CITY: of RUNCAN

TELEPHONE 746-6126 2B1 CANADA AVE. . DUNGAN, ‘B.C,

Office Of
The Mayor : February 17th, 1972,

‘Mayor and Council

Dear Sirs:

oO No doubt you hava been made aware during the past
four to six weeks of the carious problems confronting persons who are
unemployed and evaiting Unemploymont Insurence Benefits.

The seriousness of this problem is not being over
exaggerated as some persons in tha Unemployment Insurance Offices would
have us believe. Fron the complaints we have received at City Hall
and individually, we as a Council, find that there are indeed people
waiting for Unemployment Insuranca Benefits for periods of up to tvelve_

weeks.

It does not take much imagination to visualize what
happens to a man whose family is facing another week without benefits
from Unerployment Insurance and with no savings in the bank, or whose
savings are beinre used up very rapidly to feed his family. The man
has no recourse but to resort te t..e welfare offices for social
assistance. Many of the people I have spoken to over the past three
or four weeks find this a very degrading situation. They are honest,
Straight forward, hard working people, and tho thought that the
Government has let them down and forced then to 8° on Social Assistance
is indeed a severe blow te them. :

The Federal Government during 1971 changed legislation
pertaining to the Unemployment Insurance Act, Which stated that persons
would be eligible for Unenploy:zent Insurence Benefits upon "interruption
of earnings" and according to tha Act, this involves holiday pay,
severance pay, eny benuses that mey be forthcoming and any retirement
bay, etc. This means then that no one is eligible for Unemployment
Insurance Benefits until he has collected from his employer all of those
things aforementioned. It would appear in light of this legislation
that a logeer, as en xemple, vorking eight or nine months of the
year, must forfeit his holiday pay, to enable his family to live during
pertods of excessive wait by the Unemployrent Insurance Commission, or
when he is laid off because of his seasénal employment position. There
are meny cases where there ts no opportunity for the workman to use
his holiday pay for the reasons for which it has been accumulated, -