RBC workers replaced by foreigners under Harper program

[art-in-the-making]

A lot of people calling for a boycott of the Royal Bank.

Of course the CEO, aptly named "Nixon" is denying the obvious.

Whether it be RBC's already healthy profits ($1.9 bil. last quarter) or the obvious connection with Harper's give-your-job-to-a-foreign-worker program, the news of RBC's 3rd world job outsourcing has got folks a mite upset.

This of course is what many companies, such as Bell Canada, are doing all the time. In fact, outsourcing jobs to the 3rd world is the rubber backbone of Conservative economic policy and the maximum extent of their stunted ingenuity.

For Harper, "thinking outside the box" means instead of just directly giving your job to a low earning worker, it means subcontracting a job to a company that outsources it to the 3rd world, allowing weasels like RBC's Nixon a sliver of deniability.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/04/08/rbc-foreign-workers-boycott_n_3039471.html

[snikrep2010]

The denials and cover-ups begin.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/04/08/rbc-bank-foreign-workers.html?cmp=rss

The head of the Royal Bank of Canada has denied that it is replacing Canadian workers with temporary foreign workers, saying that the bank is providing jobs for anyone impacted by the move, which only involves one temporary foreign worker.

"Absolutely not," said Gord Nixon, the bank's CEO, in an interview with CBC's Amanda Lang on The Lang & O'Leary Exchange. "Firstly, RBC has not and does not hire any temporary foreign workers."

In a telephone interview with Evan Solomon of CBC's Power & Politics, Nixon added that of the 21 employees used by iGATE, six are local, 13 are from India but are only here to manage the transition and are not temporary foreign workers. Only one worker, he said, is a temporary foreign worker.

Of course they don't hire foreign workers. They hire another company to do it for them. 

[skysteed]

It's not just the RBC. All the banks are doing it.

They can deny all they want but with former employees stating on TV news that they lost their jobs after training a temporary foreign worker how much can the banks deny.

As a former Bell employee, I quit just before the major layoffs in the 90's and found another job. I saw the writing on the wall, but my co-workers thought I was nuts.

Now when I have an issue with Bell and call in I insist on speaking so someone in Canada. By law they have to transfer you back to Canada. They will say they can't but I just keep asking to speak to a manager, sometimes they hand up on me and that just give me more fuel when I call back. Half the time I can't hear them or understand what they are saying since they have so many people talking with no walls to cut the backround chatter.

I then email the president and complain to him about the shoddy service I am getting from their customer service in India.

Soon as we get cable in this area ( I am in a rural area with no cable), which may not be for years sadly, I am switching everything to the cable company. At least I know where their customer service office is and it is in Canada not somewhere, who know where.

[pocomocomputing]

It's not just the RBC. All the banks are doing it.

They can deny all they want but with former employees stating on TV news that they lost their jobs after training a temporary foreign worker how much can the banks deny.

As a former Bell employee, I quit just before the major layoffs in the 90's and found another job. I saw the writing on the wall, but my co-workers thought I was nuts.

Now when I have an issue with Bell and call in I insist on speaking so someone in Canada. By law they have to transfer you back to Canada. They will say they can't but I just keep asking to speak to a manager, sometimes they hand up on me and that just give me more fuel when I call back. Half the time I can't hear them or understand what they are saying since they have so many people talking with no walls to cut the background chatter.

I then email the president and complain to him about the shoddy service I am getting from their customer service in India.

Soon as we get cable in this area ( I am in a rural area with no cable), which may not be for years sadly, I am switching everything to the cable company. At least I know where their customer service office is and it is in Canada not somewhere, who know where.

Not true. Urban myth.

Here is a web page stating it is a myth. Applies to Canada also.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/servicerep.asp

[pjcdn2005]

or the obvious connection with Harper's give-your-job-to-a-foreign-worker program

Art, I'm not familiar with this program. Do you have more information on it?

[nuvistors]

It's not just the RBC. All the banks are doing it.

They can deny all they want but with former employees stating on TV news that they lost their jobs after training a temporary foreign worker how much can the banks deny.

As a former Bell employee, I quit just before the major layoffs in the 90's and found another job. I saw the writing on the wall, but my co-workers thought I was nuts.

Now when I have an issue with Bell and call in I insist on speaking so someone in Canada. By law they have to transfer you back to Canada. They will say they can't but I just keep asking to speak to a manager, sometimes they hand up on me and that just give me more fuel when I call back. Half the time I can't hear them or understand what they are saying since they have so many people talking with no walls to cut the backround chatter.

I then email the president and complain to him about the shoddy service I am getting from their customer service in India.

Soon as we get cable in this area ( I am in a rural area with no cable), which may not be for years sadly, I am switching everything to the cable company. At least I know where their customer service office is and it is in Canada not somewhere, who know where.

This lie was made by the cable companies in order to  get a larger share of the market.

[queenpalmer]

I almost puke when I see the Federal goverments' Economic Action Plan commercial.  They gave work visas for these people to be here to learn Bells system from the very people who will be displaced in a short time.  No wonder people try their damnest to beat the system anyway they can.

[rosscd57]

Oh please - this act was initially passed through Parliament in 1973 under a Liberal Government when Pierre Trudeau was the PM.

I'm not passing judgement - but at least get it right.

[bilge21]

This explains a bit more about it, but it's been going on for years. The reason it hasn't be brought up before is because RBC got caught.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/04/09/deliberately_lax_visa_rules_encouraged_rbc_outsourcing...

[pjcdn2005]

I didn't realize that was the program that Art was referring to. There are parts of the country where there are not enough people for the jobs available so the program has been useful. It's unfortunate that it wasn't monitored more closely so that it was used only when needed.

[art-in-the-making]

Yes, many times a good idea can be left to run wild...

Instead of being used to provide needed specialized skills at strategic points, Harper has turned this thing into a legal international cheap labour racket to be exploited by rich corporations.

The end effect, as we all know, is to amp up the pressure on Canadians to accept low wages. A direct assault on the middle class by our own Conservative government..

In 2006, the new Conservative government expanded the pilot project, and added "fast-tracking" for some jobs in Alberta and British Columbia. The new list of jobs called "regional occupations under pressure," reduced the obligation by employers to seek out Canadian workers first.

The government document obtained by the Alberta Federation of Labour suggests employers such as fast food operators like McDonald's and Tim Hortons are using this accelerated program to bring in cheap labour.

The program is aimed at higher-skilled workers, but they don't have to prove they've advertised for Canadians to fill the jobs first, said Gil McGowan.

"They don't have to run over the same checks and balances and that's why we're concerned, because clearly this process is being abused by service sector employers. And it's important to note that the government wants to expand the accelerated program, which we think would be a disaster."

Cities taking more temporary foreign workers

While most think the program is meant to fill jobs in remote parts of resource-rich Western Canada, some of the largest increase in temporary foreign workers have been in cities.

Since 2008, permits for temporary foreign workers in Toronto increased by 60 per cent, in Montreal by 87 per cent and the Atlantic Provinces saw an 80 per cent increase, according to data from Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

The total number of temporary foreign workers has doubled in the last decade, to 338,189 workers.

"We now have about as many temporary workers in Canada as the entire workforce of New Brunswick,"

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/04/09/pol-temporary-foreign-workers-labour-jobs-list.html

[rose-dee]

"Oh please - this act was initially passed through Parliament in 1973 under a Liberal Government when Pierre Trudeau was the PM." 

Rosscd, are you thinking of the "Wage and Price Controls" legislation?  There was an action plan at the time, but as I remember it was focused on federal funding for public works, infrastructure, etc.  I don't recall anything similar to the current Action Plan.

"The total number of temporary foreign workers has doubled in the last decade, to 338,189 workers."

And this will turn into an immigration problem ultimately.  I recall that Germany tried a similar programme a few decades ago (for different reasons in that case, a shortage of manual labourers, or, more precisely, a shortage of people willing to do low-paid manual jobs).  They called it the "Gastwerker" (Guest Workers) programme, bringing in mostly workers from Turkey and other middle eastern areas.  It eventually became a national disaster because thousands upon thousands of the guest workers neglected to return home after their legally permitted stay and became underground illegal immigrants. 

The problem à la RBC is a bit different though.  It sounds as if RBC is playing a sort of global shell game, moving pieces around as it needs to in order to make even more obscene profits than it already does.  I wonder why it is that RBC has been showing increased profitability during a period when almost everybody else is experiencing shrinking bottom lines -- aha! -- could it be that they've found a way to get around paying decent wages, and to Canadians? 

I was utterly, thoroughly disgusted watching Mr. Nixon prevaricating during the interview by Amanda Lang.  His smug, smiling expression told me someone has assured him he has plausible deniability because, technically, RBC is not hiring foreign workers.  Give me a break.  Do these guys really think people are so completely moronic as to believe his well-rehearsed babble rather than the direct and obviously honest report of someone who lost her job in this way?  Nauseating!

[ilurkthereforiam]

How many people who are upset with RBC regarding this issue are buying at Walmart or buying online with Amazon?

[rose-dee]

How many people who are upset with RBC regarding this issue are buying at Walmart or buying online with Amazon?

I haven't bought from Amazon, but my local Walmart hires people from the community, that is, Canadians, albeit at lower wages.  As far as I know they haven't been asked to train "visitors" who then go offshore to do the jobs they were doing, resulting in their being fired. 

I don't see the connection to RBC's dirty little game.  RBC has only been forced to come forward and talk about this (or should I say spin about this) because they were outed by some justifiably upset Canadian workers -- imagine the gall of those workers, telling the media the truth! 

Everybody is aware Walmart gets its goods en masse from cheap Chinese labour, but that's another story, and the problem of the Chinese government, not ours. 

[ilurkthereforiam]

RBC cannot buy the stuff that makes them money so they are finding other ways of to save money by outsourcing jobs.

Most big companies do this.

The employees who are that have been trained their replacements can tell RBC to pound salt.

I am not saying that I agree with what RBC is doing but other companies have been doing the same thing but in different ways.

It would be very easy for our government to add huge tariffs on product coming from countries that use slave labour, but they don't and I don't see many Canadians demand that they do.

You may not have used Amazon but lots of Canadians do.

I do not shop at Walmart.

I can count the number of my visits to Walmart over the last 20 years on one hand.

[almond_t]

If you read the book  'The Walmart Effect' by Charles Fishman you would be forever sickened and would never set foot inside their doors ever again.

The horrors 'outed' by the author  have remained with me since I read it years ago.  I don't care how cheap they are, I cannot in good conscience enable Walmart to do what they do to their suppliers and manufacturers.  I don't need a 'deal' that badly.   'Shudder'

On the other hand, apparently I need educating about Amazon's socio-economics....

[bb_cool_stuff]

Yes, a very interesting & somewhat sickening read almond.

Amazing how they are able to bully people, but when you are that big they have the attitude " What Are Going To Do About It "

Bubbles burst eventually. Lets see how Target does.

[ilurkthereforiam]

I had high expectations of Target until I saw their commercials featuring Spuds Mckenzie and their ad sell manitee grey dresses for plus sized women.

[almond_t]

They apologized for the faux pas, and said 2 different   companies produced the maxi dresses; one that called the color 'dark heather grey' and the other called it 'manatee grey'.  Unfortunately, the 'manatee' description referred to the plus sizes.

A very unfortunate choice of words.  Pizzing off such  a huge market demogrophic is a mistake the size of .. Manhattan.

[rosscd57]

"Oh please - this act was initially passed through Parliament in 1973 under a Liberal Government when Pierre Trudeau was the PM." 

Rosscd, are you thinking of the "Wage and Price Controls" legislation?  There was an action plan at the time, but as I remember it was focused on federal funding for public works, infrastructure, etc.  I don't recall anything similar to the current Action Plan.

No this was and perhaps still is called The Migrant Workers Act.