04) END THE RACIST EXCLUSION: ABORIGINAL PEOPLE ARE WORKERS

Statement from the Communist Party-Manitoba, Jan. 23, 2015

            The overwhelming majority of Aboriginal people are workers and they among the most oppressed and exploited part of the working class in Manitoba. Excluding Treaty First Nations workers living on reserves from the Labour Force Survey is an official reinforcement of the racist view that Aboriginal people do not value work or contribute to the economy.

            Manitoba and other prairie provinces should stop bragging about their low jobless rate and end the long, agonizing jobs crisis. The racist exclusion of Aboriginal people from the labour force survey is a big reason why Manitoba, of all the prairie provinces, is a low‑wage province.

            The Communist Party of Canada‑Manitoba demands that the Conservative government end the racist exclusion by immediately including all workers in the Labour Force Survey.

            The truth is that for centuries Aboriginal people have been the backbone not just of the fur trade but of Manitoba's industrial, mining, farm labour and manufacturing industries. And today their racist‑inspired joblessness is a weapon for big business to depress wages for all workers.

            Refusing to consider Aboriginal people as part of the working class, the Conservative government is whitewashing the real rate of unemployment for all workers.

            This is a much more significant problem in provinces with high numbers of Treaty Aboriginal people, such the Prairie provinces. In Manitoba, the official rate is 5.2% (35,000 jobless).

            Counting the labour force on reserves (at an estimated 70% jobless rate and 68.5 participation rate), Manitoba's real unemployment rate is actually closer to 8.6 per cent, or more than 65% higher (about 64,000 jobless actively looking for work).

            [Using similar calculations, Saskatchewan's unemployment rate grows from 3.6% (21,000 jobless) to 7.6% (48,000 jobless looking for work); about 110% higher. Alberta's jobless rate grows from 4.7% (114,000 jobless) to 5.6% (137,000 jobless), about 20% higher.]

            Aboriginal leaders report that unemployment rates reach 90 per cent on many reserves.

            One of the biggest anchors dragging down wages in Manitoba is the high rate of unemployment. The real rate of unemployment should include discouraged workers, people who simply have given up actively looking for work. The real rate of unemployment is higher than the official rate. Adding the officially excluded working class in Manitoba means that the real rate is higher still.

            The real challenge for working people is to mount a strong campaign for genuine job‑creation policies, such as a shorter work week with no loss in pay or a plan to build 1,000 child care centres and 10,000 homes. All job creation initiatives and hiring must have affirmative action for Aboriginal nations which have higher rates of unemployment, which in all likelihood means all of them.

            Unemployment is not only a reckless waste of labour power, it is “a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the working class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for the keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital.” (Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific).

(The above article is from the February 1-14, 2015 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)