For a Complete Overhaul of Employment Insurance Program

Unemployed Workers and Their Defence Organizations Must Have a Decisive Say

Unemployed workers and their defence organizations have long called for a complete overhaul of the Employment Insurance (EI) regime. They envision an unemployed workers’ social compensation program that meets the demands and needs of those who find themselves unemployed through no fault of their own. The current EI system demands the duty to work of individuals without a reciprocal guarantee of available work and the right of the working class to a livelihood.

The current economic system is incapable of providing jobs for all. The EI system must recognize this longstanding reality and compensate workers who are deprived of work, and ensure they receive a Canadian standard of living. No one can deny that the Canadian working class recognizes and assumes its duty to work, as workers are the producers of all social wealth necessary for the economy and society to function. The economy and society would have totally collapsed by now if workers did not uphold their duty to work. It has become clear that a just overhaul of the EI system requires giving the unemployed and their defence organizations a decisive say in a new socially responsible direction for EI.

Statistics on access to the regime reveal the extent of the EI crisis. Successive anti-social reforms imposed by the federal government, particularly during the 1980s and 90s, have resulted in more hours required for eligibility, fewer weeks of benefits, reduction in the rate of benefits in relation to wages, and an increase in the exclusion from benefits of workers who are accused of leaving their jobs voluntarily, which can be grossly distorted to disqualify unemployed workers who need assistance.

The percentage of unemployed workers qualifying for EI fell from around 80 per cent in the 1960s and 70s to 40 per cent as early as the mid-1990s.[1] Within this context of massive numbers of unemployed workers being eliminated from qualifying for EI, estimates are that approximately $60 billion in accumulated EI funds were declared “surplus,” removed from the EI fund and placed in the federal government’s general revenue to be used to pay the rich!

While the percentage of unemployed who qualified for EI stood at 42 per cent in 2017, the rapid increase in precarious work throughout the country hides the true problem and has meant greater hardship for part-time and seasonal workers. People working limited hours per week, or hired for shorter periods of time (between 22 and 38 months), qualify at a much lower rate and for lower benefits than fulltime workers having worked an average of 59 months at one job.

Precarious workers often fail to accumulate the number of hours required to qualify for EI. They are routinely accused of leaving their jobs “voluntarily,” which renders them ineligible for EI benefits according to the current criteria. They are disqualified irrespective of the real reason for their becoming unemployed such as disputes over wages, the availability of hours of work, distance to and from work for limited hours of work, poor working conditions, employer abuse, sickness or family problems.

A socially responsible overhaul of the EI regime is necessary. The defence organizations of the unemployed have put forward demands aimed at increasing not only access to the plan, but also the amount and duration of benefits. Those claims must be given serious consideration and could very well serve as a basis for the EI regime’s renewal. Workers need, and have the right to, a social program that compensates them at a Canadian standard of living when deprived of a job and livelihood by a socialized economic system on which they depend, but which they do not control.

Note

1. Brief review of the federal government’s anti-social legislative offensive against the Employment Insurance regime.

(Legislative graph from here.)

This article was published in:

Renewal Update No. 8, Septebmer 11, 2019

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Unemployed Workers and Their Defence Organizations Must Have a Decisive Say