The Big Corporate Lie

Today a federal court threw out the case the unions had filed against HD Mining...

 http://www.theprovince.com/business/mining+company+justified+hiring+Chinese+miners+court+rules/8415940/story.html

Our BC election has ended, the Government of the corporate and for the corporation has prevailed, no need to carry on the mock concern over the needling details of the HD Mining fraud, deception and denial, or of the temporary foreign worker program..

Unemployment levels in Europe of 20%..In America of 15%...In Canada of 10%...Yet the big lie continues, the skilled worker shortage..

When I was a boy there was no self serve gas stations, there was no automated tellers, no online banking, even in grocery stores like Safeway, at that time you had a teller who rung up your purchases and a bag-boy(or girl) who actually placed your groceries in bags, in paper bags, fast forward to today not only are stores availing themselves of automated checkouts but those still human run checkouts both ring up your order and fill your grocery bags, two jobs turned to one.

In the logging and milling game of today, modern mills can buzz through immense volumes of trees with a fraction of the employees of the past, modern machinery like fellerbunchers can do the work of 10 employees, these machines can chop down, delimb, cut to size and stack, no longer are skidders, cutting crews, delimbing crews required, one man in one machine can blaze his way through a forest near single handed..

Up in the tar oil land, not only are the tar sand moving dump-trucks 4 times the size of those dump-trucks of the past but more and more of them are being equipped with computers that run them, meaning this, four big-truck drivers of the past are now one really big-truck driver today, and now even that one really big-truck driving job is being phased out, point A to point B automated driverless trucks will be the future wave in Alberta, and in mining operations around the world..

I can cite study after study that totally debunks the skills shortage myth, we here at The Straight Goods have offered up undeniable proof that the job numbers cited by the BC Liberals attributable to a robust up and running LNG industry are pure fiction, the largest LNG plants proposed for British Columbia even if built will require a mere fraction of the employees initially claimed by industry, and echoed by a compliant corporate controlled Government..LNG plants will require in the range of 250 full-time employees each, so even if 10 LNG plants were built we are talking about a few thousand employees needed at most...

There have been many articles written on the "alleged Skills shortage"..Articles going back decades, this corporate ruse has developed quietly and strategically for two reasons, the main reason is to keep worker wages down....

The Alleged Skilled Worker shortage and the fraudulent Temporary Worker Program...

In the USA it`s happening too, down there they call it the HB 1-visa program...

Let`s be perfectly clear, without the fraud of the skilled worker shortage the temporary worker program wouldn`t exist, the two scams work in tandem, one doesn`t exist without the other, the only way the corporate sector can justify bringing in cheaper foreign labour is to claim the skilled workers needed don`t exist....

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Lana Payne writes...

"It is a program that is rife with abuse. Its rules are regularly broken. And it was designed that way; legalized exploitation.

No one should be surprised that Canada’s temporary foreign worker program (TFWP) has been used and abused by employers to suppress the wages of Canadians. After all, the rules actually allow employers to pay migrant workers 15 per cent less than prevailing wage rates.

No one should be surprised that migrant workers are often afraid to speak out if their workplace rights are violated. Speaking out has drastic consequences for them, a return-trip home and lost wages for them and their families. This power dynamic makes them susceptible to all kinds of worker rights’ violations.

No one should be surprised that the fast-tracked, rubber-stamped application rules are now being used to kick Canadian workers out of their jobs.
And no one should be surprised that the program is seriously undermining Canada’s immigration system. The program is no longer about filling real and temporary labour shortages. The jobs are not even temporary in the vast majority of cases.

And sadly in Harper’s Canada no one is surprised. But that doesn’t make this right."

http://www.thetelegram.com/Opinion/Columns/2013-04-20/article-3223631/Foreign-workers-and-federal-priorities/1

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The temporary worker program is about driving wages down, companies bring in indentured employees who can`t complain, can`t quit, can`t negotiate with teeth, any loud harping by these indentured employees would result in a quick trip back in their home country, in a flash back where they came from, shoot one monkey to scare a thousand....Caterpillar did this two years ago..
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The bitter labour dispute at a London locomotive company has come to a sadly predictable end. The company’s owner, U.S. giant Caterpillar, closed the plant on Friday, throwing its 465 employees permanently out of work.

That’s what Ken Lewenza, president of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), which represented the workers, warned would happen. The union had no bargaining power against an employer that refused to negotiate.

The Ontario government was equally helpless. Caterpillar pulled the plug just three days after Premier Dalton McGuinty went to London and called on the company to “come to the table and demonstrate some flexibility.”

Caterpillar locked out workers at its London plant, Electro-Motive Canada, on New Year’s Day after they rejected its take-it-or-leave-it demand to cut their wages by 50 per cent. It was clear from the beginning that this was not a normal work stoppage. The company would not talk, wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t bargain.

The community rallied behind the workers. Caterpillar shrugged. The premier denounced the company for “not meeting Ontario’s legitimate expectations.” He might as well have scolded a stone"

 http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2012/02/06/caterpillar_gives_ontario_harsh_lesson_in_unionbusting_by_shutting_locomotive_plant.html

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And it`s even worse than strong-arming these Canadian "skilled workers" ...Because Caterpillar bought the company in 2010 with the goal of doing exactly what they did, they bought the company, received huge tax breaks then moved the whole operation to Indiana where more "skilled workers" did the same job for $15 dollars per hour and no benefits..And Stephen Harper just watched..

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"That leaves only Ottawa. Prime Minister Stephen Harper could have demanded job guarantees when his government approved the sale of the London company (then known as Progress Rail) to Caterpillar in 2010. He could have stipulated that Canadian money stays in Canada when he gave the locomotive manufacturer a substantial tax break in 2008. He could have mounted a more vigorous defence to the U.S. government’s “Buy America” policy, which has the potential to suck thousands more jobs out of Canada.

He did none of these things"

  http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2012/02/06/caterpillar_gives_ontario_harsh_lesson_in_unionbusting_by_shutting_locomotive_plant.html

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That division made over $1 billion dollars in profit for Caterpillar, but it wasn`t enough, also to note, Caterpillar has $billions of dollars worth of machinery in the Alberta tar patch, the heavy machinery of choice in the tar sands is Caterpillar, Stephen Harper could have flexed some national muscles but he did nothing, the tar patch should have been used as leverage to save those Caterpillar jobs in London Ontario, but again, Harper did nothing, and ordinary workers in Indiana with a little bit of training could easily do the jobs that were done by "skilled workers" in London Ontario...

Stephen Harper was also missing in action when it came to saving a 1000 high-skilled jobs in the airplane maintenance, mechanics, computers experts, hydraulic experts, specialized high paid workers were cast aside when Air Canada betrayed Canada and Canadian workers, Air Canada and their maintenance division Aveos sent those good paying jobs to El Salvador, a country whose high skilled airplane and jet mechanics, hydraulic experts, computers experts work for roughly $5000 Canadian dollars per years...$60 to $80 thousand dollar a year high-skilled Canadian workers were locked out, their high skilled jobs now being performed for about 1/20th of the price in El Salvador..

What Air Canada did was the most shocking display of Canadian corporatism screwing Canadian workers I have ever seen..It was done with deliberateness, with guile, with bread crumbs leading people like me to see and document just how low-down and dirty Air Canada was...Air Canada didn`t even care about the optics of their crimes, they, Air Canada knew they had their man Stephen Harper watching their back, watching, applauding and opening the door for more illegal outsourcing..

That viral story with all the bread crumbs here...


 http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca/2012/03/air-canadaaveos-corporation-scorpiation.html

We have temporary workers being brought in to work at Tim Hortons and Dennys restaurants in Vancouver, brought to work for $10 dollars per hour in a city that costs $20 dollars per hour to live a sub-standard existence..

How can people work at a job at a wage level when their expenses are double the prevailing rate.

The Big Corporate Lie, a lie that Adrian Dix perpetuated in his 2013 election platform, the big corporate lie Governments use as a crutch to blame the failing of a corporate controlled world that has failed to produce jobs and prosperity, the big 2009 Wall Street meltdown, the biggest heist in history, millions of workers thrown from their jobs, four years later a mere handful of those jobs have been replaced, and all replaced with a wage structure smaller than before the meltdown..

Blame the poor worker, tell the impoverished that only if they were better trained, more educated all their woes would vanish, ....

RBC..A bank with record profits every quarter are complicit players in the temporary worker program, a ruse to bring in indentured employees for a pittance of what high-skilled IT workers of Canada expect..Study after study has debunked the IT shortage..

The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists—in 7 Charts

 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-bust-americas-awful-market-for-young-scientists-in-7-charts/273339/

Hey, That Famous 'Skills Shortage' You've Heard About? It's a Myth

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/hey-that-famous-skills-shortage-youve-heard-about-its-a-myth/258207/

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"You are in Dubai or any other city in the oil-rich Arabian/Persian Gulf region. It is blistering hot. The only human beings you see are on construction sites. They are the people brought in under the local version of the temporary foreign workers program, mostly from low-wage Third World nations. At the end of their shift, they go to bunk in the temporary accommodations they share with other workers. They have no families — they are not allowed to bring any. At the end of their temporary visa, they must go home. If they don’t, they are picked up in periodic crackdowns and put on planes. When they get back home, they often find that their families, especially their children, are estranged from them.

You are in a Berlin parkette. You see, besides the seniors and the moms with babies, middle-aged men and women on benches, talking, whiling away the time. They are German Turks. They had come as guest workers. They were supposed to have gone back home. Few did. This being Germany, they didn’t get deported. Now they live in the in-between world of Germany (which did not give most of them citizenship) and Turkey (which they visit but where they no longer belong). They constitute a German underclass that’s resented by Germans.

Those are two examples of the same phenomenon — temporary workers. The arrangement suits both the workers and the host society, in the short term. But it is exploitative of the former and debilitating to the latter, in that it creates a two-tier society, of varying severity and duration.

Canada limited the use of temporary workers. Seasonal farm workers come from Latin America or the Caribbean and go back home, mostly under the supervision of their sponsor. Foreign nannies come on contract but, unlike the fruit and vegetable pickers, are allowed to apply for and get landed immigrant status.

Now Canada is flooded with temporary workers — 338,189 as of December 2012. In fact, there may be more. Ottawa has no way of knowing how many stayed behind at the end of their temporary visas. Canada has no exit controls.

They were all brought in ostensibly because of extensive skilled labour shortages.

But with 1.33 million jobless, there’s no shortage of labour for the 250,000 job vacancies. That’s nearly six jobless Canadians for every available job.

As for skills shortages, there are certainly some. But look at where the temporary workers landed, as the Globe and Mail has done. 

Its sector-by-sector breakdown shows that only 9,300 of the 338,000 workers ended up in scientific and technical services. Less than 17,000 are in the manufacturing sector, and only 19,000 in construction. The highest number, 44,745, are in accommodation and food services.

That’s your foreign worker pouring coffee at Tim Hortons, baking pizzas at Boston Pizza, making beds at some motel and tending to a senior citizen somewhere.

How much skill do you need for such jobs? The real issue is that Canadians don’t want those jobs, certainly not at the wages on offer. So the skills shortages mantra is a bit of a scam.

At the high end of the skills spectrum, a different proposition is at work, as seen at RBC. High-tech jobs are shipped overseas or contracted to a Canadian company that gets the job done overseas. Costs go down, profits go up and up, as do CEO compensations (in RBC’s case, $7.5 billion last year and Gord Nixon’s package, $12.6 million).

Now we know what was meant by business “competitiveness,” “flexibility,” “nimbleness,” etc.

Nothing wrong with businesses earning higher profits — but should we be helping them do it at the expense of rattling the foundations of Canada?

There are global forces at work, no question. But what the Stephen Harper government has done is to allow the creation of a bit of a Third World in Canada."

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/04/21/stop_importing_temporary_workers_into_canada_siddiqui.html

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Record profits at all of Canada`s major banks, companies like General Electric who haven`t paid taxes for decades, even the world`s largest company caught using every loophole they can find to avoid paying taxes..

 Senate Probe Finds Apple Used Unusual Tax Structure to Avoid Taxes

Skilled garment workers in India and Bangladesh making the world`s finest clothes, they earn 25 cents per hour, no pension plans, companies merely burn down the business when the time is right...

Yes indeed, corporate controlled Governments have systematically found a way to blame workers for Government`s own failings, the world has near 2 billion unemployed workers, wages are falling not rising, corporate thieves are getting greedier, pensions are a thing of the past, benefits being stripped one by one, and even the universities in Canada are complicit in the scam, education is not a right, not a privilege, education today is a business, the British Columbia education business brings in more revenue from student tuitions than what the BC Government collect in corporate income tax, a decade ago the ruse was a looming IT shortage, a looming teacher shortage, a looming science shortage, today we have millions of under employed highly skilled thinkers, now these same scammers are wanting to sell labour training..

LNG plants won`t employ 10,000 people each, a mere 250 employees are required for each, strong young backs are the only requirement in the tar sands, however, even that employment is limited, only with a huge increase in production of tar oil will result in some new employment, but only some as technology and corporate greed will limit employment opportunities..

Stephen Harper and every other corporate controlled Government are complicit in the big fraud, each politician carries the lie to cover their term in office, huge multi-national companies keep promising millions of jobs in the future, only they all have one proviso...That being, the JOBS WILL BE in the future, just allow us more tax breaks, just allow us not to comply with protecting the environment, just allow us huge profits for a few more years and we promise, we really really mean it..Millions of jobs are coming..

Just trust us!


Don`t believe them, just look to all those LNG jobs Christy Clark and the BC Liberals promised us, 75,000 jobs turned into a few thousand before our eyes!

http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca/2013/05/british-columbias-lng-facilities-to-be.html

And while the media frenzies over a melting Duffsicle society and everything democracy built is burning to the ground.



The Straight Goods

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