February
5, 2009 - No. 27
The Harper/Ignatieff Budget
and
the Crisis of Unemployment
• The Harper/Ignatieff Budget and the
Crisis of Unemployment
• Nothing for Construction Workers
in Harper/Ignatieff Budget
- Jim Nugent
• More Layoffs for Workers in Nova
Scotia's Annapolis Valley: More Indifference from the State and the
Monopolies
- Ena Boutilier
The Harper/Ignatieff Budget and
the Crisis of Unemployment
The Harper/Ignatieff budget touts the "stimulus
package" as having the potential to create 189,000 jobs over 2009 and
2010. Many outside Parliament using the Finance Department's own
formula put the number much lower at 120,000. (Source: Globe
and Mail) Statistics Canada reports that at the
end of last December, 1,210,100 workers were officially registered as
unemployed. This number is 13.5 per cent greater than at the conclusion
of 2007 representing an increase of 143,800 officially unemployed
workers. Statscan writes that pressure towards unemployment intensified
during the second half of 2008
and into the new year. The "stimulus package" will make no significant
impact on the huge unemployed labour market and the socialized economy
in crisis.
Owners of monopoly capital generally only want
government assistance to help their particular business or sector. They
do not want the government to renew the socialized economy in a
comprehensive way that would potentially create forces that could
compete with private monopolies or restrict their
activities. Their capital-centred outlook dictates that they want
bailouts for themselves and a "stimulus package" in areas such as
infrastructure where private construction monopolies can profit from
building projects that all owners of capital can later use without
those projects becoming competitors with their particular
business or sector. This greatly limits what any government can do.
Public Enterprise
For example, the government is not allowed to
begin a public enterprise in iron ore, steel and machine-building from
raw material to finished products including the wholesale sector, where
such production from top to bottom has guaranteed sales and stability.
In such a public enterprise,
the added-value would be divided between the claims of workers and
governments with a suitable amount retained within the various public
enterprises for reinvestment and expansion if needed. Such a public
enterprise would have an enormous positive impact on the economic
crisis and unemployed labour market.
But owners of capital do not want government
intervention that does not result in private profit of enterprise,
interest and rent for themselves. They would rather wait out the crisis
with self-serving pay-the-rich schemes while praying for an upswing in
the business cycle. Further, they do not want any
serious reduction in the unemployed labour market as that would shift
power towards the working class to better organize and fight to improve
its claims, guarantee the rights of all and position itself politically
to demand a say and power over the direction of the economy.
Labour Market
 Capital-centred political economy views a large
unemployed labour market as a positive feature of capitalism.
Unemployed workers compete with one another for available work, which
weakens their claim to the added-value they produce and weakens their
existence as a coherent
class of and for itself. According to the outlook of owners of capital,
workers in the unemployed labour market should not be "comfortable" in
their unemployment, and those with jobs should be "scared" of joining
the ranks of the unemployed. A perpetual atmosphere of insecurity is
"good" say owners of capital.
This insecurity is critical in having a pliant workforce that accepts
lower claims on the added-value it produces and is reluctant to call
for restrictions on monopoly right and demand a say in building a
self-reliant pro-social economy. Insecurity forces workers to accept
jobs no matter what the conditions or wages,
and if none is available or individual circumstances become tragic,
certain workers may sink into permanent unemployment as declassed
humans on the fringe of society or criminalized.
The Harper/Ignatieff budget does almost nothing to
alleviate the suffering and anxiety of workers who were recently laid
off or have been without work for some time. The retrogressive rules
for Employment Insurance were only slightly changed allowing an
additional five weeks of payments for certain
workers but all other discriminatory rules remain intact, which has
resulted in a low percentage of workers qualifying in the first place.
Of the 1.2 million workers currently in the unemployed labour market,
only 506,230 are collecting EI benefits.
Minister Finley: No
"Lucrative"
Unemployment
In the minds of owners of capital and their
representatives, only 506,230 collecting EI benefits out of 1.2 million
workers is how it should be. In an interview with Canwest News Service,
Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, "dismissed criticism
about the latest budget's treatment of the unemployed, saying the
federal Conservative government has no interest in making it
'lucrative' for jobless workers to stay home... Finley made clear the
government's priority is retraining people for the 'jobs of tomorrow'
[quoting a phrase from Michael Ignatieff] and not
paying them to stay home... Asked why she opposed raising benefits and
making it easier to qualify for EI, as demanded by some critics, Finley
said: '...We do not want to make it lucrative for them to stay home and
get paid for it, not when we still have significant skill shortages in
many parts of the country.'"
Owners of capital do not mind using public funds
to train workers so they can better serve private enterprise in the
future. But they do mind weakening the labour market. The labour market
is an unequal social relation, which owners of capital use to their
advantage to attack the claims of the working
class and keep it disorganized. The labour market is both a direct
attack on workers who are unemployed and a weapon to weaken the entire
working class. Any government that does not support the unemployed on
the labour market at a Canadian standard of living without equivocation
is a stooge of the owners
of capital and a bitter enemy of the working class.
 The
Harper/Ignatieff budget has neither the
intention of solving the economic crisis nor assisting unemployed
workers. Owners of capital do not want to weaken their labour market by
paying workers at a Canadian standard while unemployed. Owners of
capital do not want to know how to renew the
socialized economy in any way that interferes with their right to
private ownership of individual parts of the economy and to claim
profit of enterprise, interest or rent.
It is up to the organized efforts of the working
class to restrict owners of capital from blocking assistance to
unemployed workers, and to restrict owners of capital from blocking
governments in engaging in genuine economic renewal to confront the
crisis. Workers and their allies should denounce this
federal budget and redouble their efforts at organizing the working
class as a class of and for itself. Join the discussion of the way
forward. How does "the issue" of the labour market pose itself? Let's
discuss by building the Groups of Writers and Disseminators to extend
the influence, outlook and power of the working
class.
Nothing for Construction Workers
in Harper/Ignatieff Budget
- Jim Nugent* -
In December, construction was the leading sector
nationally for job losses with 44,000 fewer workers than in November
(seasonally adjusted). These job losses reflect rapidly declining
construction activity across the country, with a 0.3 percent decline in
October and a 1.2 percent decline in November. After several
years of growth in construction employment, construction workers from
both the residential sector and the industrial/commercial/institutional
(ICI) sector are now joining the lines of unemployed workers from
manufacturing, forestry and other industries.
Nothing in the budget which the Harper government
has introduced with the support of Ignatieff will turn around the trend
of rising unemployment in construction. The announced construction
related measures -- infrastructure programs, social housing expansion
and
home renovation tax credits -- are a smokescreen.
Harper wants to create an impression that the government is "doing
something" about unemployment, while handing over hundreds of billions
of dollars to the banks and monopolies.
The government's budget measures are not even in
scale with the size of the construction industry. There are 1.2 million
people employed in construction, producing $70 billion in projects
every year. Harper treats the industry like it was a couple of guys
with a pickup truck. Compare for example, the
budget's $7 billion infrastructure program to the $9 billion oil sands
budget cuts announced by Suncor last week. Big monopolies like Suncor
set the direction of the industry and call the shots, not the
government.
The political fraud of "doing something" for
workers is best seen in the infrastructure measures of the budget. $7
billion in 2009 and $6 billion in 2010 for building roads, sewers,
universities etc. was announced. But this is the average amount spent every
year on governmental and institutional
construction.
The Canadian Construction Association (the voice
of owners in the ICI sector) applauded the budget. Government and
institutional projects are profitable cash cows for the engineering and
construction monopolies. Harper has guaranteed that they can continue
milking the system throughout the recession. But workers
in the ICI sector face hiring halls that are filling up as industrial,
commercial, warehousing, oil and mining, milling, forestry and other
industries stall out, affecting both new construction and maintenance
projects.
Budget measures affecting the residential
construction sector have a similar character. The big item here is
supposed to be the $1.5 billion for social housing. This is dwarfed by
both the size of the residential construction sector ($45.5 billion a
year) and by the need for social housing. Toronto Community
Housing (TCH) officials say that $1.5 billion is required just to get
TCH housing up to standard. The Kelowna Accord called for $5 billion in
First Nations housing and related services.
New housing starts for all types of housing fell
by 19 percent in November, reflecting the collapse of prices and sales
for homes. In the last 6 months, the average price of an existing home
in Canada fell by 11 percent, matching the drop in 1990 on the eve of
the last recession. Resale of existing homes
from November '08 to November '09 showed a 24 percent drop across the
country, with a 62 percent drop in BC and a 44 percent drop in Ontario.
The media expresses the "optimism" that this is a decline from a high
level of production of housing in recent years. But activity is none
the less declining and this means
sharply rising unemployment for residential construction workers in the
coming months.
This decline reflects the fact that hundreds of
thousands of workers and working people are being shut out of the
housing market by unemployment and falling incomes. Posturing of the
Harper government about social housing and other budget tinkering will
not change this reality.
The third component of Harper's construction
industry budget "fix up" is the tax rebate on home renovations. Even
the "two men and a truck" crews regard this measure with contempt. As
one small contractor told me, "It has a $10,000 limit. That is two days
work for two men to build half a deck.
$10,000 is nothing. An average renovation project takes nearly
$100,000."
More Layoffs for Workers in
Nova Scotia's
Annapolis Valley
More Indifference from the Stateand the Monopolies
- Ena Boutilier -
 On January 22,
2009, Kentville's ACA Co-operative
announced massive job losses at its New Minas poultry processing plant,
as well
as the permanent closure of its Eastern Protein Foods plant. The cuts
affect more than 300 workers, with still further layoffs forecast for
the near future. These layoffs compound the devastation
wreaked upon the Annapolis Valley's economy and its constituent
communities, who are still reeling from the closure of Maple Leaf
foods' Canard processing plant in January of 2007, which likewise ended
the jobs of over three hundred workers.
In the face of this economic aggression, both
federal and provincial politicians appear not only impotent, but
complicit. Mark Parent, Kings-North MLA and Nova Scotia's Minister of
Labour and Workforce Development, mused that "this is an extremely
trying time for the people at ACA and Eastern
Protein and we are there to ensure that they receive any outstanding
salaries, vacation pay and severance and to help them find other jobs."
Last fall, the provincial government was also there to ensure that ACA
Co-operative was approved for a $3.5 million working capital loan,
only to be followed up by massive
lay-offs and likely by the further dislocation of members of the
cooperative's surrounding community.
Parent also announced that Peter MacKay -- the MP
responsible for Kings-Hants, Minister of the Atlantic Canada
Opportunities Agency (ACOA) and the so-called
Minister of National Defence -- has allocated $1 billion for
agriculture,
forestry and fisheries in Atlantic Canada, and the former incredulously
claimed that "it couldn't have come at
a better time." Such callous insensitivity is not only a belated form
of cold comfort to the workers who have already lost their jobs, but is
also an instance of a cruel irony in which jobs have been allowed to be
eliminated on the heels of the latest anti-worker Federal Budget which
promised job creation and other
economic "stimuli." The latest round of lay-offs in the Annapolis
Valley are one among many sobering illustrations of the fact that
Stephen Harper's economic "stimulus" plan is hollow indeed, and that
the Canadian ruling class at all levels have no solution to the
wrecking of the Canadian socialized economy, and
in fact have a vested interested in accelerating it. As is shown by the
combination of the province's $3.5 million dollar gift to ACA and the
latest anti-worker Federal Budget, the working people of the Annapolis
Valley have been forced to pay tribute to the financial oligarchy at
the federal and provincial levels, while
that cabal of parasites has calculated that these workers, their labour
and their communities are expendable in the drive of the food
monopolies to "consolidate" their operations and render them more
"efficient." In this case, the "efficiency" of ACA's operations is
being achieved through partnership with Maple Lodge
Farms, a major poultry processing monopoly based in Brampton, Ontario
that
is set to possibly assume a controlling interest in the former company.
(For more on this drive for "efficiency" on the part of the food
monopolies, see Shunpiking, Vol. 4, No. 4,
May/June 2007: www.shunpiking.com).
While all of this economic and political
manoevering is going on, the local bourgeoisie of the Annapolis Valley
have assembled a "worker support team" whose supposed purpose is to
"assess" the skills of workers and provide "re-training." In the
context of the 21st century neoliberal labour market,
such euphemistic language and gestures are geared toward facilitating
the transition of long-time plant employees into a labour market in
which many of them will be forced into migrant labour, and into
increasingly lower paying and even less secure work.
At the same time, ACA Chairman and CEO Ian
Blenkharn is now announcing the prospect of re-employing some of the
laid off union workers in the company's New Minas operation. "Some of
the lost wages will come back," said Blenkharn. "That's our medium to
long-term goal." Blenkharn's capital-centered outlook assumes that
wages will "come back" as if wages fall
out of thin air rather than from the labour of those that he has
decided to lay off and/or hire back. Moreover, the fact that only
"some" of the wages are expected to "come back" can be taken as a tacit
admission that ACA intends to use the spectre
of unemployment and poverty as a weapon with which to extract
concessions from workers. However, if the monopolies and their state
have no solutions to the current crisis, why should workers accept any
concessions at all? This question becomes all the more acute in the
wake of Blenkharn's pronouncement that
another 60 job losses may be on the way, and in light of the obvious
fact that neither ACA nor any level of government is either prepared or
motivated to recognize the right of workers to a guaranteed Canadian
standard of living. There is no better example of such a worldview on
the part of the ruling class than
Blenkharn's feigned optimism regarding the possibility of further job
losses. Regarding the possible lay-offs, Blenkharn blithely says that
"the good news is that maybe we don't have to." In other words: accept
concessions now, and we might consider the possibility of not laying
you off.
How generous of the bleeding hearts (and bloated
pockets) of the bosses of the ACA! The bosses are holding the sword of
Damocles over the head of the workers of the Annapolis Valley, and have
doubtless set the stage to blame any further aggression on the unions.
They intend to divide workers
on the basis of union and non-union membership, all to cover up the
fact that the crisis currently facing the working class -- in the
Annapolis Valley in particular, and throughout Canada in general -- is
not of the workers' making. In response to this unrestrained offensive
on the part of the bourgeoisie, the Canadian
working class and its fighting members in the Annapolis Valley must
continue to proclaim their right to a guaranteed Canadian standard of
living, and assert that they are the centre of production in the
socialized economy and not mere "costs of production."
No Concessions without
Solutions! No to Monopoly Right and Impunity!
Read The
Marxist-Leninist
Daily
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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