02) CANADA CREATING LOW-WAGE "GUEST WORKFORCE"
By Kimball Cariou
Canada is well on the way to creating a huge workforce of low-paid, temporary foreign workers. That's the logical conclusion from the facts and figures in a new report issued by the Toronto-based Metcalf Foundation.
As reported by the Toronto Star's Nicholas Keung, the Foundation argues that abuse and exploitation of migrant workers is much more prevalent than anecdotal stories of bad bosses. In reality, Canada's immigration and labour laws mean that mistreatment of such workers is becoming "normalised."
The Star gives some typical examples: a live‑in caregiver's work permit and passport are seized by her employer, who pays her only $2100 for two years of work; promised $15 an hour by a recruiter to work as a chef in a Toronto restaurant, an Indian migrant is paid just $8 hourly, sharing accommodation in a cold basement, with no vacation or holidays; the monthly paycheque of a Tanzanian taxidermist is immediately grabbed by his employer.
Other cases have hit the headlines in recent years, including a group of African workers hired to plant trees in British Columbia. Housed in atrocious conditions and given only the most meagre food, about 30 of the workers were ripped off by their employers, and some are still fighting for back wages.
"The exploitation is not isolated and anecdotal. It is endemic. It is systemic," says the report. Titled "Made in Canada: How the Law Constructs Migrant Workers' Insecurity," the report stresses "a deepening concern that Canada's temporary labour migration programs are entrenching and normalizing a low‑wage, low‑rights `guest' workforce."
The number of migrant workers in Canada has tripled in the past decade, to over 300,000. One‑third of these are in low‑skilled jobs.
For many years, Canada has imported live‑in caregivers and seasonal farm workers. But a 10‑year‑old so-called "pilot project" also recruits workers for agriculture, restaurants, food processing, cleaning, construction, road building and tourism. This category has risen from 1,304 in 2002 to 28,930 in 2010.
The author of the study, Osgoode Hall Law School professor Fay Faraday, says that such low‑skilled migrant workers are more vulnerable to abuse because they have no access to permanent residency, and there is little oversight by Canada or their countries of origin. In effect, governments are creating the conditions which allow any supervision to be increasingly privatized between employer and worker.
As a remedy, the report proposes that migrant workers should be granted permanent resident status upon arrival. It also recommends stronger legislation to govern worker recruitment, citing regulations in Manitoba as an example, as well as work permits that allow migrants freedom to choose employers and the right to unionize and bargain collectively.
The protections adopted by Manitoba include a ban on charging or passing fees to migrant workers, and a requirement to deposit a $10,000 credit, which is used to pay back fees owed to a migrant worker if the law is breached.
(The above article is from the October 1-15, 2012, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)