This past summer, I spent some time on unemployment and one of the things that you must do to get your EI payment is attend a 3-hour seminar with workers in similar situations. The presentation itself was fairly boiler-plate, but what stuck out to me was the moment where everyone explained their situations.
The group I was with was an amazing cross-section of people from different industries, many of whom were extremely ashamed of the situation they had found themselves in. Some were anglophones or immigrants unable to find work without a high enough level of French. Others explained how they were unable to afford a car and were therefore limited in where they could work. One woman was a trained teacher who couldn’t work because of her hijab and there was a gentlemen who’s criminal record caused many employers to turn up their noses. A mother of two explained how she had worked at a factory for 20+ years, which had closed its doors to move to the States because of the trade war, and was now unsure how she would find work to support her family.
What quickly became obvious was that the high unemployment we are seeing is not simply an issue of people not wanting to work, because from what I could see in that room was that people were desperate to do so! It is the crises of the capitalist system itself that thrusts people out of work, and we need to get to work to overthrow it!
– Calvin B., Montreal
