#work relief

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“In November 1930, one Communist detected a shift in elite thinking away from attacking the economic factors that led to mass joblessness and toward explicitly coercive strategies designed to separate and control the jobless. “They have given up all attempts at doing away with unemployment and concentrate on doing away with the unemployed,” argued this radical. To illustrate his argument, he highlighted the wide-ranging discussions around “the setting up of debt slave camps in the woods, the finding of work at starvation pay ‘beyond the city limits,’ the cutting of wood (for board) in Allouette Park and the many schemes concocted in the festering heads of the class enemies of the working class.” Another jobless man wrote to the Unemployed Worker from one of the camps, wryly noting that “one thing we have to be thankful for” was the fact that “‘our’ roads are being built so cheaply.” The dilemma of identification posed by this writer is significant: could the unemployed feel that the roads they built belong to them? And if they did, were they labouring under an illusion?” - Todd McCallum, Hobohemia and the Crucifixion Machine: Rival images of a new world in 1930s Vancouver. Edmonton: Athabaska Univesity Press, 2014. p. 200.

[hwmsaudiotheatre]

A story about a scientist under suspicion.  

#Audiodrama from HWMS Audio Theatre.

“Add Subtract Unite Divide”

‎HWMS Audio Theatre on Apple Podcasts

‎Arts · 2022

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Along with the economic vision invested in the camps and the foundation of commodities that enabled their creation, historians must begin to come to terms with the “work” aspect of work relief. After reading details of a “strike” at the provincial relief camp at Allco in a February 1932 edition of the Vancouver Sun, an official of the federal Department of Labour wrote authorities in the provincial Department of Public Works, seeking information. This type of request was standard practice: the Department of Labour had gathered data on strikes and lockouts for government publications such as the monthly Labour Gazette and the yearly Labour Organization in Canada since the early 1900s. After an exchange of letters, both bureaucrats decided that disputes would only be officially classified as “strikes” if the labourers involved received wages: protests involving relief workers were therefore not “strikes” per se. While superficially an administrative matter governing which department of the state was to collect information, there was a much more significant issue at stake. By reaffirming the distinction between work relief and wage labour, this decision masked the similarity between these two forms of economic activity. If we stand back from the traditional connotations associated with “relief,” we see that this system of state paternalism did not fundamentally differ from wage work in many respects.” - Todd McCallum, Hobohemia and the Crucifixion Machine: Rival images of a new world in 1930s Vancouver. Edmonton: Athabaska Univesity Press, 2014. p. 200.

[themasterpupil]

Work relief