Foreign Canada Line workers win multi-million dollar human rights case
By Kelly Sinoski
December 3, 2008
Vancouver Sun
VANCOUVER - A group of temporary foreign workers who helped build the
Canada Line have won a multi-million dollar award from the BC Human Rights
Tribunal after it found they were discriminated against by their
employers.
SELI Canada and SNC Lavalin, which was boring parallel tunnels under
downtown Vancouver, has been under the microscope since early last year
after a series of complaints to the Labour Relations Board, the B.C. Human
Rights Tribunal and the provincial Employment Standards Branch over its
treatment of foreign workers.
The Construction and Specialized Workers Union Local 1611 had alleged the
company, which was originally paying the 39 mostly Latin American workers
$12,000 US per year, unilaterally altered their contract to raise their
pay to $20,000 US after they joined the union in mid-2006.
That undermined the union's bargaining powers and let the company set a
wage that was below local labour standards, said the union in its filings.
The workers were netting about $20,000 US per year, roughly $14 an hour,
plus room and board — about three times what they would make in their own
countries but $10 per hour less than the $23 to $24 an hour, plus
$4-per-hour benefits, being paid to most local union workers, the union
says.
The company had denied allegations that it fraudulently altered the
workers' contracts and then covered it up.
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