Temporary foreign workers scandal

[Temporary_User]

I probably worked at the same place as Cameron did one year during the summer in university. It was a great job. I can't remember the year, but my training session was right when the majority of the TFWs were hired. I think they were paid the same as me ($16 I believe or it was $18).
The housing they were given costed them a lot. I can't remember exactly what each person was paying but I remember being shocked at what they told me. They were also housed 4 people in a 2 bedroom apartment. A bunch of grown men in their 30s up to 50. These guys didn't know each other before they moved here, they were just paired up and expected to live and work together. Definitely led to some issues arising because of this.

I talked my brother into applying since he is a truck driver, but apparently they are very picky about who they hire to drive. They want people who are willing and able to work all hours and be able to come in within moments notice (on call 24/7 with no guaranteed hours). I wonder if they have any TFWs as drivers.

[Dynamic]

I'm not too sure where I stand on this. Just today I went to a subway and the staff were fast, experienced, and overall very good. I'm just assuming but they all looked to be from the Philippines. Also at the sawmill I work there I would say we have about 50 tfw's. These are high paying jobs but there is literally not enough people to run the place since oil and gas picked up in the area.

[Temporary_User]

List of Calgary businesses that employ TFWs:
http://ntfw.ca/calgary-alberta-busin...reign-workers/

[I-Hate-Hulse]

That list is impressive for the number of food service places. Albertans had better get ready for another era of crappier customer service and reduced hours at restaurants. Like Springs1 bad.

[CaramonLS]

If you employ unskilled TFWs in NE Calgary, East of the Deerfoot, you are doing something very, very wrong.

It's good that from the list I see businesses like this in the minority.

[Wormius]

The only legitimate business that should need TFWs on that list is the French Maid.

However, I also can see the requirement for some other business that may need expertise or language skills possessed in certain regions of the world like, Globefish and Lina's for example.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Cameron Swift

After reading the other thread, I figured I should post about my experience.

I first came to Canada on a 1 year working holiday visa. I met my future wife whilst here, but when my visa expired I had to go back home to Ireland. After 6 months and obviously wanting to return to Calgary, I came across a job agency who was hiring TFWs for a food distribution warehouse. I applied, interviewed over the phone, and they paid for my flight over to Canada, which they're obliged to do under the rules. They're also obliged to provide accommodation, but I turned that offer down as obviously, I had a place to stay. To my knowledge, the company owned some properties close to the warehouse, and they housed 4 guys at a time there. I'm not sure if they charged them rent.

This was in 2007, and I guess no Canadians wanted to work in the warehouse. It was night shift (5pm-3:30am) and the pay was pretty decent - $16 an hour to start, it went up to $18 the next year, and by the time I left the next year, I believe I was making close to $20. On top of that, the company paid out productivity bonuses on every payday (based on number of items picked and number of errors made) A lot of guys didn't make those bonuses, but if you did it could be anywhere between $50-$200 extra per pay.

As I said, I'm not sure many Canadians wanted to work there. The staff was made up of Canadian guys who'd been there for years, and then about 30-40 TFWs (mostly Mexican and about 10 Caribbean guys and me) Speaking to the long term guys, I'd hear stories of how before the TFWs came in, guys would have to work 3-4 hours overtime every night to get the pallets on the trucks.

At no point did I hear of any TFWs being mistreated, and not that I ever asked, but I assume we all made the same wage. Pretty much all were hardworking - over time, some were let go due to not being all that great at the job. In my time there (2.5 years) I can only remember two Canadian kids (about 18 years old) joining and lasting more than a month. I got married, got my permanent residency and moved on.

Now, maybe this experience isn't typical of other TFW experiences, but I think that's the point. It's unfair to tar all TFWs and employers with the same brush. In my situation, I think it was a win-win for everyone involved. The company was able to meet their promises to their clients and build business, and the employees got to make money and spend it in Calgary or send it home to their families.

I am not sure if it is the same TFW program that exists today, but when my family moved to Canada, my father was a foreign worker in a remote mine in Northern Ontario. It was a similar situation where they couldn't find Canadians to work there. I don't know the exact specifics, but I know that he was locked into the job for a while and we didn't have mobility to move around the country. The wages were apparently crappy and it took a long time to pay off the debt.

Just curious, but do TFWs have the freedom to pursue other opportunities once they are here, or are they locked into their jobs still?

[Swift]

The work permit which allows you to enter Canada and has to be shown to CBSA, has your employer's name and address printed on it. You can only work for them. If I remember correctly, it also has the job you were hired for on there too. In my instance, I was hired on a two year contract, after which point, my visa would expire. It was renewed for another year or two before that happened though.

At one point, I applied for a position in the logistics side of the company, and HR came back to me and told me that unfortunately, that wasn't allowed with my visa. Some Mexican guys did jump ship to work for another company. I'm presuming illegally. I don't know. But it didn't work out for them, and they were back in Mexico soon enough.

[Ben_in_Canada]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

.

Just curious, but do TFWs have the freedom to pursue other opportunities once they are here, or are they locked into their jobs still?

I've had the wonderful duty of informing new hires on several occasions that we could not allow them to start as HR had missed the part on their visa that stated they could only work for a certain company in a certain function.

[FlamesAddiction]

A Saskatchewan company is being accused of not paying overtime to TFWs and also hiring them for locations that meet the federal requirements, but then moving them to different towns as soon as they get here:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskat...time-1.2641940

[peter12]

Opposition to this program boils down to a)complete misunderstanding of economics and b) xenophobia plus a bit of patrimonial racism.

[northcrunk]

Originally Posted by peter12

Opposition to this program boils down to a)complete misunderstanding of economics and b) xenophobia plus a bit of patrimonial racism.

I have no issue with the program, I think it serves and important purpose (esp. in Alberta) the problems arise when:

1. Employers don't even try to hire Canadians for these positions and instead opt for TFW. Or they bring workers into a market that needs it only to be moved to different cities that don't need TFWs once the worker arrives.

2. Employers abuse TFW because of their ignorance of Canadian labour standards and bully them into silence about it.

3. Canadian teens can't get any sort of service job because they are not even being considered due to the fact many business' consider TFW to be more long term, even though these jobs have traditionally been held by youth. The problem with this is young people cannot get any sort of work experience and will be completly unprepared for the work world after school.

EDIT: Criticism of the program is not based on racism or xenophobia. This is Canada, most of us have grown up with people from all cultures and have friends with familly working as TFWs. I think that's a rather simplistic take.

[Tron_fdc]

Companies found abusing this system should be fined right out the arsehole.

We don't live in a 3rd world country where it's ok (or normal) to exploit workers. Fair wage for a fair day of work. If you import people and slave drive them you should have MASSIVE fines thrown at you.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by peter12

b) xenophobia plus a bit of patrimonial racism.

But what if I just do not like living with these people?

[peter12]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

But what if I just do not like living with these people?

I don't equate foreigners with homeless people.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by peter12

I don't equate foreigners with homeless people.

What about foreign homeless people?

[sfpipes]

Originally Posted by northcrunk

I have no issue with the program, I think it serves and important purpose (esp. in Alberta) the problems arise when:

1. Employers don't even try to hire Canadians for these positions and instead opt for TFW. Or they bring workers into a market that needs it only to be moved to different cities that don't need TFWs once the worker arrives.

2. Employers abuse TFW because of their ignorance of Canadian labour standards and bully them into silence about it.

3. Canadian teens can't get any sort of service job because they are not even being considered due to the fact many business' consider TFW to be more long term, even though these jobs have traditionally been held by youth. The problem with this is young people cannot get any sort of work experience and will be completly unprepared for the work world after school.

I'm quoting the above only as a reference point, not to specifically call out the poster. These are three of the common issues I hear people have with the TFW program so I wanted to speak to my experiences with them.

1. Part of the program requirement involves advertising in the Canadian market for a set time before you can even apply for an LMO to get available TFW positions. The process of getting a TFW is very long and expensive. If you are audited, Service Canada expects you to have names, dates, results of any interviews done with Canadian workers over roughly a 3-6 month time frame. They would also expect a reasonable number of local hires in that time. For the time and cost of aquiring TFW's, it is simply not worth it for that to be your go to hiring model.

As for moving workers to different cities, I haven't seen a lot of that in my experience. I believe the fines that could be given in this situation are quite substantial. Especially for a smaller non franchise business. Not worth it unless you were absolutely desperate.

2. Having spent a lot of time with our foreign workers, there are definitely employers that take advantage of their desire to work hard and fit in. Stories of passports being confiscated, poor accommadations, long hours and minimal time off amont those things. Again I feel this is a small percentage of employers, but certainly a valid concern.

3. I believe that Canadian teens can get jobs if they choose to get them and actually do the work required. We hire a high number of local teens for our restaurant. We interview an even higher number of local teens for positions.

The first problem with teens is availability. Even if you hired every teen that applied for a job, you would have no weekday or overnight staff. Also, a lot of teens have no desire to work a decent number of hours. We hire teens that start out available every weeknight for 4-5 hours. Within 2 weeks, a number of these workers have changed that to 1 3hour shift a week. That or they up and quit after one shift because it's just not their "thing". It's just not enough numbers to run a 24 hour a day restaurant.

The second problem is finding teens that want to work at all and actually seem like they would give a crap. We are in a small town and I truly believe that most qualified, willing to work teenagers are currenly employed somewhere. What's left is kids that don't want to work at all or interview so poorly that they don't get hired. It's just not as easy as hire the first teenagers that come in.

Sorry for the long windedness of my post. I've spent a large part of the last 2 weeks trying to calm the fears of our TFW's, talk down TFW's that are almost in tears on a daily basis and defend how we personally utilize the program. Not a whole lot of fun. I just hope that there is a solution that is fair for everyone and actually helps weed out the empolyers that abuse the program.

[getbak]

Is there any requirement that the company has to offer a competitive market rate on the salary they're paying for the position before they can qualify to hire a TFW?

Let's say it's a full time office job and the low end of the Calgary range for this type of job is $50,000/year and you post it with a salary of $1800/month. At that rate, you're unlikely to get any qualified candidates. Would you then qualify to hire a TFW, or would they force you to post it at something closer to market value?

[sfpipes]

You have to advertise for the position at a defined prevailing wage. So there is a site for Alberta that lists a low, high and median wage based on the area of the province you are in. The wages are categorized by job type. Once you have advertised for the minimal time at the prevailing wage, you may apply for TFW approval. Once you go through the process, that is also the amount you must pay the TFW's that are hired on that approval. So any local job seekers would see the ads at the prevailing wage value. For our restaurants, the prevailing wage is pretty close to what we would start at for any full time, full availability employee. So it works pretty good.

[killer_carlson]

The median wage issue is set region by region within a province. Calgary is different from Edmonton, Ft Mac, etc.

As I do a fair bit of work in this area, I have a lot of comments but not the time to post them, but the nonsense that TFW come into Canada at pennies on the dollar needs to be clarified.