.” I didn’t know this at my interview after high school, but I learned it quickly. Roofing is unusually hard work. Consider the cold tar tear‑off. Tear‑offs took place at night. The boss would tell us to show up with enough clothing to cover our entire bodies. No skin could be exposed to the tar dust or else the sun would melt it into your pores, sending you to the ER with your skin on fire and eyes swelled shut. When the morning crew rolled in, they’d yell at us to clear out before the sun crested the horizon. Hot tar wasn’t much better. A foreman told me a guy once
fell off the edge of a building into the 400-degree Fahrenheit kettle of liquid asphalt. I remember wicked headaches from fork‑lift exhaust on winter mornings when the shop doors were closed and we had to load insulation or shingles onto the trucks. And black nasal congestion after driving in summer‑hot vans packed with fiber board pieces and dried glue after a clean‑up. Despite the hardships, I learned to respect the roofing trade. A roof provides shelter. From tin shacks to magnificent castles, a roof serves as a universal symbol of provision. Most of my coworkers couldn’t see this. I didn’t either at the time. Fifteen years later, I still drive by a job site and pray for guys
on the roof. They endure cold, heat, toxins and low wages.... But they keep us dry at night. Their work affects every single one of us. — Sam Van Eman, excerpted from Faith in the Workplace newsletter
Unpaid endorsement If I were on death row, my last meal would be from Steak ‘n Shake. If I were to take President Obama and his family to dinner and the choice was up to me, it would be Steak ‘n Shake. If the pope was to ask where he could get a good plate of spaghetti in America, I would reply, “Your Holiness, have you tried the Chili Mac or the Chili 3-Ways?” A downstate Illinois boy loves the Steak ‘n Shake as a Puerto Rican loves rice and beans, an Egyptian loves falafel, a Brit loves bangers and mash, a Finn loves reindeer jerky, and a Canadian loves doughnuts. This doesn’t involve taste. It involves a deep-seated conviction that a food is right, has always been right, and always will be. — Film critic Roger Ebert in Life Itself: A Memoir
Hard-core rights Ten years ago companies viewed human rights as a values-based issue. Today, human rights is understood as a hard-core business issue. — Sustainalytics CEO Michael Jantzi in the Globe & Mail
Whose bootstraps? There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid 21
for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.... You built a factory and it turned into something terrific...? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along. — Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senate candidate from Massachusetts
“Free” enterprise State-controlled companies account for 80% of the market capitalisation of the Chinese stockmarket, more than 60% of Russia’s, and 35% of Brazil’s. They make up 19 of the world’s 100 biggest multinational companies and 28 of the top 100 among emerging markets. World-class state companies can be found in almost every industry. China Mobile serves 600 million customers. Saudi Arabia’s SABIC is one of the world’s most profitable chemical companies. Emirates airlines is growing at 20% a year. Thirteen of the world’s biggest oil companies are state-controlled. So is the world’s biggest natural-gas company, Gazprom. Stateowned companies will continue to thrive. The emerging markets that they prosper in are expected to grow at 5.5% a year compared with the rich world’s 1.6%, and the model is increasingly popular. — The Economist
The Marketplace January February 2012
