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Canadians on EI may be forced into jobs
April 20, 2012 - 1:54pm
On the Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/04/19/ei-recipients-seasonal-jobs_n_1439275.html?ref=canada-business, EI Recipients may be forced into jobs. What do the Tories think, this is Georgia. Why is it my fault that because I lost my job, that because Farmer Brown wants to pay less then minimum wage, I should have to go pick his potatoes. And I am supposed to look for work, IN MY FIELD, how? When? What a bunch of mean dicks!
The taxpayer subsidized corporate call centers treat their employees so shabbily hereabouts, that many of the local folk can't abide by the working conditions for any length of time, and so they're largely staffed by employees holding work visas, who likely consider the regimented sweatshop conditions a vast improvement from corporate hellholes elsewhere. And so we have a situation where subsidies are used not only to keep the shops from being offshored, but to assist in recruiting and retaining workers from elsewhere to staff them.
I have worked in two of these call centers. Never again. They were horrible jobs run by kids. It was awful!
oh-oh I started a thread in National news on this and put a lot of effort into writing an article on this to get it started... crap.
Sean's post: http://rabble.ca/babble/national-news/harper-government-changes-employme...
Red herring is my guess. I think Arthur could be right - they may need call centre jobs filling. How much nicer it will be to do forced call centre work than backbreaking work in some farmer's fields. Perhaps a handful of young Canadians will actually volunteer to work in the fields while us mature workers will feel lucky to get away with call centre work as an alternative to losing EI benefits.
Anyway, I think that they are still clueless as to how the ideology is supposed to work. They have no plan other than to copy-cat General Pinochet. In the late 1970s to early 80s, some large percentage of Chile's economic growth was due to expansion of non-productive sectors, like marketing and financial services. It crashed by 1985.
I think there is a method to their madness when it comes to planned economic crashes and yo-yo economies. It conditions us to accept less and be greatful for what little prosperity they have planned for the future. Neoliberalism is actually about pushing national debts higher and lowering economic austerity on the masses and thereby exacerbating their bad fiscal situation, which was centrally planned from the very beginning. When was the beginning? According to Naomi Klein, Greg Palast and others, the ersatz genesis fable for neoliberalism was played out in General Pinochet's Chile. Fascists always start on trade union labour. Next comes deliberate sabotage of the economy in paving the way for their agenda.
This notion will end in massive failure. Employers will get employees they don't want, employees will hate their employers, and everything will end up costing more than is produced in any form of benefits.
From Vancouver Sun:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/workplace/Employment+Insurance+reci...
The federal government wants to reduce disincentives to work and create a "greater connection" between the EI program and the temporary foreign worker program, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told the National Post editorial board this week. ... Under the proposed reforms, unemployed Canadians who are receiving EI would be required to accept local jobs that are currently being filled by temporary foreign workers.
The Cons first greatly increase the number of temporary foreign workers so desperate that they work for wages below what Canadians can survive on, thereby dropping wage rates. Then they plan to force unemployed Canadians to work for these low wages, fulfilling their dream of a low wage-high profit society.
Obama and Wall Street have the same agenda. They think that if they squeeze labour into accepting lower wages, corporate profitability will return. It won't.
They think that by removing billions of dollars in wages from circulating in the economy, somehow it will increase profits. It may work short-term but in the end, disaster. Economic disaster is their real agenda.
Fidel: Applause. I totally agree- this is purposeful at least to some degree. I think they could get it wrong and find that in the end the rich hurt as well though. They don't believe in any collective good and so won't connect the fact that personal suffering like this could even cause a real estate collapse but they are certainly doing this to cause a result that is painful for many and good for a few. Economic decline is helpful to the rich as it pushes down wages etc. Wholesale economic collapse is not as good. I think they might get it wrong and aim for economic decline and get a complete crash instead.
Howard I don't agree. They don't care if the people are unhappy -- what do you think low minimum wage does? They want the employees disempowered and with their backs against the wall feeling they have no choice but to accept it because it can only get worse. That was the point I made in the other thread.
Jerrym-- yup-- that's how I see it
Fidel, Cross-posted my applause was for your first post.
Still I agree with the point being made here-- it is not a contradiction to say they are doing it by design but they will also have unintended effects. It is easy to see why: they are nasst and selfish but they also are blind to how collective good works and to the way the economy depends on lower income people.
Most of the Tories should be forced to pick potatoes for $2/hr
Fact is,most of them haven't done an honest day of work in their over privelidged lives.
Thanks Sean. I think their jobs agenda is not so far removed from paying 19th century Irish starvation wages to build roads that went nowhere in particular. Their task is to create debt not wealth. It sounds Orwellian, but it's true. Rogue economist Michael Hudson says that the new business plan amounts to this: debt equals wealth creation. And public debt is considered premium debt. In Canada alone there are 33 million co-signers for debts they ring-up. And if debt exceeds our ability to pay, well then there is always our massive reserves of energy and raw materials which really are worth something. It is a win-win situation for creditors hanging on to and investing in public debt.
And they really don't want us paying down the debt by exporting our way to being a debt-free society, or their worst nightmare, a net creditor nation. We shall create few manufactured high tech goods which other countries might pay hard currency for. No, let us dabble in financial services, marketing gimmicks and any other dance around the maypole sooner than get serious about jobs of the future. Debt is the new wealth creation. And I agree with Dr Michael Hudson when he describes the new business plan as Orwellian.
Closing this duplicate thread. Please continue in Sean's earlier and longer thread here.