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As far as the pandemic is concerned, it has brought its share of extra work. We have all had an appalling overload of work. There were a lot of program changes, especially at the beginning. Everyone acted in good faith but it was a shaky start. Service Canada closed its doors for a while. Now they offer their services but in a very limited way so everybody is turning to us. We had a big increase in the number of people we had to assist. We had to answer questions from just about everybody. We had to learn the programs very quickly. Once the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) was in place, things calmed down. We provided a lot more one-on-one help than usual. That's not usually our main work. We are funded to do collective defence but since March our focus has been on assisting individuals. We have managed to get through it and respond to everyone. No one wanted to go through a crisis like this, but it's here and we have to deal with it. We were able to rise to the challenge. I am proud of my team, a small but strong team. We can see that the work we've done for all these years was not for nothing. Fernand Thibodeau,
Assistance and Support for Workers in
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It
is now reported that on December 16, Immigration, Refugees and
Citizenship Canada issued a temporary public policy which will allow
the workers from Trinidad and Tobago to apply for temporary status and
get a 6-month open work permit, according to a government statement.
The statement says: "Under the policy, which will be in
effect until February 12, 2021, workers will be able to apply for
temporary status and get a 6-month open work permit. This should allow
them to find other employment and apply for any other government
support they may be entitled to, such as employment insurance. This
action is part of a broader effort to support the needs of these
workers,
including emergency accommodation."
One problem we have is that the EI offices have reopened, but they are limited in their services. They assign you an agent who calls you back within 24 to 48 hours. Very often when people who need to apply for EI try to open their file on the internet, they can't open it, or it says that their file has expired. Many don't get their Record of Employment from their employer. They come to us for help to apply for EI. There are people who are illiterate, who have learning disabilities, and there is a lot of fear of making mistakes in their application because employment insurance is extremely judicialized. I myself have completed about 400 employment insurance claims for people. I have to do this at home because our committee does not receive funding from the provincial government. We are all volunteers. We also help people on other issues, such as ensuring that seniors get what they are eligible for at the provincial level with regard to COVID-19, helping people renew their licence plates, among other things. I can honestly say that this year if the ASTS committee hadn't been there for people it would have been a nightmare.
Also, the pandemic has shed light on what we have said for several years, that the EI program is outdated. We want the government to work with us to carry out a complete reform of EI.
Line
Sirois, Action-Chômage Côte-Nord
On December 7, we held a press briefing in front of the Service Canada offices in Forestville. We did what we have always done, we brought a Christmas tree decorated with black holes. We were with the CSN. We summoned the media, and we asked that the measures that the Trudeau government put in place temporarily for the pandemic become permanent measures. In this temporary reform, the Trudeau government set the number of hours of work required to qualify for employment insurance at 420 hours. We don't want to go back to requirements of up to 700 hours of work to qualify as is happening in our region. The government has said that it must consult before reforming EI. Yes, everyone must be consulted, but in the meantime the temporary measures put in place because of the pandemic must become permanent measures. We want in-depth reform, and we don't want it to end up as an election promise.
At the moment the unemployment rate is going down. We have told reporters that no matter whether the unemployment rate goes down or up, the hours of work for our people who depend for their living on seasonal work will not change. The lower the official unemployment rate, the more hours a worker has to work to qualify and the fewer weeks of benefits they are entitled to. Conversely, the higher the unemployment rate, the fewer hours a worker has to work to qualify and the more weeks of benefits a worker is entitled to receive. We want this to stop. We want to eliminate the unemployment rate as a criterion for establishing the required hours of work and the number of weeks of benefits. We want to establish the same number of hours and the same number of weeks of benefits for everyone such that it is enough to, among other things, eliminate the black hole phenomenon, which is a big problem in our area.
In our work under the conditions of the pandemic, we give a lot of information over the phone. We don't receive many people at the office because we are able to settle matters by phone. We get a lot of calls from people who are still waiting for their EI benefits, who have not yet received an answer from Service Canada. The transition did not go very well between the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and EI starting at the end of September [CERB ended at the end of September, replaced by temporary EI measures whose eligibility criteria were less stringent than usual -- WF Ed. Note]. There appears to be a shortage of labour at Service Canada.
We are continuing the battle to defend the rights of all the unemployed.
(Translated from original French by Workers' Forum. Photos: MEPAC, A.S.T.S., Action-Chômage Côte-Nord)
Federal Government Operation of Pacific Gateway Hotel
Hotel Workers Demand Guaranteed
Recall to Their
Jobs
November 25, 2020. Press conference of Unite Here Local 40 representing hotel workers at Pacific Gateway Hotel in Burnaby.
More than 80 per cent of the 150 workers employed by the Pacific Gateway Hotel in Burnaby near the Vancouver Airport have been laid off since the spring. The hotel is one of several that the federal government is using for quarantine facilities. Federal and several provincial governments and other agencies have negotiated contracts with hotels to house not only travelers but migrant farm workers and to provide emergency housing for people without homes, women fleeing violence and others. In almost all cases the hotels have recalled their laid off staff to provide cleaning, maintenance, food services, everything that is needed. Training in public health protocols required to do the work has been provided to the staff.
However this is not the case at the Pacific Gateway Hotel which is being used for quarantine for international travelers arriving at Vancouver International Airport. Instead of the laid off hotel workers being recalled, the Red Cross has brought in other workers. In hotels across the country it is the hotel workers that are doing the work. According to a CBC report on August 20, the federal government had by then arranged and paid for the quarantine of over 3,000 people coming into Canada, at 11 hotels across the country.
Hospitality
workers and their union, Unite Here Local 40, have been and continue to
be outspoken in demanding protection of their jobs at a
time when most hotels and restaurants are operating at minimal
capacity. Unionized hospitality workers have negotiated recall
periods in their contracts that vary from contract to
contract, however none cover the unprecedented length of the current
layoffs. Unorganized workers have only the protection provided by
provincial labour laws, which also do not provide protection in these
circumstances. Both the federal and provincial governments acted
swiftly to hand out billions of dollars to individuals and corporations
and
have repeated endlessly how important it is to keep the connection
between workers and employers, but for months now the hospitality
workers' demands for the necessary government measures to ensure that
employers cannot terminate them have fallen on
deaf ears. Hundreds of workers have been terminated and
hundreds more stand to lose their jobs in the next few months.
In a press conference on November 25, two Pacific Gateway workers and the Executive Director of Unite Here Local 40 Robert Demand explained the situation facing the workers at the hotel and the refusal, to date, by federal and provincial governments and the employer to guarantee the workers' right to job security.[1] One of the workers who spoke at the press conference is a server, Treva Martell, who has worked at the hotel for 15 years. The other, Gangamma Naidu, has worked at the hotel as a room attendant for 45 years. On December 3, hotel management notified the workers that what they call the federal government's "involuntary takeover" of the hotel has been extended to March 2021. The union is calling for an extension of recall rights for 24 months, to the fall of 2022 when it anticipates that the sector will be back in operation. The silence from the federal and provincial governments and employers is deafening.
Zailda Chan, President of Unite Here Local 40, states in a December 3 press release, "The failure of the federal government to make sure hotel workers aren't hurt by its takeover of the Pacific Gateway is astounding. Workers at the hotel -- predominantly women and immigrant workers -- have been kept in the dark for months about the duration of the federal contract and why feds are using a contractor to perform hotel workers' duties. Now the hotel is suggesting workers could permanently lose their jobs because of the extended federal contract.
"This is unacceptable from a federal government which has given lip service to caring about workers hard-hit by the pandemic. We want to know how the government plans to resolve this situation -- one in which their actions will cause hotel workers to lose their jobs."
Some of the biggest hotel employers are taking advantage of the pandemic and the shutdown of much of the tourism sector to terminate workers as a means of escaping their obligations to meet the negotiated wages and working conditions that workers have fought for and won. Most hotel employers did not apply for Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy benefits to keep workers on their payrolls and workers applied for Canada Emergency Response Benefit and Employment Insurance benefits.
Governments have responsibility to the workers at the Pacific Gateway Hotel, along with all hospitality workers and other workers in danger of permanently losing their jobs, to ensure that emergency measures are taken to extend recall rights for as long as it takes for the industry to be operational and the workers recalled to their jobs.
Workers' Forum fully supports the demands of hospitality workers for their rights and for protection of all workers in all sectors whose jobs are in danger due to shutdowns and layoffs due to COVID-19.
Note
1. For video of the press conference click here.
(Photos: Unite Here Local 40)
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