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Defending the Rights of Unemployed Workers Valiant Struggle of Unemployed Workers' Defence Organizations Must Be Supported By All! Clearly, when the government introduced the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) in early April, it provided the unemployed with emergency funds they required to survive the pandemic, even though it took heroic and grueling efforts by these organizations' activists for workers to actually be provided those benefits. It is also clear that through the introduction of the CERB, a temporary program, the government has avoided having to restructure the employment insurance regime to meet the demands of activists that it be turned into a social program allowing for everyone unemployed to be supported and to live decently. The arbitrariness of the regime remains, such that only around 40 per cent of unemployed workers receive benefits. That arbitrariness now threatens to cause further chaos in the lives of hundreds of thousands of unemployed, particularly seasonal workers, as containment and de-containment measures imposed on their economic sectors by the government leaves it uncertain whether they will be able to return to their jobs. Since the allocation of benefits is based on the number of hours worked, what will happen to the unemployed unable to return to work because their sector is under total or partial lockdown? Will the CERB be maintained long enough to support them?
All Out to Firmly Support Unemployed Workers' Defence Organizations!
This article was published in   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
Workers' Forum
firmly supports the current fight of the unemployed workers' defence
organizations and the unions backing them to get the federal government
to immediately drastically lower the eligibility requirements for
employment insurance, and increase the duration of benefits, as well as the actual
amounts the unemployed
receive. This is urgently needed so that unemployed workers can face
the uncertainty that the COVID-19 pandemic is creating about the
possibility for them to return to their jobs, especially in regions
where seasonal work is by far the main work available.
The
truth of the matter is that workers who find themselves unemployed must
be protected, and that protection is a right. It is not the pandemic
that created the need for protection, but the pandemic is worsening
the problem. In that vein, the demand of the defence organizations of
the unemployed to immediately lower eligibility requirements
so that everyone is eligible and receives benefits that last long
enough to get them through the crisis is important and must be
supported by everyone. The federal government cannot continue to refuse to
renew the EI regime and it cannot maintain the arbitrariness of the
regime in the name of the urgency of the crisis. Opening up the regime
to the
unemployed is what will protect them during the crisis.