What Unemployment?

"Are we going to have a fishery designed to maximize EI access or maximize market returns?  I'm not advocating for the absence of an EI program.  We in the seasonal industry need seasonal supports, but in the absence of an EI program, would you have as many people wanting to work in the fishery then if they knew they could work 10 weeks, get laid off, maintain EI and not have to work?  And that's part of the overcapacity challenge and the structure of the business.  I think the existence of EI leads some people to stay in the fishery when they otherwise wouldn't."  Derek Butler, executive director, Association of Seafood Producers, Newfoundland and Labrador

Newfoundland has a high unemployment rate, higher than the other provinces; at 13%, it is the highest unemployment rate in the country.  Seafood processing plants in Newfoundland and Labrador advertise in regional newspapers and magazines for badly needed employees.  The response is so dismal they have given up in despair that native Newfoundlanders will apply for those positions.  Leaving them obviously short-handed.

Quinlan Brothers Ltd., facing the reality of the situation has had to bring in 20 workers from Thailand, hired to cook and package frozen shrimp and crab until October.  "They were doing everything they could to hire locally within the province.  But having failed to get an adequate workforce in 2011, they decided they had to take further initiatives to meet their growing demand for labour", explained a spokesman for the company, Gabe Gregory, in sheer frustration.

The plant hires about 450 people for the fishing season each year.  And they mostly come to work there from elsewhere in the province than where they operate from, in Bay de Verde, a community in the north of the Avalon peninsula.  "Why are there people in Atlantic Canada on EI when we have plants bringing in people from elsewhere to work?" fulminated Derek Butler.

Mr. Butler feels EI represents a symptom of a larger problem within the industry.  The industry, he feels, requires a change to present itself as a useful employment opportunity for younger people.  The fishing season might be extended in its potential to eight months or more.  With fewer harvesters and processing plants to balance the actual needs, people could be employed for longer periods, making it well worth their while to take those jobs, rather than for the few weeks it takes to quality for EI.

And something of that nature may very well be on the way, to change once and for all, the entitlement attitude that seems so obviously and maddeningly to prevail among casual, part-time workers too long accustomed to working just long enough to qualify for extremely generous EI payouts to people living and working in the Atlantic provinces.

The recent alterations by the federal government in the Employment Insurance system may just turn out to be the impetus needed by the industry when people have to face the reality that qualification has been made a tad more complex than previously; if work becomes locally available, it should be accepted, rather than continuing to rely on the 'found income' of EI.