Feds Lack Compassion for Laid-off Workers
Conservatives have once again shown a callous disregard for the plight of working families. On Monday, Human Resources Minister Diane Finley stated that her government has no interest in increasing Employment Insurance payments making it “lucrative” for jobless workers to sit around the house. She might as well be calling them lazy welfare bums.
Finley opposes raising EI benefits or making it easier to qualify for the insurance payments. The government’s recent budget reforms to EI are minimal; they leave the maximum payment at $447 a week, and it is still difficult to qualify for that paltry sum. One wonders why many workers have to pay for an insurance that they will never be able to access when they need it.
The minister argues that with significant skill shortages in many parts of the country we should be putting our money into retraining. But retraining is not a substitute for decent EI benefits, easier access to the system, ending the two-week waiting period and ending the practice of refusing to pay out benefits until severance packages have been exhausted. In any case, for many laid off workers retraining is not an option because of intellectual limitations, age, and the fact that you have to have such an exorbitant number of hours to even qualify.
If the Harper government really wanted to involve itself in new job creation we should have seen a bolder and more visionary approach in the budget involving widespread development of green technology for the future.
