(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.)

The demand for job creation and improvements to Employment Insurance will be at the heart of a cross-Canada political campaign launched by the Communist Party this month. Party leader Miguel Figueroa will soon be on the road, speaking at public forums and other events on this issue, starting in British Columbia.

     As the Party's Central Committee pointed out last month, "among the Federal Budget's worst features is the almost complete government inaction on (un)Employment Insurance (EI). Instead of extending coverage to all of the unemployed, and increasing benefit levels and claim periods, the budget keeps virtually all of the current miserly and exclusionary regulations firmly in place. The $2 billion for retraining jobless workers is a tiny fraction of the $54 billion stolen from the unemployed over the years through Liberal and Tory cuts. The federal minimum wage remains unchanged and the budget does nothing to protect and raise pensions or to improve social assistance.

     "The failure to act on EI reform is no accident or oversight; on the contrary, it is quite purposeful. As unemployment rises (the latest figures for January 2009 show that another 129,000 jobs have been lost, resulting in a spike in `official' unemployment to 7.2%, from 6.6% in December), so does what Marx described as the `surplus army of labour.' This `army'- especially when insufficiently-protected through unemployment coverage or other forms of social assistance - is an invaluable tool in the hands of the capitalist class, used to increase the fear and insecurity among those still working so that employers can more easily extract wage and benefit concessions from the workers. That is why the struggle around EI and other direct improvements to the real incomes of the working class is such a central question in the overall fight to prevent the cost of paying for the crisis from being placed on the backs of the people."

     Miguel Figueroa will speak at the Centre for Socialist Education, 706 Clark Drive in Vancouver, at 7 pm, Sunday, March 15, as part of a visit to British Columbia. From there, he heads to Alberta (March 18-19), and then to Saskatchewan and Manitoba. For full details, contact the Communist Party's central office, 416-469-2446.