Rant: Women's work

People's equanimity is beginning to fray, including mine. But even when the world buzzed along as usual, I'd have taken notice of two recent events.

1. Patti Smith ignored for writing much of a classic rock song

My friend Beth, who knows I am a Patti Smith fan, sent a link to an article by Ed Simon, "A Close Reading of 'Because the Night'". I settled in expecting to read his analysis of the 40-year-old Patti-Bruce Springsteen collaboration and found that Simon said that Patti only sang a song Bruce gave her, which resulted in her only top 40 radio hit.

He goes on about the Bruceness of the lyrics, but Springsteen wrote only the chorus (and the music). In fact, Smith was given a cassette of the unfinished song by Bruce's producer Jimmy Iovine, and after ignoring it for some time, wrote the verses in one memorable evening.

Smith''s recollection of the writing the lyrics while anxiously waiting for her boyfriend (Fred Smith, who became her husband) to call, is here (and it is not an obscure story.) What is especially galling is that her spirit of collaboration, and her gratitude to Springsteen and her band shines forth from her 2018 account published in Billboard, on the song's 40th anniversary—and Simon is oblivious.

"One more case", I fumed to my friend, "of a woman receiving no credit for her work while the man is lauded."

Okay, one rock star or another, you might think, but when even as celebrated a writer and artist as Smith is treated this way... so help me.


2. Thirty-one thousand bank employees win a landmark case

After a decade, a group of employees at one of Canada's banks, CIBC, (we only have five in the country, so they are big) won a class-action suit for unpaid overtime.

I have long railed against this abuse, which typically hits those in clerical or service roles (so, disproportionally women); when I worked in corporate life I saw it often. Financial services and tech jobs are mostly non-union jobs, ripe for this kind of exploitation. The managers who are responsible absolutely knew the labour laws they were violating.

I also knew HR executives who fought this abuse. One of my former colleagues at a global financial services institution says her obliteration of this practice was the prime achievement of her career. She had to fight like a samurai, manager by manager, to get them to stop.

This is one day I am thrilled to live to see. There may be an appeal, and notice that the suit took a decade for a verdict, but this slimy practice has been outed. The ruling will reverberate through the business world.