Last week, Statistics Canada released another Labour Force Survey. The study comes at a time when many young workers across the country are asking, “Will I have a summer job?” It is a good question. Prospects look grim. For starters, youth will find high competition from recently laid-off workers. The vast majority (over 60%) of these workers are not able to collect Employment Insurance and are, frankly, desperate.

‘Small headline’ stories tell the bigger picture here – like the announcement from Distress Centres of Toronto that calls to their lines have increased exponentially this year from people who’ve lost their jobs or are just worrying about basic needs.

Highly distressed or crisis calls (including suicide calls) have doubled.

That’s not to say the economic crisis in Canada hasn’t already hit young workers as well. Among 15 to 24 year olds, unemployment jumped to the highest in eleven years this March, to 14.8%. In Ontario it is 17%. Youth have experienced the fastest rate of decline among all age groups, with 122,000 jobs lost since October.

For a country with a population of only 33 million, these are very large numbers.

With residence fees, tuition, food, housing, car insurance and day care costs all going up, many youth are also asking, “Will I get enough hours this summer? What about the teenagers, students, apprentices and others with little to no work experience?”

A few years ago, I wrote an article in the Peoples Voice newspaper about a “big, fat, dangerous great Canadian summer job, where you work like a beaver, and get treated like a hoser.” After interviewing a number of youth looking for work at gas stations, restaurants, or temp agencies across the country, the conclusion was that you had to lie about your experience in order to just get your application reviewed.

With all this considered, I’m not surprised that the plight of those industrial workers, with their (until recently) supposedly making fat pay cheques, seems distant to many new job hunters.

Actually it isn’t. If one section of the working class resists concessions and makes gains, youth (and all workers) benefit. A good example is the Canadian Auto Worker’s Union Save Our Severance and pensions campaign. As Angelo DiCaro with the CAW youth told me, “If these big corporations don’t live up to their pension obligations and the government doesn’t provide back-up, what will be left for young workers – if they can retire? Young workers are facing a very bleak future.”
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Over half of the jobs killed in March were in manufacturing, particularly auto and parts, metal and wood processing. Not one CEO has been asked to return a penny of the $3 billion slush-fund Prime Minister Harper’s 2009 budget created, but the government dares to demand workers and retirees return pension benefits and slash wages. Youth and students shouldn’t fall for divide and rule: our stakes are on the same side of the table as the industrial workers, and diametrically opposed to the CEOs.

Politicians are playing with fire on these issues. Back in March Ontario’s Premier publically mused that, after granting corporations one of the lowest tax-rates in North America, the province couldn’t afford raising minimum wage. After mass public outcry, Dalton McGuinty did a one-eighty.

What else could we get them to turn around on?

Lets not forget that full-time minimum wage workers in Ontario still make $3000 below poverty line. And Ontario has the highest minimum wage in Canada, at $9.50, although if you are under 18, you get $0.55 less per hour than general minimum wage. Next year it will be $0.65 less. Huh? Visit endstudentminimumwagenow.ca:
British Columbia (where the “entry level” minimum is $6 per hour!) now ties with New Brunswick and PEI for the lowest Canadian minimum wage. According to Canada Mortgage and Housing’s most recent rental market report, renting a two-bedroom apartment is  $656 in Moncton NB, $660 in Charlottetown PEI, and $1,100 – almost twice as much – in Vancouver.

For the record: on May 1st Saskatchewan’s minimum wage creeps to $9.25 and Manitoba’s inches up to $8.75. Newfoundland’s reaches $9.00 on July 1, more than Alberta’s at $8.80. Quebec’s is $8.50, Yukon $8.58 and North West Territories $8.25. (And in Trail, BC, my friend and Communist Party candidate Zach Crispin is demanding a living wage of $16 running in the provincial election).

I haven’t even mentioned the injuries and deaths young workers sustain. Plus, the Public Service Alliance of Canada is challenging the federal government’s definition of employee, forbidding summer students from joining a union. Talk about cheap labour!

In a few weeks it will be May 1st. Although Canada doesn’t mark international workers day as a holiday – yet – it will still be time to reflect on past struggles, and immediate battles, for workers across the country. In Quebec, mass demonstrations of tens of thousands are planned demanding reforms to Employment Insurance (a few years ago, Montreal actually mobilized more workers for May 1st that in many European cities).

So if youth, employed or unemployed, needed another reason to join the growing fight back this May Day, the signs are loud and clear.

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