Guest workers to have to pay for the privilege of bailing out Canadian companies

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

This is not to pick on Canada. Similar incidents are occuring in the US, with at least one well known and respected hotel chain.

Welcome to Canada, hope you weren't planning on staying

With boom times in the West fuelling a turbo-charged economy, a growing number of employers are relying on a new resource to keep businesses running: guest workers

Ashil Chandra took his place in a slow, shuffling line at the Canada Customs counter in Vancouver. Outside, the streets were slick with a January drizzle, and he found himself shivering beneath a light spring jacket and jeans. He was tired but happy, even jubilant, and he tried to maintain a measured comportment in the presence of the stern-looking Customs agent who was eyeballing his year-long work visa. A rubber stamp—just a formality, a souvenir, he thought—and he'd be on his way to his final destination, Edmonton.

Chandra had flown 18 hours—from halfway around the world—to join a growing legion of temporary foreign workers riding the biggest boom Alberta has ever seen. He'd responded to an ad in a newspaper in his native Fiji, and was wooed to Canada by recruiters with the promise of a position in a high-end restaurant and more riches than he could ever make in his job as a fine-dining chef back home. An added bonus, one to dream about: He'd been told the stint would give him a chance to become a full-fledged Canadian citizen. Chandra, 26, saw it as a chance to move up the food chain, to add another trophy to his collection of culinary awards. Maybe one day his name would appear on the menu: "Prepared by chef Ashil Chandra."

The Canada Customs agent shuffled Chandra's papers neatly into a pile before pausing, peering at the chef with a look of mild bemusement, curiosity and, in conduct almost unbecoming his post, pity. "You've come a long way to be a breakfast cook," he said.

For a moment, Chandra stood mutely gaping at the official with his mouth open like a freshly plated sea bass. "Holy ######!" he finally sputtered. "I'm a breakfast cook?"

It was in this instant that the undersized chef, standing all of 5 feet 5 inches tall and barely broad enough to fill out an apron, discovered he'd given up duck à l'orange for Strawberry Dream Waffles, béchamel for pancake batter, to be served up at Smitty's, a chain of family restaurants celebrated across the West for their all-day breakfasts.

That he'd come such a long way to be a short-order cook wasn't the worst of it. Before long, Chandra would realize he had fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire...

"They are qualified chefs—so this is huge for us," Smitty's representative Dorine Kielly beamed into a camera while her jet-lagged young cooks stood smiling behind her. A fresh-faced 21-year-old said he couldn't wait to finally get down to work. "This is something you don't get in Fiji," said Kam Kunal.

By the time Ashil Chandra walked through those same glass doors a month later, the story had fallen from the front pages of the local newspaper and off the nightly newscasts. There were no company representatives at the airport—just a recruiter. Chandra would finally get to meet executives two days later at his first day of orientation, when Rob Sroka, the company's controller, walked into a room of new recruits and loudly pronounced: "It's good to have you guys. Welcome to Canada. Welcome to the Smitty's family." Maybe he couldn't tell that some of their smiles were forced. These family members had arrived in the new country expecting more...

Ashil Chandra's mind had churned with those same thoughts as he filled out his application form that morning in late 2006 in a makeshift office in his home city of Suva. He fully expected a cultural adjustment. But he thought that he might come to appreciate a Ukrainian folk dance, maybe even take up a winter sport once he got used to the sight of snow. Still, he figured his comfort zone would be the workplace—a restaurant kitchen, the one constant from Fiji. So, although he was thoroughly humbled as he stood in front of the Canada Customs agent, learning that he'd moved several time zones just to flip omelettes and sling hash, he vowed to make the best of it.

It wasn't until the second week that things took a turn for the worse. Soon, Chandra was being pulled off the grill to clean walls, wash dishes, mop the floors. He was spending as much time on janitorial duties as he was on cooking. The new duties weren't what he believed he'd signed on for. But it was another frustration that eventually led him and a handful of his Fijian co-workers to discuss their situation with a local labour advocate: the growing realization that they were working full-time, going broke, and didn't have a hope of getting Canadian residency after all.

The workers laid out their complaints, spreading a raft of documents across a table. There were photocopies of pay-stub deductions for the fees being charged by the broker; a list of other fees—$10 for an iron, $7 for a shower curtain, $7 for hangers, money for pots and pans, for face cloths, as well as the first month's rent and damage deposit; a letter that advised them the monies were due immediately. "Please place cash in individual envelopes," it said. The payments were to be the first in a series of monthly instalments that would tally up to more than $6,000, which the workers said they only learned of once they had landed in Canada. Reluctantly, they'd signed documents authorizing Smitty's to make deductions on behalf of Foreign Recruitment Specialists in the order of $333 a month. "We complained to the broker," Chandra said. "But they said, 'If you don't want this money taken out of your paycheque, you can take the next plane home.'"

Between the broker fees and sending money home to pay off a loan he'd taken to buy his plane ticket to Canada, Chandra had about $50 left at the end of each week. He had to put off buying a winter coat and boots, and eventually began looking for ways to supplement his income. He shovelled snow, did errands and applied for a part-time position at Tim Hortons, but was turned away because his visa didn't allow him to work at more than one job at a time. An even worse indignity, though, was finding out that he wasn't eligible for permanent residency. "Once you have successfully completed a six-month period of employment, we will start the process to help you become permanent residents to Canada," his employment contract had stated. But when the half-year mark approached, he and the other Fijians discovered that as line cooks, they were ineligible for Alberta's sponsorship program, which allows some categories of low-skilled foreign workers to become nominees for immigration.

For weeks, Chandra and his co-workers fumed. "We couldn't eat, we couldn't sleep," he says. "Every night we were depressed. We'd say, 'What's the use of coming to Canada?'" Kam Kunal, the young man who, less than a year ago, had smiled into the TV cameras and proclaimed he couldn't wait to start his new job, was seeing the Canadian work program in a new light. "There were so many lies," he said. "It was just all bullshit."...

Firms like Calgary-based JIR Solutions, which recruits workers from Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom, believe it's unethical for guest workers to have to pay for the privilege of bailing out Canadian companies in their time of need. But JIR president Eric Rudy says it's getting hard to compete with recruiters who tell companies they won't have to bear the financial burden of bringing in foreign workers. "It's the Wild West out there," says Rudy.

A growing number of employers, including Jim Kanerva of Waiward Steel, are also wary of recruiters who gouge guest workers. In the past, Kanerva says, companies like his rarely received cold calls. "Now I hear it all the time. They tell me, 'You don't have to pay anything. It's all on the employee's back.' "As Canadians, we like to project ourselves as high and mighty. But...right now, it's a really ethically challenged marketplace."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-b.../article783502/

[Ban Hammer 13,347]

[Kathryn41 3,205]

Wow - that is appalling. When I still worked for the MP we dealt with cases of migrant farm workers who were abused by their sponsoring employers. It was an eye-opener to realize how some of these people were being treated and kept silent about it because they were told they would be deported if they complained. We were able to get a few of these abusers removed from the system and their workers transferred to other employers who honoured their commitments to the Government Temporary Workers program. Recruiters who lie on behalf of companies like Smitty's- and you can be sure I will be sharing this information with friends still in Canada so they can boycott Smitty's - are the lowest of the low and should be barred from any involvement in such programmes. I know that if my former boss were still an MP and someone in our constituency came to us with a story of this type of abuse, he would be on the phone right away arranging to revoke that company's and those recruiters credentials and credibility with Immigration. That is abuse, plain and simple.

Edited August 30, 2009 by Kathryn41

[MrsCat 6]

Well Kathryn, unfortunately, its Alberta and those cries have long been falling on dead ears. They finally set up an office to assist TFWs in their times of need to see if they have other options when they've been cheated (my mother moved from the Alberta TFW program to their advocacy office). And she and her coworkers have been detailing complaints a mile long about recruiters and companies who've been abusing the program and its workers. After hundreds of complaints they have only revoked 1 trucking company's license. The federal government has all but closed a blind eye to the issue because "its a provincial matter". Things are much worse now that the economy has tanked. Alberta has never been a province with a track record of placing the needs of people over business.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

They shoud go to Australia. Everything is perfect there. Ask Haza.

[Heracles 417]

They shoud go to Australia. Everything is perfect there. Ask Haza.

Australia is experiencing the same issue.

I think they need to pull a yank and be like there is nothing wrong with it at all. Our system is the best in the world. Best in the freagin galaxy. Or the could pull the infamous yet common is it constitutional?

[spookyturtle 9,466]

They shoud go to Australia. Everything is perfect there. Ask Haza.

Australia is experiencing the same issue.

I think they need to pull a yank and be like there is nothing wrong with it at all. Our system is the best in the world. Best in the freagin galaxy. Or the could pull the infamous yet common is it constitutional?

You jumped on this one too fast! I figured it would take you a while to find it.

[Heracles 417]

You jumped on this one too fast! I figured it would take you a while to find it.

I am going to start pulling a OT - VJ - yank with everything. Next audit at work, I am going to tell them off the bat, you're wrong. We are the best and don't care what your shitty iron clad audit says. How about I audit you ha? How do I know your audits are good? Why you here auditing me, you jealous or something? Why don't you go back to your firms office, where you came from

What do you think of my examples? any good? I need some more responses so I know what to tell them. So keep them coming.

Edited August 30, 2009 by haza

[spookyturtle 9,466]

You jumped on this one too fast! I figured it would take you a while to find it.

I am going to start pulling a OT - VJ - yank with everything. Next audit at work, I am going to tell them off the bat, you're wrong. We are the best and don't care what your shitty iron clad audit says. How about I audit you ha? How do I know your audits are good? Why you here auditing me, you jealous or something? Why don't you go back to your firms office, where you came from

What do you think of my examples? any good? I need some more responses so I know what to tell them. So keep them coming.

If they don't like it, they can go audit themselves. Tell them they are anti-American douchebags and to get the hell out of your office. And don't let the door hit them in the a$$ on the way out. Make sure to tell them how much better your company is than theirs is. And then throw in a few things about guns, liberal and Republicans. That should be a good start.

[Krikit 1,164]

It may just be that it's early in the morning and I've missed it in the article, but who are the "recruiters" responsible for this? It sounds like people are being scammed on both ends.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

It may just be that it's early in the morning and I've missed it in the article, but who are the "recruiters" responsible for this? It sounds like people are being scammed on both ends.

I know that in the Philippines, in both my BIL's cases, they present themselves as employment agencies for overseas workers. Too often, they ask for a fee upfront, and then "find" a position for them overseas, and secure the neccessary paperwork for the worker. The worker then has to go throught the process of getting the appropriate visa, and make his/her own flight arrangements to the place of employment. Once here (US, or other country), the employer pretty much has the employees at it's mercy, whether or not to give them full employment, adjust their pay, reduce their position, or send them to a different location.

To add, the one BIL works for the VA, and has a fairly good deal, and they did pay most of his expenses. The other BIL works for a well known and respected hotel chain, and they treat him like #######. Neither situation is ideal.

Edited August 30, 2009 by Mister_Bill