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8/12/2019 How the Conservatives Expanded the Temporary Worker Pipeline
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Meanwhile,attheot
herendofthepipelin
e...
Yeah, and howabout the migrantworkers who arebeing abused and
exploited?
Leterrip,
steve!
woo-hooo!!!
heressomemore
cheaplabour,my
friends!
For decades, Canada has relied on migrant workers to help
develop the economy. Many come through the governments
Temporary Foreign Worker Program(TFWP). This program was
intended to fill very specific jobs on a short term basisjobs that
required workers and skills that did not exist in the country.
But since 2006, the Harper government has made it mucheasier for
employersof all kindsto use migrant workers. Its like theyve built
a pipeline that can be easily tapped into. Employers were invited
to recruit migrant workers to almost every sector of the economy,
from agriculture, to construction, to health care, to retail, even media
and government. Employers are now able to hire temporary migrant
workers to harvest crops, fly planes, drive trucks, care for children and
elders, respond to trouble tickets on IT help desks, andincredibly
serve coffee at Tim Hortons and flip burgers at Wendys!
The Harper government effectively changed the purposeof the Temporary Foreign Worker Program...
helping employersfill specific labouror skills shortageson a short-termbasis
how is it
affectinglocal
workers?
this isoutrageous!how come wenever heardabout it?
helping employers profit from a global supplyof cheap, vulnerable and disposable labourfor just about any job youcan imagine
well
Lets tacloser lat what
CONSERVAdid-a
whats wwith
FROM: to:
Who benefits and who gets hurt?
How the Conservativesexpanded the temporaryworker pipeline
How the Conservativesexpanded the temporaryworker pipeline
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8/12/2019 How the Conservatives Expanded the Temporary Worker Pipeline
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Tradesand
equipment
operators
Management
Business
andFinance
Health
Services
70,000
60,000
80,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0
Salesand
ServiceMcJobs
LoggingMining
OilandGas
Migrant Workers by Job Type, 2012
To get some advice on how to improve the TemporaryForeign Worker Program, the Conservatives put togetheran advisory group. Heres a whos-who ofthe groups members.
Merit Canada
Until2013,
theapplicationprocess
wasFREE,whichamounted
toa$35million-per-year
subsidytoemployers!
With these changes, the use of migrant workers has skyrocketed. Employers have been
given about half a milliontemporary work permits, including 340,000 migrant workers in
the Temporary Foreign Worker Program at the end of 2012. And theres an alarming trend:
employers have been able to fill more and more low-skilledjobs with migrant workers. This includes jobs in
retail and fast food! In early 2013, a list of employers that were granted work visas for high-skilled temporary workers
was made public. The list is 90 pages long and contains thousands of workplacesand among them are fast food outlets
like Tim Hortons, Dairy Queen, Quiznos and A&W.
They set the stage by addingone line to the 2007 budget,inviting employers to recruittemporary migrant workers...
A litt le help from their friends
Canadian Restaurant &Food Services Association
Canadian Tourism HumanResources Council
Canadian ConstructionAssociation
Canadian Federation ofIndependent Business
Canadian TruckingAlliance
Petroleum ServicesAssociation of Canada
The Conservatives created loopholesallowing employers to get moretemporary work permitsSince 2006, the Harper government has quietly made critical changes
to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Quietly means they
did it largely away from parliamentary oversightlike so many of
the other things they do! Heres some of what they did:
1
For one year they allowedemployers to pay 15%less toALLworkers doing
the high-skilled job forwhich temporary workpermits were sought. Thediscount was 5% for low-skill jobs.
They have played fastand loose with the amountof time employers arerequired to advertise jobopenings. It used to be six weeks.They reduced it to as little as sixdaysat one point. Then
they increased it to 14days. Now there is aguideline for employersto advertise jobs nationallyfor only four weeks.
2
They opened special ofces in Alberta and British Columbia to fast-trackthe approval for some employers seeking migrant workers. It was a sortof fast lane for employers who were looking to hire workers in occupationsthat they called under pressure, in other words, facing a shortage ofworkers. How a shortage was determined was never explained, otherthan employers claims of shortages.
3
They later introduced an across-the-board fast lane for all employers.Their goal? To process employers applications in as little as ten days!4
5
is thatTemporary foreignworker application
ready to go?ready!
three...two...one...
Andthere wasa bonus!
lets talook at so
the probthis poli
causin
Employersappliedformigrantworkersbythe
thousands,andthegovernmenthappilyobliged.
AccesstoInformationdocumentsrevealthat
over70%ofapplicationsare
approved!
So whatswrong withallowing
employersto use more
migrantworkers,anyway?
Sopeo
howcanw
migrantw
workfo
Canadian MeatCouncil
Hotel Associationof Canada
Harperschangesallowedfor
adramaticincreaseinthe
useofmigrantworkersfor
McJobs!
comeopeople,letthoseappr
coming
...for any legallyrecognized
occupation fromany country.
This fast track/pay leswindow for employer
was recently closed dto public pressure. Buthis government is onpublic record saying tfast track window is otemporarily suspend
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Rampant abuse of migrant workers
Problems for the national labour forceIn Canada today, more than a
million workers are unemployed
and millions more are
under-employed. Youth
unemployment is off the chartsand so is unemployment among
aboriginal communities. Yet,
employers by the thousands
claim they face labour shortages.
Clearly, some employers prefer to use
easy access to migrant labour rather
than investing in job training or paying
decent wages and benefitsand the
current federal government promotes
this behaviour.
what can wedo to opposethis blatantanti-worker
agenda?
Migrant workers, particularly those in low-skilled jobs,
often face multiple forms of abuse and exploitation!
It can start with the labour brokers and recruiters
who bring the migrant workers from overseas
on behalf of employers. They often lure
migrants to Canada with misleading
information about the job theyll be doing
or false promises of gaining citizenship
for themselves and family members.
Brokers then often charge migrants illegal
job placement fees, which robs workers of
their wages and increases debt. Migrants often
have to cope with bosses who dont honour employment
contractswhich can sometimes mean failure to pay the workers properly.
Employers often force migrants to work in unsafe conditions, or to live in cramped and costly housing.
Why dont migrant workers just change jobs if theyre being abused? According to the rules, they cant
(at least not very easily). This puts them in a vulnerable positionemployers can threaten them with
deportation if they misbehave. So the workers tend to remain silent.
The result is a vulnerable, compliant workforce!
When employers are given the upper handover workers, they can manipulate wages
and working conditions downward.
In the end, the Conservative governments expansion
of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program is a
sweet deal for employers, and a kick in the teeth to
all workers. Employers get off scot-free by avoiding
spending on job training or apprenticeships, and
by getting a free pass to profit off an easy-to-exploit
migrant workforce. Meanwhile, next to nothing is
spent on protecting migrant workers rights!
A sweet deal and a kick in the teeth
Tim HortonsasCanadian as it gets?anym
ore
troublefrom
youandyoure
onthenext
planehome,
fella!!
this
cantbe
right.I
wantto
speakup...
...butIneedtomakemoneytosendto
myfamily
I dunthere
be somLets
se
In 2013, four migrant workers from twDawson Creek Tim Hortons outlets a complaint with the BC Human RighTribunal. They alleged that the ownewas overcharging them for rent in acrowded house, that he had conscatheir passports, and that he had utterepeated racist comments like lazyidiot Mexicans. Meanwhile, in WhiteSaskatchewan, six Tim Hortons mig
workers complained of being forced share three bedrooms and a kitchena stove or full-sized refrigerator. Theypaying $500-$600 each per month in
Tim Hortons claimed these were regbut isolated incidents in a company wthousands of franchises. But this is ethe type of behavior employers feel tcan get away with in a program that employers all the power. One of the in Dawson Creek is alleged to have workers he was the owner of their liand that about sums it up! There arethousands of cases of abuse of migr
workers in Canada, and the governmdoing little to stop it.
Canadian employer guiof human trafficking!There are thousands of Live-in Careworking in homes across Canada.Thmostly women workers make the chdecision to leave their own families bin search of better economic opportuabroad. They care for our elders andfor years on their hopeful road to Cacitizenshipand ideally, family re-un
However, Canadas Live-in Care Proenables some employers to easily athese workers. In July 2013, a BC cofound an employer guilty of employinmigrant worker illegally and misreprethe situation to immigration ofcials. the the rst conviction for human trafunder the Immigration Act.
In international law and Canadian lawhuman trafcking means the act of retransporting, holding or receiving peothe use of force, lies, fraud, abuse ofor payment for the purpose of exploiThis historic court ruling exposes howthe TFWP is and the case represent
important win to protect workers humrights.
Aflexible
workforce
makescanada
agreatplace
todobusiness
labour
shortage!
labour
shortage!
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Mighty bank bows topublic pressure andworker solidarity!
Workers demand fundamental change!
Their agenda exposed!In the spring of 2013, news reports exposed that IT
professionals at the Royal Bank of Canada were training
migrant workers to do their jobs, only to be later replaced
by them. It was a complex arrangement involving a job
outsourcing firm and a program for hiring migrant
workers called the Intra-company Transfer. The bottom
line was simple: workers were losing decent jobs due to an
employer profiting from lower wages and job off-shoring.Other workers soon pointed out similar things were
happening in their workplaces. From miners, to pilots to
healthcare workers, employers were taking advantage of
temporary work permits when and where they could. These
cases gave the public a peek at the Conservative governments
shady scheme to give all employers easy access to vulnerable
international labour.
dramatically scale back the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.This includes: closing the pipeline that allows employers access
for low-wage, vulnerable work permits; requiring that applicantsprovide objective proof of shortages, alongside measurable plansto train and hire from within the country.
invest seriously in job training and apprenticeships and develop alabour market strategy that puts unemployed and under-employedpeople back to work with decent wages and working conditionswith special priority on helping racialized workers, newcomers,
youth and aboriginal communities.
return to a policy of permanent immigration, not abusivetemporary migration schemes.
When news broke about IT workthe Royal Bank of Canada losing
jobs to off-shoring, there was imoutrage across the country. Uniomembers organized greeters cltalk with RBC customers outsidebranches, urging them to re-thinthey bank. Unions also threatenpull out their pension funds. RBC
CEO quickly realized that it was to change their way of doing busThe bank has since made a pubcommitment to curtail its practiceshoring and worker displacemen
The government was embarrassed by the public
outcry and quickly announced changes to the
Temporary Foreign Worker Program. But thechanges are little more than cosmetic tweaks,
aimed at diverting peoples attention.
Support the campaign for migrant worker justice!
For a strong, equitable and just economy, the Canadian government must:
Lobby provincial, municipal and First Nation governmentsand ask them to put in place measures that both protect migrant workersand require employers to demonstrate they are hiring locally.
Contact your MP and insist that the government:
Invest seriously in job trainingand apprenticeships!3Increase permanentimmigration to build
a strong citizenry!2End the abuse ofmigrant workers!1 Scale back the TFWP byclosing the low-wage pipe-
line. Establishcaps and verify
that shortagesare genuine.
4
Neither migrantworkers northe national
labour forceare adequatelyprotected.
ACTlON
ALERT!
Join with the CLC, your union,labour federations and alliesand support their work organizingmigrant workers.
Organize rallies, flashmobs and direct actionstargeting industry associations,labour brokers and employersabusing migrant workers.
Wefixing
prog
dont
worryfolks
anadian Labour Congress www.canadianlabour.caecial thanks to: United Food and Commercial Workers Canada,ited Steelworkers, Unifor, Public Service Alliance of Canada
pyright 2013, Canadian Labour Congress
signed & illustrated by Tony Biddle, www.perfectworlddesign.ca
AHEM!!Not
allowed!