Stop Temporary Foreign Workers

Cost of living is a subjective term .. at least when you look it from this side of the lake.

A little comparison between my homecountry and yours. Tallinn vs Calgary: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-livin...try2=Canada&city2=Calgary&displayCurrency=CAD

People here are buying their clothes, electronics etc. from the richer countries nowadays (online from England).

I say you guys live in a dream ...

Though a truck driver earns more than median. Avg around 1700CAD after tax (regular hometime). If you don`t mind being on the road for 1-2 months at a time. Then up to 2600CAD after tax.

 

Wow very interesting thread.

I live here in the UK and we have issues in regards to Eastern Europeans moving over here to work and live. The issues are along the lines of "why are they taking our jobs?" "they are getting free housing blah blah blah" but in essence the amount of conjecture out weighs the amount of truth.

I am in the process of moving over to Canada and even before this process could see this issue from many sides. While in the UK it's very true we have had a massive influx of eastern Europeans moving here and taking up unskilled/semiskilled work it's a very far bar to say they have stolen or taken these jobs. In most cases and this seems to be the same in Canada these jobs where available yet no one wanted to take them for a variety of reasons. Here people are happy to rely on state benefits rather than work as it provides them with enough to get by, likewise with the EI. The jobs are low paid, you are never at home, you spend many hours working and in general get treated bad. Welcome to trucking throughout the world, but don't get your knickers in a twist when someone is prepared to take that job that YOU DONT WANT.

Yes there are cases and good grounds to complain about the influx of immigration holding wage increases down, but in the UK and Canada alike the salaries have not increased over many years of which where well before the economic movement of labour. In the UK you are paid per hour, and this rate has stayed stagnant for some time now, over there you are paid PM and this has not changed much either.

What i am failing to understand is why people are thinking that a TWP holder is a priority option for employers? It costs a large sum for an employer to bring a foreign worker into Canada - and a large sum for the worker also. The company must pay for the airfare, training and accommodation for the worker. So $1000 (average) for a two way ticket, $1500-2000 CDL, $500pw training pay (bison f.e.) plus $50 hotel pd it's totting up to be a not so lucrative option.

The influx of the Polish workforce in the UK was inherrant with issues, driving on the other side of the road caused a lot of accidents and non English speakers blah blah blah. In short it was not the cheapest option for those companies, it cost them a lot more in the long run - but if they had a person willing to learn and willing to work against someone who does not really care they made the right choice.

 

I`ve noticed that there is a strong correlation between real estate prices vs. people thinking what they are worth (I mean if the prices for housing are higher, the price for workers in that area are higher, vice versa). I have a saying for what is going on in our country - we don`t have low wages, we have high prices ! I don`t care how much I make. I care how much I have to pay for my unavoidable expenses.

I join with spacemonkey`s opinion. I would add the amount of BS paperwork that a company has to go trough (and worker also).

In developed western societies there is a common problem that local people don`t make enough children and therefore rely heavily on immigration. It is a wider issue that just truck drivers. Same pattern everywhere: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark .. Someone has to earn the pensions for aging population and if it is not our children then it will be immigrants. Luckily we don`t have influx on immigrants here because of our poor social system - if you don´t work, you will starve. This keeps the colored stuff out. They want minimal amount of work and a lot of welfare .. and they find it in Scandinavia.

 

But enough of philosophy, Kim Yong will nuke us anyway

 

That may be true at Tim Hortons donut emporium where Filipino Temporary Foreign Workers are treated like dogs and forced to live in overcrowded sharecropper shacks owned by the despicable Horton franchisee. It is not generally true in trucking. Many of the trucking companies using Temporary Foreign Workers are horrible, abusive places to work but there are plenty of desperate Canadians who would work at those disgraceful companies. There is no trouble finding Canadian truck drivers to work at even slightly reputable trucking companies that pay slightly more than minimum-wage.

That is not the case in Canada. The dole in Canada is not generous at all and there is no Housing Benefit. Employment Insurance rules in Canada were recently modified to make it very difficult to obtain Employment Insurance benefits (especially for truck drivers). There is not a single Canadian truck driver who would prefer to be a ward of the state than work.

I would like to know where that mythical job is that no Canadian wants. I think Temporary Foreign Workers (and the Federal Government) are being told that nobody wanted the job when in fact the employer did not want to hire qualified Canadians who applied for the job.

Says who? The Temporary Foreign Worker Program requirements have been relaxed to make it very inexpensive for Canadian employers to hire Foreign Workers. Employers can cook up a completely fake LMO and it will be accepted by the Government of Canada in ten days. There is practically no cost. A secretary can do it in a couple of hours. And who says employers are paying the expenses of Temporary Foreign Workers? Some employers may be paying some expenses but most are not. Some trucking companies in Vancouver are running Temporary Foreign Worker scams where they are charging the truck driver a fee to participate in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Who said indentured slavery was dead?

There are great incentives for Canadian trucking companies to hire Temporary Foreign Workers instead of Canadians. Temporary Foreign Workers cannot complain or quit if they are abused or ripped off. Temporary Foreign Workers are a dream come true for abusive employers (which describes most large Canadian trucking companies). Temporary Foreign Workers do not have the legal rights of Canadian citizens. Never mind that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program was recently changed to allow employers to pay Temporary Foreign Workers 15% less than Canadian citizens.

 

If there are so many GOOD Canadian drivers that can't find good work, why are there so many trucks sitting, not from lack of work, but from lack of drivers to drive them?. Even the lousy drivers have no problem finding work.

 

Who said anything about good drivers? The quality of drivers in Canada reflects the level of pay. There are more terrible drivers than ever. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is making the terrible driver problem worse by keeping the pay low. I would also like to add that some of the Temporary Foreign drivers are better than some of the terrible Canadian drivers and some of the Temporary Foreign drivers are as bad (or worse) than the terrible Canadian drivers. Last week I was stuck behind two Temporary Foreign drivers who had spun out on snow on a steep mountain ascent. One driver was from a hot country and had never driven in snow. He did not know how to put on chains. The other was from eastern Europe and was working for a company that had supplied him with a B-train that did not have any chains at all. Neither driver had received any training on driving in Canadian conditions.

 

If they are not GOOD drivers, then they are not part of the equation as they are not REALLY qualified to BE drivers in the first place.

So, when $30-$35 per hour generally gets lousy drivers, what does a company have to pay to get qualified drivers?

It seems that there are alot more terrible "drivers" than there are good ones, at least in the pool of drivers looking for work.

That's possible, but does it matter??. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. At the end of the day there are plenty of GOOD paying jobs for the GOOD drivers. There is NO reason at ALL for a GOOD driver to be working for lousy wages.

That stands to reason.

No shortage of born & bred canadian drivers that don't know how to chain and can't drive in the snow.

 

Your very reply in regards to two immigrant drivers spinning out rather than two drivers spinning out in snow sets the undertone for your reasoning. It also aims in making you believe your own conjecture.

You must be very very narrow minded to believe that it is more cost effective to hire a foreign worker to drive trucks in Canada than it is to hire a local driver. I have already explained the various costings involved for a trucking company to hire internationaly, the costings might not fit into your ideal but unfortunately they are true. If a TFW decided to leave the company (not just trucking) has to pay the return airfare. So let work this one out in the most simplistic terms possible.

1) Cost of advertisment**
2) Cost of recruitment**
3) Flights for recruiters and or phone calls and work time related to hire.
3) Cost of immigration paper work.
4) Cost of flight for TFW
5) Cost of living while TFW is training (food and board)
6) Cost of training.
7) Cost of salary.**
8) Cost of return flight

** marked are also costings associated with local recruitment.

Only until recently and i still believe is a requirement of LMO application the employer must prove that the salary offered and given is the equivalent of a local salary.

The irony of Canadians complaining about immigration is somewhat muted by their own very placement in the first place, likewise for the US.

But at the end of the day your right, all those Canadian moaners who don't want to do OTR and don't want to be away from home for two weeks at a time, are welcome to their seasonal high rolling paying jobs. Just don't moan when you are on your ### and someone else is taking the job you turned down. Which is the case in point.

 

Dear Spacemonkey, I'm sure Canada can use a hardworking immigrant like yourself to teach moaner Canadians a hard lesson about what's what but this thread is not about immigrants. It's about Temporary Foreign Workers.