Manitoba leads the way – again
The Manitoba NDP government of Premier Gary Doer has announced that it will become the first province to regulate recruiters of temporary foreign workers working in Canada, as well as the province’s businesses that hire them. “This is a good move, and it should be followed by all other jurisdictions,” says Wayne Hanley, the national president of UFCW Canada.
“Protecting these workers has, by default, become a provincial matter because the federal government has shown no interest.”
The Conservative federal government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently allocated $96-million to expand its Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). “But the Harper government has not put up a nickel to monitor what happens to these workers when they get here, nor what they went through before they were chosen,” Hanley says. Last year, dozens of Asian workers at the Maple Leaf Foods packinghouse in Brandon, Man., revealed they had to pay more than $10,000 each to a recruiting firm offering them temporary work visas and jobs in Canada.
UFCW Canada Local 832, which represents workers at the Brandon plant, assisted the affected workers in obtaining partial reimbursement of the so-called fees.
Manitoba’s latest action to protect the rights of temporary workers follows another first in February, when the province extended the protection of its Employment Standards Code to cover farm workers for the first time. “We agree with the Doer government that if a province needs temporary workers, it also needs to make sure those workers have the same protections and rights as their Canadian counterparts,” Hanley says.
“That includes protection from unscrupulous recruiters.”