The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

PAGE 4, WEDNESDAy NOVEMBER 90 1983, WHITRY FREF PPFRRo whitbov Voice of the County Town The only Whltby newspaper independently own I>ublished every Wednesdai' by VI B.M. Publiçshinig and Photography. mc. Phone 6861 Michael Ian Burgessi Publisher -Managing Edîtor I'eee Nrthin, ned and operated by Whitby residents for Whithv rxid-t -0.Bx26 hty )t SANDRA LUCCI Communlty Editor ANDY THOMSON Advertising Manager Second Cleas Mail Registration No. 5351 IJeployment Insurance -A Maj or Concern by' W. ROGER WORTH If any one. doubts" there are pro blems with Unemployment Insurance, they need oniy glance- at the staggering cost of running the system: it has more than doubled to about $12-billion during the last few years. While Most Can adians would agree that the jobiess should, indeed must, be*assisted, there are real concerns that,,the soheme has.become overly generous, providing a disincentive for able individuals to, find worke,and- costlng taxpayers money they can't afford to pay. 1Consider, for exampie, a few o0f the points made, by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business ln an Ottawa presentation. ýAcross the, country, more than20,0 Canadians.annualiy quit their jobs, then colleot Unemrployment Insurance. I n Ottaw a's'convoluted bureaucratese, 'these* individuals are. called "4voluntary quits." The car the family and]I have been driving for three years now has reached a stage at which repairs -are beginning to be troublesomne. It, was one ýof the first North -American mid-size, front-wheel drives, - and although the first two years* were-great, we're thinking now about replacing it. The boss dragged me off recently ta look at a car by a North American auto- maker that I have scorned until now, after a bad ex- perience years ago. Not any longer. The car I looked at was fairly small, even on the shrinking scale now cur- rent. A four-cylinder engine <a shade over two litres in size), a five-speed manual gearbox, with the stick where it ought to be, on the floor beside your right hand. Ail weather, steel-belted radiais are standard. It has front-wheel drive - very effective in snow - and a gear ratio designed ta give you the jump at traffic lights and around town. It has four doors and a'back seat which [tcan get into comfortably, aIl six foot four of me. It has a trunk in which you could stow s 'everal, bodies, if you had a mind, and a price tag on the stan- dard model which is well under ten thousand dollars. How a car looks depends on who's looking at it, but to me, this one has dlean, aerodynamic lines and 1 think it's'a handsome littîe beast. I say beast because the practical, fuel-efficient family sedan I have just describ- ed tears up the. road like 'some of the sports cars I us-' ed ta drive. I didn't put a watch on it, but lId be sur- prised if 1 didn't have this little tiger doing sixty from a standing start within spitting distance of ten seconds., And I mean miles per hour, not kilometres, although 1 will not admit for the benefit of any police officers listening just where in Metropolitan Toronto 1 ran this little road test. lt's a nice smooth gearbox, perhaps not quite as silky as the one I handled on an imported sedan a few days ago. But for a saving of approximateîy twelve thousand dollars, it could be a lot rougher before l'd complain about it. l'm not going to tell you what kind of car it was that i drove, even if you Write or caîl. If I wanted a job selling automobiles, lId quit the one l've got. But lVil give you a hint. This one is made near Toronto, right here in Keep It Beautiful country. lt's aIl Canadian from top to bottom, and buying one means keeping at least a piece of one Canadian job in this country. This-car, and several others now on the market, are living proof that the North American automakers have learned their lesson. This is the kind of car that those of us who switched ta the foreign stuff a few years ago were yelling about. In Detroit and Windsor and Oaikville and Oshawa, I think the penny has fînally dropped. 'The question, '0f course, Is whether such ln- dividuals shouîd be allowed the luxury of quitting. We can ail sympathize wIth the laid off worker, oran individual who had the bad luck to be em- ployed..by a company' that'failed. But quitting voluntarily is something else again. As the Federation says: "There can be, no social ratlonale for workers and employers who pay the- cost of Unemployment. Insurance to support a bill of almost $1-billion for these-200,000- individualls who quit."l Our Unemployment Insurance benefît struc- tures are generous indeed, when compared to other countries. In Canada, for, exa mpie, some inidividuals qualify for up to four weeks of benefits for every week worked. Yet in countries such as West Germany, individuals can dlaim onl y one week of benefîts for every two weeks worked. The Federation suggests Canada move to such a system. SAt the same time, Canadians can draw benefits for a full 50 weeks. Yet, in 43 states, our wealthy neighbour to the south only provides benefits for 26 weeks. The other nine provide them for 28 to 36 weeks., The Federation believes the maximum duration 0f benefits in Canada should be reduced to 26 weeks. 1Canadian 'eligîbilîty requirements for Unem- ploynient Insurance are lenient by International standards, and this undoubtedîy creates problems. When the numberof weeks. worked ln order to be eligible waslast raiseqd, for example, the vast majorlty of claimants ýsuddenîy found .they were able to flnd a few extra weeks,0f em- ployment, allowing them to quallfy. The Federation believes. indivîduais should have to work a filat 20 weeks before they qual ify for benefits. '1Finally, Unemployment insurance creates distortions in the systemn. An individual claiming benefitsfollowing work on a highý-paying make- work project, for instance, will be reluctant to work at a lower paying job, even if one is available. What's more, unemployment benefits are now as much as $500 per month than the minimum wages in some provinces. There ys little wonder, then, that the Federation is cailing for a public inquiry into Unempîoyment Insurance. After aIl, the organizatîon's members and their employees are paying a big slice of what has become a staggering Unemployment Insuran- LETTERS, TO THE EDITOR' Dear Ed itor:, Can anybody who lives in this area under- stand why Mayor Bob Attersley, Joe Bugelli, and Ross Batten refused to go along with other members of Whitby Council and endorse the report of the Federal Task Force on Canadian, Motor Vehicle and Automotive Parts and Industry? WEZ E Jq.W They know that the recommendation of the report are designed to safeguard and increase the nwnber of jobs in the Canadian Automotive Industry. Also, they must- be aware that several thousand workers in the industry live in'this area and through their taxes and purchasing power play a major part in' keeping this conxmunity alive. <What's the big deal? Why can these coun- cillors not pass it? Is there- some political motive underlying their actions? Could it be that en.dorsing anything supported by unions is a "6No, No" these days, especially if you might have ambitions for Tory or Liberal nominations? Let us hope that these adimittedly facetious remarks are, poorly grounded and that the Whitby council will join with the U.A.W.; the N.D.P., and anybody else who is concerned about jobs in this region and quickly give the report the endorsation that it deserves. Geoff Rison N.D.P. Ontario Riding ~7z1L ?7A~'A/Ep 17.V. rn Cao 1