Canadian HR Reporter Weekly

3 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2018 May 23, 2018 lawyers. It's just wasteful and it's unthinking and it's not addressing the mischief it's meant to, which is the people who abuse temporary foreign workers." "If you've got 10 Hondurans living in your basement — purportedly brought in to be carpenters or something like that — but you've stripped them of their passports and they're cleaning hotels and you're not paying them, surely that's stuff that we should we should go after; it's really human trafficking." A common tactic for the unscrupulous is misrepresenting what a worker should be paid. "For instance, I'm looking for a drywall installer, and I'm going to be paying $25 an hour because that's the median of that wage scale, and then, all of a sudden, the employee gets approved, the person comes here, and now you're paying them $18 an hour," said Mustakas. "We have a problem here, there's a disconnect because obviously if you said from the beginning 'I'm going to be paying an $18 an hour,' the government will refuse to approve the LMIA because it doesn't meet their standards." Problems also stem from employer inaction — but not necessarily from them acting unscrupulously. "You have to be very careful when you're employing foreign nationals (with regards to) document-retention requirements. You've got to keep the records of employment for six years from the date the work permit was issued or the labour market impact assessment was issued," said Dingle. "What happens is people get the approval and they forget about it and then, you know, Joe was promoted and he's getting a pay increase or he's transferred to another office and people don't remember that Joe was not Canadian or a permanent resident and Joe can't do that — the employer can't change the terms of conditions of employment without first going to ESDC to ensure that it's OK." e federal government is to blame for some of the issues, said Brazolot. "Employers get frustrated because the application is onerous. It's justified but it's lengthy, you've got to go to every nth degree proving every aspect and yet you could have done your advertising for three months, as they request, but then they've changed the local labour rate in that area and you have to advertise for another three months because you have to show the 23 cents an hour more that they've just increased it to." Push for change e government should work to end the abuse that hap- pens, according to Quail. "For caregivers, in particular, there's often duties that are outside the scope of the work that they're hired to do. ey're supposed to be providing care but, for example, employers will send them to clean other people's houses, family members', clean their businesses, lots and lots of unpaid work," she said. "It's very common practice that temporary foreign workers aren't paid overtime, they're required to work more hours than they're paid for. (It's) very common that where they're required to receive accommodation from the employer, the accommodation is substandard." ere have been demands from temporary foreign worker groups or migrant worker groups asking to change that power dynamic by having either open work permits or having sector-specific work permits, according to Quail. "For example, you can work as a caregiver and if you have one employer who is requiring you to work 12 hours a day, you can go work for another employer as a caregiver without having to go through a new process of getting a new work permit which takes several months and it's really a huge obstacle," she said. "e government didn't make those changes that were requested, so this is kind of the consolation prize to show that there's a recognition that there's a problem of abuse and exploitation of workers, and that rather than fixing the fundamental power imbalance, there's going to be some enforcement." While consultations have happened to address some of the concerns with the TFW program, no substantive changes have been made, said Quail. "e different government agencies that work together to administer the Temporary Foreign Worker Program have had maybe one or two meetings where they brought together stakeholders and worker advocates, employers and organizations, (and) consulates that are involved in the seasonal agricultural worker program," she said. "e committee's report actually recommended some sector-specific work permits but the government didn't adopt that." Employers get frustrated because the application is onerous. It's justified but lengthy." Credit: REUTERS/Chris Wattie The clampdown by the federal government follows a 2017 auditor general's report that showed a lack of supervision over the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. ON THE COVER (Updated) A migrant worker from Mexico drives a tractor while tending to vines at a vineyard in Niagara-on- the-Lake, Ont., in 2010.

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