Employment Insurance changes: A blatant attack against all working people in Canada

National statement
December 20 2012

 

Toronto, ON—SIKLAB Canada, a progressive Filipino Canadian workers’ organization, denounces the latest batch of changes to Employment Insurance as a clear and blatant attack against the democratic rights and overall conditions of working people across Canada. The denial of benefits to migrant workers were implemented on December 9th and the rest of the new rules are scheduled to take effect on January 6th. This latest announcement marks significant changes to the Employment Insurance system but have been quietly announced to the public amidst the rush of the holiday season. As workers and members of marginalized communities who refuse to let these changes pass by unnoticed, SIKLAB Canada maintains that the new EI rules comprise only part and parcel of an entire program of austerity against employment, wages and standard of living, encompassed within the government’s latest roll-out of the neoliberal agenda of globalization. Regardless of workers’ individual status, these changes set the stage to further the oppressive attacks and exploitation toward working people across Canada that we must all continue to expose and oppose.

For the past year, these reforms to the EI system have been deliberated on and strategically rolled out in successive phases, which have included legislated approval that allowed employers to pay temporary foreign workers 15% less than Canadian workers. Furthering this attack on migrant workers, the latest round of changes include the denial of the parental, maternal and compassionate benefits without a valid Social Insurance Number and work permit. As work permits are issued on an employer-specific basis and are dependent on the industry’s working season, temporary and seasonal workers, such as those under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, are immediately denied the benefits that they have a right to as workers paying into their own EI and into the Canadian tax system. This denial is precisely part of the racist and exclusionary agenda that allows the Canadian state to deem migrant workers solely as cheap and temporary labour in the first place.

SIKLAB-Canada remains steadfast in opposing these tactics and maintain that these are being imposed onto all workers across the country. The changes made earlier this year have included eligibility restrictions aimed at streaming out-of-work claimants into jobs that pay up to 30% less than their previous wage, depending on newly-established eligibility regulations. These changes attack workers in local and seasonal industries such as those working in the fishing industry, as well as migrant workers in the local farm industries. Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, continues to emphasize that the necessary changes are meant to incentivize workers to get back into the work field rather than “take advantage” of EI benefits. Though veiled in the empty rhetoric of improvements and “incentives,” it is apparent that these EI changes, instead, claw back workers’ benefits and force many to take on flexible and contractual jobs in targeted sectors—strategies that are in line with the flexibilization of Canada’s job market and the expansion of temporary labour. In this context, Canada’s need for cheap labour is made all too clear.

The very existence of temporary labour programs, such as the Live-in Caregiver Program and the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, fulfill the convenience of providing a pool of cheap and disposable labour necessary to churn the wheels of Canada’s capitalist economy. In the name of competitiveness, these neoliberal policies are put in place at the expense of our lives and conditions as workers.

As such, the contractualization, flexibilization and instability of employment inevitably place workers in the position of having to use their EI, which are benefits that they have paid into in the first place. It is, then, crucial that we look beyond these tactics that divide and lay the blame on workers and question the neoliberal policies that the current government continue to implement.

Alongside the increasing calls of various workers’ groups and community organizations to reject these changes, SIKLAB Canada stands in solidarity against these attacks on our basic rights and entitlements as workers and as contributors to Canadian society. Amidst regressive changes that further heighten our temporariness and instability as workers, we will heighten our call to oppose the expansion of temporary labour and migration programs and demand our genuine settlement and integration. We demand an end to short-term and profit-oriented solutions that further intensify ongoing economic instability, insecurity and unemployment and instead demand changes that will genuinely address our needs as the working-class.

Stop the cuts! End the contractualization of labour!
Expose and oppose the neoliberal agenda of globalization!
Advance the movement for genuine settlement and integration!
Advance and uphold the working class struggle!

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For more information, contact:
(416) 519-2553
siklab-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org