Found at: https://peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint/Manufacturing_jobs_vanishing_-_Editorial.html
Manufacturing jobs vanishing - Editorial
(The following article is from the July 1-31, 2007 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)
People's Voice Editorial, July 1-31, 2007
Another 58,000 private sector jobs disappeared in May, 12,000 in the manufacturing sector, according to Statistics Canada. Under pressure from the rising Canadian dollar, manufacturing has shed 64,000 jobs since January, and over 250,000 over the past five years. This is a crisis with grave implications. The number of Canadians who wanted to work in May but did not have a job stood at 1,083,600. The economy is losing higher-paying, full-time jobs, forcing workers into lower-paying, insecure, part-time employment, usually in sales and services. The declining quality of work is affecting millions of Canadian families.
What are the solutions to this crisis? Speaking for the bosses, the Bank of Canada claims that the economy is operating "above capacity," and plans to raise interest rates. The federal government is expanding its temporary foreign worker program. Both policies will increase the "reserve army of the unemployed," with the goal of driving down wage levels to increase corporate profits. Some in the labour movement argue for more government subsidies to industry - a call for "more capitalism" to address a crisis created by capitalism. Such handouts may bring temporary benefits to certain sectors, but with a long term cost: capitalists will always use higher profits to invest in new labour-saving technologies.
The real answer lies in a combination of policies for immediate and long-term change, starting with laws to prevent plant closures and protect workers' wages and pensions, and a two-year notice of mass layoffs. We need expanded public ownership of industries and resources (respecting Aboriginal land claims), reversal of "continental integration" into the USA, and reduction of foreign ownership levels.
Without such policies, Canada will inevitably be reduced to a supplier of raw materials for the US imperialist war machine. But we are confident that a powerful struggle for progressive change, led by the working class and its allies, can turn Canada in a positive direction.
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