BS: Employer goes overseas to find help

Subject: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: maple_leaf_boy
Date: 20 Feb 11 - 06:31 PM

An employer at a McDonald's restaurant searches outside the country to
find help. This is the original story, and the paper had follow-up
articles, and letters from the public about this issue.
Article
One article that followed was about people in the area who applied not
only to McDonald's but to many other local businesses. They were willing to work any time, but never even got a phone call. Some of these people have children to support, too. The link is just to the
original story, but they have follow-ups to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 20 Feb 11 - 06:50 PM

The same game is being played here in Aus too - with importing foreign workers and paying them less than the award rates.

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 20 Feb 11 - 09:38 PM

We have a house-cleaning service come round to tidy up. The workers are eastern Europeans on two-year work permits. Reliable local workers can't be found for these jobs.

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 20 Feb 11 - 10:04 PM

"Reliable local workers can't be found for these jobs. "

Actually the "eastern Europeans on two-year work permits" are getting a free holiday plus pay, possibly better than they will get at home ...

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: michaelr
Date: 20 Feb 11 - 10:23 PM

Reliable local workers can't be found for these jobs.

Where is "local"?

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: mousethief
Date: 20 Feb 11 - 11:28 PM

This country, at least, is crawling with unemployed people desperate for jobs. I can't imagine that one or two of them aren't reliable.

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 21 Feb 11 - 10:55 AM

Actually the "eastern Europeans on two-year work permits" are getting a free holiday plus pay, possibly better than they will get at home ...

"Free holiday"? They are coming to work for low wages in terms of local cost of living, and in many cases at undesirable hours. And perhaps changing shift hours. That doesn't sound like a holiday/vacation to me. Of course it is "travel" of sorts, with exposure to a different country.

And "possibly better than they will get at home"? Of course! That's why they will travel half way around the world and leave their family and familiar places for these locally low-pay jobs. And "better" is a very relative term.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: Little Robyn
Date: 21 Feb 11 - 01:44 PM

"They are coming to work for low wages in terms of local cost of living, and in many cases at undesirable hours."
Sounds like the "working holidays" lots of young NZers had in London - I was going to say years ago but the daughter of a friend is over there now. They would use that as somewhere to be based whilst taking their trips/tour bus rides, around Europe.
Meanwhile, over here it's harvest season for tomatoes and the apples are not far off. Suddenly our town is full of people from Vanuatu and other Pacific islands, workers brought in because our unemployed won't do the job (for the pay and conditions offered).
(I'm not sure that I would either.)
Robyn

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 21 Feb 11 - 02:09 PM

'Local' is western Canada, specifically Alberta.

Another job that doesn't get local applicants in Alberta is in slaughterhouses. A large one, near Calgary, is operated with Somalis, who have proven to be reliable.

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: EBarnacle
Date: 21 Feb 11 - 04:20 PM

The key is "for the pay and conditions offered." As long as people follow their immediate pocket interests rather than long term interests, companies like WalMart and, in this case Mickey D's will be able to foist low paid, abusive situations on workers and ship money overseas.

If the working conditions were not abusive or if the employer were willing to pay adequate wages for a true shift differential, they could get employees. A large part of the reason that agricultural workers are needed for "stoop labor" is that the workers are cheaper than the machinery which would replace them in the fields. Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that we will end up paying more for "cheap food" and will have fewer filled jobs.

In the case of WalMart, the manufacturing is being shipped overseas. In the case of Mickey D, the workers are coming from overseas and have less knowledge of their rights as workers. Either way, the the money which is not directly needed for subsistence is being shipped overseas.

If you have ever been in the Chinatown, or even at many Chinese restaurants outside cities shortly after closing time, you have seen vans picking up the workers and bringing them home to their [often substandard] dormitories. Most of the workers are getting substandard wages. They are often illegals. Often, they are paying off the Chinese version of coyotes who have imported them to more prosperous countries at exorbitant prices, then kept them prisoners until the money is paid off.

As long as we demand that cost of food be subsidized, the price will be low and the work will be undesireable.

Also, consider that the demonstrations around the world which are taking governments down are partially caused by the fact that we are diverting a significant portion of the acreage which was devoted to grain to growing corn to be converted [uneconomically] to alcohol for fuel.

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 21 Feb 11 - 06:17 PM

Staying with examples in Alberta, Chinese restaurants are not in the imported labor coterie. Members of the 100,000 strong group staff not only our Chinese restaurants, but are in every business, educational and cultural endeavor in the province.
No dormitories here; they live in every community and make excellent neighbours.
And all are either citizens or landed immigrants or have visa status at university, etc.

The same is true of the other groups here, whether from UK or Ethiopia.

My point was that certain jobs like cleaning cannot depend on citizens or most landed immigrants.
Certain other jobs are not wanted by the established populace; slaughterhouse work being an example. The Somalis doing the labour are paid well and are landed immigrants or already citizens if they have completed the residence requirement.

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: EBarnacle
Date: 21 Feb 11 - 10:30 PM

OK, Q. Plug in your local minority. The article cited Phillipinos. Here, in the NY area, many of the Phillipinos are coming in as nurses. The illegals in our grocery stores and in the back of restaurants tend to be Mexicans and Central Americans.

You might be surprised at how many of the people filling low level jobs are illegal throughout the world. I do not know for sure what the situation in the EU is, but my understanding is that once anyone comes in, they have access to all of the rest of the EU countries without need of passports or visas.   

My point is that however substandard certain jobs are, they create conditions in which the worker [as long as he gets paid] can send money home to support the family.

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: EBarnacle
Date: 21 Feb 11 - 10:31 PM

Even when they come in legally, many of them are afraid of being shipped back to the conditions from whence they came. This is especially true when the employer is holding the worker's passport.

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 21 Feb 11 - 11:45 PM

Illegals are a very minor problem in N. Am. although some rather bigoted people make a lot of noise.
The situation doesn't look too good in Europe but all I know about that is what I see on the BBC and Aljazeera.

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: EBarnacle
Date: 22 Feb 11 - 10:22 AM

I didn't say it was a problem. I did say that illegals are hired for low paid and exploitive situations. Even legally imported workers are often afraid to exert or ignorant of their rights because their employers control their lives.

Household employees and au pairs are often in this exploited group.

Subject: RE: BS: Employer goes overseas to find help
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 22 Feb 11 - 10:14 PM

My favorite hotel in London is owned by Greeks.

The hotel staff are tall, beautiful, blond Russian women.

However, the kitchen staff are Asian. The staff eat late at night
after the public kitchen has shut down at 9:00. (Why do the countries
with the finest cuisine France/Italy dine until midnight? Because
they never thrived on boiled mutton and turnips or fish and chips?

No "self respecting Brit" has stooped to "servant class" after the sit-com
UP STAIRS DOWNSTAIRS. However, the hard pressed of the
world .... can work for mimimum wage, send a quarter home to support
their family and save a quarter part to purchase a home for cash
after seven years of servitude.

Read the current issue of Barrons to understand the unrest in:
France
UK
Iraq
Eygpt

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Why does an American woman abandon her children in the southern states .... for a better life in the UK?