02) EI, THE 99%, THE 1%, AND THE
WIDENING GAP
PV Commentary
As many
activists have pointed out, the Occupy movement continues to have a huge
political impact, even though most of the tent cities have been removed by the
ruling class. Beyond the matter of who decides where poor people can live and
protest, the issues posed by Occupy remain: what is the source of staggering
inequality in our society, and what can be done to change this situation?
Claims by
In
The wider gap
is largely due to deliberate steps by the ruling class to remove the
redistributive impact of taxes and social benefits, which had previously
cushioned the effect of unemployment. The growth of part‑time and
temporary contract work is also eroding wage levels, as is the shift to
"self-employment".
As the OECD
reports, before the mid‑1990s,
Similar
findings emerge from other sources. A September 2011 study by the Conference
Board of
This is not
just an abstract problem, it's a matter of life and
death.
Instead of
trying to reverse this deadly trend, the Harper Tories are consciously making
things worse for working people. One scandalous example is the ruthless
slashing of employees at Services
Just four
years ago, in October 2007, 181,931 unemployed Canadians were waiting for EI
claims to be processed, according to information published by the Globe and Mail last month. By October
2011, that number had skyrocketed to 360,481, which may seriously underestimate
the real total. Some economists pin the actual figure by the end of 2011 at
nearly 500,000.
This trend
directly parallels a 13% decline in temporary and permanent staff in EI
processing centres since October 2007. While hundreds
of additional processing agents were hired during the economic crisis of 2008
and 2009, these employees and others have been let go without being replaced.
The result is
catastrophic for jobless workers, many of whom are unable to find out why their
benefits are delayed. Documents obtained by the Globe and Mail claim that telephone lines are so jammed that
just one in three calls is answered. Claimants who have spoken to People's Voice say it's worse; one in
Vancouver was unable to get a single phone call answered for an entire month,
and could only get help by pressing Service Canada staff to bypass the regular
procedures to give her access to a special line.
Are such
policies the result of uncaring, thoughtless political decisions, or are they a
deliberate strategy? Given that the negative impact of neoliberal policies on
poor people is widely documented, it seems clear that pro-corporate governments
like the Harper Tories know exactly what they are doing.
It seems
equally clear that only massive political pressure by a highly united and
mobilized working class - organized and unorganized, young and old, male and female,
citizens and migrants, straight and gay - can force a shift to pro-people
economic policies.
But as Miguel
Figueroa told the recent Athens meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties (see
pages 6 & 7), "traditional bourgeois mechanisms of regulating and
overcoming the crisis are increasingly ineffective... the resulting ruling
class response to the crisis is more socially brutal, more militaristic, more
dangerous to all humanity than during previous rounds of crisis..."
Our struggle
begins with the fight to reverse neoliberal attacks such as the corporate drive
to remove access to EI benefits. But our aim must be to topple the system which
is based on maximizing corporate profits at the expense of working people.
Capitalism is the source of the crisis, and socialism must be our goal.
(The above
article is from the January 1-31, 2012, issue of People's