Dire Situation with Employment Insurance
All Out to Defend the Rights and Dignity of Unemployed Workers!
Unemployed workers' defence organizations are reporting on the dramatic situation workers are facing. Delays in the processing of Employment Insurance (EI) claims are worsening and the government is using the end of the pandemic health emergency as an excuse to return to pre-pandemic measures that create an untenable situation for the unemployed. In addition, Service Canada is conducting full-scale interrogations of the unemployed to deny their right to benefits, abandoning them to the care of their loved ones. Without the hard work of unemployed workers' organizations, supported by unions, in defence of the right to benefits that enable them to live in dignity, their situation would be even more dire.
The Canadian government is using diversion to deny its responsibility to the unemployed and is abandoning them to their fate.
When it began its consultation on EI reform through an online questionnaire in the summer of 2021, the federal government indicated that one of the central objectives was to make workers and the EI system more responsive to the labour market. That premise is false.
Workers must be protected from the vagaries of the labour market over which they have no control. The labour market is an instrument in the hands of narrow private interests competing with one another for the realization of maximum private profit at the expense of national, regional and local economies. In today's "new economy" workers are disposable. Imposing the vagaries of the labour market as a criterion for the health of the economy or for employment insurance is cruel anti-worker disinformation. Labour market rhetoric obscures the fact that Canadians do not control their economy and is used to justify attacks on workers, especially seasonal workers, as they do not "move with the job" wherever it can be found. Maintaining that EI eligibility and benefits are conditional upon contributing to the "labour market" means that the mass exclusion of the unemployed from the EI system will continue.
On top of all this, the Canadian government is now insisting that EI must contribute to balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility. These are the themes announced by the federal government as guidelines for the budget that will be presented in the spring. This heralds a new offensive of cuts to social programs and assistance to those in need, as well as all sorts of schemes to pay the rich by way of the public purse, in the name of the green economy or the integration of the Canadian economy with that of the U.S. and its war machine, without even discussing with the Canadian people what these things mean.
Workers were shocked when the federal government announced in January, through Service Canada management, that it would reduce the hours of 750 public servants working on Employment Insurance files, smack in the midst of a crisis in the processing of claims that is causing so many problems for unemployed workers. In response to the outcry, the government backtracked and cancelled the decision, while maintaining that the goal of a balanced budget remains and that there are other ways to achieve it. Meanwhile, it is silent on what is happening with the promised EI system reform.
Interrogating the unemployed on their personal finances in relation to whether or not they can receive benefits shows that anti-labour ideology and prejudice is rampant amongst the ruling circles. For years, neo-liberal think tanks and governments have been trumpeting the idea that EI is there for those who "agree to move " based on the labour market and that the others should fend for themselves or be directed towards programs of last resort, such as social assistance, that are even more precarious and impoverishing.
Workers and their organizations are demanding that the unemployed receive the benefits, at a Canadian standard, that are rightfully theirs and allow them to live in dignity. Enough with the disinformation and excuses for denying the unemployed what is rightfully theirs!
Workers' Forum joins with all those who are calling for a reform based upon long time demands by workers and their organizations, in particular those involved in the defence of the unemployed.
Workers' Forum also salutes the initiatives taken by the defence organizations of the unemployed to strengthen the movement, such as the formation of the Interprovincial Alliance, which brings together defence organizations from Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.
Together, let us defend the right of unemployed workers to live in dignity! Governments that oppose this right are not fit to govern!
This article was published in
Number 5 - February 17, 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2023/Articles/WO10051.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca