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Wilf Day
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3276

posted 04 January 2006 12:13 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A complaint against underemployed immigrants putting downward pressure on wages is in today's Globe on p. 15.

The writer was a teen gang member 25 years ago, and seems to have retained some of their values. He talks sensibly about the effects of poverty and absent fathers, but then he writes:

quote:
The federal government must look at the causes of poverty, such as our high immigation levels. Pouring desperate people into large cities isn't helping poverty, it's adding to it. We all know there are many benefits from immmigration. But despite Ottawa's wishful thinking, the vast majority of newcomers do not want to live in small-town or rural Canada. What is happening right now is that underemployed newcomers put a downward pressure on wages, while resources that could go to skills training and upgrading instead go to teaching English and soft skills. If you were born into poverty in this country, this seems monstrously unfair.

No doubt employers benefit from, and exploit, low-wage immigrants. The best solution obviously is to organize them, rather than advocate lower levels of immigration and complain about the cost of ESL courses. (Although it's interesting that some civilized countries such as New Zealand have a populist anti-immigrant party that is not right-wing in most other policies. Could this happen in Canada?)

Some Canadian unions make it a point of pride to have done well at organizing immigrants. Can babblers point to current examples?


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 04 January 2006 12:48 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This is a complex issue and global in scope. I have no doubt that the feds and their corporate friends would like more immigrants, not just because they are from another country or specitic ethnicity, but because watering-down the labour market has just that effect - applying downward pressure on wages. The Liberals can hide behind any of the niceties and rhetoric that they love immigrants, they built this country etc, and that's exactly true.

For example, Chinese immigrants did build our trans-national railway and suffered some of the most horrific human rights abuses doing it while they were supposedly charges of and protected by the British monarchy after arriving.

And Hal Banks, union buster and thug extraordinaire imported from the States, ruined the careers and lives of several thousand unionized sea farers. Hal referred to our PM then as "Uncle Louis" and was protected from prosecution for his nasty deeds for 25 years by our federal Liberal government. He had a record a mile long in the U.S. before arriving in Canada.

And then there's the issue of todays immigrants suffering such high unemployment rates when they get here, especially well-educated professionals who end up driving cabs and flipping burgers for a living. Their Unemployment rates are typically four times the rate and higher than for immigrants without an education. Studies have shown that newly arrived women to Canada suffer a major health setback in the first 10 or 12 years of living here, and it's no wonder with the stress of finding a job that pays a living wage in this country after they've been told that Canada is a land of opportunity. What they should be told up-front is that our Liberal governments have been pursuing American-style "flexible labour markets" and that next to the States in a comparison of richest nations, Canada owns the second largest low wage work force as a percentage of total employment as well as, next to only the States, the lowest rate of unionized workforce among developed nations. Add to that our appalling rates of child poverty, and one has to wonder what in hell our Liberals are telling immigrants about this country in order to fool them into coming here.

Canada is in need of a wide range of skilled professionals because we have such a poor record for educating and training our own. Our feds have always encouraged the theft of skilled workers and professionals from abroad in satisfying corporate needs in this country. But it seems the Liberals have been lying outright to prospective immigrants about job opportunities in Canada. It's no wonder the feds are having such a difficult time press-ganging immigrants into choosing our low wage frozen Puerto Rico du Nord.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
faith
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4348

posted 04 January 2006 12:52 PM      Profile for faith     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Then you have BC where the immigrant workers are imported for a specific job and then sent home when the job is finished while Canadian workers sit on the books at the union hall waiting for work.
This has happened on Vancouver Island and I am sure will probably happen again.

From: vancouver | Registered: Aug 2003  |  IP: Logged
anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045

posted 04 January 2006 01:29 PM      Profile for anne cameron     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
And the ridiculous thing is that on this Island there are scads of people who desperately want work! But the LiEbrals allowed Mexican workers to be brought in (the cost of their return plane flights was deducted from their wages). When parts of the now defunct Gold River pulp mill were being taken apart workers were brought here from China, the excuse being China had bought the obsolete equipment and if the Chinese took it apart they'd know how to put it back together again......(!).....and out here many of those 1-800 phone numbers are actually answered in India.

I do not object to immigration but I find this kind of "contracting out" to be near slavery. bringing in foreign workers while denying them immigration status is cold hearted and exploitive. I don't blame the workers for coming, but I have a very low opinion of the ones who brought them here.


From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
mersh
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 10238

posted 04 January 2006 01:32 PM      Profile for mersh     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Some Canadian unions make it a point of pride to have done well at organizing immigrants. Can babblers point to current examples?

I wouldn't normally call them the most politically progressive of unions, but the UFCW has been fighting for years for the rights of immigrant farm workers in Ontario (link).


From: toronto | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged

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