Don't get me started......

I think Mr. Flaherty (Princeton grad) should work a day in his life and see how that feels. If he becomes unemployed (which I fervently hope he does), he could try picking fruit while waiting for his EI. 

One should never have to work an entire professional career to  get sacked and be forced to work at Arby's (unless they want to).

You touched on a real concern, which is that crooked employers will be able to pay any pittance and toss out the safety standards because of this change.  There will be little recourse for EI recipients.

I once worked temp as a numeric typist (at minimum wage) between the desks of two department heads that viciously hated one another and they were forever yelling and berating each other over my head.

I sat in the middle trying to type Bills of Lading without mistakes. BAD job.

Grad student once your funding runs out.  Even when you're paid, most labour laws don't apply.  Now I'm just 'slave labour'.  I'm sure there are still worse jobs out there though.

I think it's also more beneficial for those with student loans to collect EI and wait to find a job in their field rather than work for minimum wage.

I have worked more jobs than I can keep track of.
 

Bad jobs?

If we are not talking wages, then working elbow deep in someone else's feces has to rank right up there. Not bad pay, bad job.

Changing adult diapers was bad for far less wages.(Minimum wage then was a little over $5 an hour.

For bad pay and hard work, it has to be cutting and hurling Christmas trees onto a truck for $3.35 an hour.

Cleaning hotels rooms during spring break in Texas after college kids have been partying was not pleasant but it paid over $5 and it certainly was better than my working in the laundry with 100 degree temps PLUS dryers running.

If they can do so much "reality TV" and shows like Undercover Boss, how about having politicians and policymakers do some grunt work for a week? Jim Flaherty could star in the first episode. He needs a reality check.

So true. It's a waste of time and resources and very false economy. What is needed for a resume is a current work history that utililizes at least some of the skills that education has developed. Potential employers won't be able to assess the true ability of a grad if the first job they find after graduation is flipping burgers. Have to say though that there should be a giant disclaimer given to anyone who considers entering an Arts Undergrad that they should be prepared to do anything to get by afterwards. Think entrepreneurship if you must take Classical Studies. 

:-) 

It's called being a professional bum-wiper. Been doing that for a lot of years! Some has to and it ain't so bad once you're used to it. There's always lots of work!!!! 

I started doing this as a temporary job until I found one that suited my real skills -- 20 + years ago. Got to pay the rent somehow and I couldn't afford to take the time to retrain.....

Hi GordW,

Hmmmmmm.

I worked as a Security Guard for Burns International back when minimum wage was $4 an hour.  If I took a detail which had a high probability of me getting injured I was paid $4.25.  That extra $.25 eventually adds up to about the price of a box of band-aids.

I worked for a promotions company when minimum wage was $4 an hour as well.  I spent roughly 8 hours a day outside running flyers from door to door to door.  Everybody loved us crossing their lawns, the Canada Post carriers complimented us on the way we clogged the mail boxes.  Every now and then we'd have a free sample run.  Want to know what it feels like to deliver something like, a cup of liquid tide laundry soap to 2000 homes every day for a week?  

This was my favourite.  It was August, heat-wave and we were delivering free samples of Mott's Clamato, regular and spicy.  Our bags probably weighed 60 pounds at the start of each run.  We are about a half and hour away from lunch and I am dry, so dry I can't even spit.  I'm hot.  I'm drenched in sweat and all I have to drink is one can of spicy clam and tomato juice.

Still, I'd take any of those jobs at those rates before you could pay me to sit and listen to Jim Flaherty.  That would have to be the absolute worst of jobs.

Grace and peace to you.

John

the gad ones were the hopeless ones.

I was working in a filthy factory. It was raining. I stood in a second storey doorway of the factory (there was no gallery of stairway), looking out into the rain, thinking of my holiday coming up,realizing I couldn't possibly afford to go anywhere - and thinking this was the rest of my life.

Later, working as a clerk at Bell tellepphone was no better. The work wasn't hard but, lord, it was boring.

best job - teaching

most challenging job - filling in for a kindergarten teacher.

Mmmm ... most of the jobs I had in my student days were not great.  It's hard to say which was the worst.

The best one was in the summer after second year university. I was an OT assistant in a large rehabilitation facility.

There are bad jobs, then there are illegal jobs. Believe me, no job is as bad as that.

For me a bad job is one that saps the integrity of the spirit.

A job that is compelling you to do something that goes against  what you stand for.

Changing diapers of old people .... that is a noble job....

Cleaning out sewage from a place to make it cleaner and better ..... that kind of dirt washes off.

Having to cover or contribute to the blatant cheating and demeaning of others ..... we that soils the soul I suppose.

I have had lots of physically dirty jobs .... but that dirt washes off.

I have stepped away from working for certain clients because I felt that in principle that what their company was doing was wrong and I did not want to contribute to that or have my reputation soiled by working for them.

Just my thoughts.....

Hugs

Rita

i helped with the coding for the afterlife

so sorry for the mixups, fellow humans...try to die with enough money, hmm?

here's the demo

did you really, ina?  it is good, i loved that...shared it out via facebook after my nephew in new zealand shared it with me.

*****

hmm, don't think i ever knew something was a bad job when i was in it, i just slogged through.  something about the way my parents raised me i think....not saying it is right, just saying it is what it is...worked for the same company for 34 years, lots of different managers, roles, functions, reporting areas, titles, etc...even different company name...

My worst job was definitely working at the Orange Julius in the mall. In the back was an area about 15 feet long and 5 feet wide where all the food prep was done, everything was stored and also where I was constantly tripping over my boss. I spent all of two weeks in that job and hated every moment of it. 

Flaherty needs a reality slap for sure.  Let's line up and volunteer to slap him.

He should take a lesson from this man. This is a BC MLA who took a one-month welfare challenge.  IN WINTER. Sleeping outside was not an option.  This is his blog:

http://mlaonwelfare.com/

heh guys, i get this..but..i am going to play devil's advocate for a moment.

So...for the guys that I remember talking to who said they would work for x months doing a spring/summer/fall construction task and then collect UI for the winter....is that reasonable?  Is it reasonable if it is a pattern year after year?

that is a good point.  living in an area with lots of orchards for summer and ski hill in winter there  is a lot of seasonal work out there. A person COULD keep themselves employed through much of the year if they had a mind to. Many just work half a year and  join hte EI ski team the other half. That is abusing the sytem a bit, year after year. Teachers work their asses off ten months of the year and get two off. I am fine with that. But half and half or doing the bare minimum to qualify for EI then sit on their duffs. Not cool.

I have often thought it would be really interesting to have one of those reality shows like SG mentioned show up at my workplace. I would love to see someone like Jim Flaherty show up and spend a day trying to lead a group of up to 75 kids ages 5-12 in activities that are engaging for all of them! I think that would be very entertaining!

Hi Pinga,

Seasonal work is seasonal work.  Admittedly construction no longer appears to need to knock off through our milder winters.  It does slow down dramatically.

The question that needs to be addressed, I guess, is what do seasonal workers do when their season closes?  The carpenter can still do carpentry inside, theoretically, can they find enough work to close the seasonal gap?  Plumbers and Electricians aren't so seasonal still I'm betting most rack up more hours during the construction season than they do in the non-season.
 

Can a carpenter make the same per hour at McDonald's as they do during construction season?  Can they make as much as they would on EI?  Mortgage payments don't decrease just because my pay takes a hit.  If the government wanted to address that piece of the puzzle it might help.

Any job that pays is better than one that doesn't.

If the job pays less than EI does it cannot help to keep the household stable.  And McDonalds doesn't seem to be in a rush to hire carpenters.

Six years ago when we moved back to Ontario from NL the most I could get from any congregation was half-time.  I applied everywhere to make up the hours lost.  Not one call back, not one interview.  Fast food joints don't appear to need clergy people.  Nor do security firms (and I have years of experience working security).  Nor do Lowe's or Home Depot or Home Hardware or the Grocery Stores.

EI was better than nothing.  Not much better but it was something.

Flaherty, with all due respect, has his head lodged firmly in the vicinity of his prostate.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Pinga - as one whose husband did seasonal work (driving a concrete mixer truck), I'll reply to your devil's advocate. 

We live in a province where much of the work is seasonal.  Tourism, construction, farming, forestry, fishery are seasonal activities - so often are mills and factories and processing plants that depend upon these industries.  At about the time Seelerman would get laid off (usually some time between November and Christmas) many other places were also laying off.  Believe me, there are a lot more people looking for work than there are jobs in January. 

Some years he did find alternate work.  One year, with an early lay-off he went out to Alberta for a few months - by the time he paid his bus fare (travelling for four or five days without a change of clothes or a chance to lay down) and his board on the job, there was almost nothing left to send home to his family - fortunately I had a job.  Another year I got a job driving transport between here and Montreal - when needed.  Sometimes back-to-back runs, sometimes a week or so in between.  Other times he would find part-time, temporary, poor paying jobs closer to home.  Mainly he drew EI, and occasionally got a day or two with the cement company, and hoped for an early call-back in March.   

EI doesn't pay as well as your regular job.  It doesn't give benefits or help build your CPP.  But the workers do pay into it, knowing that in all likelihood they will need it at some time in their lives. 

(Yes, their are seasonal winter jobs, but the ski lodge can't hire everyone who is laid off from other positions.  And the fact that McDonald's in Edmonton is having a hard time finding employees to work broken shifts at minimum wage doesn't help the unemployed truck driver in NB. 

I do think that EI needs an overhaul.  There's a difference between someone with a skill who has primarily seasonal work and would work in the off season too than someone who has a contract for 1 season and plans to bum around the rest of the time.  Also, I think we need to look at the overall salary.  If someone knows their work is seasonal they should plan to spread out their pay, just as someone has the spread out their pay over a month if they only have one pay period a month.

If people are not eligible to collect EI if they were to be laid off, I don't think they should be paying into it.

*blush*  I'm not on the scale of Slartibartfast (video) or the Mice experimenters of Earth but I'm learning ;3

EDIT:  we used to let humans code the afterlife etc but that stopped after the horrible Berserker spartacus Bosch incident *shiver*

Jobs as they are right now aren`t reasonable -- they consist of working one`s self out of a job.  So, in this environment, the above is reasonable, imhowasohp.

(I`ve heard from sombuanll people that welfare & social security isn`t sustainable in the long-term because as the population grows so does the government and then so does welfare etc programs...)

I'm not sure I understand you.  Are you saying that seasonal workers should save for their periods of unemployment?  Isn't that what they pay into EI for?  

Or are you saying that EI should be discontinued altogether?  Then workers could save the amount they are now paying for their EI. 

Of course there are those who have learned to work the system, but I know very few who wouldn't work if they could find a decent full time, permanent job with paid vacation time, health benefits and a pension plan.   Most people who are forced to live part of the time on EI know how hard it is.  It pays only a portion of the person's regular salary.  There are waiting periods and hoops to jump through to get it.  There is always the possibility of someone looking over your shoulder.  A trip out of town for a day or two could get you disqualified because you are supposed to be using that time to look for work, even when you know none is available.    And there is the shame.  Even though they have paid in, and are entitled, they are aware of how many people look down on them and treat them as somehow cheating the government.  And that's how they are often treated by those government employees they have to deal with.

Seeler, I don't completely know how it should be handled.  Maybe certain jobs, that pay a decent salary (enough to live off of for a year) need to be coded somehow.  The way health insurance etc. would also need to be set to cover the person for the whole year.  If someone doesn't get rehired at the beginning of the next season, then they can collect.

My second paragraph was completely unrelated to the seasonal workers.  When I was getting paid, as a student I had to pay into EI.  When I stopped getting paid, I wasn't able to collect.  I'm sure there are other situations where people pay in but can't collect.  I think that needs to be changed.  If someone doesn't meet the criteria to collect if they are laid off, then I don't think they should be paying into it.

chemgal-

second paragraph - it definitely needs some revision.  I don't know why yu couldn't collect if you had paid in the required number of weeks.  My understanding is that a person is entitled to draw if they are laid off but not if you quit or are fired without just cause.  If you are refused you have the right to appeal.  The only time I drew any myself my company and I had reached a parting of the ways.  On appeal the EI people agreed that I had just cause to leave such a toxic atmosphere and granted me my benefits.  (I only drew on them for a short time before I found other work. 

first paragraph - in a way the government does recover funds it pays out to seasonal workers in high paying jobs.  It's called 'taxes'.  Say you earn $100,000 in eight months and then experience a lay off.  You draw EI for four months - and add that to your salary when you report your income for the year.  You pay taxes on the total, and in that way much of your EI is clawed back.    The low income earner also reports his wages and EI but pays less back in taxes.

Seeler, I can't collect because I am a student.  I can understand that justification, but then I shouldn't have had to pay in with a student type position (TA/RA).  I wonder about students even paying in with part time jobs, but I suppose they might be able to collect if they can't get hired when they graduate?  I'm not sure of all the rules.

I'm still not too sure about EI and seasonal workers.  I see some as taking advantage of the system, not just individuals but companies as well (they might have to pay better if seasonal  workers couldn't get EI).  Maybe seasonal workers should pay more into EI?  I wouldn't have a problem if what was paid in over a year = what was paid out.  I'm assuming that some seasonal workers are able to collect more than what they are paying in.  Maybe I'm wrong? I thought I saw something that showed the max you could pay in and the max you could get out and the latter was larger.  Now I'm not seeing that; maybe it was data from different years.  If you can't collect more than what you pay into it, then the seasonal workers being able to collect EI doesn't bother me at all.

EI is insurance - not everybody who pays for insurance ever collects.  And some collect more than they pay in.   If people were given the option of paying in or not, probably most people who don't expect to collect would opt out.  The system can't run that way. 

If people could just collect the amount they paid in, it wouldn't be insurance but inforced savings. 

Seeler, I agree.  Insurance is for the unexpected, seasonal workers shouldn't be surprised when they can't find work in the same industry when the season ends.

Seeler, i disagree re the role of EI.

I think it is quite different for those who plan to be off for two months or more, than those who are not.

I don't think teachers collect EI during their two months (or three) in the summer, yet their work is definitely "seasonal".

I pay into EI as an INSURANCE -- capitals intentional.

It is not part of my salary package, planned to be used for x months per year.

I really liked what Rita said above.  I cleaned hotel rooms when in college and there were many days in my chosen profession that I wished I were a chambermaid.  That particular "job" "call" or whatever was the worst employment experience of my life and it didn't end well.  One of the best times I had was bussing tables at a Restaurant back in the day.

At a chain restaurant in Florida I marvelled at the waiters working their butts off to feel the crowds and our waitress that day told us she loved her job because she liked making people happy.  I couldn't imagine doing what she did.  

A lot of jobs might not be so bad if the wages and benefits are fair.  Workers at Costco are some of the happiest in the country and the company has a very small turnover of staff. 

But that's a reflection on jobs.  John has already stated the problem with Flaherty's proposal (and ideology). 

Teachers are paid an annual salary - they are not laid off when work gets slack.  And their salary is adequate to live on.  Many wage earners are hired and paid for the hours they work.  They really can't plan ahead.  The season might be long or short.  There might be periods of unemployment or underemployment at any time during a bad year (unfavourable weather or the company not getting a contract).  They might worry that year about whether they will even get enough work to qualify.  (I remember one year that six men agreed to work shorter hours so that the seventh man of their crew wouldn't get laid off).  Other years, when we have an 'open' winter and their are a few big projects going on there might be very little lay-offs. 

I have a friend who earns a good salary at a very stressful job - she arranges with her employer to hold back a portion of her income.  Then, every so often, she takes three months off to travel or relax.  No unemployment there.   I've also heard of people 'banking' extra hours so that they can take extra time off from time to time - that's not unemployment. 

Unemployment is when a worker find himself, or herself, without a job and no possibility to find anything suitable.   Its what we pay into.  Its what we are entitled to.

 "I drove a taxi, I refereed hockey. You do what you have to do to make a living."

Come on, refereeing hockey isn't THAT bad Mr. Flaherty.  And taxi drivers can sometimes make decent money with tips. I would like to see him running the deep fryer at A&W.  Or cleaning up hotel rooms after parties. I'm talking low paying, dirty shitty jobs.  

Someone agrees with me about EI and students:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/canadas-shame-ei-is-stealing-from-the-young/article4238254/

If you're going to be ineligible to collect if laid off, you shouldn't have to pay into it in the first place.

My Dad worked as a commission salesman for many years, and paid into the EI system faithfully. Or rather, it was deducted from his pay.  When the store closed, he applied and was refused because he was a commission salesman. BURN!!

I agree that people should be able to collect EI when out of work but something has to change

It can't be a lifestyle thing.

Teachers are not a good example as they are salaried year long employees. I believe most boards pay out eh summer salary at the end of June

But if you are say a lobster fisherman and you know that the money you earn over those weeks will be all there is, then surely you should be saving it and spending it over the year

I am not sure why the system should be set up to support the idea that you work at a job for only a few months.

If there isn't work then does it make sense to live there?

A big thing in Toronto are roofers. They all seem to be from the East. They arrive, roof, leave and get EI all year. Doesn't seem fair

It is different if it is an unexpected job loss. But an expected one? An expected annual job loss means go and find a different job

lastpointe - I can agree with you here to a degree - people in high paying jobs should be saving for times when they might become unemployed.  Let's start with our government reps. 

But are people willing to pay enough for lobster to enable a lobster fisherman to support his family throughout the year.  I don't know any lobstermen personally, but I do know others in seasonal jobs.  When they are working they try to pay off their debts, fix up their house, save a bit for a vacation, get their kids teeth fixed.  Etc.

Teachers in most (if not all) boards in Ontario are paid a salary and the salary is spread over 12 months instead of 10 months.  During the summer, teachers are not eligible for any kind of unemployment unless they have lost their jobs or are on maternity leave.  When Jim got sick, I took a leave and was granted EI for stress because I was simply not able to do my job at the same time.  During the March Break, I was not eligible for EI because I would have technically been paid for that week, although it would have been pay owed to me for previous work.