Between October 2008 and August 2009, Canada lost 486,000 full-time jobs. Dramatic as they are, even these figures do not speak to the experiences of workers whose lives are being devastated by job loss. Our communities are in crisis. The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) set out this past summer to listen to the powerful voices of workers in their communities. 

In each community, we met with labour and other community leaders; laid-off and unemployed workers; workers in both the public and private sectors; women, men, workers of colour, young workers, and Aboriginal workers.

We talked to people who deliver social services to the community and unemployed workers. We spoke with educators and health care providers, clergy and politicians. In each interview, we gained deeper knowledge of the real impact of market forces on people’s lives.  This summer, we saw the effect of an unprecedented attack on unions and collective bargaining. We saw the fear caused by loss of retirement security for retired workers. We witnessed the inadequacy of the unemployment insurance program to help unemployed workers. We saw the strain on municipalities. We heard what job loss is doing to families.

Although governments and powerful business groups would like to have us believe the “Great Recession” might be drawing to a close, workers continue to face joblessness, and with it, financial ruin.  Many workers have only been able to find minimum-wage jobs to replace industrial wages. Those lucky enough to be still working face deteriorating wages and working conditions. Others worry about the prospect of bankruptcy and welfare. 

Miramichi, New Brunswick

At one point, Miramichi had one of the largest pulp and paper mills in Canada, employing more than 1,000 workers. This mill is now closed permanently. Last year, the Miramichi region lost 3,100 jobs.  The biggest employer in town is now the Regional Hospital. Workers did all they could to survive at first with severance pay, Employment Insurance cheques, training support, and job opportunities in the province or across the country. These sources of funds are now drying up.

Kelly McKay’s father was laid off from the mill. He is ill, too young to retire, and has had to declare bankruptcy. “For me, as his child, it broke my heart to think that man has been working since he was 11, and what did it come down to?”  Read more...

Liverpool, Nova Scotia

By mid-summer 2009, CEP paper workers at the Brooklyn mill had already been through several five-week shutdowns. As of July, as one worker said, “We have only worked 12 of 28 weeks in 2009.”

One paper mill worker said, “When I joined the union in the mid-1980s, there were over 700 members in my local. Now, there are 215.”   A Liverpool resident commented, “Oh man, there’s a lot of pain in the fishery right now. Not the owners, they’re having it bad, but it is far worse for the ones working on the boats.

A lot of them left for Alberta when things were booming there, but now they’re completely lost, and there’s a lot of poverty out there.”  Others are coming home. “I know two families where the workers returned from Alberta and can’t get more work, and one of them has been out of work since April.”  Read more...

Oshawa, Ontario

Employment has dropped from 12,000 at GM Oshawa to just over 3,500 in two years. For each job lost, another 7.5 jobs were lost in auto parts and services. Long-time resident Sandra Kicinko says, “This has been devastation.”

The United Way “took a hit of approximately $700,000.” She continues, “When you have a $3-million budget, that’s very significant.” Simcoe Hall Settlement House has seen an increase of approximately 20 to 25% per month in the usage of food banks.  Says Ingrid Thompson of ETFO, “We have kids in crisis every day and there’s no place for them to go.” Occasional teachers find it next to impossible to qualify for EI.  UFCW Loblaws’ workers are seeing their jobs turned into Superstores and NoFrills, which means four-dollar-an-hour pay cuts. Read more...

Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

By April 2009, 20% of Essar’s (the former Algoma Steel) workforce of 2,251 was laid off. Meanwhile, Algoma Tube (now Tenaris) shut down and later resumed production with 130 workers still laid off.

A USW millwright, who relocated to Sault Ste. Marie, was told two months later that he was laid off permanently. “I was hoping to ...plant some roots and hopefully start a family, but like I said, I was hard hit. And now I find myself laid off, collecting EI which doesn’t cut it. It’s half my wage, and plus ... I’ve applied to roughly 125 to 130 different establishments and I’ve only had one call back, so it’s tough.”

An OPSEU medical laboratory technologist at the Sault Area Hospital describes her workday. “We’re facing no downtime. You’re performing at 200% for seven and a half hours a day, and quite literally, people leave there crying. Quite literally.”  Read more...

Welland, Ontario

John Deere will be closed by the end of the year with a loss of 800 jobs, and in recent years, Henniges Automotive has permanently laid off about 700 workers. In both cases, production is being permanently shifted out of Canada, mainly to Mexico. CAW Local 523 president and city councillor Rick Alakas is alarmed:
“For anybody to sit here now and say that we’re in a transition and we’re going to turn a corner and be just fine, I think they’re fooling themselves, or they’re preaching a line to the public that they’re hoping the people are going to buy into. But we’re going to be in one hell of a mess here come September, October when Deere’s closed... We’ve got a huge social problem growing on the horizon in Welland.”  Read more...

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

The Saskatchewan government receives generous revenues from potash, oil, and mining. But the new government has cutbacks and privatization on its mind. New “essential service” legislation is stripping public sector workers of the right to strike. CUPE members are worried.

In Saskatoon, the key “community in crisis” is urban. It is Aboriginal. It is young. And the “crisis” for this community did not emerge in the last 12 months.

Aboriginal and First Nation communities say, “Economic crisis? The recession? Our communities would welcome moving up from abject poverty and neglect to the status of a Recession.”   Read more...

Campbell River, British Columbia

“We’ve lost our fishing. We’ve lost our logging. We’ve lost our mill. We’ve lost our mine. What more can one town lose?” asks miner and CAW Local 3019 president Brian Clark.   Three hundred miners from NVI mines laid off in March 2008; 257 jobs lost at the TimberWest sawmill in May 2008; 1,100 pulp and paper workers at Catalyst on indefinite layoff since spring 2009.

USW member, Mitch, is laid off from Western Forest Products. He is concerned about equal access to Employment Insurance.   “Just north of here you don’t need as many hours. They’re working for the ... same company, but they don’t need the same hours we need. They get longer benefits, and it doesn’t take them as long. So they need to really fair up the process.”   The results point to a failure of unfair trade, investment, and financial policies. Across the country, workers are calling on governments to take immediate action to address the profound crisis affecting all of our communities.  Read more...

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