Thank you.
We too welcome the opportunity to make some remarks before the committee. We're going to be speaking specifically to the current temporary foreign workers program and also sharing with the committee an experience that we have ongoing in one of our workplaces.
We have about 255,000 members in almost 2,000 workplaces across Canada. As you well know, we've participated in public debates about the direction of immigration policy and the temporary foreign worker program for many years.
The emerging emphasis on temporary and migrant labour is bad labour market policy. That is the reason we have made presentations, but it's also bad immigration policy. The temporary foreign worker program, however, itself, has moved from the sidelines to the fast lane of labour market programs. It's no longer a phenomenon restricted to just western Canada; the program has crept into British Columbia, Ontario, and beyond.
We find the low-skill program showing up for the first time in CAW workplaces from hotels to fish processing plants. We're preparing, in fact, as a union, to survey our workplaces on the prevalence of the programs. They stay up to two years to wash dishes in hotels, serve food in coffee shops, care for the elderly, or work in a warehouse. This is rapidly becoming a major part of the government's immigration policy, it appears.
The low-skill pilot project is creating for us complex and difficult new tensions in a number of these workplaces, sometimes pitting worker against worker. In the hotel sector, in which as much as one-quarter of our union membership is now made up of temporary foreign workers in some Alberta and B.C. locations, we've seen tension on both sides. Resident workers have no guarantee of shift hours during slow months, but the temporary foreign workers have full-time hours, as required by the temporary foreign worker contract with the government. On the other hand, temporary foreign workers can't use their collective agreement right to bid on job postings because they're locked into a job description on temporary foreign worker contracts.
At Presteve Foods in Windsor, a low-skill pilot is being used currently by a management team to undermine harmonious collective bargaining relations that have been there for almost 20 years. It is being blatantly used for union busting. Although it's a federal program, we've found, sadly, that the federal government is unable to step in and correct the situation, and it can't cancel the contract. We have letters from the director of the foreign worker program attesting to that.
The situation has now escalated. We are in a lockout situation at Presteve Foods and in a formal labour dispute with the employer. We don't know how many temporary foreign workers are in the workplace. They're displacing union jobs at $12.80 an hour with temporary foreign worker jobs at $8.75 an hour. The regular labour market opinion route was followed, but no one investigates an employer's claims. In this case, Presteve fraudulently claimed there was no union on the application and that $8.75 was the prevalent wage in the workplace, so there is very little oversight for the regular route.
When a fraudulent application becomes clear, as it has in Presteve, HRSDC is powerless to act. Instead we're left as a union to hold demonstrations, to go to the media, and to go to arbitration. The employer ignores the decision recognizing the rights of foreign workers under the collective agreement. Higher rates of pay, seniority rights, etc., and the repayment of lost wages have all been ignored by this employer, in spite of the decision.
Due diligence investigations at the front end of the permit process would have demonstrated, among other things, the employer's failure to properly advertise in Windsor, a community that is suffering from one of the highest unemployment rates in this country.
There's a mixed message on the applicability of collective agreements to temporary foreign workers in the workplace that hopefully this committee will look at, and it appears that the federal government office responsible for this program in these kinds of situations is powerless to do anything about it. We have potentially dangerous pilot projects, and with only three to five days for processing, we risk losing any ability to assess the bone fides of employers' attempts to hire or train the existing workplace.
What we're saying is that rather than a labour shortage, in fact what we may have is a cheap labour shortage, and it's very troubling for the immigration policies.
Our goal is to find a balance between protecting and representing foreign guest workers and moving to a fairer immigration system. We're calling for a moratorium on the expansion of the deeply flawed temporary foreign worker program; broad consultations on long-term labour market planning with labour market partners; appropriate responses to genuine labour market shortages, including a sustainable training program; and a fairer immigration system, including a reformed immigration point system and more opportunities for family reunification and refugee applications.
On undocumented workers, the CAW supports the current campaign for status for undocumented workers and supports new immigration policies that provide meaningful opportunities and rights for working-class immigrants. Immigration bureaucrats will often say that if undocumented workers are granted status, the government will be condoning queue-jumpers, but the present immigration point system values elite skills and university degrees, and workers essential to our economy are not allowed to come as legal immigrants.
We'll continue to work alongside our community partners in demanding fair immigration policies that provide workers with security and real opportunities.
We're prepared to answer any other questions as well on the other issues before the committee.
Thank you.