I should have been crowing about this months ago, but when you're a pot-addled hillbilly sometimes shit gets lost in the shuffle.
A year ago in April I had this to say about the Temporary Foreign Worker program.
Drives down wages. Great for employers; screws over workers.
Then a year later, April 2013, the RBC scandal comes to light.
Suddenly every mainstream journo wants to tell you that the TFW program drives down wages, is great for employers, and screws over Canadian workers!
Who knew?
Showing posts with label RBC foreign worker scandal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RBC foreign worker scandal. Show all posts
Friday, June 21, 2013
Thursday, April 11, 2013
RBC chief Gord Nixon got $2.5 million raise last year, promises to be more sensitive about offshoring jobs
Royal Bank of Canada boss Gord Nixon and his crocodile tears were all over the news today.
He apologized to the workers he was caught trying to fire last week. Said he was going be more sensitive in the future.
In the future, when RBC ships your job to India, they will send a grief counselor round to your house the day after they tell you to clean out your desk. The grief counselor will hold your hand and pass you kleenex.
Gord made a nice pay packet of 12.6 million dollars last year, so it's not as if he has to care. He's doing this because it sincerely comes from his heart. He had no idea that the people he was firing would lose their jobs.
He apologized to the workers he was caught trying to fire last week. Said he was going be more sensitive in the future.
In the future, when RBC ships your job to India, they will send a grief counselor round to your house the day after they tell you to clean out your desk. The grief counselor will hold your hand and pass you kleenex.
Gord made a nice pay packet of 12.6 million dollars last year, so it's not as if he has to care. He's doing this because it sincerely comes from his heart. He had no idea that the people he was firing would lose their jobs.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Pot-addled blogger beats the big boys to the "Temporary Foreign Worker" story by a year
Oh lookee; the CBC is all over employers exploiting the TFW program today.
Look who was telling you all about it a year ago.
Frankly, I think what's pushed this story onto the news agenda is the sheer audacity of the Royal Bank's move to dump their internal IT folks for a call centre in India.
If RBC was some struggling banking operation doing everything it could to stay afloat, maybe this story would have passed unnoticed. But everybody knows, even folks who don't follow this stuff, that RBC is hugely profitable and can well afford to pay Canadian wages to Canadians.
And even though Gord Nixon's spin-twats are working 24/7 to contain the PR disaster, the truth of the matter is that responsibility for this debacle lies not with RBC, but with the Government of Canada.
The Temporary Foreign Worker program has from the beginning been an end run around Canadian labour standards and Canadian workers. Its genesis was in the seasonal importation of black fruit pickers from the Caribbean. Most Canadians were able to let that one slide because... well, you know...
Even then, if we'd been willing to pay a few cents more for a bag of apples at the A&P, this program would have been robbed of its legitimacy.
But now we're well past fruit-picking. We're at coal miners and welders and truck drivers and convenience store clerks... and now we've got Canada's biggest bank horning in on the action.
We're at white collar professionals.
Suddenly the nation takes notice!
This travesty should have been stopped when it started, but better late than never.
Look who was telling you all about it a year ago.
Frankly, I think what's pushed this story onto the news agenda is the sheer audacity of the Royal Bank's move to dump their internal IT folks for a call centre in India.
If RBC was some struggling banking operation doing everything it could to stay afloat, maybe this story would have passed unnoticed. But everybody knows, even folks who don't follow this stuff, that RBC is hugely profitable and can well afford to pay Canadian wages to Canadians.
And even though Gord Nixon's spin-twats are working 24/7 to contain the PR disaster, the truth of the matter is that responsibility for this debacle lies not with RBC, but with the Government of Canada.
The Temporary Foreign Worker program has from the beginning been an end run around Canadian labour standards and Canadian workers. Its genesis was in the seasonal importation of black fruit pickers from the Caribbean. Most Canadians were able to let that one slide because... well, you know...
Even then, if we'd been willing to pay a few cents more for a bag of apples at the A&P, this program would have been robbed of its legitimacy.
But now we're well past fruit-picking. We're at coal miners and welders and truck drivers and convenience store clerks... and now we've got Canada's biggest bank horning in on the action.
We're at white collar professionals.
Suddenly the nation takes notice!
This travesty should have been stopped when it started, but better late than never.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Royal Bank foreign worker "scandal" just business as usual
For years foreign workers have been the backbone of the labour market in the orchards of Southern Ontario and the vegtable farms of the lower BC mainland.
The government routinely rubber-stamps virtually every employer application to import foreign workers regardless of how many Canadians are unemployed. Tim Hortons operators in Alberta bring counter help in from Mexico. Chinese-owned coal mining operations bring workers in from China.
Today Canada has over three hundred thousand foreign workers and at the same time 1.3 million Canadians are unemployed.
The government connives with the employers at bringing in foreign workers for two reasons: in the case of skilled workers it's cheaper than training Canadians, and in all cases it drives down the cost of Canadian wages. This is a government firmly committed to serving the interests of employers, not workers.
The fact that the culpable are acting shocked and dismayed now that the Royal Bank story has hit the headlines says more about their acting skills than about their shock and dismay. Jason Kenney has been petitioned for years by labour groups and individual supplicants to invest in Canadians first, yet today he pretends he had no idea what was going on.
The Royal Bank of Canada had net earnings of $7.5 billion last year. It can easily afford to pay Canadians and to keep these jobs in Canada. What does "enhancing efficiencies" mean when you're already making 7.5 billion a year?
The government routinely rubber-stamps virtually every employer application to import foreign workers regardless of how many Canadians are unemployed. Tim Hortons operators in Alberta bring counter help in from Mexico. Chinese-owned coal mining operations bring workers in from China.
Today Canada has over three hundred thousand foreign workers and at the same time 1.3 million Canadians are unemployed.
The government connives with the employers at bringing in foreign workers for two reasons: in the case of skilled workers it's cheaper than training Canadians, and in all cases it drives down the cost of Canadian wages. This is a government firmly committed to serving the interests of employers, not workers.
The fact that the culpable are acting shocked and dismayed now that the Royal Bank story has hit the headlines says more about their acting skills than about their shock and dismay. Jason Kenney has been petitioned for years by labour groups and individual supplicants to invest in Canadians first, yet today he pretends he had no idea what was going on.
The Royal Bank of Canada had net earnings of $7.5 billion last year. It can easily afford to pay Canadians and to keep these jobs in Canada. What does "enhancing efficiencies" mean when you're already making 7.5 billion a year?
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