Canadian HR Reporter

CanaDian hr reporter october 20, 2014 14 INsIgHT Is THaT reallY You? LoS anGeLeS — on any given day, it would be pretty hard to have your picture taken with the likes of president Barack obama or George Clooney. But one at- torney just did that, along with other celebrities including hilary and Bill Clinton, anne hathaway, Jamie Fox and Leonardo DiCaprio. at least, that's what the "publicity page" on her website seemed to show. But Svitlana Sangary may see her law licence suspended after a state bar investigation, ac- cording to reuters. "Many, and perhaps all, of these photos were created by taking original celebrity photos and then overlaying the re- spondent's image in order to make it appear as though (she) was in the presence of that celebrity," said Judge Donald Miles in his opin- ion, adding the pics "were part of an advertisement and solicitation for future work... and they were false, deceptive and intended to confuse, deceive and mislead the public." Sangary has denied the allegations, saying she was able to pose with prominent people through her political and philan- thropic connections. THere's porN… WaShinGton — Federal work- ers in the United States apparently have a lot of time on their hands. one employee — earning between US$106,000 and US$139,000 — at the environmental protection agency downloaded at least 7,000 fi les of pornography and logged be- tween two and six hours of porn- watching per day for several years. another was caught watching up to eight hours each week, apparently because he did not have enough work to do. as a result, rep. Mark Meadows is introducing a bill that would ban employees from look- ing at porn during work, according to the Fiscal Times. ough most agencies already have rules against this, they aren't enforcing them well enough, said Meadows, whose bill would also cover other inappropri- ate uses of time. "it's not just casual porn viewing but hours and hours of unproductive time doing things we shouldn't be condoning. ere seems to be a need to reinforce agency rules that might be in place, but not enforced." … aND THeN THere's More porN toronto — airline passengers may assume their pilots are busy checking switches and safety set- tings in the cockpit, but they could be mistaken — they could be busy looking at porn. air Canada has been warning pilots they could be fi red or face criminal charges for placing "inappropriate mate- rial" and "suggestive images" in the fl ight deck, according to CBC. "i am disappointed to have to raise this issue once again but unfortunately we have some people that have yet to understand the message," wrote rod Graham, air Canada's chief pilot and director of fl eet op- erations and training, in a bulletin. transport Canada told CBC it is not responsible for regulating read- ing material in the fl ight deck but one inspector did have concerns: "pilots are stuffi ng paper material inside compartments where elec- trical wiring is and this is a hazard, not to mention that this is a form of workplace violence." seaT BelTs are oVerraTeD aNYwaY BrUSSeLS — Belgium was the place to be recently for drivers who don't like buckling their seatbelts or obeying the speed limit. e country's police were upset about plans by the incoming government to raise their pension age from 58 to 62 — as part of eff orts to cut the federal budget — and about 40,000 offi cers demonstrated in Brussels. ey also decided to go easy on minor infractions, according to reuters, which included ignoring drivers who parked illegally. "Clear- ly this wouldn't cover major off enc- es, such as reckless or drunken driv- ing," said Vincent houssin, deputy chairman of the 18,000-member VSoa police union. W EIRD orkplace THe Vol. 27 no. 18 – october 20, 2014 PuBlisheD BY Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. One Corporate Plaza 2075 Kennedy Rd. Toronto, ON M1T 3V4 ©Copyright 2014 by Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. All rights reserved. CAnADiAn hR RePoRteR is published 22 times a year. Publications Mail – Agreement # 40065782 Registration # 9496 – ISSn 0838-228X director, Carswell media: Karen Lorimer - (416) 649-9411 karen.lorimer@thomsonreuters.com publisher and Editor: John Hobel (on leave) eDitoRiAl managing Editor/Acting publisher: Todd Humber - (416) 298-5196 todd.humber@thomsonreuters.com senior Editor: Sarah Dobson - (416) 649-7896 sarah.dobson@thomsonreuters.com News Editor: Liz Bernier - (416) 649-7837 liz.bernier@thomsonreuters.com Employment law Editor: Jeffrey R. 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Address changes and returns: Send changes and undeliverable Canadian addresses to: suBsCRiBeR seRViCes Canadian HR Reporter One Corporate Plaza 2075 Kennedy Rd. Toronto, ON M1T 3V4 ❑ From time to time, we make our subscriber list available to companies and organizations whose products and services we believe may be of interest to you. If you do not want your name to be made available, please check here and return with your mailing label. CustomeR seRViCe Call: (416) 609-3800 (Toronto) (800) 387-5164 (outside Toronto) fax: (416) 298-5082 (Toronto) (877) 750-9041 (outside Toronto) Email: carswell.customerrelations@ thomsonreuters.com letteRs to the eDitoR todd.humber@thomsonreuters.com CHRR reserves the right to edit for length and clarity. coffee for aGeNT 99 LanGLey, VirGinia — Anyone familiar with their local Star- bucks knows the baristas there will cheerfully ask for your name so they can write it on the cup to avoid confusion with orders. But this practice is frowned upon at one location — the Starbucks on the CIA's compound in Langley, Va., according to the Washington Post. " ey could use the alias 'Polly-O string cheese' for all I care," said a food services supervisor at the Central Intelligence Agency, asking that his identity remain unpublished for security reasons. "But giving any name at all was making people — you know, the undercover agents — feel very uncomfortable. It just didn't work for this location." Baristas there go through rigorous interviews and background checks and must be escorted by agency "minders" to leave their work area. "Urban myth says the CIA Starbucks is the busiest in the world, and to me that makes perfect sense," said Vince Houghton, an intelligence expert and curator at the International Spy Museum. " is is a population who have to be alert and spend hours poring through documents. If they miss a word, people can die." todd humber editor's notes A tale of 2 labour markets I t was the best of times, it was the worst of times. with apologies to Charles dickens and his Tale of Two Cities, that line could easily describe Cana- da's current labour market. There's a marked geographical split that essentially runs along the famed 100th meridian (no Tragi- cally Hip puns, please). If you're an employer west of that line, there's a good chance you're struggling to fi nd talent. If you're east of it, then you probably don't understand all the hullabaloo surrounding the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) — except for the knowledge that you'll likely be blasted in the news for "taking jobs away from Canadians" if you try to use it. Negative headlines around the TFWP led Ottawa to announce plans, back in June, to crack down on abusers and overhaul the pro- gram. Among the changes were using wage levels, rather than National Occupation Codes, as the main criteria for determining low-wage versus high-wage work — the logic being that wages con- stitute a more accurate refl ection of occupational skill level and lo- cal labour market conditions. e Labour Market Impact As- sessment Fee was boosted from $275 to $1,000 and the proportion of foreign workers an employer could use was capped at 10 per cent of all hours at the worksite. Applications were refused for low-wage, lower-skill occupations in economic regions with an un- employment rate of six per cent or higher. Late last month, the federal government posted a discussion paper on the Employment and Social Development website. e gist of it is simple: Employers that fl out the new rules when it comes to temporary foreign workers could face a permanent ban on hiring them. Other penalties in- clude one-, fi ve- and 10-year bans on applying for foreign workers. Proposed fi nes range from $500 to a maximum of $100,000. None of that sounds too onerous if you're east of the 100th meridian. If anything, it elicits a reaction of: "Weren't you doing this already?" But cast your eyes west and you'll see dissent rising. ese two head- lines appeared on hrreporter.com in the fi rst week of October: •"B.C. premier chides federal overhaul of TFWP" •"Prentice says time critical factor in Alberta's worker shortage." e Western premiers weren't pulling any punches in their criticism of Ottawa's crackdown. Alberta Premier Jim Prentice said time is of the essence for employ- ers in his labour-crunched prov- ince, and he bristled at the notion that employers in his province aren't paying enough to attract Canadian workers. "I've never agreed with the sug- gestion that really this is about Alberta business people trying to underpay," he said in an interview with the Canadian Press. " ey're quite prepared, in most of the cases I've seen, to pay a premium to get people here. ey just can't find people given the red hot economy." Alberta has 68,000 temporary foreign workers and the premier said Ottawa's tweaking is already hitting home. In B.C., Premier Christy Clark called the changes "tragically misdirected." Her province is on the cusp of a huge expansion in the liquefi ed natural gas industry, something that will require a lot of labour to get rolling. In a speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade, she put the spotlight on one of the ug- lier sides of the objections swirl- ing around temporary foreign workers — a general opposition to immigration. "We should not think about people who come from across the world to British Columbia to work as being something less than the rest of us," she said. "So my advice to federal politicians is this: If (they) want to fi x the temporary foreign workers program, maybe they should start with changing the name. Call them 'potential new Canadians' because they're coming here to help us build our country." For its part, Ottawa isn't budg- ing. It has made it clear it has no plans to back away from the re- cent changes and, despite the cry from the Western premiers, it's hard to argue against that policy. But Clark is right. e TFWP has an image problem. It has been abused by unscrupulous employ- ers. And it will continue to be abused — every government pro- gram is, to some degree. So per- haps a rebranding is in order. And Prentice is right. His red- hot economy needs more workers than Alberta can attract, and pay is only one part of the equation. While some Canadians are mov- ing out-of-province for jobs, not enough will ever do so — regard- less of a fat paycheque — because few people are willing to uproot their families and lives to move to another part of the country. So how do we fi x what may be an already-fi xed program? e fi rst answer is: Give it more time. e second answer, and this is a long-term issue, is that employers should continue to work with ed- ucational institutions to develop scarce, in-demand skills. Students also need to be better informed about realistic job opportunities attached to their degrees. But, in the interim, the federal government needs to have a plan B in place to further open relief valves for provinces with booming economies that legitimately can't fi nd the talent they need to grow. Credit: Pincasso/Shutterstock

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