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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

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

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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.

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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.

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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."

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Labour Code Changes Criminalize
the Right to Refuse Dangerous Work

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.

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Inhuman Shift Changes Will Lead to
Fatigue and Accidents

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.

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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.

(Photo: nationofchange.org)

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