Making The World Safe For Capital

Complaints about the Temporary Foreign Workers Program keep piling up. This morning the Vancouver Sun reports:

B.C. workers ranging from seasoned professionals to teenage fast-food employees are complaining about being dumped in favour of non-residents as Ottawa scrutinizes employers who abuse the Temporary Foreign Worker program.

Vern Doak is a crane operator with 37 years experience who lives in Vernon. In early March he was contacted by his union, who informed him that an American company, Oregon-based O & S Contracting, had work for him building a cogeneration plant near Mackenzie in north-central B.C.

But Doak was replaced by foreign labour. The program, Carol Goar writes, was never about filling labour shortages. It's time to answer a few straightforward questions:

If they want an “adult conversation” about work and remuneration, they should be ready to answer some key questions:

Why should they be exempt from market discipline? The law of supply and demand provides a clear solution to domestic labour shortages. Raise wages or improve working conditions.

Why are they telling Canadians their kids and neighbours have a poor work ethic? Lots of Canadians do dirty, onerous jobs — pick up garbage, go down mines, wash highrise windows.

Why are they comparing foreign workers whose immigration status depends on their performance to Canadian workers who have the freedom to walk away from exploitative employers?

The program has always been about lowering wages -- and, thereby, increasing corporate profits. Stephen Harper has never accepted the idea that government should balance competing interests. For the prime minister, there has only been one side that matters in any dispute. That's capital. That's his side.

And his mission is to make the world safe for capital.

One May Smile And Smile

Tom Walkom writes that no one should be taken in by the cosmetic changes to the Temporary Workers program, which Jason Kinney announced two days ago:

The backpedaling Monday by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney underscores a bitter truth about Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.

It has been forced to retreat marginally from its long-running campaign to push down wages in Canada. But it hasn’t given up the war.

Kenney’s tactical retreat was announced with much fanfare. As cameras clicked, the minister announced numerous changes to Ottawa’s temporary foreign workers program.

Yet only one is significant. That’s the government’s decision to axe a provision allowing employers to pay foreign temporary workers up to 15 per cent less than the going wage.

Even the Harperites had come to realize that, at a time when 1.4 million Canadians are out of work, this was unduly provocative.

But the goal remains the same -- to drive down labour costs and increase corporate profits -- not just in Canada but around the world. Things could be different. When the Harper government signs its much ballyhooed trade deals, it could insist on labour and safety standards which would go a long way to preventing the kind of disaster that happened in Bangladesh:

Canada and other rich nations could help by insisting that wage and labour rights be preconditions for trade with a developing nation like Bangladesh.

To put it another way, trade and immigration policy could be used to boost wages there toward Canadian levels.

But that is not what is happening. Instead, Canada’s government is using trade and immigration policy to lower wages here toward Bangladeshi levels.

The lesson Othello learned from Iago applies equally to Stephen Harper: "One may smile and smile and be a villain."

 

Twisted Priorities

The Harper government is a nasty piece of work. Its twisted priorities now permeate the Canadian economy. Those priorities are best illustrated by the temporary foreign workers program. Originally established in boom times to help alleviate labour shortages, the Harperites have used the program to cudgel Canadian workers. Haroon Siddiqui writes in the Toronto Star:

Under Stephen Harper’s watch, temporary foreign workers have tripled, from 140,000 to 338,000. The total may be more like 500,000, if you add those who may have gone underground at the end of their temporary visas, plus the refugee claimants and foreign students who have work permits.

This at a time when there are 1.3 million unemployed, a high percentage of them educated young Canadians who are having trouble landing their first job. Also, too many of the 250,000 immigrants that Harper is bringing every year by the normal route cannot find jobs commensurate with the education and skills for which they were selected.

This makes sense only as a policy to depress wages across the board, weaken worker rights and make it easy for businesses that barely look for Canadians to fill vacancies, let alone train new hires. Between 2007 and 2011, nearly a third of all net new jobs were filled with temporary workers.

It is that last sentence which bears repeating: a third of the new jobs created have gone to temporary foreign workers. If you think the Harper government is working for you, think again. Siddiqui writes:

Most temporary foreign workers are not allowed to bring families or apply for permanent immigration status. Many are abused at work. “There are countless harrowing stories from thousands of people facing threats from employers and labour brokers, toiling on poverty wages in unsafe work places and living in horrendous conditions,” says Karl Flecker of Canadian Labour Congress. Given that, most have little commitment to Canada.

Permanent immigrants do. More than 80 per cent become citizens. Even if they don’t do well, their children do and become productive citizens. That’s why our immigration policy has been a successful citizenship policy.

But Jason Kenney, minister of immigration and citizenship, has reduced himself to the role of chief headhunter for businesses.

The Harperites work for Canada's business elite. That's the same business elite which buys clothing from Bangladesh and pays those who make the clothing $38 a month -- before the building burns down or collapses.

Twisted, indeed.