10% unemployment by 1990

The tragedy

behind the

jobless rate

By KERRY McCUAIG

For Kathy Kreig, being laid off means passing up
sales on baby clothes for her eight-month old son
Jamie — he has to make do with her four-year old
daughter’s hand me downs.

It means being stuck at home because she can no
longer afford to run the family’s second car, a °72
Vega which took her back and forth to her job at
Admiral in Cambridge, Ontario.

The insurance came due and she couldn’t afford
to renew it. *‘ The public transportation system in
Cambridge is so poor that a car isn’t a luxury’,
says 26-year old Kathy. *‘It’s'a four block walk to
even get to a bus stop and with two kids in the
middle of winter that’s a bit much.”

Running out of milk and bread means waiting for
her husband, Mike to get home from work at six
before she can pop out to the store.

‘**When I! was working I always thought how nice
it would be to be a full time mother’’, she says.
‘But when you can’t even get to the library or visit
a friend, when you can’t even buy the kids under-
wear, it takes the joy out of being at home.”

Kathy had worked for five years at Canadian
Admiral Corp. Ltd. when she was laid off Nov. 4,
along with 1,700 other Admiral employees in On-
tario. She was earning $7.20 an hour as an assem-
bler and liked her job.

“‘Not that the work was exciting’, she says,
“‘but I had made a lot of friends. We would go
bowling on Tuesdays and socialize together on the
weekends. We don’t do much socializing now, we
even have to think before inviting friends over for a
game of cards.”

Kathy is bitter as she tells of her layoff notice.
*“We showed up for work, were told to go to the
cafeteria and were out the door a half hour later
without even a pay cheque for our last week’s
work. It was just before Christmas too.”’

Kathy is in a more fortunate position than some
of her fellow workers. ‘*At least Mike has a job. A
lot of the women’s husbands had been laid off from
the Stamp (Stamp and Enamel in Cambridge) ear-
lier that month. Some of the guys are in their fifties,
they'll never get jobs.””

Working Wives Lower Poverty Rate

Not that Kathy’s job wasn’t important. A recent
report from the National Council on Welfare
claims that it is working wives that are keeping
their families out of poverty.

The proportion of poor families dropped from.
ey of all Canadian families in 1969 to 10.4% in

“If there are fewer poor families than there were
in 1969 it’s not because people are getting larger
wages or more from government programs, but
because people are pooling their wages, says the
Council’s director Kenneth Battle. ‘‘More families
have pulled themselves above the poverty line be-
cause they have working wives.”

Figures differ according to regions and commun-
ity sizes. A family of four living in a major centre is
considered poor if their income is below $12,807, a
single person if they earn below $5,822. This leaves
10% of all Canadian families, and 31.4% of single
persons or nearly 3 million people living below the
poverty line.

But as unemployment figures rise and job oppor-
tunities decrease there is little change that the
1,500,000 unemployed in this country will find al-
ternative jobs.

Economists optimistically predict a 10% jobless

TRIBUNE PHOTO — KERRY McCUAIG

Admiral workers protest their lost jobs at the Canadian Labor Congress initiated interest rate protest Nov. 21

in Ottawa.

sustained at 3% annually throughout the decade.
The current unemployment rate is 8.7%.

A document prepared by the federal Department
of Trade and Commerce predicts that a further
175,000 people will be unemployed by March. On-
tario and Quebec will be hardest hit with mass
layoffs in the furniture and fixtures, machinery,
fabricated metals, rubber and plastics, leather, tex-
tiles, chemical, printing and publishing industries.

The document also targets farm machinery
workers (1,000 more are to join the 4,000 already
on indefinite layoffs), 1,800 are being cut from
Canadian National’s work force, 18,000 auto-
workers are on definite and indefinite layoffs. Basic
industries such as iron and stell will also ex-
perience substantial job losses.

‘Human Tragedy Mounts

While the government releases its figures the
tragedy mounts as each worker hits the un-
employment line. Metro Toronto’s welfare rolls
have swelled by 5,000 since November, bringing
the total to more than 40,000. Most of the new
applicants have never been on welfare before, ac-
cording to John Kruger, Metro’s commissioner of
community services.

Kruger says many of the people seeking welfare
are workers whose unemployment insurance has
run out and they’ re trying to maintain a family at a
cost that reaches $1,000 a month.

Welfare pays a maximum of $625 a month for a
family of four. Kruger said one of the requirements
in applying for welfare is to continue looking for
work. That just adds to the frustration, ‘‘the jobs
are just not there,” he said.

The bitterness of applying for welfare is only the
tip of an ugly iceberg. At least six Branford, On-
tario workers committed suicide after the towns’
major employer Massy Ferguson laid off its work
force last December.

Last month in Toronto a grandmother and two
small children were burned to death in a fire. The
father was unemployed, the mother in hospital.
The gas company had cut off the heat during a
record cold snap. The family had used space heat-
ers to keep from freezing. The fire started from an
overload on the electrical system.

What’s becoming obvious is that mortgage fore-
closures, welfare applications, mounting racism,
rising incidents of wife and child abuse, suicides
and other deaths aren’t the result of inherent
human weaknesses. They follow directly from
government policies.

Ottawa, continues to follow Washington’s lead
is placing its faith in supply side economics — it is
based on the assumption that inflation can be wres-
tled to the ground and economic growth enhanced
as long as investors ‘‘believe’’ in the economy.
The jobless are to be sacrificed in the phantom fight

Corporate profits are to be enhanced while
workers’ wages are kept down. Corporate tax cuts
are joined by shifts in government expenditures
away. from services for working people» toward
corporate subsidies. It adds up to a further means
of increasing corporate control over economic re-
sources at the expense of working people.

November’s federal budget followed this model
as Ottawa succumbed to U.S. pressure and
weakened its attempts to regain some control over

energy and natural resources.

Even disguised in Canadian colors Reaganomics
doesn’t work. Inflation hit a 33-year high last
month. Economic growth will be 2.7% annually for
the next decade. This is the best government says
it can do.

The only real alternative is for working people to
insist on direct, public democratic control of the
economy.

( Ontario labor plans
interest rate protests

TORONTO — The Ontario Federation of —

Labor may be a jump ahead of the Canadian Labor —
Congress in planning grass roots, local demonstra-
tions. The CLC executive council said from its —
special meeting in Ottawa, Feb. 9, that it was plan-
ning a public attack on the federal interest rate@
policy in local areas.

The OFL has already ‘‘targeted 11 major areas
in Ontario for demonstrations based on local deci
sions as to their nature and timing. p

It is proposed that these begin i in St. Catharines | a
on Feb. 24 and culminate in Toronto on April 6.
Among the two northern and nine southern centres —
suggested by the OFL following a huddle with ©
major affiliates, are Hamilton, Windsor, Cornwall, —
Kingston, Sudbury, Thunder Bay ‘and’ Peter-
borough. The tentative plan is to select a bank OF ©
federal building around which the protest with the
most meaning can be centred.

“It’s left up to the areas to determine what they
think is the best kind of thing in that particulat
He ee president Cliff Pilkey told the Tribune,

e

At the CLC council meeting agreement was
reached to hold regional protest rallies, pu
forums or commissions, meeting with seamen coll
parliament, and to use advertisements, and possi:
bly another demonstration along the ince of
November 21 to get government -action. :
demonstrations are expected to continue up to ie :
CLC convention scheduled for Winnipeg, in May:

Pilkey said of the latest decisions: “‘we may eve®
put this public commission concept into play —
include not just the unions but small busines
that have gone belly-up, and homeowners who al

— rate by 1990. That is only ifreal economic growth is

against inflation. ,
losing their homes.

yt . +a is

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEB. 19, 1982—Page 6