Just Shut It Down Already

As if we hadn't already heard enough about the vileness that is the TFWP, we have two major revelations today which more than justify shutting the whole thing down immediately.

First up is the "advice" that a company which recruits TFWs gave to an employer:

According to the email, which was obtained by CBC's iTeam, the Saskatoon-based recruiter told Houston Pizza in Estevan, Sask., that some employers of temporary foreign workers find that over time, the workers "become 'Canadianized' and increase their demands on the employers.'" 

"We believe a simple reminder to the workers will reverse the effects of the Canadian influence," it says.The 2011 email essentially suggested telling such "Canadianized" workers that if things don't work out, they could be sent home. 

International Manpower is part of the Mercan Group of companies which helps employers across Canada recruit temporary foreign workers to jobs many Canadians don't want.

If this doesn't show us in clear and unambiguous terms that this program has become exploitation, I don't know what will.  Essentially, this is telling employers to rule their workers with fear and intimidation - all the while, subjecting them to working conditions that Canadians would never tolerate.  

“After we actually agreed to everything, [Qizel] just said ‘Look guys you are working on commission. You don’t like it, you can get deported, I am cancelling your permit,'" said Soloviov. 

He said they were told they would get 25 per cent from each sale. The shock came on paydays, he said, when they received next to nothing. The employer deducted $225 every two weeks for rent plus other “fines," from the little pay they were supposed to get. 

“If you look at it, it’s modern slavery. Because some people were not actually paid at all,” said Soloviov. “I got paid 50 bucks or 100 bucks in the three months I worked and that’s bad exploitation. But some people were actually slaves and ended up owing him money.”

This is straight out exploitation.  It isn't even just a case of bringing in people from abroad to replace Canadian labour.

However, when you look at this through a different lens, it becomes quite clear that this program has been mutated by the Harper Government into part of a program aimed at driving down Canadian wages.  Like so-called "right-to-work" legislation, the TFWP has become a tool which has been used to dramatically alter the supply-and-demand balance in Canada's labour force.

Make no mistake, the TFWP has been around for ages, but it has been under Harper that it has been broadened to the point that TFWs are being used not as a means to fill a need for specialized knowledge or skills, but as a tool for getting labour cheaper than Canadians would tolerate.

SHUT IT DOWN NOW!

TFWP: SHUT IT DOWN, Minister Kenney

If the C. D. Howe Institute study released yesterday isn't a clue as to what is so fundamentally flawed with the TFWP, I don't know what is.

In its report, the non-partisan C.D. Howe Institute looked at a number of examples, but focused on what impact the program had on the labour market in British Columbia and Alberta — two provinces which have employed more temporary foreign workers than the rest of the country combined, in every year since 2007.

For part of the time period in question, the unemployment rates in B.C. and Alberta were seven and five per cent, respectively — lower than the Canadian average at the time and as such possibly a suggestion that employers were indeed having a hard time finding workers. 

But the report found the two provinces saw their unemployment rates change by a larger amount than the rest of Canada, both when unemployment was decreasing before 2007, and when the jobless rate started increasing after that. 

"On average, the variation in the unemployment rate during the whole period was 2.3 percentage points in the rest of Canada and 6.2 percentage points in Alberta and British Columbia," the report says, "which suggests the [program] potentially accelerated the rise in unemployment by about 3.9 percentage points in the two provinces between 2007 and 2010." 

This program is being used not as a tool to fill "urgent" jobs where the appropriate workers aren't available, it is being used as an excuse by employers to hire people for less money than Canadian workers would be willing to work for, or putting up with abuse that Canadians would not accept.

The workers allege they had to pay hundreds of dollars each for their work permits and Labour Market Opinion surveys, when employers are legally obliged to cover those costs. 

A Labour Market Opinion — also known as a LMO — is a legal document describing the worker's job and is required by the federal government before it issues a temporary permit for a foreign worker. 

Orense and Natividad claimed their boss changed their status to skilled supervisor on their LMOs, to help Orense become a permanent resident and allow Natividad to bring his wife to Canada.

 So, we have employers lying on the paperwork.  First of all, you can't tell me that a Supervisor role at Tim Horton's is a "skilled" role.  Yes, it requires some business knowledge, and some people management, but nothing that cannot be learned readily "On The Job".  We aren't talking about skilled trades level knowledge here - you know the stuff that requires a couple of years of training to learn, or a specific degree that takes 4 years to attain.  We are talking about the kind of work that any reasonably intelligent Canadian on the street should be able to pick up in a matter of weeks.

In other words, the employers are using this program as a way to sidestep having to pay Canadians realistic wages, and not be treated horribly.  Come to that, a friend who is currently hunting for work recently ran across a job posting for an "entry level" position that required 3+ years of direct experience.  A requirement that is clearly laughable to Canadians, but could easily be used by an employer to justify hiring through the TFWP instead on the basis that they couldn't find a 3+ year experienced Canadian willing to take "entry level" wages.

I think the biggest tip-off to the way that employers are abusing the TFWP is in recent statements by McDonald's Canada CEO John Betts, who called criticism of the program "Bullshit" on a conference call.  He's entitled to his opinion, of course, but likewise, we are entitled to consider the motives for his outburst.  McDonald's got caught profiteering at the expense of foreign workers they had hired, and hiring exclusively through the TFWP even when they had active applicants from the local area.  In short, McDonald's got caught with their pants down on this one, and they are feeling the heat for it.

The funny thing (if you can call any of this funny), is that employers like McDonald's or Tim Horton's would not find it difficult to hire staff if they were willing to pay something better than minimum wage to their staff, and didn't have working conditions that were so appallingly terrible.  These are people we are talking about.  Not automatons.  It used to be that many teenagers got their first jobs working at McDonald's.  These days, those same jobs aren't available to the teenagers, because TFWs have supplanted them.

In this morning's news, that Minister Kenney has suspended the Fast Food Industry's access to the TFWP, and while that is a good first step, it's now time to shut down this entire program.  There are already immigration programs for bringing in foreign workers when needed.  They aren't simple programs to navigate, but that also means that there is a disincentive for an employer to go that route unless the candidate has specific skills and knowledge that can't be acquired readily, giving local talent the opportunity to fill those roles first.

It's time for the government to start representing Canadians, rather than representing the interests of big business.

TFW: The Dark Side Of Corporate Feudalism

The Temporary Foreign Worker program has become a symbol of the worst predations of corporate thinking.  As more revelations come out, the depths that corporate groupthink can sink to are revealed.

Foreign workers recruited from Belize are accusing McDonald’s Canada of treating them like "slaves," by effectively forcing them to share an expensive apartment – then deducting almost half their take-home pay as rent. 

“When we arrived at the airport, they said, ‘We already have an apartment for you,’ so at that point we already know we don’t have a choice of where to live,” said Jaime Montero, who came to Edmonton with four others in September to work at McDonald’s. 

"We had to live there. We were told this is what we are doing," said another worker who didn't want to be named because he still works for McDonald's.

At first glance, providing an apartment that can be rented by the workers almost seems beneficent.

Five workers paying $280 bi-weekly works out to $3,030 per month. That suggests McDonald’s charged them $600 more for rent than what it paid. 

So, the corporation tried to make money off the temporary workers by charging them more in rent than the apartment actually costs the company.  Dishonourable at the least, downright crooked by my standards.  Oh, and it gets better:

“They actually said even if we leave the apartment and go rent another apartment, that McDonald’s would still deduct the rent from our salary,” said the other worker.

So, it's not even an option for the workers to move somewhere else.  The deductions for rent are happening in the payroll?  Holy cow.  This reeks of corporate feudalism at its worst.

This is exploitation, plain and simple.

Time for the TFW program to be shut down, and a detailed investigation of the practices of every company involved.  Worker exploitation is wrong.  Dead wrong.  The sociopaths who are exploiting workers should be charged and held accountable for their misdeeds.

... and the TFW program should be shut down posthaste.  

TFW Program: Shut It Down NOW!

A few weeks ago, we learned of a few McDonald's restaurants abusing the Temporary Foreign Worker program by giving preferential treatment to candidates coming in under the TFW program over Canadian citizens and permanent residents.  

Today, we find out that it has been much broader in scope than just a franchise owner in Vancouver.

“I feel it’s definitely discrimination against Canadians,” said Chris Eldridge, from Lethbridge, Alta. 

Eldridge just quit his managerial job for six McDonald’s locations in Alberta, because he said he could no longer stomach denying local employees much-needed shifts to accommodate temporary foreign workers. 

“Honestly, some days I wonder, is this still Canada? Everyone is supposed to have equal rights.”Eldridge was a manager who did the worker scheduling for McDonald’s franchisee Dan Brown. He's also upset about differences in pay. Many foreign workers started at $10.80 an hour, he said, while local employees doing the same job made less.

Think about this.  We're talking about a McDonald's here.  Not exactly the kind of jobs that require a degree or specialized training to do.  We're bringing in people from overseas to fill these jobs?  What happened to the local teenagers who used to regularly fill those roles?

The TFW program was intended to fill specific gaps in the workforce where allegedly employers were "unable" to find workers with certain skills.  Then the Harper Government opened the floodgates up to allow just about any company to bring in TFWs for any reason.

The Globe and Mail published an extensive list of the companies authorized under this program.  A quick glance at the list of authorized companies shows us restaurants, fast food outlets and car washes all authorized under this program.  I find it incredible that there are shortages of workers in these areas...especially not with Canada's youth unemployment rate running between 13% and 15%.

This entire program has outlived its purpose.  It has become a tool for businesses to evade paying fair wages to Canadians.  You run a Tim Horton's franchise, and you can't find workers?  Maybe you aren't paying enough.  Oh gosh ... you might have to cut back on a couple of cruise vacations next year ... tsk.

Time to shut it down.  You want to live in Canada? - there's an immigration system for that.

Jobs for Canadians FIRST.