Globe and Mail back-pedaling on Royal Bank's foreign worker scandal

The Globe and Mail seems to be in damage control re: the story that embarrassed one of Canada's iconic bastions of capitalism last week. Two of the paper's heavy hitters have opinion pieces in today's edition that go to credibility-stretching lengths to downplay the substance of that scandal.

Doug Saunders has it neatly wrapped up. The real problem with outsourcing is that we need the foreign workers to stick around longer. After all, we were all temporary foreign workers at one time, according to Doug.

His fatuous reference to guest workers in Germany in the 1960's neglects to mention that the West German economy had full employment at the time, a phenomenon starkly absent from the Canadian situation today. Were Canada in full employment Saunders might have a point. It isn't and he doesn't.

Then we've got Margaret Wente, The Globe' s in-house plagiarist. She spins a compelling yarn about how it's not avaricious managers displacing workers with their opportunistic abuse of the TFW program; it's technology!

Yup, it's all about computers and algorithms. The entire effort smacks suspiciously of the glib foolishness that Don Tapscott has been peddling for at least twenty years.

Oddly enough, once we leave the opinion pages The Globe has buried another article about the Temporary Foreign Worker program deep in the business section.

Finally we get to the meat and potatoes of the matter. Quoting several actual economists, Tavia Grant informs us that the TFW program displaces Canadian workers and drives down Canadian wages... which is so blatantly obvious that even a pot-addled hillbilly blogger figured it out ages ago.

And that's why Canadians are pissed off about the Royal Bank firing Canadian workers and outsourcing their jobs.

Royal Bank boss apologizes for foreign worker scandal

Not that he thinks the bank has done anything wrong. In fact, he is at pains to make clear the bank followed all regulations.

No, he's only apologizing because they "don't always meet everyone's expectations." How humble!

And when Canada's biggest bank fails to meet everyone's expectations, we are quick to let them know, and Gord Nixon assures us that he's listening.

Nice try, Gord, but I ain't buying it. According to this story, the RBC's arrangement with this particular outsourcing contractor has been ongoing since 2008.

Apparently no one at the bank thought it was dodgy to replace Canadian workers with "temporary foreign workers" for five years, until the CBC broke the story this week.

That smacks of an ethically challenged corporate culture, and hiding behind the "legality" of outsourcing is no excuse.

This kind of dirty dealing is legal because big business' friends in Ottawa look out for big business and not for Canadian workers.

The fact that RBC spent $100 million on this one outsourcing contractor in 2012 alone only comes to light because of a SEC filing made in the US. The Canadian government would prefer not to know what Canadian companies spend on outsourcing jobs, and they would obviously prefer that Canadians don't know either.

Shame on you, Mr. Nixon, and shame on your enablers in Ottawa.

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.