Importing Foreign Workers

News Item - Vancouver Sun October 15, 2012

OTTAWA --- A major B.C. labour organization denounced on Monday the “mass importation” of Chinese workers to mine coal in the northeast part of the province, saying it is “preposterous” to suggest British Columbians don’t have the skills to fill close to 2,000 full-time jobs destined for foreign workers.
“We want to register our grave concerns about the uses and abuses of the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program as it relates to projects in British Columbia,” the organization told Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Christy Clark in an open letter.
It was issued by the Bargaining Council of the B.C. Building Trades Unions, made up of 15 unions representing 35,000 craft construction workers, including underground miners.
“We believe this mass importation of labour is completely unnecessary and is simply a strategy to employ lower-paid workers who are compliant with the culture of coal mining in China,” wrote BCBCBTU President Mark Olsen.
“The coal mining in that country is patently unsafe and the industry there shows little regard for the life, health and well-being of the workers in that country.”
The organization was reacting to the disclosure in The Vancouver Sun that a consortium of companies, mostly Chinese, are planning to bring anywhere from 1,600 to just under 2,000 Chinese nationals to B.C. in coming years to work in four proposed underground mine projects.

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My Comments

I often disagree with the big unions, but not this time. If Chinese owned or backed companies are going to import most of their workers when there is high unemployment in Canada, it would seem to be a good reason for the Canadian government to block Chinese takeovers in our natural resource sectors. It seems to me that the Canadian government's issuing of the permits under the TFW program in this case demonstrates a callous attitude towards organized labour in this country. The government seems to forget that a healthy domestic economy needs decently paid workers who can afford to buy food, housing and consumer goods.

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