The dominant discourse in labour policy in Ontario these days seems to be about levelling the playing field between public sector workers with decent pension plans and their counterparts in the private sector.

This is about levelling downward and goes hand-in-hand with measures like the so-called sunshine list naming public servants earning over $100,000. Round up the usual suspects.

Almost entirely silent in all of this is the experience of workers who have no union representation and especially temporary foreign workers or new immigrants who work in part-time or temporary jobs.

In the past weeks, two seemingly unrelated reports brought all this home with a crash.

First the Royal Bank of Canada caused a national furor when it replaced 45 of its IT workers with temporary contracted-in workers from other countries - a decision now reversed.

RBC brought in the replacement workers under the federal government’s temporary foreign worker program. Over 300,000 temporary foreign workers are reported to be in Canada currently doing jobs that are supposedly hard to fill with Canadians. This is a huge influx of labour power during a period of persistently high unemployment.

The program has a built-in incentive to employers, permitting them to pay foreign workers up to 15 per cent less than the going rate for this work.

Temporary foreign worker programs were controversial before the outcry over RBC’s hiring strategy because of their impact on migrant workers.

Labour, community, and faith groups point out that the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program and the agricultural stream of the temporary foreign workers program often places highly vulnerable offshore workers beyond the reach of provincial employment standards workplace health and safety protection. Many benevolent employers treat these workers well – but seasonal workers are also particularly attractive to unscrupulous employers. In Ontario this is a serious issue for farmworkers and some domestic workers.

My work with an expert advisory panel on workplace health and safety in 2010 showed that we are all just a short step removed from sometimes brutal workplace exploitation.

On a holiday weekend in August 2010, a reasonably short train ride took me to the agricultural heartland of southwestern Ontario where I met with migrant workers from the Philippines and Thailand. Some testified that they had not been paid, or were being paid less than the prescribed minimum wage for their work. Many were not being provided with adequate health and safety equipment.

Some of these workers were victims of human trafficking. They were lured by brokers in their home country to fly to Canada as visitors with guaranteed work to follow, but with a hefty fee paid up front. The employment was in low-wage agricultural work and came with encouragement to file for refugee status – with support being provided by Canada-based brokers (for a further fee, deducted from wages).

I also heard from a construction worker from Hungary who was under police protection after fleeing from what has been termed “the largest proven human trafficking ring in Canadian history”. This was based in Hamilton.

Imagine what it would take for one of these workers to find a government office and file an employment standards complaint or to report a health and safety violation, especially when it has been drilled into them that this will result in instant deportation.

These concerns were highlighted again this week with the release of the Law Commission of Ontario’s report on Vulnerable Workers and Precarious Work, which reported that about 22 per cent of Ontario’s workers work in temporary, low-wage “precarious” jobs.

The 47 recommendations in the report argue for changes to the province’s employment standards regime, tougher sanctions for employers who flout the law, and improved education for vulnerable workers.

The report emphasizes the special needs of temporary foreign workers in low-skilled jobs who fear losing their jobs and being removed from Canada. It recommends changes to:

Ensure workers are not terminated and sent home unfairly.
Provide workers with additional support when enforcing their rights.
Extend existing legal protections for live-in caregivers to all classes of temporary foreign workers.
Establish a minimum wage commission to recommend increases to Ontario’s $10.25 minimum wage.
And in the area of health and safety, the report recommends enforcement procedures focused on temporary foreign workers, temporary staffing agencies and workers in agriculture, hospitality and cleaning; and expediting temporary foreign workers’ reprisal complaints before they leave Canada.

The report was received positively by Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi and deputy attorney general Patrick Monahan, who accepted the report on behalf of the government. This is a very hopeful sign.

This long-established practice of exploiting foreign workers has been tolerated for too long as a “wicked" and intractable policy issue that is somehow beyond the reach of provincial policy makers and legislators.

Maybe the Law Commission report will serve to move the problem above ground where it can be named and seriously tackled.

A timely warning about precarious work

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