How the Conservatives Expanded the Temporary Worker Pipeline

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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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

NOTE:


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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!

Documents

How the Conservatives Expanded the Temporary Worker Pipeline