Trading jobs

Media sources as disparate as the Calgary Herald and the CBC have both written stories in the past few days about Canada's Foreign Worker Program. They both say the same thing. They have suggested that the program, which was designed to help Canadian companies in the short term find workers for specific jobs for which there were no Canadian workers available, is being used to find cheap labour from other countries in spite of the fact that there are Canadian workers available and capable.

The Foreign Worker program has always made some sense from the perspective of both industry and most Canadians because the imported workers were doing jobs that Canadians generally did not want. Picking fruit is a prime example. The farmer only needs workers for a short period of time, it is hard work and Canadians are generally not prepared to work for low wages and long hours. From the workers point of view however, it has not always been a great deal. Yes they get to come to Canada for a while and make what must seem to them like a fair amount of money; money that they can take home and support their families. But various advocacy groups have argued for years that the working and living conditions are substandard and that in spite of the fact that the foreign workers are obliged to pay into Employment Insurance (what an oxymoron that phrase is!) they are seldom eligible to collect it. As well they may not be eligible for health care depending upon how long they are in the country.  While they may (according to Citizen and Immigration Canada's website) have full access to all of  the protection that Canada offers to its citizens, one wonders how easily the information is available to those whose first language is not English or French and who may not have internet access. However the issues that have been raised most recently are not related to the protection of those temporary workers but rather to the protection of good long term jobs for Canadians. Bank employees and miners have both been affected the Foreign Worker Program.

If I understand the story, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has hired a company to supply IT workers from another country and has required its own employees to train those new workers before being laid off. It would be logical to assume that the bank was doing so because it needed to save money. Not a good reason or even one that is legal but it would be sort of understandable. Except that according to the Huff Post "the personal and commercial banking segment earned a record $1.1 billion, up 11 per cent from the same quarter last year". Nope they don't need the money. They are just being greedy.

On the West Coast, CTV news (amongst other media sources) has discussed the case of 200 miners from China who were allowed to enter Canada on temporary work visas because the owners of the mine (who happen to be Chinese) said there were no suitably trained Canadian miners. That is a bit hard to believe. There have to be 200 miners in Canada who would re-locate to the West Coast. What is unfortunately less hard to believe is that our government allowed this to happen. I think the important question is why?

For the companies in question it is a good deal. They are allowed to pay 15% less to the imported workers. It is also a good deal for both the companies and the government in that it is one more way that unions are being broken.  Quite clearly the message is to Canadians - if you won't work for lower wages - we will import workers who are so desperate for a job that they will accept reduced wages. And these workers will have fewer rights and  may never know that they are allowed to complain about work conditions. Sweet deal if you are a capitalist.

At the end of last year, CBC presented a story about the treatment of foreign workers at Tim Horton's.  Who knew that there were not enough students who wanted to work at Timmies ? It couldn't be because those imported workers would work for less...could it?

There is some good news. According to at least one employee at the Royal Bank, since the story broke he has started to get offers from other departments within the bank offering interviews. Brendan Behan (Irish Author) once wrote - there is no such thing as bad publicity" (The Quotation Page).  It looks like he may have been wrong.