Decolonizing Employment

Shauna MacKinnon

• Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780887554650
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Indigenous North Americans continue to be overrepresented among those who are poor, unemployed, and with low levels of education. This has long been an issue of concern for Indigenous people and their allies and is now drawing the attention of government, business leaders, and others who know that this fast-growing population is a critical source of future labour. Shauna MacKinnon's Decolonizing Employment: Aboriginal Inclusion in Canada's Labour Market is a case study with lessons applicable to communities throughout North America. Her examination of Aboriginal labour market participation outlines the deeply damaging, intergenerational effects of colonial policies and describes how a neoliberal political economy serves to further exclude Indigenous North Americans. MacKinnon's work demonstrates that a fundamental shift in policy is required. Long-term financial support for comprehensive, holistic education and training programs that integrate cultural reclamation and small supportive learning environments is needed if we are to improve social and economic outcomes and support the spiritual and emotional healing that Aboriginal learners tell us is of primary importance.

 

PART 1

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY, LABOUR MARKET POLICY, AND ABORIGINAL PEOPLE IN CANADA

CHAPTER 1

Social Exclusion, Poverty, Inequality, and Policy in the Neo-Liberal Age

We are not in the business of supporting people to get careers—we are here to assist them to transition to work as quickly as possible—our policy is “work first.”

—Government of Manitoba representative,

as quoted in MacKinnon and Stephens 2006, 15

Dunk, McBride, and Nelson argue that training has become a very effective ideological tool for neo-liberalism, in part because the idea of upgrading skills to be more competitive has a “common-sense” quality consistent with the conservative preference for “active” versus “passive” measures of income support (1996). In his analysis of this approach to training in Britain, Usher criticized “employability training” (1990, 51) for being more about socializing people to “accept [unskilled/semi-skilled] jobs that ordinarily they would not accept, for pay that employed workers have already refused” (1990, 51).

Crouch, Finegold, and Sako argue that the “employment-generating power of improvements in skill levels is limited” (1999, vii) and that employment policy cannot depend solely on supply-side measures such as education and training. Wood suggests that a fundamental problem with labour market policy reform is that it is often piecemeal. He notes that reforming institutions at one level is likely to be ineffective if other systems are not reformed in a compatible manner (2001). This is problematic because labour market policies must meet broad societal needs. Policy solutions are complex, involving multiple government departments and levels of government with mandates that are often not only incompatible, but also arguably in conflict. For example, changes to education and training policies to encourage skill development in specific sectors are ineffective for individuals reliant on social assistance if “work first” policies create barriers for recipients to access these training opportunities.

The current approach to labour market policy is essentially rooted in the belief that education and training—learning—is an individual responsibility. From this perspective, government intervention should be limited to that which responds to market need. This paradigm has led to very minimal training for those whose need for comprehensive training is the greatest, thereby contributing toward a perpetuation of poverty, inequality, and social exclusion. It is consistent with a broad political acceptance of neo-liberal policies that have effectively excluded many Canadians from the benefits of Canada’s growing prosperity (OECD 2011; Yalnizyan 2007).

Social Exclusion, Poverty, and Inequality

What is the potential for labour market policies—and, more specifically, education and training policies—to address poverty and social exclusion? Answering this question begins with clearly defining these concepts. What exactly do we mean by “social exclusion”? What is poverty and how do we measure it? There are many definitions for each of these concepts.

Defining Social Exclusion

The idea of social exclusion can be used to shape policy that moves us closer to equality, or it can be used to constrict policy (Levitas 2005). Levitas provides a typology of social exclusion in an attempt to demonstrate how ideology influences meaning. She argues that the term “social exclusion” should be used in its broadest sense, with the recognition that while poverty is at the core of exclusion, the context of income deprivation must also be considered. Levitas describes the following characteristics as central to the concept of social exclusion:

• • An emphasis on poverty as a prime cause of social exclusion
• • The implication that poverty can be reduced through increases in benefit levels
• • The potential for giving economic value to unpaid work
• • The idea that citizenship is the obverse of exclusion, rather than taking a minimalist view of inclusion
• • In addressing social, political and cultural, as well as economic citizenship, it broadens out into a critique of inequality, which includes, but is not limited to, material inequality
• • Recognition of the causes of inequality
• • Understanding of the need for a radical reduction of inequalities, and a redistribution of resources and of power. (2005, 14)

The comprehensive nature of this definition makes it particularly useful because it allows for consideration of the historical and discriminatory factors that have contributed to the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people among the poor. However, it is also worth noting, as Levitas does, that social exclusion in public policy does not usually begin with this comprehensive understanding. She outlines three divergent views that can be reflected in public policy.

Broadly defined, social exclusion is directly related to poverty. In this sense, which Levitas outlines as the redistributive (RED) discourse, social exclusion is a consequence of poverty. She describes this as consistent with the earlier work of Peter Townsend (1970), which understands poverty in terms of “people’s ability to participate in the customary life of society…their resources are so seriously below those commanded by the average individual or family that they are, in effect, excluded from ordinary living patterns, customs, and activities” (Levitas 2005, 32).

Policy grounded in this definition of social exclusion would require comprehensive approaches that result in increased income and access to a broad range of resources and social supports including, but not limited to, education and training that lead to satisfactory employment.

More commonly seen in policy practice, and better aligned with neo-liberalism, are what are described by Levitas as the social integration (SID) and moral underclass (MUD) discourses (2005). SID focuses solely on exclusion as a result of a disconnection to paid work followed by a policy emphasis on labour market attachment, while MUD views social exclusion as the result of “moral and cultural causes of poverty.” Social exclusion models that focus on programming to “reform” “youth at risk,” single mothers, and others who do not fit within the mainstream “norm” are often modelled from a MUD perspective.

From the RED perspective, social exclusion speaks to the limited participation of individuals in all domains of life. The lack of income is central to all exclusion. While access to economic opportunity through employment is the focus of SID, it is but one component of a poverty and social exclusion strategy under the auspices of RED.

The typology that Levitas provides is a reminder that policy development is value laden and that terminology can be twisted to support prevailing political ideology. In Canada, the lack of initiative to address poverty and social exclusion by ensuring that all citizens have sufficient income, satisfactory housing, accessible childcare, and access to education and training based on right rather than ability to pay, suggests that if any model of social exclusion has influenced policy in recent years, it is certainly not the RED model. The SID framework is clearly evident through policies that aim to quickly train people for the labour market. The MUD perspective is increasingly reflected in policies that systematically create barriers as a result of expectations that are inherently classist, racist, and sexist.

Defining Poverty

Poverty is a highly contested concept. Those subscribing to the SID approach to exclusion view poverty alleviation in the context of the “achievement model of income determination,” the conventional and dominant view of poverty that is based on the idea that poverty can be escaped simply by working hard (Bowles, Durlauf, and Hoff 2006, 1). This view is reflected in the ideology of the current Conservative government. For example, in 2012 Canada’s finance minister Jim Flaherty defended changes to Employment Insurance that make it more difficult to qualify and collect benefits, saying that “there is no bad job, the only bad job is not having a job…I drove a taxi, I refereed hockey. You do what you have to do to make a living” (Canadian Press 2012, para. 3).

From this perspective, poverty is also most often viewed in absolute terms—a lack of adequate food, shelter, clothing, and medical care. However, such a definition is inadequate when poverty is viewed in broader terms. In recognition of the limitations of this definition, Lang adds a further dimension that allows us to develop measurements relative to specific economies. Lang describes poverty as the “lack of sufficient financial resources to obtain adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care and to participate in society” (2007, 35). While this definition does not provide an exact measure of poverty, it provides a more accurate working definition, and one that is compatible with the RED notion of social exclusion and the idea that poverty must be measured in relative terms within the context of a nation’s economic capacity. Relative measures that look at both before- and after-tax incomes allow us to critically analyze whether government policies are effectively minimizing the negative effects, including extreme inequality, that result from unchecked capitalism.

While Canada does not have an official poverty line and there has been much debate in recent years as to how poverty is best measured, the Statistics Canada Low Income Cut-Off (LICO) has most often been used to measure poverty. The LICO is essentially an income threshold below which a family will likely devote a larger share of its income to food, shelter, and clothing than would the average family (Statistics Canada 2010). Using data from the 1992 Family Expenditures Survey as a base, and then factoring in Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rates, Statistics Canada calculates both before- and after-tax cut-offs for various family and community sizes, resulting in thirty-five cut-offs (Statistics Canada 2010). While it continues to be the measure most commonly used, the LICO is not a perfect measure. One criticism of the LICO is that it does not adequately capture differences in the cost of living across the country. For example, housing costs in Winnipeg are far lower than those in Vancouver and Toronto, yet the LICO does not account for this difference. The LICO is also not applicable to First Nations because LICOs include the cost of shelter, which is generally paid for in First Nations.

The Fraser Institute has lobbied for the elimination of the LICO. It argues that this measure effectively overstates poverty in Canada by making it a “moving target,” and that relative measures like the LICO will not allow us to ever alleviate poverty, because the threshold is simply too high and constantly rising (Sarlo 1992). The Fraser Institute’s solution is essentially to lower the threshold so that the incidence of poverty will appear much lower than that currently shown by the LICO. The absolute measure of poverty developed by the Fraser Institute includes only the barest of necessities and essentially shows Canada to have very little poverty.

The Government of Canada more recently (1997) established an absolute measure called the Market Basket Measure (MBM). Governments and some analysts favour the MBM over the LICO because it takes into account regional differences in the cost of living. The MBM includes a broader range of essential goods and services than does the Fraser Institute measure, but it is similarly flawed in that its generosity depends on what goes into the basket and how often it is updated.

Statistics Canada’s Low Income Measure (LIM) is often used for the purpose of making international comparisons to determine how our country measures up against others. The LIM is basically a fixed percentage (50 percent adjusted for family size) of median-adjusted family income, using the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID). While the LIM can be useful when comparing different countries and the MBM is useful because it takes factors other than income into consideration, poverty must be viewed in the context of the social and economic conditions of the nation; social exclusion stems from a lack of access to opportunity as a result of poverty. From this perspective, the LICO, and in particular the after-tax LICO, is suitable for measuring how some Canadians are faring relative to others and how well tax policies are serving to counter labour market inequalities.

Inequality: Why It Matters

As noted in the previous section, relative measures like the LICO are useful because they allow us to understand and therefore respond to the distribution of wealth within a nation. Wilkinson and Pickett show that it is not only poverty and inequality across nations that we should be concerned about, but rather the extent of inequality within nations. They present strong findings to support their argument that inequality within nations has the greatest impact on individual outcomes, because what matters most is “whether you are doing better or worse than other people—where you come in the social pecking order” (2009, 13). In effect, class very much matters. As described further in Chapter 7, the people described in this study face a host of challenges not experienced by those who are comparatively better off. Their relative poverty puts them at a disadvantage on many fronts, including access to the best education opportunities and the kinds of social networks that often lead to well-paying jobs.

Neo-liberals are quick to defend a free market approach as the best solution to poverty in the most absolute terms, and they are less concerned with inequality in spite of the now vast amount of research that demonstrates why they should be concerned (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009; McQuaig and Brooks 2010; Stiglitz 2012). They dismiss the idea that it is not only possible, but beneficial to all of society, to have governments intervene to improve individual social and economic outcomes and reduce inequality. They reject the evidence that shows social democratic countries to be reaping the benefits of having societies that are more equal than those in neo-liberal countries like Canada and the U.S. Instead, right-wing think tanks like the Fraser Institute are engaged in campaigns to dismiss research on inequality, and they criticize Statistics Canada and the media for “perpetuating the old cliché that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer” (Palacios and Veldhuis 2008, 5). The Fraser Institute supports the idea that “as long as the process determining the distribution of income is just, the resulting distribution is fair no matter how unequal” (Mankiw 1998 as cited in Sarlo 2009, 41).

Yet the evidence that growing inequality has negative effects on societies is mounting. Wilkinson and Pickett show that the most equal societies are healthier, display higher levels of trust, and have higher literacy rates and levels of education attainment as well as lower rates of crime and imprisonment. Wilkinson and Pickett also show that social democratic countries are the most equal (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009).

Government Policy and Social Exclusion

In the late 1990s, several European countries began to recognize the societal impact of social exclusion and moved toward implementing comprehensive social inclusion strategies. The extent to which they were comprehensive in practice is debatable and in many ways now moot, as governments previously leading the effort to increase inclusion are moving away ...