Information on Sector-Specific Work Permits
The federal government is preparing to introduce sector-specific work permits for certain streams of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) in early 2027. Last March, it announced a new stream of temporary foreign workers programs for the agriculture and fish processing sectors. Consultations on the proposed reform, about which very little has been made public, are currently underway. These permits are being touted as a means of offering greater freedom and mobility to workers than the much-criticized closed work permit.
As part of the decades-long fight of migrant workers and their advocates in defence of their human rights, a panel discussion was organized on October 3 on the topic. It was hosted by Amnistie Internationale Canada Francophone and the Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers (RHFW), which is currently leading a class action lawsuit against closed work permits, that was recently authorized by the Superior Court of Quebec.
The event kicked off with the RHFW's Hannah Deegan, a lawyer, explaining that based on Employment and Social Development Canada's own calculations, over 100,000 positions that presently fall under the TFWP will be affected by the reform.
She explained that one of the reform's main objectives is to streamline the program's requirements for the two targeted sectors, as at present, each of the TFWP's agricultural sub-streams operates with separate rules and operations. The intent is also to standardize the rules for employers, while extending the many employer benefits found in the agriculture sector to the fish processing sector. The new component would also allow workers to change employers, providing the job has a valid labour market impact assessment (LMIA).
Noteworthy is the fact that the new stream announced by the government covers a range of jobs, including both permanent and seasonal positions.
The Three Panelists
Rachel Dempsey is a lawyer, whose practice focuses on worker representation and economic justice advocacy. She represents many nurses in the United States who hold sectoral visas and are subject to contracts that penalize them when they change jobs, as well as workers in various other sectors who are subject to coercive contracts.
Nicolas McGeehan, in France, is an investigator and advocate on migrant workers' rights and support. He has conducted research on a wide range of issues, including abuses in agricultural supply chains.
Caroline Robinson, from Scotland, works with a centre that provides direct support to isolated and marginalized workers, particularly in seasonal agriculture, dealing with labour abuse, exploitation and human trafficking.
General Observations on Sector-Specific Work Permits
Highlighted during the discussion were the human rights issues that arise in the context of migrant labour migration systems worldwide and the extent to which these violations are similar in various countries, despite small differences. Also exposed was the inequality and structural discrimination inherent in these systems, that exclude most temporary foreign workers from accessing permanent residency.
What was also brought to the fore is that sector-specific permits are deeply problematic, as they create a huge power imbalance between the employer and the employee with temporary status. Recurring abuses singled out included those in housing conditions, access to services and work in dangerous sectors of the economy, resulting in multiple human rights violations linked with visas specific to a sector.
Just as with teachers and care workers, as well as workers in other sectors, the working and living conditions under which temporary foreign workers toil, with respect to all the services and support they provide, are also our living conditions. When they are forced to leave, everyone is impacted.
For large national and multinational corporations and the lessons they have learned from the experience of various temporary foreign worker programs, the trend is towards extending those practices to other workers, such as permanent residents and Canadian workers. It is therefore in the interests of the entire society to stand in defence of migrant workers, as an attack against one is truly an attack against all.
In the short term, increased foreign worker mobility, not sector-specific work permits, is seen by their advocates as the response for preventing the violation of their human rights. Permanent residency is the answer in the longer term. This would also address, once and for all, the untold harm that these workers and families are forced to endure in leaving their families, with children and families having to manage their lives without their parents, husbands, wives.
The Canadian Experience
Currently, the agriculture and food processing sector is one of the main users of the TFWP, employing the largest numbers of temporary foreign workers in the country. Despite its importance to the Canadian economy, the use of this program to recruit workers in the agricultural sector has attracted strong criticism with regard to human rights.
Relying heavily on a temporary admission program to meet labour market needs creates a situation of precariousness. People recruited through these programs often find themselves in difficult working conditions with limited access to social and legal rights.
Canada's short-term visa program was called out. A key issue with visas is that when workers are recruited into sectors where they are subject to excessive control, it's very difficult, if not impossible, to ensure fair and equitable recruitment.
Another major problem raised was in relation to "permanent/temporary immigration" and the TFWP. Year after year, people come to Canada to work under the TFWP because they want to move here permanently, and they see the program as a pathway to permanent residency. However over the years, the federal government has introduced regulations and made reforms that make this close to impossible for most. Meanwhile recruiters continue to sell this mirage.
Emphasis was placed on the responsibility of the federal government to ensure there are effective regulations in place so that the employer, not the foreign worker, is made to pay for recruitment services, as forcing recruitment contracts on temporary foreign workers is a great tool for exploitation.
Problems with the U.S. System
Three main areas of concern were raised: an anti-trust violation, fees foreign workers are forced to pay, and external contracting in the area of foreign-trained nurses.
Temporary foreign workers are unable to change jobs. Nurses, for example, working for a recruiting company must remain in their job for three years, otherwise they can be fined $60,000. There is also a clause in their contract that requires them to pay the costs associated with immigration, such as their visa application. Recruitment companies often attempt to force them to pay other unrelated costs, threatening them with deportation. Even though there are laws in place that make it clear it is employers who must pay such expenses, these workers are for the most part, unfamiliar with them.
Recruiters have immense power, as they work as intermediaries between nurses and hospitals. The product they sell is "a cheap nurse" and they act as "commissioning agents for foreign mandates." Nurses depend completely on them to get their visa. However, those working in their defence must deal with the hospital, a situation which places these employees in a very vulnerable position. National employers in the U.S. are often powerful and politically connected, with political influence, while people have none.
Amongst them, fraudulent intermediaries or operators also exist, who call employers to ask for transfers or recommend that certain workers be blacklisted or not hired. Other difficulties these workers face include their unfamiliarity with the language.
When workers are given the right to remain in the country through their employer, this places them in a vulnerable and dangerous work situation, as they are uncomfortable in complaining to their employer. This not only hurts temporary foreign workers, but also permanent residents and even U.S. workers, as it creates certain groups ripe for exploitation.
When people arrive in the country with a green card, which is permanent residency, after a certain number of years they can be offered citizenship.
Employers are looking at the imbalace of power that they have with temporary workers, whose immigraion status is at risk if they give up their jobs.
Tiered levels of status and pay exist (sometimes referred to as the staircase model), with an imbalance of power with foreign workers over temporary visas, and green card holders (permanent residents) who are paid less than half of what their U.S. counterparts are paid. For example, patients are provided care by employees exploited in various ways. The conditions of migrant workers hurt everyone, including citizens and patients cared for by these employees, who also experience the consequences of that exploitation. This gives rise to an understanding of ascent that "you're an immigrant, your employer expects to have power over you."
The issue is not just about migrant workers, but about the labour system overall, and of how employer cartels are being organized, which raises the need to increase the mobility of skilled labour in the workplace. In the face of employers collaborating and coordinating to discipline this work to a certain degree, employees are at times forced to deal with an entire sector of employers.
A system of permits for foreign workers which allows for employer collusion to take place, by regulating and organizing it, was raised as being not only toxic to the lives of temporary migrant workers, but also to the lives of workers in other areas.
About the System in the UK
In 2019, a sector-specific visa was introduced in the UK, applicable to the entire agricultural sector for poultry workers, which brought with it significant changes, one of which was that certain farms were grouped together. When workers enter the program and the accompanying visa, they can be sponsored by recruiters, or operators, who work for certain groups of farms.
Similar to the "open work permit" introduced by the Canadian government as a so-called remedy to vulnerabilities in the workplace under the closed work permit, a change also took place in the UK through the introduction of the job transfer at the sectoral level. The goal, however, is for workers to return to the same farm year after year. They feel that they cannot be seen as causing problems, as this would jeopardize not only their current, but future jobs.
Even when a job transfer request is made by a worker, it can be refused for all kinds of reasons considered valid, such as that the visa could expire during the period of training, a lack of time remaining on the visa to make the transfer, etc. Exploitation is the cause of this, seen in relation to slavery, this type of visa is tied, limited. The exploitative employee system is also the cause of indebtedness, and employees are potentially being exploited or abused.
It is the recruiter, or labour supplier, connected to certain, specific farms, who contacts the farm about a transfer request. The connection between the employer and worker mobility therefore still exists, with consequences for workers, such as dismissal from their place of employment and being blacklisted by other farms within the same group. Workers can also be falsely targeted for so-called "low productivity" or "misconduct," and be let go, which can have a major impact on their work prospects. With regard to the relationships between groups of farms chosen by certain operators or recruiters, these links cannot even be changed by the government.
Where a worker does succeed in getting a job transfer, they must accept it before being told which farm they have been assigned to, which reduces the ability to connect with the workplace.
Workers are prevented from leaving the farm to work during harvest time when there is little pay to be had on the farm, another example of them being kept in restricted and abusive environments.
Although in theory certain standards and services, such as health care, are supposed to apply to all, the reality is that these workers are often deprived of them through all kinds of excuses linked to their short work agreements and their isolation from those services. As well, while they have the option of finding their own lodgings rather than being accommodated on the farm, their short six-month stay makes it difficult for them to find temporary accommodation and they face the same problem every year.
In the UK, a control test was carried out with workers from Ukraine. They were able to change to a much more open visa, which saw a dramatic change in treatment on the farms.
A much more open visa system must be created so that workers are not trapped at their workplace.
(Source: Permis de travail sectoriels et droits des travailleurs migrants)
This article was published in
Volume 54 Number 11 - November 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/M5401114.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca