Pools of captive, exchangeable workers for groups of employers instead of tied permits? Sectoral/restrictive work authorizations are not the solution, says workers' rights organization DTMF-RHFW

MONTREAL, Nov. 28, 2023 /CNW/ - Following the UN rapporteur's denunciation of employer-tied work permits, the CIMM standing committee is meeting to study closed work permits and replacement policy options. However, as summarized in the brief submitted by DTMF-RHFW, sectoral, region, or occupation-restricted work permits are not the solution.

Restrictive permits, whether linked to employers of a specific sector, occupation, region, and/or placement agency, are associated with conditions of worker silencing, wage theft, debt bondage, work-related illnesses, accidents and death, harassment, rape, undocumented work, and/or human trafficking. In Canada, SAWP workers already have sectoral permits, but they too are vulnerable to contemporary forms of slavery.

"Restrictive permits create employer consortiums, empowered to blacklist and block workers from the legal labour market when they become 'undesirable' for reasons like a workplace injury, attempts to assert rights or bargain collectively. Injured or ill workers, unable to freely accept a more suitable job, will have to continue working despite harm to their health to avoid jeopardizing their right to work in the country." says Fernanda Cortes, DTMF-RHFW board member and former community outreach agent for SAWP workers.

These permits inevitably create pools of captive workers, allowing certain occupations, sectors, and regions to maintain dangerous and archaic working conditions, degrading work conditions for all - including citizens. Jobs in Canada, often dangerous or extraordinarily difficult, are increasingly being filled at inadequate conditions with captive (im)migrants, distorting the value of goods and services by artificially suppressing their human costs. With open work permits, competitive wages, benefits, and governmental help if necessary, not state coercion, will attract and retain workers.

Restrictions on workers' labour market freedom, both presently and in the past, like those imposed on First Nations Peoples and immigrant workers from China, produce discriminatory outcomes, consolidate ethnic and racial labour market segregation and, more broadly, pockets of social exclusion. Open permits should no longer be limited to workers from preferred countries.

"Employer-specific authorizations are incompatible with fundamental rights, but replacing them with sectoral, regional or otherwise restrictive permits is not the solution. Unfree workers, captive workforces and family separation, this is not a humane way to integrate (im)migrants." says Prof. Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier, executive director of DTMF-RHFW.

Open work permits, accompanied by a return to worker-family sponsorship by the federal government, and not by employers, based on provincial skills needs with bilateral programs for recruitment, placement, micro-credit, integration and community support, as well as permanent status recognition upon arrival, would facilitate decent work conditions, and circular migration as much as access to citizenship, while upholding fundamental rights, the Rule of Law and Canada's democratic nature.

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SOURCE Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers (RHFW)