[lbo-talk] Re:What should prospective Canadian Managers know...

[andie nachgeborenen]

One key thing having nothing to do with colleagiality
that Canadians should knwo is that American employees,
including managers, have almost no rights in the
workplace. I gather this is less true in Canada.
Unless you have a  civil service or union job (and
supervisors cannot be unionized in America), you are
probably an employee at will and can fe fired at any
time for any reason or none except the handful of
raesons that are legally prohibited, such as race or
sex discrimination. (and these are very hard to
prove.) Employee protectionsa re few and sparse and
poorly enforced. Peoples hould be aware of that. If
you can negotiate a contract, especially taht provides
for termination only for cause, you will be in better
shape. 

Despite all all the self-hating Americanism here, I
think that your managers will find that whatever our
cultural deficiencies, religiosity, smugnessm, and odd
conservative politics, Americans are one-on-one open,
friendly, generous, and interested people, concerned
to be fair and decnt to other individuals whom they
know. 

jks

--- Will Thurber <wthurber at taro.bus.BrockU.CA> wrote:
> Your insights have been great, more eloquent, but
> certainly similar to my 
> own thoughts.  But...
> There is a lingering anti-Americanism lurking not
> far beneath the surface 
> of most Canadians.  While using this material might
> be cathartic to me, it 
> will only feed into a pre-existing semi-hostile
> attitude structure making 
> it more difficult for them to understand the Yanks
> and thus work 
> co-operatively with American colleagues, just the
> opposite of my goal.
> 
> If I were describing American world views to an
> alien from another planet, 
> your suggestions would be perfect, but given that
> Canadians have an almost 
> smug sense of moral superiority - I fear that this
> would only be setting 
> them up for an ass-kicking when they are older.  Now
> I can solve this 
> problem myself, to tell the Canadian Students to get
> over 
> themselves.  However, now I fear that I might be
> encouraging them to sell 
> out their moral standards in the pursuit of material
> wealth, i.e. They can 
> be poor and feel morally superior or they can be
> rich and try to 
> accommodate their American peers.  Now  I
> acknowledge that I might be 
> over-analyzing this, and fretting about the ethics
> of sycophancy in a 
> business school might be a waste of my limited
> cognitive powers, but I 
> can't help myself.
> 
> ___________________________________
>
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