Jimbo Jobs

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at the new EI laws the Harpercons want to shove through.

Courtesy of Pale

We were warned about this kind of thing before. Not just in Canada neither. It’s simple, really. To the elites and such, the working class have gotten too uppity. They have too many rights and powers they never had before. As they should, after all,  where would those fools be without the working class?  They only earn profits because of the work their workers do.  Well, so much for appreciation. From a REAL News video shortly after the US midterm elections, when Professor Emeritus of economics at Amherst University, James Crotty:

…they {gov’t,  financial industry, businesses — take your pick] weaken labour, they cut social programs, they make it harder to get unemployment [insurance]. They make it dangerous to be unemployed, so they have the workers weaker than ever, workers would work for any wage; control labour’s power, so they can cut their cost for the labour forces, so for the corporations, there is a real benefit in the long run of weakening labour’s power to get a decent fair share to get a decent fair share of the income pot. (found at about 6:20 mark of this video).

Mr. Crotty, of course, was speaking globally, but the new EI deforms of the Harpercons certainly mirror what Crotty was talking about.  You know, Diane and Jimbo jobs.

Right now,  what was divulged, was there are 3 classifications of unemployed and while the new rules would slightly differ between the 3 classifications, the rules are basically the same for anyone receiving EI across the board. Here are the basics.

“Long-tenured workers,” defined as someone who received 35 or fewer weeks of regular or fishing EI over the last five years, will be allowed to restrict their job hunt to positions that pay 90 percent of their previous earnings and are in the “same” occupation. After 18 weeks, they will be expected to accept jobs that pay 80 percent of their previous salary in the same field.

A second category called “occasional,” defined as cases that fall between the definitions of long-tenured and frequent, can spend 18 weeks looking for a job in their “similar” occupation at 80 percent of previous pay. After 18 weeks, those recipients will be expected to take “any work” at at least 70 percent of earnings.

The third category is called “frequent” users, defined as someone who has made three or more regular or fishing claims and collected 60 or more weeks of benefits in the past five years. This category currently makes up 58 percent of all EI claimants. Frequent recipients will only have six weeks to find a job in a “similar occupation” at at least 80 percent of pay.

After that, EI claimants will be expected to take “any work that the claimant is qualified to perform (with on-the-job training, if required)” at at least 70 percent of previous earnings.

Also, 21 million bucks will be spent to implement a new bureaucracy which would ostensibly ‘help’ the unemployed look for work–yep, those new Jimbo & Diane jobs. So, they don’t have the money to keep the employees who worked processing EI claims and Service Canada centers, but they have money for big brother to make sure those ‘lazy bums get off their keester to find work?’

Back to Jimbo & Diane jobs,  to take a job at about 30% less than your last salary and about an hour’s drive from where you live, is in and of itself a hardship for most.  They assume that everyone has a car, let alone drives.  I don’t even know how to drive, how the hell would I be able to commute, assuming I lived in a rural area with no public transportation? Also, that 30%  would be for car expenses for most. IF forced to take 30% less of their salary, many unemployed would not be able to afford to keep their cars given how expensive it is.  It’s not only gas and basic maintenance that is so expensive, but what about parking?  These new rules assume that someone living in a rural area would drive to a big city to work.  Many employers don’t even offer parking, let alone free parking. Anyone checked out how much a public lot charges to park per day, lately??

This also means that should one take a job 30% less than their previous salary and then be unfortunate enough to lose that job,  under the new rules, they would have to take a further cut of 30% from that previous job, meaning one could end up working for  a good 60% less, at least, than from where they started. All an effort to drive down wages. That and that new so-called foreign workers thing.

Speaking of which, where are they being hired besides seasonal farm hand help usually occupied by migrants from Central-America, or domestic workers like maids. In some cases.  They generally work for peanuts.  What was it Jason Kenney said again? Oh yeah!

Jason Kenney has been open about the Conservatives’ belief that EI recipients need to be more flexible about taking available work. “We should not be bringing in temp foreign workers from around the globe to take jobs in Canada in communities with chronic high unemployment,” he told the Halifax Chamber of Commerce last month.

As for Jimbo, well,  folks are just too damned picky! His way to get those dang unemployed up and about? Well, take it Jimbo!

That means we are going to have to encourage more persons with disabilities to work, more seniors to work, more aboriginal people to work, including young people. We need to get rid of disincentives in the employment insurance system to people joining the workforce.”

Ah that negative reinforcement!

And what does this mean, matching skills to workers. Does that mean a child care worker in a government run group home must be open to taking a job as an underpaid domestic? Does that mean that a janitor of a school or hospital would have to become a maid in some private home or underpaid cleaner for an agency hired out to clean some companies and offices?  Would that fisherman have to work, picking fruit?

About the disabled and the others considered marginal by employers,  are Jimbo, Diane and Stevie Spiteful cooking up a Philip Davies scheme? You know, a law that would lower legal minimum wage for them? I sure wouldn’t put it past them.

That, of course, encourages further marginalization. Many employers practice discrimination of all kinds despite laws preventing it.  Too many loopholes.  Instead of that cracking down on the unemployed, perhaps more should be done to encourage employers to hire these people.  Ageism is alive and well for one thing. The young are discriminated against for a myriad of reasons. Women are often discriminated against because of fear motherhood will remove their attention from the work place (yes, a human resources consultant actually said that), etc., etc.  As for seniors, is this a prelude to raising the retirement age to 70? Or perhaps even work til you die scheme?

As for Jimbo’s ‘terrible’ job of refereeing hockey. Oh yeah, standing on the side lines with a whistle. So hard! Stevie Spiteful, Diane and her senator husband have such a great idea as to what it’s like to struggle to make ends meet.  They obviously have no idea how much things cost, like housing, which takes up half of most workers’ income. In some cases,  to take jobs that are about 30% less than they earned previously could be the difference between having a home or homelessness and one cannot have a job without a home.

Speaking of well healed politicians and their friends here’s a word from Thomas Walkom:

The contempt is that of comfortable, well-heeled politicians who, deep down, assume that those unfortunate enough to have lost their jobs lack moral fibre.

That much is wrong with the Employment Insurance system is well-known. Its biggest failing is that it no longer helps most of the jobless.

Yes, back to that stigmatizing the poor. It’s their fault a company shuts their doors or downsizes.

Also, most workers contribute to the EI fund, yet most cannot receive it when they need it. Now many more will have problems accessing EI.

As for those so-called labour shortages, what type of jobs are they? McJobs at Timmy Horton’s? Picking fruit on some orchard? Housekeeper? Seriously, where are they? where are they?  Oh yeah, Alberta!

More from Walkom:

If there is a theme to the changes announced this week by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, it is wage reduction. To this Conservative government, anything that might interfere with the mythical free market — and particularly with the market’s downward pressure on wages — is anathema.

Are cash-strapped farmers forced to bring in desperately poor workers from South America to harvest crops? Then the answer is not to reform the food system so that farmers — and farm labourers — can make a living wage. It is to make more Canadians so desperate that they will take be forced to take these Grapes of Wrath jobs.

Thus the new 70 per cent rule: If you lose your job, you must be willing to take a wage cut of up to 30 per cent to qualify for EI benefits. Lose that job and you’re liable to another 30 per cent wage cut. And on. And on.

That portion indicated in bold mirrors what Mr. Crotty said a year and a half ago.  Between Lisa preparing to rewrite the labour code,  the new EI rules and of course, union bashing, can’t have the working class get too uppity now, can they? This, despite the fact all of them are where they are because of the working class. Some thanks.

Speaking of that ‘free market’,  and letting employers take care of their own business, why isn’t it so free when it comes to government interfering in labour disputes leading to potential strikes and or lock-outs?

Also, if those buffoons really cared about the economy, this is the wrong way to do it. If your working class has no buying powers, how can the economy grow? As for those austerity measures forced on many countries, one of them is lowering legal minimum wages. Given that those who hire at minimum wage are the private sector, what does that have to do with reducing debt. It doesn’t.