Classifying the unemployed

Because we have do something, McDonalds is importing temporary workers and there are unemployed Canadians that could be flipping those burgers.

So to fix the problem, the Harper regime will reclassify the unemployed or so Kady reports from Diane Finley’s news conference this morning.

The new classifications set out the period of time that a claimant can refuse a job offer that pays less than they were making before and eventually I assume they will have to fill that job at McDonalds.

If you are lucky enough to be classified as a LTW (Long-tenured-worker) in the new plan, you are allowed to refuse jobs that are less than 95% of your lost rate of pay, at least for the first seventeen weeks or so. After that you have to accept job offers that are up to 80% of your former wage.

Now if you are considered an occasional claimant you only have 6 weeks at the 95% level, then 12 weeks at the 80% and finally 70%. in other words you have to take a job offer even if it is a 30% cut from what you were making before or loose your benefits.

Lastly if the database determines that you are a Frequent flyer, you can’t refuse a 20% cut from the start and after the first six weeks you fall to the 70% level.

And it will be a database that determines your classification and I assume some links if you disagree with the classification. Applying for your benefits is an online procedure. No more lining up in the EI office, now you register and report on line. The ministry will now send you two alerts each day for the available jobs in your area, that I assume meet your skill set and qualifications, based on the data of course that you entered when creating your claim.

Is this going to stop McDonalds or Tim Hortons from bringing in temporary workers from the Philippines or El Salvador? No, only reversing the changes that the Harper regime made to immigration laws would do that. They created a new category of temporary worker and the low wage employers have exploited it.

As an employer authorized to import workers you do not have to raise your salaries or improve employee benefits in order to hire employees, quite the opposite, you can lower them and bring in employees that will do anything to work. And the neat thing for the government, when the temporary worker is laid off, they cannot claim EI benefits. No they are either hired by another low pay employer or get sent back home.

The Harper regime has now finally started to explain the changes they are going to make to our EI payments which are sort of skimmed over in the omnibus Budget bill they will be passing. The budget bill basically states that the Harperites no longer need to pass laws in order to make changes to the EI or talk to Parliament. Now they can just make decrees and that is what they have done today.