Pandemic: Income Supports

[dewline]

I still believe that the federal government of Canada rolled up the various COVID-motivated income support programmes far too soon.

Yes, there's more jobs and I'm still trying to find my best fit.

(Listening to Cross-Country Checkup on the radio, and I have the CFL Western Division final on TV behind me.)

Comments

[agoodwinsmith]

I agree. 20 hours a week with no benefits is not a job. 20 hours a week with no benefits and random hours is not a job. 20 hours a week with no benefits, random hours, and layoff without warning is not a job. 20 hour a week with no benefits, random hours, layoff without notice, and abusive expectations is not a job.

So much of our economy is built on Not A Job employment.

[sabotabby]

One thing that I hope comes out of the Great Resignation is, if not a full-scale general strike or workers revolt, the idea that you should treated with dignity and appropriately compensated for work, and that having a job is not some kind of privilege that we need to compete for.

[dewline]

I don't mind the competitions too much, honestly. I do object to the idea that anyone should starve to death for losing any/all competitions, though.

[sabotabby]

That too.

[lilysea]

Yes, they cancelled pandemic-related income support far too soon in Australia, too :(

[We still have unlimited-duration unemployment benefits, but the rate is not enough to live on,

and also unemployment benefits do nothing to help people who HAVE a job but need to stay home and self-isolate due to COVID exposure...

or who HAVE a job but their workplace is closed due to a lockdown...]

[dewline]

...unlimited-duration?

And no, it wouldn't be allowed to be enough to live on, would it.

*sigh of irritation and disgust*

[lilysea]

...unlimited-duration?

As long as you are unemployed, and also jumping through Centrelink's hoops every 14 days to prove you are job-searching [eg applying for X jobs a fortnight], Australian unemployment benefit never ends.

However, the hoops get increasingly more annoying every 6 months,

and eventually you end up in "work for the dole" schemes doing 20+ hours per week of unpaid work which could be eg planting trees or picking up rubbish from the roadside.

[dewline]

In Canada, we're currently only expected to keep the job search diary ready for "on request" inspection, and it's spot checks. For as long as the benefits are allowed to last. I fully expect that to be made worse in some way or another the next time our Conservative Party gets back into power on the federal level...and they'll likely privatise - as I hear has been done in your country and in the UK - the administration of it, or download more of the process onto the provincial/territorial governments if that happens.

And if "the dole" became something like an actual "baseline" living wage in Canada, I doubt I'd mind doing some volunteer community support like tree-planting. But that's not going to happen without a lot of political pressure from us citizens, is it?

[lilysea]

Yeah, at the Federal level, Australia has had the equivalent of the Tories/the Republicans in power nonstop since 2013, which has caused A LOT of damage to the social safety net :(