2013-04-30
Nicholas Keung
Ottawa’s reforms to the temporary foreign worker program are only a “cosmetic” response to the public outcry over the RBC-iGate affair, say critics.
Toronto Star
Toronto
Ottawa’s reforms to the temporary foreign worker program are only a “cosmetic” response to the public outcry over the RBC-iGate affair, say migrant workers’ advocates.
While the move to eliminate the “wage flexibility” that allows employers to pay migrant workers 5 to 15 per cent below prevailing wage is welcomed, critics said some of the proposed changes look good only on paper and mean nothing without oversight and enforcement.
“We have little faith that they would result in anything meaningful,” said Naveen Mehta of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Canada. “It’s just (smoke and mirrors).”
Using Ottawa’s bad employer list as an example, former live-in caregiver Kay Manuel, whose story of exploitation sparked off new migrant worker protection laws, said the federal government has yet to name a bad Canadian employer on its website since its 2011 launch.
“All these changes are meaningless and cosmetic,” said Manuel, a member of the Toronto Caregivers Action Centre. “We are not stealing jobs, but filling the ones that Canadians do not want due to the long hours, low pay and live-in requirement.”
While labour unions are advocating for an independent commission to assess labour market needs and adjudicate employers’ applications for migrant workers, grassroots advocates worried employers will make migrant workers pay for the new fee on Labour Market Opinion (LMO) to get them here.
“The changes announced today are mostly about rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship,” said Chris Ramsaroop, a member of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, a coalition of grassroots advocacy groups.
Calling Ottawa’s reforms “political jockeying,” Deena Ladd, executive director of the Toronto Workers’ Action Centre, said Ottawa could enhance the migrant worker program’s transparency by publicizing Canadian employers using the program and the jobs migrant workers they are bringing in to fill.
“It is certainly useful to know who the employers are, for the (labour) organizing and advocating purpose,” Ladd said. “More transparency is critical.”
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