Employment Insurance and the Big Brother State
I’m writing this because I’m once again forced to wonder how small-government “libertarian” conservatives can actually express support for the present government. The new proposal for EI, according to the minister, doesn’t mean kicking off people who would be eligible for EI today, or at least it only involves kicking off about 1% or so. And to achieve that grand objective, it may mean — must mean, given what’s been described to us by the government, the establishment of a new and enormous Big Brother-esque bureaucratic surveillance machine.
So far all we have to go on is a press release authored by the minister’s chief liar Alyson Queen, which suffers from a disturbing number of grammatical mistakes and bloopers resulting from some left-in remnants of early drafts. Let me be the first to declare shenanigans on this press release. It contains numerous errors and obviously has been through at least one major revision (since a couple parts got left in by accident and now float mysteriously, referring to nothing.) Some parts are duplicated. Several “backgrounders” are tacked on at the end, even though the “press release” itself is a Backgrounder — so you have Backgrounders to the Backgrounder. And so on. So Finley is both a liar, and incompetent.
Anyway, here’s the summary:
First, the government will divide everyone into three categories: less than 35 weeks of EI in the past five years, more than 35 but less than 60, and more than 60 (spread over at least 3 separate claims). This part is relatively easy to do and can probably be handled by EI’s computer system with only a little bit of retooling. How often you’ve been on EI in the past determines how choosy you can be about new work: down to 90% of pay for first-time claimants, or 70% for “frequent claimants.” More confusingly, your expectations are required to scale back in six-week increments: for instance, the middle group must accept down to 80% of their salay after 6 weeks, then down to 70% after 18 weeks, and so on.
Second, it requires that people accept any offer for “suitable employment.” That includes your usual line of work or, for frequent claimants or others after a couple months on EI, any job for which they would not require additional off-the-job training. People can refuse work if they are physically or medically incapable of doing it, or if they have “family obligations” which would interfere. You also can turn down jobs with unsafe working conditions, but absurdly, Finley claims that the only relevant unsafe condition would be if “position offered is not vacant directly due to a strike.” Huh?
The most interesting requirement, however, is transportation. This press release makes four potentially incompatible claims: that you must accept any job within an hour’s commuting time; that you must accept any job within your community’s average commuting time; that you must accept any job within your personal typical commuting time; and that you can refuse a job if you have “limited transportation options” available.
It’s worth asking how the EI system is going to monitor every single individual claimant to make sure they’re not turning down work that might not tick off any of the above boxes. Calculating commuting time is even more tough. For people who don’t have cars, the commuting calculation would have to be based on public transit, and so the one-hour time limit would have to be calculated on a case by case basis — not just for the individual claimant, but for every job they are offered.
Third, it requires that people undergo an acceptable “job search” or lose their benefits. “Reasonable job search” is defined according to four criteria, one of which is further subdivided into six required activities — researching jobs, resume-writing, searching for jobs (which is apparently different from researching jobs), filling out applications, attending interviews, and attending job fairs and workshops.
Not only are you expected to complete all of these steps, but you’re expected to develop an appropriate ratio between them all based on the area you live in. For instance, the government says that expects people in high-unemployment regions to spend more time researching “and not applying to the same job every day”, while people in low-unemployment regions devote a higher proportion of their time to filling out job applications. You must be able to show evidence of job searching on every day, 7 days a week.
There’s no way the EI system could possibly process all of this information for every claimant. Instead, they require that you “keep a record” of all of your activities and keep a file of “evidence” that can “support all job search activities.” I can see keepin a record of jobs applied for and interviews attended, but how exactly are you supposed to record “evidence” of searching and researching jobs? If you’re unsure how to answer this question, don’t worry, I’m sure Vic Toews and his Internet snoop squad will be happy to supply a copy of your Google search log to the EI people upon request.
Fourth, the government will send you a list of all available jobs in the country twice per day. Unlike the current biweekly selection of job offers from the federal Jobs Bank that you get every two weeks currently, this list will include jobs across the country, and it will bring together job offers from private job sites as well as the federal one. And you’ll get an updated list twice per day. It specifically says that you will receive job postings of “all available work… across Canada.” Yeah, that should be helpful.
This is, of course, completely ridiculous. There’s no way there are enough jobs being posted for any sort of qualified professional worker that they would need such a continuous stream of updates. Moreover, I can’t imagine how HRSDC thinks it is going to draw together all the information from the various private job bank sites and render it in a meaningful form. To do that, you’d either have to take over all the private sites (not likely under the present regime), force all private sites to transition to a common platform so that data can be exchanged automatically (not something private profit-seeking jobs sites are likely to agree to), or hire a legion of researchers to trawl the job sites every day searching for job offers to input into EI’s special new super-database.
Finally, the government is making some adjustments to the clawback rates. The stated purpose is to stop people from accepting only a few hours of part-time work in order to prevent their payouts from being clawed back under the current scheme. What they don’t mention is that under the new scheme you’ll actually have your net benefits slashed until you’re earning the equivalent of a full-time minimum-wage job (sort of defeating the purpose of the part-time-work exemption, if you ask me), even as people earning up to $3500 a month in “part-time” work will still receive some EI money as a top-up:
Additional Weekly Income | Current Scheme | Proposed Scheme |
|---|---|---|
| $100 | $568 | $518 |
| $200 (half-time minimum wage) | $655 | $568 |
| $300 | $655 | $618 |
| $400 (full-time minimum-wage) | $655 | $668 |
| $500 | $655 | $718 |
| $600 | $655 | $768 |
| $700 | $700 (EI benefits cease) | $818 |
| $800 | ---- | $868 |
| $900 | ---- | $918 |
| $1000 | ---- | $1000 (EI benefits cease) |
Of course, there’s no money left over in the budget for the creation of such a surveillance machine. HRSDC is cutting back just like every other department. So how does EI create its surveillance bureaucracy? Either it won’t actually create it at all, in which case all the grand new rules are just a bluff, or, more likely, they will create it by shifting workers out of EI operations units and putting them onto the surveillance units instead. So EI, whose service wait-times are already so absurdly long that the minister has publicly claimed there is a wrecking conspiracy at work among the lower levels, is going to get even slower.
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Dave
The ‘evidence’ of a job search is writing down 50 or so business names from the phone book. That’s what we used to do. No resources to verify that all those companies were really cold called… And, from working reception at factories, we kept no record of cold calls coming in. More Conservative BS that can and will be gamed.
sushi
I find it interesting that we now institute significant public policy shifts based on anecdotal data regarding 24 unfilled fish plant positions in PEI.
The other point of interest is the focus on economic disincentives as they apply to the unemployed. The fact of job loss and EI payments render you an instant couch potato. This we know to be true.
No one appears to be too concerned with the way in which the Harper policy changes will influence employer behaviour.
If I am an employer and I find my margins being squeezed, I now have significant economic incentive to layoff my workforce as I am assured that the EI system will force them to accept reemployment in the exact same positions at much lower rates of pay.
Nègres blancs d’Amérique was published 40 years too early.
Sixth Estate
Dave — You’ve always been expected to be conducting a job search. My point was that the new rules are far more specific about what that search must contain. For instance, if you were challenged on it under the new system, it wouldn’t be enough to have that list of business phone numbers. You’d have to show the time you spent researching and searching (again, I’m unclear on the difference there), networking, etc., etc. I suppose heading off to the pub with some friends counts as networking though, eh?
And then my point was, the only way these new, tighter rules would actually mean something would be if they were enforceable, and I can’t imagine how they will be.
sushi — Not just PEI — also some unfilled fast food jobs in Alberta!
With regard to the rest of your comment — I’ve thought along those lines too. Right now I’m not sure. On the one hand you’re absolutely right; it creates an incentive for employers to game the system and drive down wages. On the other hand, for most employers the resulting shuffle would probably involve more trouble than it was worth. From my own anecdotal evidence, it’s taking a good while to get EI payments out the door from HRSDC these days. Laying off your employees and waiting a couple months for them to get on EI, then another month after that to make them an offer and get them back on the job, seems like quite a hassle.
From an employer perspective, the new temporary worker-EI “connection” will probably be far more interesting. By definition (and economic theory, which the Harperites claims to love), temporary foreign workers are paid less than what Canadians were willing to be paid for the same work. If the connection is going to mean offering Canadians jobs at substandard wages and compelling them to accept, then THAT would be something that employers would be interested in.
The whole thing is pretty screwy, though. The EI system was not designed to help you find employment, it was designed to compensate you for lost employment. We used to assume that Canadians were intelligent enough that if jobs were available they would find them, and that’s worked pretty well for us so far, given that EI is a wholly self-financing program (or would be, if the government hadn’t raided the treasure chest for years).
If the purpose of the program was to create employment, there would be obvious ways to squeeze employers. Like, eliminate the temporary foreign workers program. Then, wages would rise to the point where labour would make itself available on the market. I believe that’s how the free market these clowns worship is actually supposed to work. Suddenly they’ve discovered they control the levers of state control, and state control doesn’t sound so bay anymore.
The Sixth Estate » Employment Insurance and the Big Brother State | Job Offers
[...] people in low-unemployment regions devote a higher proportion … … See the rest here: The Sixth Estate » Employment Insurance and the Big Brother State ← How to become a certified resume writer? – Covering Letter for Job … Truck [...]
kootcoot
I’m retired (not retarded) now, but spent much of my working life doing so-called seasonal work like logging and construction. In the day loggers were never unemployed on the coast, unless they wanted to be but in the interior we had to deal with Spring break-up. Now a short spring break-up would see me back to work before benefits would start pouring in and forcing me to give up my job and if the conditions forced me to be off longer, the UI would pick up the slack. Meanwhile, no one was likely to hire me for a month or two in the meantime, though sometimes I could fit in, and would, some small construction job. Either way, I made much more money working and with a family to support, preferred to do so.
I always wondered then, when occasionally they would launch a campaign to send people like me on absurd job searches to satisfy some bureaucrat’s inspiration, how they ever expected to have people available to do these seasonal, yet important and productive jobs if they were gonna be hassled for taking advantage of the very insurance program that was supposed to protect them. Incidentally, local employers usually complained to the UI people even more than us claimants, for making them deal with all these bogus (in the sense we were forced to apply for non-existent jobs that we wouldn’t get even if they were there) applicants for jobs that didn’t exist and wouldn’t be given to a guy who would leave in a month of so for three times the money where he had seniority.
If only we would work for the wages the Chinese will work for though, then all would be peachy keen in Spiteful Stevie’s Canada. Besides, what a sense of entitlement we have expecting to have a roof over our heads and some food to eat!
chris
Well at least they can’t force me to work for less than I make now. With my lifetime of experience, vast knowledge of my field and technical capabilities, that would be illegal. At least until they abolish the minimum wage laws…Oh…shit.
The bottom’s coming up pretty fast with these guys in charge, time to sharpen the old pitchfork I think.
chris
Also:
http://www.juancole.com/2012/05/the-exact-measure-of-injustice-frederick-douglass-poster.html
Sixth Estate
kootcoot — I tuned out as soon as I realized this was some sort of entitled elitist socialist drivel.
The government is billing the new approach as a solution to the traditional “fake job search” but I’m honestly not sure how it can be. Who is going to assess what constitutes a reasonable job effort? The criteria I summarized here look detailed on paper, but I fail to see how they can plausibly be put into practice, even assuming they were a good idea.
Lenny Wright
EI has come to mean Empty Insurance. When you lose your job you are on your own. If you have a bad boss and they let you go, you can’t collect a penny. If you get sick and cant go to work forget collecting you will die waiting for a cheque. EI is just another tax. It should be there to help people. They pay into it, so they can get help on a rainy day.
I am totally offended at this “fake job search” BS. Anyone try and look for a job and see what you get. Not enough livable jobs to go around. It is a silent plague.
hernanday
The reality is there will be like 5 guys in Ottawa trying to enforce this nation wide, that’s how Canada’s feds work. Pass a bunch of laws no one complies with and rarely enforces them.
Not that they don’t plan to make a police state, but first they want to bankrupt us first by forcing us into the shit jobs and on the dole before hiring the brown shrits to lock us up.
Sixth Estate
hernanday – That was my suspicion too, yes, regarding the lack of enforcement. The current EI system already lacks the staff to run it thanks to Conservative mismanagement. And they’re not hiring new staff. It follows that anything requiring even more work out of the existing staff isn’t going to work very effectively.
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[...] the separatists” to avoid taking responsibility for his own actions. This spring’s comparatively minor EI reforms provoked howls of protest, especially in Atlantic Canada. Imagine the political fallout if the [...]