Category Archives: foreign workers

No shortage of workers – just a shortage of training

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Tue, 11/19/2013 – 10:06
Posted by Andrew Jackson     http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca

Two major recent studies – from Derek Burleton and his colleagues at Toronto-Dominion Bank, and from former senior federal government official Cliff Halliwell published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy – provide excellent overviews of recent developments in the Canadian job market, and an informed framework for thinking about our future skills needs.

This message seems to have finally got through to the Harper government. In a speech to the Vancouver Chamber of Commerce on November 14, Employment and Skills Development Minister Jason Kenney told employers to stop complaining and to stop relying excessively upon temporary workers. Instead, he said, employers should “put more skin in the game” by increasing wages in high-demand occupations and by investing more in the training of Canadians.

The TD and IRPP studies provide balanced overviews of our future skill needs. Neither see generalized shortages as an acute danger, notwithstanding the pending (if increasingly delayed) retirement of the baby boom generation. Indeed, Mr. Halliwell says we should welcome a tighter job market, after years of stagnant real wages for most workers.

Graduates from our postsecondary education system, together with new immigrants, will more or less match job vacancies opening up due to the retirement of highly skilled workers. And employers can be expected to minimize shortages as they emerge by investing in capital and skills so as to raise productivity.

All that said, these studies note that we face some specific skills shortages today in a limited number of occupations and regions, and that some employers may face increasing difficulties finding workers with the right education and skills to fill available jobs in the future.

This can, however, be seen more as an opportunity than a curse, given the significant unemployment and underemployment of today, especially for youth, recent immigrants and aboriginals. The challenge is to invest in skills to increase access to good jobs for Canadians who want to get ahead, and thus to forestall future shortages that might lower our economic potential.

One set of policies that makes sense is to raise the education and skills level of marginalized groups and to ensure that unemployed workers, especially the long-term unemployed, have access to retraining. While Canada has one of the most educated work forces in the world, we have a relatively high proportion of workers with low literacy and numeracy levels, and many recent immigrants need help to upgrade their qualifications.

Programs delivered by the provinces with the support of the federal government address these issues to a degree, although spending is well below the industrial country average. Unfortunately, the federal government proposal to introduce the Canada Jobs Grant will shift some funds away from training the most marginalized workers and toward employer-sponsored training.

Mr. Halliwell argues that our current educational and labour market policies fail the significant proportion of the work force that leaves the educational system with less than a postsecondary qualification and finds relatively low-paying, less-skilled jobs. These workers tend to receive little or no employer training – and are excluded from current government programs.

He suggests that we think about “second chance” programs for this group, to improve their opportunities in the job market later in life and to help fill employer needs for skilled workers.

One option that Mr. Kenney might consider is to give more employed workers access to Employment Insurance (EI) benefits for training leaves, on the model of apprenticeship training. Apprentices qualify for EI benefits when they are away from their regular job for the classroom part of their program.

EI-supported training leaves would allow workers to take a community college or similar training programs – still at some considerable financial sacrifice to themselves, since benefits only replace up to 55 per cent of normal wages and since tuition costs would have to be paid.

Employers could contribute by making sure that a worker could return to the job from which she or he took a leave and, perhaps, by providing a supplementary income if the training program met the needs of their business.

EI-training leaves would empower individual workers to invest in their skills, and help create a higher-skilled work force for the future. Mr. Kenney might consider this option as an alternative to the proposed Canada Jobs Grant, which has won few supporters to date.

This article originally appeared on the Globe & Mail’s Economy Lab.

Photo: Cristiano Betta. Used under a Creative Commons BY 2.0 licence.

Canada’s Top Labour Leaders Call on Premiers to Oppose Harper’s Low-wage Agenda

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NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO–(Marketwired – July 25, 2013) – At a meeting with Canada’s premiers, labour leaders from across the country called for unity among the provinces in rejecting Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s low-wage agenda. While the premiers gather for their Council of the Federation meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake this week, the presidents of Canada’s provincial and territorial federations of labour are hosting parallel meetings where jobs, pensions and healthcare are the big-ticket items.

The labour federation presidents called on the premiers to put pressure on the federal government to double the Canada Pension Plan and renew the 2004 Health Accord, but the main focus of their talks was on jobs, training, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, Employment Insurance and Canada’s labour market.

“The Harper government is driving down wages and working conditions for all Canadians,” said Lana Payne, President of the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour. “The latest changes to Employment Insurance be terrible for the labour market and damaging for the economy as well. They will hurt industries and employers in some regions of the country but they will hit the most vulnerable workers hardest, with fewer and fewer unemployed workers being eligible for benefits.”

The federation of labour presidents encouraged all the premiers to call on the federal government to scrap the Employment Insurance changes.

Today 1.4 million Canadians are unemployed while the country faces many labour market challenges, including the rise of precarious work, the exploitation of migrant workers, cuts to Employment Insurance and reduced investment in job training programs for vulnerable workers – all of which highlight the need for a renewed focus on creating jobs for Canadians.

“The provinces must reject this low-wage agenda,” said Sid Ryan, President of the Ontario Federation of Labour. “The premiers have an opportunity to use their leadership to engage in substantive dialogue and take action to make sure that Canadians have good jobs. One way they can do this is by establishing Labour Market Partners Forums in every province to provide vision, collaboration and leadership on job creation.”

Already established in Québec and Newfoundland and Labrador, a Labour Market Partners Forum is a tripartite body that would facilitate collaboration and dialogue between government, labour and employers, particularly on employment strategies. This coming together of stakeholders would help to develop economic strategies that would allow the provinces and territories to compete in a global economy on the basis of high productivity and quality rather than low wages.

There is no shortage of labour market issues to be discussed in this kind of tripartite forum, including job training programs, support for unemployed persons, regular increases to the minimum wage and protections for migrant workers.

“The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is being used to fundamentally transform our country’s labour market in ways that are detrimental to the interests of ordinary Canadians,” said Gil McGowan, President of the Alberta Federation of Labour. “Provincial governments should follow Manitoba and Saskatchewan in implementing legislation that protects migrant workers from abuse and exploitation. The provinces should join the growing chorus of critics calling on the federal government to scrap the low-skill stream of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. These workers are being used as pawns to drive down wages and displace Canadians, while also allowing employers to shirk their responsibility to train Canadians. The Premiers need to stand up to the Harper government on this important issue.”

Together, Canada’s provincial and territorial labour federations give voice to over three million workers, represented by the Alberta Federation of Labour, British Columbia Federation of Labour, Canadian Labour Congress, Manitoba Federation of Labour, New Brunswick Federation of Labour, Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour, Northern Territories Federation of Labour, Nova Scotia Federation of Labour, Ontario Federation of Labour, Prince Edward Island Federation of Labour, Fédération des travailleurs et travailleises du Québec, Saskatchewan Federation of Labour and Yukon Federation of Labour.

Foreign workers doubled as joblessness peaked: report

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Conference Board asks why Canada is still bringing in temporary foreign workers

 

Jul 23, 2013     http://www.cbc.ca

Despite an unemployment rate that spiked in 2009 and remains high, the number of temporary foreign workers in Canada has more than doubled over the last six years, according to the Conference Board of Canada.

In 2006, there were 150,000 temporary foreign workers employed in Canada. By December 2012, that number had more than doubled to 340,000.

The growth in the number of foreign workers continued throughout the 2009 recession, when the unemployment rate peaked at 8.6 per cent. In June of this year, unemployment stood at 7.1 per cent, though joblessness among young workers was stuck around 14.1 per cent.

The temporary foreign worker program has come under scrutiny in the last four months, since CBC reported that professional IT workers were being fired from their jobs at RBC so the employer could bring in temporary foreign workers.

The federal government amended the rules in late April, making it more difficult and more expensive for companies to turn to foreign workers to fill job vacancies in Canada. But the impact of those rule changes has yet to be seen, the Conference Board says.

Its report released Tuesday says that while Canadian youth were struggling to secure employment, especially that important first job after college or university, companies continued to bring in foreign workers in record numbers.

“This, justifiably, raises the question: if the unemployment rate remains relatively high and so many young and able Canadians are unable to find work, why are we still bringing in so many people under the TFW program?” the Conference Board asks.

There is no clear answer to that question, it concludes, pointing out that Alberta faced looming labour shortages in 2006. Employers in some parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan continue to have difficulty finding workers, despite the number of jobless in Canada.

A CBC report last month found the number of foreign workers in Canada had nearly tripled over the past 10 years.

The Conference Board blames a skills mismatch and the reluctance of Canadians to move long distances to find work for the inability of employers to attract Canadian workers to jobs. There also may be perception that foreign workers can be hired for less than their Canadian counterparts, the report said.

One of the key changes that Ottawa announced in April is a new fee that will be imposed on employers when they apply to the government for a labour market opinion (LMO). A positive labour market opinion must be obtained in order for employers to bring foreign workers to Canada. It takes a number of factors into consideration including what potential benefits hiring the foreign workers would have on the labour market and what efforts were made to hire Canadian workers for the positions.

The government also got rid of a rule that allowed employers to pay foreign workers up to 15 per cent less than the prevailing wage for a classification of job.

The Conference Board said it expects these changes to put “downward pressure” on the number of foreign workers in Canada — and lead to more employers seeking out domestic workers for jobs. However, it is too soon to tell if the measures will be effective in lowering the number of temporary workers in Canada while unemployment is high, the report said.