What they don't tell you about EI benefits

When will it stop??

I was working most of the summerand fall they told me .i need more hours/it took then 3 month to tell me that.to find that out I hade to go to Regian/I live in Prince Albert. was going to school but can do that now so I am toste

the ugley side of EI is if your fired or quit your not eligable for EI payment even if you payed in for 30 years like myself it hurts no matter what not a penny a real scrue ball

ei is ridiculous. the maximum a person can receive after taxes is between 1400 and 1500 a month. rent is 700 a month. that sure leaves a lot. I think ei should be a mandatory 65 percent of your monthly income while you were working (tax free). at least you wouldn't see a large drop in earnings. also, i think this 2 week period of no payment off the start should be abolished. at the very least, lets see the maximum go up to 1800 a month. come on already, that added help to ei was a load of you know what. last but not least, there should be easier restrictions on receiving benefits if you quit your job.

I was laid off on December 19, 08, it is now Feb. 19, 09 and they still don`t have me in the sytem.
Thank God I started back to work today.
When will I see my U.I."Benifets" ?
I`m quite sure I`ll have a few paycheques in the bank long before that.
I would have been better of to have put money into a savings account.
That would have been the answer.
U I C is a scam as far as I`m concerned.

OHH,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, PS
To our wonderfull Government.
THANKS FOR NOTHING, because si far all I`ve gotten is the Big Pickle.

e.i. eh? the government takes our money because they think they can save for our own unemployment better than we can. How much surplus money is the e.i. slush fund at now? o ya, the stock market just crashed so the huge amounts of surplus they had must be gone. Now how is that better than if i had just kept the money and invested it on my own. Wouldn't elimanating e.i. also save on costly and cushy government staff payroll? The worst feeling in the world when u have to run through a mile of paper and time convincing someone who has a secure job working 9:35am - 3:45pm to get your own money you apparently had been saving for job insurance. Don't forget to work on getting a new job too! Then you get that job right about the time your first e.i. check comes in so you have to go through more rigamarole to tell the government "hey, don't pay me bro."

What really irks me is that, as Charles says, you pay into EI for years and years and aren't entitled to it if you are fired or quit. I feel, as do many others, that regardless of how you left your job you should be entitled to what you paid into it--it is YOUR money. Even if it is only $50.

What also really irks me is that they don't tell the new guy that if you are turned down for ANY reason you lose all your accumulated hours and have to start from scratch.

Where is the justice in any government system???????

EI (employment insurance) is meant to assist anyone, who thru no faulth of their own... loses their job. The 2 weeks waiting period can be difficult, since in most cases the person has no advance notice, therefore no savings to rely on. They don't take enough tax off, so if you've been on EI & then find work, you will probably owe the tax amount back. The up side is that you can work, meaning you can make up to $50 per week, before they start deducting $ for $. For example, I made $268 each week on EI, but worked 20 hours per week @ $9 @ hour, or $180. Take $50 off the $180 leaves $130. Take the $130 off $268 & I was still getting a weekly EI cheque for $138. Doing this also prolongs your EI weeks.

During this period you must also be actively looking for work & report this activity to EI if they request it, so make sure you keep a job search log. There have been 3 plant closures in our community in the last year, which means there aren't many jobs out there & for every job there are over 100 applicants... chances of finding meaningful employment are next to nil! And being a tourist area, most jobs are in the customer service sector meaning they are mostly part time or minimum wage. Thank goodness minimum wage is going up to $9.50 in Ontario in March!

EI will also assist you in furthering your education by means of upgrading or colleges courses, the problem being that most classes are full due to the numbers of unemployed in our area. There is a waiting list. And with gas prices I cannot afford to travel to out of town training facilitities in our area. My EI is finished on Feb 7th, but at this point I am unsure whether I qualify to receive the added 5 weeks in the new budget. My next step will be Welfare & to renegotiate my payment plans on my line of credit, if that is possible. And hope, beyond hope, that I can find something.... anything to tie me over. I am an apprenticed machinist, a cook, an admin. assistant with office skills... but cannot find meaningful work in our area. And being an older worker in my late 50's means I have that barrier to face! Going into my retirement years, I do not have much in savings left & do not want to touch my RRSP any more than I have. I was just divorced a couple of months ago, my ex is also laid off due to plant closure, so no money will be forthcoming from him.

I considered myself middle class but am quickly becoming low income, thru no fault of my own.

My experience is a little different than most everyone here. 2 years ago I moved from Saskatchewan to Nova Scotia and hearing all the horrible things about the labour market here in Nova Scotia, I planned for a lay-off even though my boss assured me it wouldn't happen, throughout the past 2 years I set a hundred bucks aside per pay for this eventuality. I was laid off Nov. 6th 2008, I had money to cover me the first two weeks while I waited for my first cheque and what I have left I am now using to subsidize my meager 730$ bi-weekly. I am woking now on getting retrained through EI and have not yet run into any problems I haven't had time to fix. I got a phone call from my boss 2 weeks ago to let me know that they wouldn't need me back this coming year as my position had been elilinated to save cost. Which is fine with me I was working in the construction industry making about 17$ an hour and 15 hours a day four days a week. But in Nova Scotia labour law says my employer doesn't have to pay overtime until after I have worked 110 hours bi-weekly (96hrs for non construction work) I calculated my pay difference in any other province in Canada and it would have been 18200$ more in any province because of the ridiculous laws here in NS. My point is at least EI has the same rules and regulations across Canada Why are our labour laws so bad out here where the economy is already so bad and the taxes are so ridiculously high?

YES! the current EI system is full of problems! However, in the case of being fired or quitting I don't believe that it should allow for automatic eligibility for EI Benefits. What ever happened to personal responsibility? There are cases where it does make sense for a person to quit a job and still receive EI, but that is not the majority of the cases. There are often times when a person has job maintenance issues (i.e., cannot perform to expectations, addiction issues,conflict resolution issues, and just plain laziness). Instead of opening the floodgates so that the government, and obviously us who are paying into the system, have to take care of every person who decides to quit because they don't like their job, or gets fired because of whatever, doesn't really make sense. Imagine all the young university students who don't want to start at an entry level position because they have a BA after their name and they have unreal expectations, should we provide them with EI?
There are always exceptions to the rule! There are legitimate cases where it does make sense for a person to receive EI benefits after having quit or been fired. There is an appeal process in place if you are denied initially and I do know that people HAVE quit jobs and received EI because of the nature of the circumstances.Remeber it is an "insurance system". I pay car insurance just like everyone else but still have my rates go up due to bad drivers or accidents that I have not been involved in. It's not a perfect system, but the fact that we all pay into it doesn't mean that we are "entitled" to all of its benefits. If that were the case then there would be no insurance system

I have contributed to U.I.C for the past 35 years. I have never collected any money from them. I am now off on sick leave,15 weeks max. my post surgury will be longer. My point: I did not choose to be sick, but the majority of women choose to be pregnant, why do they get 52 weeks over people that are on sick benefits. It is sickening when you think of all the terminally ill people that have worked all their lives and get a lousey "15" weeks. Something wrong there.

Dont feel bad. I Got sick in 1994. I still have no diagnosis from the medical system, although I have lab tests showing a flag low IgM from 1995 till present. I got a secondary sinus infection in 2003 till present. Recently it was found I have a kidney tumor, and 2 flag low subclasses of IgG. Due to a lack of diagnosis from these quacks that call themselves doctors, I have been denied CPP Disability. The first doctor I saw told my wife it was all in my head, and other local doctors... effectively costing me my familly. I have managed to find treatment with over 400$ of antibiotics a month, because they wont give me the cure that I ask for. I am able to work almost to capacity, and usually full time, yet my employer (CHEMCO ELECTRICAL CONTRACTORS - Edmonton) has a "culture of safety" which recently meant being complicit in poisoning the workers with combustion gasses since December 08 till yesterday when an independant contractor took some tests and said the air wasnt fit to work in for longer than 4 hrs a day ... we worked 10 .. anyways, they wont allow me to take days off to rest up or avoid the -30C temperatures that wear me down. 2 years ago when i claimed for EI we were entitled to 36 weeks and that could run over into the next year as long as you claimed before the end of the year that you started your claim. after working 10 months i reopened my claim to find the rules have changed... it now runs out at the end of a year, despite how many weeks you were unemployed... So I reopened with my new 10 month record of employment to find the new entitlement was 12 weeks. This is due to changes by the Harper government and the Government taking excess EI funds and putting them in the general coffers to pay for other government needs. I am so glad to be one of the needy who is kept sick by the thieves who run the systems, and proud to do my part in keeping the federal budget under control by donating my EI insurable weeks to helping the politicians get thier raises. They do such a wonderful job that I would like to .... LOVE them to death .... not sure if "love" was the appropriate word, but at least it is rated GP.

Well to make a long story short:It was during the last"Economic down turn"Early 90's I lost my job due to cutbacks I had just lost my mother and recieved a bit of money had a busness oppertunity and bought into it and lost my inheritance my wife and I divorced and I was on the street well not quite I met a lady who took me in.we went to work as Supers at an apt building and were doing ok when the stress got to be too much the super at the time started making life miserable for my wife and her health started declining so we gave our notice I looked hard for a Job during that month but no Jobs were to be found we took our saving and my wife was working part time found an apartment I applied for EI was declined because we "QUIT"I tried to explain it was necessary to quit due to mental stress and what happened Nope no Doctors note no money.we forged on I worked temp jobs on farms or where ever I could but still we had no money we were about to be evicted so off to Welfare I went hat in hand well it seems if you quit there is a 3 month wait for welfare but we have no money for food/rent and are about to be on the street welfares responce"You should have thought of that before you QUIT"Food Bank aided us and the gods smiled upon me for the first time in a decade and I landed a GOOD Job but I realized right then that being pushed to live on the street you are no longer a" GOV'T STATISTIC" so they prefer it that way meanwhile there were orientals getting 4 or 5 welfare checks sure they caught them eventually but still if you are coming here from another country we will support you but those in need get NOTHING or the bare minimum

another thing about EI is if you happened to be on disability for the year before applying for EI you probably won't qualify becuase you didn't have enough insurable hours. Even though technically you were employed but receiving insurance money for disability and the insurance money is taxable it's not considered insurable income and therefore you do not qualify.

We just started getting our early CPP now hubby has been laid off and we need to go on EI , does anyone know if EI will deduct the CPP amounts from our EI checks .Were on Ontario .