January 30, 2015 - No. 1
Nation-Wrecking Restructuring
Harper Government Targets
Employment Insurance Funds
to Pay the Rich
Nation-Wrecking
Restructuring
• Harper Government Targets
Employment Insurance
Funds to Pay the Rich
- Peggy Morton
• The Canada Job Grant Program
• Serious Impact of Anti-Social
EI Reforms on Lives of
Unemployed Workers
Consequences of
Neo-Liberal Agenda on Working Conditions
• Changes to Health and Safety Provisions in
the Canada Labour Code
• Labour Code Changes Criminalize
the Right to Refuse Dangerous Work - Interview, Bob Kingston,
Agriculture Union, Public
Service Alliance of Canada
• Inhuman Shift Changes Will Lead
to Fatigue and Accidents - Ron Thomas, President, USW Local
5795, Iron Ore
Company of Canada, Labrador City
Another Environmental
Mess Due to Monopoly Oversight
• Drilling Wastewater Leaked from
North Dakota Pipeline
Nation-Wrecking
Restructuring
Harper Government Targets
Employment Insurance Funds to
Pay the Rich
- Peggy Morton -
In 2014, the Harper government restructured labour
market agreements
to give much greater control to private interests over which job
training initiatives
would receive federal funding. Now that most providers have signed
Canada Job Grant agreements, Jason Kenney, Minister of Employment
and Social
Development has announced that he is turning his attention to the
labour market development agreements.
Labour market development agreements (LMDA) are funded
by Employment Insurance (EI)
premiums. At $2 billion a year, the LMDA funds are the largest job
training funds in
Canada. To be eligible for skills training under labour market
development agreements, a worker must be currently unemployed. The
workers must also be
eligible for EI benefits, or have completed an EI claim within the past
three years, or be returning to the work force after a period in which
they were caring
for a newborn or adopted child.
Kenney's announcement
signals that the entire skills and
job
training system is being restructured in the service of private
interests. "We're negotiating new
agreements that place a greater emphasis on earlier interventions with
the unemployed, programs that are more linked to the employer demand
for training and
better accountability as well as possibly pay for performance for
provinces that innovate and deliver better programs that get people off
EI faster," Kenney
said.[1]
"Pay for performance" schemes and "early intervention"
to get people
off EI faster will be a further means to deprive workers of EI benefits
and force them
to take jobs which do not match their education, skills and previous
wage rates. This is an assault on the rights of workers and a
pay-the-rich scheme to benefit
private interests. Employers will dictate what "skills training" takes
place, giving rise to various schemes which benefit them but have
nothing to do with "job
creation." For example, jobs can be "created" which disappear as soon
as the grant money runs out.
The Harper government's restructuring amounts to grand
theft of the
EI benefit fund. The rich are paid from the EI fund while the majority
of unemployed
workers are denied EI benefits. The number of unemployed workers who
actually receive EI benefits continues to decline. In October 2014
there were 491,400
people receiving EI benefits, a decrease of 26,800 from the previous
year.
This restructuring is also tied to the new Job Bank
which is being
touted as the be-all and end-all for matching workers and employers.
The system is
designed to automatically match employers and unemployed workers who
have registered (as all workers receiving EI will be required to do.)
It forms part of the arrangements to force workers to
accept work at
low wages and unrelated to their skills and qualifications or risk
losing their EI
benefits.
The Harper government stubbornly refuses to acknowledge
that a new
direction is needed for the economy, instead repeating its absurd
mantra that paying
the rich will lead to "job growth" and economic prosperity. In this
vein it keeps repeating the claim that the problem in Canada is a
labour shortage and
mismatch between jobs and skills, which this restructuring and other
measures will supposedly solve.
All the facts show that this
is not the case and that
the real aim is to pursue a low wage agenda. Statistics Canada
reports that in September
2014, the national job vacancy rate among Canadian businesses was 1.6
per cent or 243,000 job vacancies in total. The unemployment rate was
6.6 per cent
-- calculated on the basis of those still actively looking for work,
while youth unemployment is more than double that at 13.6 per cent. For
every job vacancy,
there were 5.6 unemployed people. This shows that the problem is not a
skills "mismatch" but the loss of the greatest treasure, the
squandering of the collective
power of the modern economy through unemployment, the destruction of
manufacturing, wrecking of the public service and social programs and
of entire sectors
of the economy.
The neo-liberal restructuring of society embraced by
Harper and his ilk is to permit private interests to take over
functions previously assigned to the public authority with the role of
being to pay for their schemes. The restructuring of labour market
agreements, immigration reform and other measures are all designed to
permit the monopolies to destroy the public authority with a cheap
labour policy which drives down wages and lowers the living standards
of the working people.
Many Canadians are rejecting Harper's bogus claim that
he is the one
to "manage the economy." They are asking in whose interest this
management of the
economy is taking place. Canada needs a skills and job training system
that would assist Canadian workers to acquire the education, skills and
training needed
for nation-building and the development of the socialized economy. The
skills and job training system is one aspect of the need to manage the
economy on
behalf of all the people, not just a privileged few. More and more
Canadians are concluding that a new direction is needed for the economy
Note
1. iPolitics, January 5, 2015
The Canada Job Grant Program
Canada Job Grants are part of the Labour Market
Agreements, which
are designed for unemployed people who are not eligible for Employment
Insurance
(EI) benefits; and employed people who do not have a high school
diploma or recognized certification, or have low levels of literacy and
skills. Labour
Market Development Agreements are designed for workers who are eligible
for EI or have past EI claims, and are funded through the EI benefits
fund.
The changes made to Labour
Market Agreements in 2014
through the
Canada Job Grant program allowed the Harper government to seize tight
control
over how funds transferred to the provinces for skills training and
labour market development are allocated. The Job Grant program is now
operating in all
provinces and territories except New Brunswick and Nunavut which have
yet
to reach an agreement with the federal government. Quebec has its own
arrangements
with the federal government and does not participate in the Canada Job
Grant program.
The Canada Job Grant was initially announced as
a program
which would be funded through equal contributions by the federal and
provincial
governments and employers. However Jason Kenney was forced to amend the
program as provincial governments strongly objected to this dictate
which would
have forced the provinces to re-direct funds from existing programs.
The program is employer-driven, giving control to
employers on who
gets training and what type of training will be provided for new and
existing
employees. It provides $10,000 for each worker enrolled in a training
program provided the employer puts up $5,000. The training is not
linked to the hiring
of new workers, and can be used by employers to provide training they
would have provided in any case to their existing work force. Worksite
training provided
by a third-party is eligible -- e.g. training on a new piece of
equipment or software for existing employees would qualify. The program
provides a subsidy to
employers for short-term training, or to pay the wages of interns or
co-op students, instead of long-term assistance to marginalized people
to upgrade their
education and skill levels.
The fact that the Canada-Alberta Job Grant program was
launched at
the notorious company union, the Christian Labour Association of Canada
(CLAC)
training centre also shows its intention to undermine the leading role
of the building trade unions in construction worker training and
certification. A single
employer can access up to $300,000 a year in grants in Alberta, while
BC has no cap on what an employer can receive.
Serious Impact of Anti-Social EI Reforms on
Lives of Unemployed Workers
Harper government officials like to say that the 2012
reform of the
Employment Insurance Program is having no impact on the ability of the
unemployed
workers to get EI benefits.
This is a callous statement because the number
of
unemployed workers who actually get EI benefits is constantly going
down and this has been
the case now for the last 25 years. In a report released in October
2014, the Parliamentary Budget Office said that 38 per cent of
unemployed workers received
EI benefits in 2014, down from 46.6 per cent in 2007 (and from over 80
per cent
in the 1980s). That is due both to the objective
deterioration of the
conditions of life and to the anti-social policies of the successive
neo-liberal governments. The growth in the number of workers who are
long-term unemployed
and in precarious, casual and contract work, combined with the
tightening of the eligibility criteria, literally flushed hundreds of
thousands of workers out of
the EI program.
But it is not true by any means that the EI reform of
the Harper
government is not having its own dreadful impact in the lives of
unemployed workers.
A major impact is that workers are being pressured not to apply for EI
even though they are eligible and not to appeal when their application
has been denied
or their benefits cut off or reduced. This is the case because workers
fear reprisals from this government or are discouraged by the
cumbersome and
bureaucratic nature
of the program.
An interesting report was
produced in October 2014
called The Reform of the Employment
Insurance Act: Organizing So That
People Do
Not Exercise Their Rights or Claim Their Benefits. It was
produced by the
Autonomous Movement in Solidarity with the Unemployed (MASSE) and the
Service to the Collectives at the Université du Québec
à
Montréal.
The report mainly deals with two aspects of the reform:
the new
appeal mechanism and the division of the EI claimants into three
categories
based on how often
they claim benefits.
The new appeal mechanism replaced the old tripartite
Board of
Referees and the Umpire with the Social Security Tribunal. It is so
cumbersome and
bureaucratic that from April 2013 to January 2014, the number of
appeals dropped by over 85 per cent from the year before and the
tribunal dealt
with only 16 per cent of
the appeals that were filed. Among the changes that were made is the
obligation for workers whose application was denied or whose benefits
were cut off to
go through an administrative review before they are allowed to appeal
the decision. There is no time limit on how long this review can take.
It is estimated that
only 15 per cent of the benefit claimants who get turned down by the
administrative review proceed further by appealing the decision. The
appeal is first filed with
the General Division of the Tribunal. The appeal is not automatically
granted. It can be summarily rejected by a member of the tribunal,
preventing the worker
from getting a hearing. If the appeal is granted, the judge has
discretion of how the hearing will take place. Very often, it is held
by video conference or
conference call and the judge can conduct the hearing from his home
which can be hundreds of kilometres away from the region in which the
worker resides.
If the worker is turned down at the level of the General Division, he
can file an appeal with the Appeal Division of the Tribunal. During
this entire period the
worker receives no income.
The report also deals with
the impact of the division of
EI
claimants into three categories: the long-tenured workers, the frequent
claimants and the occasional
claimants. The level of benefits and the conditions the unemployed
workers have to accept so as not to lose their benefits (for example,
the low wage they must
be ready to accept when looking for a job) vary according to which
category the worker belongs. Each claim that the worker files is
accounted for and he/she has
to think twice before being labelled a frequent claimant by the
program. Activists in defence of the unemployed report that many
workers chose not to file claims
even if they are eligible, to avoid being labelled frequent claimants.
Furthermore, there is the workers' fear of being
criminalized by
the EI
regime of fraudulently receiving benefits. This has already happened
to many workers who
received benefits for years and were told when the reform was enforced
that they had been receiving benefits illegally for years. Many workers
simply do not
want to be on the government's radar especially if they have come
from countries the Harper government considers enemies of Canada
and the "free
world."
It is also important to point out the severe cutbacks
the Harper
government has made in Service Canada reducing the numbers of public
sector workers who
process the claims. In March 2014, across Canada,
there was a backlog of 138,000 files waiting to be processed which is
an increase of 27 per cent
from the year before.
The unemployed workers are treated like outcasts who
must fend
for themselves. This is one more reason to defeat the Harper government
and reverse
these criminal
anti-social policies.
Consequences of Neo-Liberal Agenda on
Working Conditions
Changes to Health and Safety Provisions
in the Canada Labour Code
The new definitions in the Canada
Labour
Code of what constitutes "danger" and the new provisions
regarding the right to refuse dangerous
work came into effect October 31, 2014. The Code
covers about 1.5 million federal employees in sectors such as railways,
shipping, pipelines and
mining. The changes are part of the omnibus Bill C-4 the Harper
government adopted in December 2013. Posted below is an interview about
the changes with
Bob Kingston, the National President of the Agriculture Union of the
Public Service Alliance of Canada who has been a health and safety
activist for about
30 years.
For reference, here are the former and new definitions
of what constitute "danger " in the Canada Labour Code. The
former definition:
"Any existing or potential hazard or condition or any
current or
future activity that could reasonably be expected to cause injury or
illness to a person
exposed to it before the hazard or condition can be corrected, or the
activity altered, whether or not the injury or illness occurs
immediately after the exposure
to the hazard, condition or activity, and includes any exposure to a
hazardous substance that is likely to result in a chronic illness, in
disease or in damage to
the reproductive system."
The new definition:
"Any hazard, condition or activity that could reasonably
be expected
to be an imminent or serious threat to the life or health of a person
exposed to it before
the hazard or condition can be corrected or the activity altered."
The amended Labour Code, among other things,
has a new provision on the right of workers to refuse dangerous work
which says:
"129. (1) If the Minister is informed of the employer's
decision and
the continued refusal under subsection 128(16), the Minister shall
investigate the matter
unless the Minister is of the opinion that
(a) the matter is one that could more appropriately be
dealt with,
initially or completely, by means of a procedure provided for under
Part I or III or under
another Act of Parliament;
(b) the matter is trivial, frivolous or vexatious; or
© the continued refusal by the employee under
128(15) is in bad faith."
Labour Code Changes Criminalize
the Right to Refuse Dangerous Work
- Interview, Bob Kingston, Agriculture
Union,
Public Service Alliance of Canada -
Workers' Forum: What are the main
changes according to you that the Harper government made regarding the
health and safety of
the workers in the Canada Labour Code?
Bob Kingston: The new wording says it
must be
imminent danger. It implies that the damage has to be severe, serious
and immediate.
The new definition removes any reference to long-term harm, such as an
illness, disease or damage that can be caused by a hazardous substance.
This will now
give the managers the opportunity to say that there is no problem. How
could breathing asbestos particles cause an imminent danger or damage
to your
reproductive system and so on? You are not going to die for years.
Another main change is that everywhere the Code used to refer
to health
and safety officers, it has been changed to say the Minister decides,
the Minister decides,
which means that anybody who does not like a decision from a health and
safety officer can immediately have it overruled.
In the past, a safety officer was identified as a
decision maker.
They were deemed to be impartial and apolitical and their decisions
were given a certain
amount of status. Now basically any manager can redirect them and tell
them what to do because at the end of the day it is going to be up to
the Minister to
decide, which puts it in a political realm.
One of the reasons for these changes is that the
Harper
government made so many cuts to safety officers, it got to the point
where they could not meet the legal requirements any longer so the
government changed the
rules.
WF: How do you assess the changes that
were made to the provisions on right to refuse dangerous work?
BK: First,
they used figures that were
totally
fictitious. They said that 80 per cent of all work refusals ended up in
findings of no danger, which
is nonsense. We investigated it, we did it with the people who actually
put the data in the system -- the safety officers -- and we found out
that
these figures have
nothing to do with what is really going on. When we challenged them,
they acknowledged there were problems in their figures and said they
would try to have
the correct numbers for Parliament before they had to vote. They did
not present the correct numbers although I know that they went back and
did the search,
and to this date they have never provided Parliament or the Standing
Committee with those figures. The whole process was corrupt, devious
and self-serving.
The Labour Minister has been made the decision-maker in
determining
if a work refusal is legal or not under the Code. The Minister can even
refuse to
investigate if he or she defines the action of the workers as
frivolous, vexatious or in bad faith. In that case, the worker is
automatically deemed as abusing
their rights under the Code.
The Code talks about
circumstances under
which employers can punish employees under the Code. If it has been
shown that they
have abused any of their rights under the Code, they can be punished.
In the past, the employer would have to prove that the
workers acted
wrongly. Now they will have a ministerial declaration saying that this
person acted
in a frivolous or vexatious manner or in bad faith. That gives the
managers proof to go ahead with their discipline. There is no process
in place to challenge that decision by the
Minister not to
investigate and instead to label the action of the worker as frivolous.
There is no ability to appeal that.
When we opposed
that provision, Labour Minister Kellie Leitch said that the declaration
of the Minister could be appealed. It is her bill and she was not aware
of what's in it!
We challenged her, she admitted that she was wrong on that point but
the bill was passed at it was.
It was already difficult to get people to exercise their
right to
refuse but now it is going to be close to impossible, especially with
young workers.
WF: What do you want to say in
conclusion?
BK: This takes us back to "body count"
health and safety. Let's see to what extent we can remove any kind of
enforcement of the
regulations, let' s see how much we can take apart before people start
dying. That is what they have done.
They knew their figures were wrong, they knew the Labour
Minister was wrong and yet they made no move to correct it.
This so-called law and order government does not even
care. They are
willing to endanger Canadian workers without any second thought.
Inhuman Shift Changes Will Lead to
Fatigue and Accidents
- Interview, Ron Thomas, President, USW
Local 5795,
Iron Ore Company of Canada, Labrador City -
Workers'Forum:
USW Local 5795 recently denounced the shift
changes the
Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC) is imposing on workers. Can you tell
us more?
Ron Thomas: We had a 12-hour rotating
shift. You
worked Monday and Tuesday, then you were off Wednesday and Thursday,
then
you worked Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then you were off Monday and
Tuesday so it was opposite the next week. You worked two days, then
three
nights, then
two days, and so on, that is the way it worked. Now the shift they want
us to do is to come in to work seven straight 12-hour night
shifts in a row.
Then you are off for seven and then you work seven day shifts. The
supervisors also stated that it is not just the seven shifts that you
are going to be scheduled
for, but they are going to be forcing us to work extra shifts. That is
why we are taking this on. We will probably head to arbitration on it.
You can imagine
what it is like driving a haul truck for 12 hours on night shift, going
from point A to point B, back and forth and back and forth, you do that
for 12 hours a
night and for seven nights in a row. The fatigue and number of
accidents that will result from this will be very high, I can guarantee
it. That is just deadly.
The company never spoke to us about it. There is zero
communication
with the union. The only things this company believes that we as a
union
should have
a part in are bargaining and arbitration cases.
Also,
one has to understand that this is an isolated town. It was always
considered a family-orientated town. Having to work seven days in a row
is going
to take away from volunteer work in the community; minor jockey,
minor softball, guides and boy scouts and everything else. It is
different if you are
going to a work camp site, you know you are going to work for two
weeks,
or 21 days, and are prepared to do that when you go. When you already
work with
a company in an isolated town, where your spouse is also working with
the same company, now that you are going to be forced to work all these
shifts, it is
going to be hard to find babysitters and everything else.
These changes were made after they got a new CEO and he
brought in
his new managers. Rio Tinto is the main shareholder, and they are also
not union
friendly.
WF: You also report an increase in the
level of disciplining.
RT: They have been disciplining our
members more
than has ever been the case in the past. Right now we have six members
who
have been fired. We have never had that many people fired at one time
in the 25 years that I have been working with the company. We had a
gentleman that
was begged by the supervisors to stay to finish off a job. This was at
the end of seven shifts in a row he had worked, plus overtime. On
a Saturday night,
they asked him to stay to finish the job. He did not want to do it, he
was tired, they begged him, he stayed. He slept in the next morning --
that is he didn't
call in an hour before his shift to let them know he wouldn't be in. He
got disciplined for that. He
never showed up for 8 o'clock. He got
disciplined for that.
You only get four chances before you are fired. At some point he was
driving 45 km in a 40 km zone, it is not much, he got disciplined for
that. Then within the
same year he took off his safety glasses to wipe them off, the
supervisors disciplined him for that and he has been fired.
I honestly think that this is happening because with a
downturn in
the industry, with iron prices going down, they can't lay off the way
they want so they
are planning to increase the disciplinary measures and hand pick who
they get rid of. In 2004 they amalgamated many jobs into a single
occupation. For example
they created one called "maintenance operator mechanical 2." That
occupation includes all the welders, pipefitters, machinists, auto
mechanics, plant mechanics
and field mechanics -- six different trades all in one occupation. In
our collective agreement it states that if you are going to lay anybody
off you have to lay
off the junior person in the occupation. In order to lay off 10 welders
they may have to lay off 20 pipefitters or 10 mechanics before they can
lay off the first
welder. They are getting around this by disciplining people.
On top of that, right now we have 2,500 grievances
referred to
arbitration, the worst that I have ever heard of. The problem with
that, which the company
likes, is it is draining the union's resources because one arbitration
case costs us $30,000. Right now we are still alright financially but
it is going to take its
toll.
Another Environmental Mess Due to
Monopoly Oversight
Drilling Wastewater Leaked from North Dakota Pipeline
According to the North Dakota Department of Health,
close to 3
million gallons, or more than 11 million litres, of saltwater generated
by oil drilling leaked from a
North Dakota pipeline
earlier in January. The leak took place in Williams County in the
Northwest portion of North Dakota and is the largest such spill during
the current oil
boom.
Pipeline operator Summit Midstream Partners notified the
Department
of Health about the leak on January 6. Based on information from the
company, the
department first announced that an undetermined amount of saltwater had
been released from a saltwater disposal line but on January 21, it
issued a statement
saying that it had been informed by the company that "approximately
70,000 barrels of produced water and an unknown amount of oil" had
spilled from the
pipeline.
The fluid that leaked from the pipeline is a by-product
of fracking
and according to experts, often includes contaminants such as fracking
chemicals, benzene
and other carcinogens.
The cleanup has started but it will be difficult to
measure the
effects on the environment and wildlife until the ice melts, said Dave
Glatt, chief of North
Dakota Department of Health's environmental health section. Some
previous saltwater spills have taken years to clean up.
At the moment, the spill does not threaten public
drinking water or
human health, Glatt said. He said some farmers have been asked to keep
their livestock
away from the two creeks that were affected by the spill. So far, about
65,000 barrels of a mix of freshwater and brine have been pumped from
Blacktail Creek.
The wastewater also reached the bigger Little Muddy Creek and the
Missouri River may also have been affected.
North Dakota has suffered several saltwater spills since
the
state's oil boom based on fracked oil began in 2006. This latest spill
is almost three times
larger than the one that contaminated a portion of the Fort Berthold
Indian Reservation in western North Dakota in July 2014. Another spill
in
2006, of
nearly 4 million litres, near Alexander, also in the western portion of
the state, is
still being cleaned up nearly a decade later.
North Dakota, the U.S. No. 2 oil producer behind Texas,
produces
millions of barrels of wastewater per day with a salt content 30 times
higher than sea
water that must be sequestered underground forever. Media reports state
that there were 74 pipeline leaks in 2013 that spilled a total of
22,000 barrels of
saltwater, 17,000 barrels of which was from a single occurrence in
Bowman County. North Dakota oil drillers produced a record 313.5
million barrels of crude
in 2013 along with about 350 million barrels of contaminated water,
state data show.
A network of saltwater pipelines extends to hundreds of
disposal
wells in the western part of the state, where the water is pumped
underground for permanent
storage. Media report that in 2013, the State Legislature rejected a
bill which mandated flow meters and cutoff switches on these pipelines.
The bill was defeated
86-4 after encountering resistance from oil companies which argued the
additional monitoring would be too expensive end ineffective in
detecting small holes
in pipelines. Many pipelines are not equipped with systems that send an
alert when there is a leak and companies only discover them when going
through
production loss reports.
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