Migrante BC, a member of the BC Employment Standards Coalition, is hosting a conference on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program between December 3-4th, 2016. “Building & Strengthening Workers’ Solidarity” will be held at the Unifor Hall, 326 12th Street, New Westminster. The conference will include a presentation by Professor Ethel Tungohan from the Department of Political Science at York University.
For more details and registration info, please click here.
The West Coast Domestic Workers’ Association, a member of the BC Employment Standards Coalition, is holding its Annual Post-Valentine’s Dinner & Dance Fundraiser on Saturday, February 20th at St. Mary’s Ukrainian Church at 3150 Ash Street. Tickets are $20 for former or current caregivers, and $25 for community members.
Because the WCDWA faced a large cut-back in funding last year, it needs your support now more than ever. If you are able to support the WCDWA by purchasing tickets, or soliciting sponsorships from organizations or businesses in your community, please let the organization know by calling 604-669-4482 or contacting at natalie(at)wcdwa.ca.
Thank you for your support!
Adrienne Montani, Provincial Coordinator of First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition.
David Fairey, labour economist, a research associate of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ BC Office, and Co-Chair of the BC Employment Standards Coalition.
In this week’s Province newspaper, BC Employment Standards Coalition members Adrienne Montani and David Fairey call on MLA candidates in the upcoming by-elections to clarify their parties’ positions on employment standards. They underscore the opportunity for immediate reform in three areas: minimum wages, child protections, and migrant worker rights and protections.
At a forum in downtown Vancouver on Saturday, August 10th, the West Coast Domestic Workers’ Association (WCDWA) presented findings and recommendations from its new report, “Access to Justice for Migrant Workers in BC.” The report addresses a wide variety of inequities and forms of discrimination that are intrinsic to the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), along with the program’s successes. It also includes specific stories of abuse and injustice experienced by people in BC employed under this program. Next to Ontario, BC employs the second-highest number of TFWP workers in Canada.
Participants at the forum included a number of individuals employed under both the Live-In Caregiver Program and agricultural worker streams of the TFWP, as well as representatives and advocates from a number of organizations involved in migrant labour issues. Other participants included Vancouver-Kensington MLA Mable Elmore, Lorene Oikawa, Vice President of the BC Government Employees Union, Judith Diesta from the Vancouver Committee for Domestic Workers’ and Caregivers’ Rights, Lucy Luna from the Agricultural Workers Alliance, and Al Li Lim, Staff Lawyer and Executive Director of WCDWA. Following the WCDWA’s presentation, participants engaged in a roundtable discussion on the issues addressed in the report, including how to better serve needs of people who are employed under the TFWP.
To read “Access to Justice for Migrant Workers in BC,” please click here.
According to this recent publication from the Alberta Federation of Labour, recent scandals involving “guest” workers at the Royal Bank of Canada and HD mining “are just the tip of the iceberg.”
Through an Access to Information Request, the Alberta Federation of Labour obtained a list of all Temporary Foreign Worker applications that were rubberstamped in the first eight months of the new federal Accelerated Labour Market Opinion (ALMO) process. The document suggests that abuse of the ALMO process is even more widespread than what might have been expected. Although guest-worker permits were intended to be reserved for highly-skilled employment positions, a large number of the guest-worker permits were granted to fast-food restaurants, and there appeared to be minimal review of the applications.
As Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan noted, “Workers who want to come to Canada should enjoy the same rights and privileges as other Canadian residents. We shouldn’t be paying them 15 per cent less than Canadians, and the government shouldn’t be whisking them in through an accelerated and duplicitous process.”
