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Vol. 71/No. 6      February 12, 2007

 
Chinese Canadians protest
exploitation of contract workers
 
BY SANDRA MITCHELL  
TORONTO—The Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC) issued a statement January 8 demanding the federal government and employers “bring forth measures to prevent the exploitation of foreign temporary workers.” It was responding to a news report that 61 workers, hired through the government’s Foreign Worker Program at Maple Leaf Food’s pork plant in Brandon, Manitoba, had each paid Can$10,000 to come to Canada from China (Can$1=US 85 cents).

“This amounts to a modern day head tax and borderline human trafficking,” said CCNC president Colleen Hua.

The head tax was a racist measure imposed by the Canadian government on Chinese who immigrated here between 1885 and 1923. By 1903 it amounted to $500 per person, the equivalent of two years’ pay. Today, the CCNC and other Chinese-Canadian organizations are demanding full government redress to families of those who paid the head tax.

According to the January 8 Globe and Mail, Maple Leaf officials claimed they had no knowledge that their employees made the $10,000 payments—several times the average annual factory wage in China. They said they found out only when workers began asking to be moved to cheaper housing because they could not afford the rent in the company-provided housing.

Maple Leaf used a Vancouver-based agency to find workers, the Globe and Mail reported. Maple Leaf, which was to import another 182 workers from China, says it has now stopped using the government program and ended its dealings with the agency.

Robert Ziegler, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 832, which represents workers at the Brandon plant, called on the company to repay the 61 affected workers, CBC News reported.

The government set up the temporary foreign worker program to aid employers claiming a labor shortage. Like the “guest worker” programs the U.S. Congress has been debating, it limits workers’ rights, making their legal status dependent on their bosses.
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. immigration agents arrest 21 workers at N. Carolina plant
Jailed workers face deportations Smithfield threatens to fire nearly 600  
 
 
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