(The following article is from the March 1-15, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Sam Hammond, Chair of the Central Trade Union Commission, Communist Party of Canada

When Canada's first Unemployment Insurance Act was implemented in 1940, it was the last such plan adopted in all the developed countries, and seriously flawed from the outset. The exclusion of workers in agriculture, horticulture, forestry, fishing, public sector workers, nurses and teachers narrowed its scope to less than half the work force. New claims required 20 weeks of insurable earnings, and renewal of expired claims required from 12 to 20 weeks, depending in which of the 58 regional statistical areas one lived in. Benefits were paid at about 55% of earnings, applied against a maximum of $780 per week, and lasted from 14 to 50 weeks depending on the unemployment rate of your region.

     While there have been slight improvements over the years (limited coverage for sickness or pregnancy, etc.) numerous Task Forces and Commissions have recommended to a succession of governments restricted qualification and cutbacks in benefits. One exception was the government of Pierre Trudeau, which implemented the 10/42 formula and payments for maternity and sickness leave. The 10/42 formula provided a renewal of benefits after 10 weeks of contributions for 42 weeks; the first claim still required 20 weeks with a minimum of 15 hours per week.

     The most serious attack on workers (especially women) came in 1997 when the Liberal government changed the name to Employment Insurance, arrogantly declaring that an overhaul was needed because too many workers were working just to qualify for benefits. They brought in "reforms" that set up the biggest expropriation, theft or fraud (choose your term) of workers' money in our history, and simultaneously disqualified millions from eligibility to collect from a plan to which they are forced to contribute.

     This resembles the extortion protection rackets of organized crime, but on a bigger and more "professional" level. The previous 20 weeks at 15 hours qualifier was converted to qualifying hours with an estimated 35 hour week. What had previously been 300 hours over 20 weeks now became 700 hours to qualify. This change set off the present disgraceful area disparity, gender discrimination, massive disqualifications, impoverishment of workers and the accumulated theft of $54.4 billion that should have been paid out to the unemployed.

     It would be possible to study statistics for a long time in Canada's 58 EI regions, since each has its own formula that determines eligibility, and duration and amount of benefits. For approximately 70-75% of workers this is incidental, because they do not qualify.

     The plan discriminates against women big time, because it does not take into account their social existence, the way they are forced to earn a living, and the double-duty responsibilities of motherhood and nurturing society in general, mostly for free. In the last three decades there has been a tremendous influx of women into the workforce, up to a level about equal in numbers with men. While this was happening, workplace and employment conditions changed radically, especially under the onslaught of Free Trade, de-industrialization, union busting and deregulation. In short, the neoliberal corporate offensive, where every part of your body, your labour-power, your family, culture and genetic composition become commodities to be sold, traded or stolen.

     Of all the men, women and children toiling in Canada at the present time, 39% are employed in "precarious" jobs: short term contracts, permanent part-time, casual part-time, etc. This is institutionalized instability, dangling by a weak thread that can snap at any minute, affecting more women than men.

     There are also thousands of women who must leave employment to nurture children, or to look after family members and the elderly. They don't even rate a statistical category.

     It is almost impossible for casual or part-time workers (2.1 million women and one million men last year) to qualify for EI. Things are bad and getting worse. There is a Revenue Canada provision that if less than $2000 is earned in a year, the victim can reclaim monies extorted from their earnings by EI. In 2002, 656,870 such workers earned less than $2000.

     The federal government is holding $54.4 billion stolen from disenfranchised workers, extracted weekly from the wages of those working, stolen from the 70% who will pay and not qualify. In the case of women workers, and especially younger women, as many as 80% may never collect from the fund they sustain. Even if everyone qualified, benefits are inadequate at a maximum of about $429 per week. Only about 50% of those collecting get that maximum, after a two week waiting period with no income at all.

     Genuine Employment Insurance reform is a fight the labour movement must take up. More than any other, this is the fight we can win, the foot in the door, the thin edge of the wedge. Universal qualification and payments of 90% of wages, starting the first week and lasting for the duration of unemployment, would be the best stimulus our crumbling economy could have.

     Together with fully public Medicare, childcare and education, this is the basis of the social safety net the people of this country deserve, providing the ability to spend in the domestic market, to provide for children, to live our lives with dignity and respect.

     This fight would recruit the entire working class, especially the youth, and replenish the labour movement both ideologically and with millions of new members. It was the struggles of the dispossessed and unemployed which led to massive recruitment into the ranks of labour in the 1940s, after fifteen years of depression and war.

     Hopefully the 54 labour leaders who met in Ottawa in mid-February will deliver on their welcome promise of massive campaigning. Hopefully they will forget their suggestion of a summit meeting of labour, business, government and community leaders - a stacked deck card game where they will be outnumbered and recruited.

     Such a summit should be with our social justice partners, with Aboriginal peoples, with trade union activists, not with the capitalist class that brought us to this crisis. We should look to the militancy of the French, the Greeks, and other struggles sweeping across Europe.

     There were 126,000 jobs lost in January 2009 and a predicted 400,000 more by year's end. These workers and their families can be organized into a massive force for change; labour must lead them.