In addition to forcing the capitalist to reduce the size of his workforce as much as possible, competitive pressures compel him to pay those who remain as little as possible. While historically, the rise of the union movement in particular economic sectors forced many employers to substantially raise pay levels, more than two-thirds of the Canadian labour force remains unorganized. 31 Many of these workers are in the category of relatively higher paid supervisory, managerial and professional workers, but in 1971 fully one-third of jobs in Canada paid a wage at 'or below the amount required to maintain a family at the poverty line. 32 Many of these jobs are located in marginal businesses in highly competitive industries such as personal services, textiles, garment manufacturing, and non-durable manufacturing, which in their wages and working conditions often preserve many of the horrors of the 19th century sweatshop.

Exacerbating the effects of these relatively constant Sources of unemployment and poverty in capitalist nations like Canada are more or less regular cycles of economic downturn and recovery (euphemistically referred to as the "business cycle" by orthodox Western economists), and a longer term tendency to exceptional general economic crisis, as exemplified In the Depression of the 1930's and the present severe recession. These periodic slumps, recessions and depressions create high levels of unemployment, and drive many workers into dependence on public assistance. While capitalist politicians often publically deplore rising levels of unemployment during recessionary periods, at likely as not they have actually directly attempted to stimulate them, since in the tortured logic of capitalist economics, high levels of unemployment are seen as one of the best cures for slumps through their influence in moderating the wage demands of workers.

Surplus Population

What these harsh economic conditions have produced in Canada, as they have in other capitalist nations like the U.S., is a split in the working class between a relatively better-paid, more secure stratum (but one that is not immune to the effects of recession, as the present period is demonstrating), and a large "surplus population" of unemployed and underemployed workers, forced either to fill low-wage Jobs or to remain idle, waiting to be called up during a period of exceptional economic expansion. 33 This latter stratum of the working class is inhabited by those excluded from normal employment, and includes disproportionate numbers of women, recent immigrants, racial and cultural minorities, teenagers, ex-convicts, the handicapped, the aged, residents of low-wage regions like the Maritimes, those without job experience or educational credentials, and those without fundamental literacy and numeracy skills. 34 In 1975, Cy Gonick estimated that they numbered 2 million out of a workforce of 8 million--one quarter. 35 While in the Marxist sense all productive workers face exploitation, members of the surplus population face an extra measure of it in that they receive a significantly smaller portion of the product of their labour than other workers--often below the amount required for normal standards of subsistence. They are what has been termed "superexploited".