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Comment by eswat | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of the RBC debacle a few years ago, where they abused the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to replace capable, salaried Canadian IT workers with offshore services.

That stint hurt not just those workers but other companies that were trying to hire the best in the world, only for the feds to deny visas due to one bad apple spoiling the bunch.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/rbc-temporary-foreign-work...

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This seems like a really good reminder that while actual immigration may not hurt domestic workers, poorly-executed foreigner worker programs definitely do.

Adding new employees to the primary labor pool by immigration isn't a huge deal, if you can handle population growth you can probably handle immigration. But I constantly see governments "address" fears about that with limited visa programs, which is hilariously counterproductive.

It really ought to be obvious that employees who face deportation if they leave their jobs aren't part of a competitive, efficient labor market. They're not free to ask for raises, they're not free to object to working conditions or unreasonable hours, they certainly can't leave a bad company to join a competitor or start a new business. All of which makes them great candidates for an employer looking to avoid paying market rates or treating employees decently.

It's crappy for the visa workers and domestic workers alike, and I honestly think the situation could be greatly improved by just expanding real immigration - maybe maintaining initial sponsor requirements if people are worried about unemployed immigrants, but abandoning the ongoing-sponsorship rules in favor of real green-card/citizenship status.

Yes - we've discussed amongst ourselves (those affected) about what RBC did, and how they were lambasted in the media for abusing the visas. In our particular case, TCS seems to already have a number of local assets they're involving, with most of the work to be sourced by India based teams. I'm sure OTPP is trying to avoid similar negative press in regards to abusing visas, but I've been surprised how little coverage this news is getting in general (a pension plan funded by local Ontario union based teachers firing local union based employees for offshore assets.)

Might be worth notifying personalities like Michael Geist about this and act as a voice.

While I'd agree that is a good idea, I'm already treading carefully about what I'm saying here as my employer is very explicit about employees not speaking to media outlets (everything I've relayed here is public knowledge.) I'll mention it to our local union president (Jeff Billard), and see what his thought are.

I worked at RBC during that time and can add a bit of context. Rumour was the CIO at the time (Morteza Mahjour) had staked his job on reducing operating costs of the tech services & operations division by bringing in an offshore firm called iGate. I wasn't laid off but plenty folks I know were and I left anyway.

The cost savings plan turned out to be a bust, projects ran over budget or never got off the ground at all and Morteza left. Apparently the new guy is turning things around. Some old colleagues have gone back after being offered hefty raises.

Edit: also, does the teachers union know this is happening? Isn't that retirement fund worth a fortune?

Yes - the Ontario Teachers Federation (the parent body that manages the different Ontario teachers' unions) was made aware of the outsourcing shortly after it was announced in July. They questioned Ron Mock (OTPP's CEO) shortly afterwards, and voted to have OTPP reverse the decision:

https://twitter.com/oectagovernor/status/768170531468095492

Sadly, this has resulted in no visible changes to the decision.

The OTPP fund is currently at $171.4 billion (all figures in Canadian dollars) as of December 2015, with $13.2 billion in surplus funding as of January 1, 2015. Makes you wonder why they'd go through this kind of cost cutting, doesn't it?

Wow! I have a few friends who teach in Ontario, will be interested to hear their thoughts. Thanks for the background info.

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