Event Details

Dear friends and colleagues,

There are over 338,000 migrant workers in Canada. This number has more than doubled since 2006. In Toronto, the number of migrant workers increased 237% between 2006 to 2012. As Canada increasingly relies on a work force of transnational migrant workers with temporary status, an industry of third-party for-profit recruiters has emerged to match workers with jobs in Canada.

The Metcalf Foundation is pleased to announce the publication of a new report — written by Innovation Fellow Fay Faraday — which examines migrant workers’ experience of recruitment and analyses whether the existing legal model can adequately protect low-wage migrant workers against recruitment abuse.

Profiting from the Precarious: How Recruitment Practices Exploit Migrant Workers draws on in-depth interviews with low-wage migrant workers in the Greater Toronto Area and southern Ontario, and community organizers in Canada and abroad. Faraday maps out migrant workers’ experiences of recruitment and analyses how abusive recruitment practices resonate throughout a worker’s labour migration cycle. She demonstrates how our complaint-based laws fail to provide effective protection or enable workers to enforce their rights.

As the Ontario government has recently introduced two bills that address worker recruitment, there is both urgency and opportunity to examine legal models that could, in fact, provide effective, meaningful, and accessible protection for low-wage migrant workers.

Please join us on Tuesday, April 8, at 2pm, at the Toronto Reference Library, for the launch of Profiting from the Precarious. Fay Faraday will present her findings along with recommendations for how we can close the vast and disturbing gap between the current law’s promise of protection, and the reality of ongoing exploitation. Panelists from the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change will share their lived experience and provide insight regarding policy recommendations. There will also be an opportunity for a Q&A.

This is a free event, but as space is limited please RSVP at http://faraday-report-2014.eventbrite.ca

If you require additional information please contact: Inclusive Local Economies Program Director, Adriana Beemans, abeemans@metcalffoundation.com or 416-926-0366 x 224

Sincerely,

Sandy Houston
President and CEO
Metcalf Foundation

38 Madison Avenue, Toronto M5R 2S1
t: 416-926-0366
f: 416-926-0370
e: shouston@metcalffoundation.com
w: www.metcalffoundation.com