By Roger Annis, Rabble.ca, November 28, 2012. Also published in the Dec 5, 2012 edition of the BC Federationist, the weekly e-mail newsletter of the BC Federation of Labour.
Vancouver BC–The Temporary Foreign Worker Program of the Canadian government is coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism as the number of employers tapping into it increases and as reports of abuse and exploitation rise accordingly. The program was the subject of an evening panel discussion in Vancouver on November 27 at this week’s biannual convention of the B.C. Federation of Labour. Some 100 delegates attended the forum.
Panel presentations were led off by Lee Loftus, President of the B.C. Building Trades Council. His union and the Steelworkers union have launched a legal challenge to an application by the Chinese-owned HD Mining company to bring hundreds of Chinese workers to build and operate a coal mine in the Tumbler Ridge region in the northeast of the province. According to Luftus, four to six additional such applications by mining companies have been made or are in the works.
The Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) obliges an applicant company to demonstrate that it cannot find the workers it needs within the existing labour market in Canada. It must also spell out a plan for how it will establish a permanent workforce. Loftus said enforcement of these provisions are lacking. The unions in the mining industry, whose members would traditionally be the ones hired to build such a project as HD’s, only learned the company’s plans one month ago.
The company says it solicited and received 300 applicants from Canadian residents. Loftus reported that not a single one was accepted.
Loftus said unions support the right of foreign workers to immigrate to Canada. But they want them to enjoy equal rights to Canadian-resident workers. “Our motto,” he said, “is ‘Good enough to work, good enough to live [in Canada].'”
He gave the example of tunnel drilling labourers and specialists hired to work on the rapid transit line built in Vancouver during the 2000s. When the labourers’ union discovered they were working for an hourly equivalent of $3.71, it successfully organized them and won big immediate improvements to their wages and work conditions. It won a court decision for salary compensation against the contractors SELI and SNC Lavalin, though that decision is still under appeal and compensation has not been paid.
Eugene Kung of the B.C. Public Interest Advocacy Center told the audience that Chinese-Canadians such as himself are following closely the controversy over the TFWP. He explained that the program denies fundamental rights to workers and leaves them vulnerable to super-exploitation.
Recent changes to the program will speed up the process through which companies can apply for temporary workers and they will be allowed to pay 15 per cent less than a benchmark wage rate determined for a given region and industry.
Kung explained that his group has been assisting four temporary workers from Mexico whose story of employer abuse came into the news several weeks ago. They were hired to work for a Tim Horton’s coffee franchise in northern B.C.
Kung talked about the legal challenge to HD Mining’s plans. Racist immigration policies are a dark chapter in Canadian history, he said. “My grandfather paid the head tax, so we know all about this past.”* He said he worries the TFWP will stir up racism against Chinese-Canadians.
“We can do better than the past,” he said, “and thankfully we are. I am very encouraged to see the B.C. Federation of Labour doing just that, by focusing this issue on protection of workers rights. He said concerned people must fight against the exclusion and isolation of workers, and they explain the harsh economic conditions in the world economy that are compelling so many people to seek to leave their homelands.
Lucy Luna of the UFCW described the legal labyrinth and no-man’s-land in which the TFWP increasingly operates. She gave the recent example of two Mexican workers who were dissatisfied with the agricultural jobs they were hired to perform in BC. They decided to return to Mexico rather than continue to work under conditions of abuse.
Their employer refused to assist their return home. The TFWP requires employers to pay the transport to and from the home country of workers, but in this case, the employer refused to do so because it said the workers had not completed their contract.
The union and the workers went to various federal and provincial government agencies and were told, “Not our jurisdiction.” They went to police and were told that because no law was broken, nothing could be done. It was only when their story hit the news and the Mexican Consulate in Vancouver became involved that air tickets were quickly purchased and the workers were able to return home.
“What’s wrong with the TFWP is that it is temporary and it leaves workers extremely vulnerable. These workers should have the opportunity to become permanent residents,” Luna said.
She reminded the audience that legislation does not permit temporary farmworkers to become permanent residents of Canada. She also explained the UFCW has organized the large meatpacking factories in western Canada where a large part of the workforce is nonetheless. “They should be allowed to stay in Canada,” she said.
During the discussion period, audience members contributed examples and experiences they have faced in seeking to defend workers being exploited under the TFWP. Joey Hartman, President of the Vancouver and District Labour Council, asked the views of panelists about commentaries, including in left-wing press, suggesting that the trade union challenge to the TFWP is harkening back to the racist past many decades ago when unions in the province campaigned against Chinese workers and immigration.
Loftus said he finds such reports “distasteful and offensive.”
“What we are trying to do is to make sure that history does not repeat itself. We are fighting so that all workers have equal rights. The TFWP program is broken and must be fixed.”
Eugene Kung said it is important to study the past in order to avoid repeating it. He warned the audience to beware of reports in corporate media that would blame temporary workers for the difficult economic conditions facing Canadian workers.
In her remarks to the forum, chairperson Lorene Oikawa of the BCGEU said the B.C. Federation of Labour wants a moratorium on the TFWP program until blatant abuses and discrimination are ended. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program dates back to 1973. It allows a maximum of two years of residence. It was originally aimed at bringing professionals and skilled workers to Canada. Beginning in 2007, Canada began to receive more temporary foreign workers than immigrants seeking permanent residence. Today, there are an estimated 300,000 workers in Canada under the program (a 33 per cent rise since 2007), including 70,000 in BC.
The two flagship programs of temporary workers in Canada are the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and the Live-in Caregiver Program (LICP). The numbers of workers coming to Canada on these programs is now surpassed by the TFWP.
Roger Annis is a retired aerospace worker and IAM member.
Related article:
Abuse and exploitation inherent to Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program
By Brad Olson, Rabble.ca, November 12, 2012
As scandals rock the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program, the federal government will begin a program wide review. Though the government hinted at it, they did not mention the endemic abuse that is inherent in the TFW program, and the global treatment of migrant workers.
In the last month, the TFW program has made headlines after reports surfaced that migrant workers from China were being recruited to a coal mine near Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. Even though according to the B.C. Federation of Labour, B.C. lost over 10,000 jobs last month [1], and over 300 Canadians applied for these jobs, all were denied as they didn’t have the right training or qualifications. One of the qualifications on the job description [2] was that they be able to speak Mandarin.
Later, it was discovered that many of the 200 migrants given temporary work permits to these mines had to pay up to $12,500 in recruitment fees [3] to get these coveted jobs in Canada. Though this is actually illegal, these practices are not uncommon. In some sectors, workers have to pay up to half of their expected wages to recruiter agencies before they even get their work permit.
Though migrant workers should be entitled to the same work rights as other workers in Canada, sadly they are not. Nearly all of the lower skilled workers under the TFW, and half of the total number of work permits issued, are only allowed to work for the employer that brought them over. All of the workers in the Live-in Care Giver Program and the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program are required to live in housing designated for them by the employer, and many provinces expressly deny workers from forming unions; abusive employers are easily able to prey on these isolated people. It is not uncommon for employers to force their employees to work 18 hour days for less than minimum wage, under the constant threat of deportation if they complain.
Canada was built with migrant labour, and though the Temporary Foreign Worker program leaves many pathways for abuse, it leaves few pathways to immigration. Lower skilled workers are only able to apply for permanent residency after two years in the abuse riddled Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP). The number of current workers in B.C. under the TFW program is up to 70,000, and nationally up from just over 100,000 in 2002, to over 300,000 [4] in 2011 and growing. Our permanent immigration level has fluctuated around 140,000 in the last 10 years, while the TFW’s have tripled.
The abuses that take place within this program could be stopped through regulation, enforcement and meaningful policy change. Currently, the government is taking a step back and letting the “market” police itself, rather than having programs that carry out migration settlement and work in a comprehensive manner.
Canada needs to step up its community building efforts, and support migration that supports the people that come here, help them find work and become a part of the fabric of Canadian society. In Manitoba, there is a comprehensive recruitment regulation policy that could be the model for the rest of the country.
In order to truly protect migrants and the people who are coming here, Canada should model its review through the lens of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the UN Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (CRMW), and the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.
Canada has not signed either of these international conventions, and according to the ILO has violated the rights of over 100,000 seasonal agricultural workers in Ontario [5] by forbidding them from joining a union.
I am thankful that Canada will review the Temporary Foreign Worker program. Maybe scrapping it — and improving our permanent migration policy, and ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers — would be a good start.
Brad Olson is a member of Canadian Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (CCSDP-Vancouver), a student at UBC, and Social Worker in the Downtown East Side. You can follow him on Twitter @b1olson
Notes:
[1] http://bcfed.ca/node/2272
[2] http://www.usw.ca/admin/media/documents/files/Mine-Job-Postings.pdf
[3] http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/10/18/Chinese-Temp-Miners/
[4] http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_oag_200911_02_e_33203.html#hd3a
[5] http://www.ufcw.ca/index.php?Itemid=295&id=2149&lang=en&option=com_content&view=article
Follow-up news stories:
Canadians shut out of jobs at B.C. mine for at least four years
Documents tendered in the case include the company’s previously unreleased transition plan
By James Keller, The Canadian Press, December 13, 2012
It could be more than four years before any Canadian miners are hired at a controversial underground coal project in northern British Columbia and more than 14 years before all the temporary foreign workers are gone, says a transition plan prepared by the company behind the mining proposal. HD Mining submitted the document to the federal government earlier this year as it applied for temporary foreign worker permits to bring 201 Chinese miners to its proposed Murray River coal mine near Tumbler Ridge.
The plan was released Wednesday as a pair of unions challenging those permits asked a Federal Court to stop any more workers from arriving.
The Chinese-owned company has said it must hire foreign workers because there are no Canadians trained in the specialized form of mining that would be used at Murray River, and it has stressed the Chinese miners’ jobs are temporary.
The document indicates the company plans to use temporary foreign workers to build the mine, which it expects would take 30 months to complete. If the mine is approved, temporary foreign workers would be used at the mine for the first two years of operation as they set up a training school and start recruiting and training Canadians.
After that, the document says it would take another decade to shift the work to Canadians at a rate of 10 per cent of the mine’s workforce per year.
The B.C. Federation of Labour, which isn’t directly involved in the case but has been a vocal critic of the mine, seized on the document to suggest the public has been misled about the temporary nature of the Chinese miners’ work. “They’re talking 14-and-a-half years — that would be unacceptable to anybody in Canada,” Sinclair said in an interview. “This is a total abuse of the program. There’s nothing temporary about any of these jobs.”
The proposed Murray River mine has been the source of controversy since details of the foreign worker permits surfaced in news reports two months ago. The federal human resources minister has said her ministry has its own concerns about whether the rules were followed and announced last month that the entire temporary foreign worker program is now under review.
HD Mining has proposed a $300-million underground mine southwest of Tumbler Ridge, about 140 kilometres west of Grande Prairie, Alta. The court heard that 17 Chinese miners are already in B.C. and another 60 are expected to arrive this weekend as the company prepares for preliminary exploration work while waiting for full approval for the mine.
HD Mining has already said it would take 10 years to transition work to Canadians, but it has not said it would be more than four years before the transition would begin. Spokeswoman Jody Shimkus said HD Mining wants to hire Canadians as soon as it can, but she insisted it will take time to transfer the skills needed to work in the mine, especially given the current labour shortage facing the industry.
“If we’re successful transferring the skill set before then, that would be wonderful,” Shimkus said in an interview. “But when we submitted the plan, we also submitted the information on the overall shortage of skilled workers both in B.C. and Canada, so we will be competing with all other sectors and natural resource operations for that pool of workers.”
Shimkus noted the company recently signed an agreement with Northern Lights College to create a curriculum to train workers.
B.C. Jobs Minister Pat Bell has been one of the mine’s most vocal supporters, repeatedly defending the company’s plan to use temporary foreign workers and suggesting the temporary jobs are linked to exploration work that will last six to eight months.
Bell did not make himself available for an interview Wednesday, instead issuing a written statement that ignored a question about the length of HD Mining’s planned transition to Canadian workers.
Bell’s statement said the latest court documents released in Federal Court show HD Mining made extensive efforts to meet provincial workplace safety rules.
The transition plan outlines the steps the company has put in place to ensure the mine meets provincial rules, including asking B.C.’s inspector of mines to review the issue of the use of Mandarin at the mine.
The Federal Court case linked to the mine was launched by the International Union of Operating Engineers and the Construction and Specialized Workers Union, which are seeking to have the company’s temporary foreign worker permits thrown out.
The two unions were in court Wednesday asking for an injunction to prevent more workers from arriving — including the 60 expected to arrive this weekend — until the legal challenge can be heard.
Human-rights complaint against Steelworkers union by Chinese mineworker
By Wendy Stueck, Globe and Mail, Dec. 14, 2012
A month or so ago, Huizhi Li was just one of dozens of Chinese men who pegged their hopes for a better life on a job in Tumbler Ridge, a British Columbia town built near seams of coal. Now Mr. Li, who is in his mid-20s and came from China to work for Vancouver-based HD Mining, has signed his name to a human-rights complaint, putting himself in the middle of a dispute that has implications not only for him and his fellow employees but for the B.C. and federal governments, Canadian companies that hire foreign workers and the labour and immigration policies that allow them to be hired.
In his complaint, dated Dec. 10 and distributed by his employer, Mr. Li says he is worried that United Steelworkers’ statements on the Internet are “likely to create contempt for Chinese persons and in particular Chinese mining workers.”
The United Steelworkers, along with other unions, have criticized HD Mining’s plans to hire foreign workers, saying the company could have done more to hire and train Canadians. As part of that campaign, the union has posted statements online saying foreign workers are vulnerable to exploitation, including being underpaid and denied workplace benefits.
USW district director Stephen Hunt rejected the notion that such statements could create contempt for Chinese workers. The claim is being filed under a section of the act that relates to hate speech on the Internet. “We have taken a strong stand on behalf of workers here that we do think are being exploited,” Mr. Hunt said, referring to HD Mining employees who are already in Tumbler Ridge and others scheduled to arrive this month. “To make a suggestion that we are racist is just simply wrong.”
Lawyers for HD Mining wrote Thursday to the federal deputy minister of justice to voice concerns about statements federal ministers Diane Finley and Jason Kenney have made about the controversy. On Nov. 8, Ms. Finley, Human Resources Minister, issued a statement in which she said she wasn’t satisfied that sufficient efforts had been made to hire Canadian workers for the B.C. jobs. And this month, Immigration Minister, Mr. Kenney, was quoted as saying that mistakes may have been made in hiring foreign workers for the project.
In the letter, HD Mining’s counsel says it has “grave concerns” with actions taken by the ministers and could take the matter up in court. The human rights complaint comes as a federal court judge is weighing arguments in a related court case.
HD Mining plans to build a coal mine near Tumbler Ridge, about 1,000 kilometres north of Vancouver, with the help of Chinese workers brought to B.C. under Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Two labour groups – Local 1611 of the Construction and Specialized Workers’ Union and Local 115 of the International Union of Operating Engineers – applied for a judicial review of the process that gave HD Mining permission to hire 201 workers for its project.
As part of that court action, the unions are seeking an injunction that would prevent about 60 Chinese miners from starting work at HD Mining’s Murray River coal project later this month. About 15 workers, including Mr. Li, have arrived in recent weeks.
The company says an injunction would result in millions of dollars’ worth of delays. “A delay in our schedule could cost as much as $6.3-million in the first 30 days,” said Jody Shimkus, a spokeswoman for HD Mining.
Contractors for the project are also fighting the injunction. Triland Modular Ltd. and Northern Lands Development Corp., which have contracts with Huiyong Holdings to build housing and dining facilities for the workers in Tumbler Ridge, said they would also lose tens of thousands of dollars. “Any delay in proceeding with these contracts will have significant financial impacts on Triland and Northern Lands,” James Rea, president and chief executive of both companies, said in an affidavit, estimating standby costs for the two projects of about $80,000 a month.
A judge is expected to rule on the injunction as early as today.
Labour groups have for years been raising concerns about Canada’s increasing reliance on foreign workers. A Metcalf Foundation report released this year found the number of migrant workers in Canada has tripled since 2000 and that since 2006, the number of migrant workers with temporary status who enter the country each year has exceeded the number of economic immigrants who are granted permanent resident status.
Judge won’t halt Chinese miners
B.C. unions lose their request for injunction
By Petti Fong, Toronto Star, Dec 15, 2012
VANCOUVER— A federal court judge has rejected an application by two B.C. unions to stop more Chinese miners from coming into Canada, saying that to stop the workers from entering the country would do more harm to the mining company than to Canadian workers who may have wanted those jobs.
“This judgment is a massive victory for HD Mining,” said Penggui Yan, chair of the B.C.-based company, in a statement. “We have been waiting for a court to say that we have done nothing wrong and this decision does exactly that.”
Yan said he hopes Friday’s ruling will force the unions to seriously consider why they are trying to stop workers from coming to Canada. HD Mining has said the next batch of workers are needed to begin constructing a tunnel; a delay could cost it over $6 million a month.
Two unions representing workers with experience in Canadian mining operations have been fighting the work permits, issued by the federal government. The unions successfully won the right last week to gain access to the applications filed by the company requesting the temporary work permits. Those applications and Ottawa’s response to them have traditionally been confidential. But they have now lost a separate application for an injunction to block more workers from coming here while their case is being heard in court.
Brian Cochrane, business manager of International Union of Operating Engineers, local 115, one of the two unions that tried to stop more workers from coming in, said the unions won a partial victory. “The judge was quite clear that the company not rush those other workers into the country in advance of the planned May date,” said Cochrane. “We fully intend to proceed with our case for judicial review.”
One of the 16 miners already in Canada filed a complaint this week to the Canadian Human Rights Commission against the United Steelworkers union. Huizhi Li, who is being backed by HD Mining, argues that the union’s letter-writing campaign urging the province to stop the arrival of any more workers could lead to “contempt” for Chinese people. Tumbler Ridge Mayor Darwin Wren said the miners already working at the job site have been taking courses at the local college and are becoming part of the community.
“They were at our Remembrance Day ceremonies and took part in the local food drive at the food bank,” he said. “I have not seen any type of discrimination against them . . . and would be very disappointed if there was.”
Triland Developments is building 92 residential units in Tumbler Ridge to house the miners. Triland’s Graham Johnson said Friday there is concern in the town that HD Mining could withdraw its investments in developing the mine. “They have come here and played by the rules, they came here with good intentions and did the right thing,” said Johnson. “This is not about 200 jobs; this is about hundreds and hundreds more jobs that will come to the community if the mine begins operating.”
