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Undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died

projects.thestar.com

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Re: Undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died

#31
post #2

Many companies in countries like Canada and Australia are now trying harder than ever to emulate the United States with it's extremely low wages, health, benefits, etc. for temp or casual workers. Unfortunately, it's a race to the bottom, as tens of millions of Americas will attest to. My simple question is - can we justify treating humans like this in the name of increasing profit?

If I own a company, I can justify anything short of illegal activities to increase profit. If you don't want companies to behave in a certain way, get it outlawed.

This is a bullshit perspective when companies lobby and play all sorts of tricks to manipulate the law itself.

Re: Undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes.

If you hire a plumber to do a job in your home for an hour is he now your employee?

No.

There are clear differences on who is responsible here. We can expect a factory to be always responsible over their area as it is a larger entity and doing business and we expect them to be experts and be in control of their own domain. We can expect them to be responsible over their non skilled labourers.

A plumber is the expert in this case and he controls his domain while you are just a dumb customer.

Re: Undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died

#33
post #2

Many companies in countries like Canada and Australia are now trying harder than ever to emulate the United States with it's extremely low wages, health, benefits, etc. for temp or casual workers. Unfortunately, it's a race to the bottom, as tens of millions of Americas will attest to. My simple question is - can we justify treating humans like this in the name of increasing profit?

If I own a company, I can justify anything short of illegal activities to increase profit. If you don't want companies to behave in a certain way, get it outlawed.

You can justify some illegal activities, it's not a crime if nobody finds out / cares.

Re: Undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died

#34

That is some great journalism, can't remember the last time I read an article like that. Also telling that this article has less than 20 comments on Hacker News. Or maybe it's a sign of the times that this sort of stuff appears on a tech news site at all.

> Also telling that this article has less than 20 comments on Hacker News

It's only been up for an hour, slow down.

Re: Undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died

#35

How is it not her own fault for wearing dangerous clothing (a hijab) in a factory workplace? Something as simple as long hair can be dangerous in such an environment, and a hijab or scarf is unthinkable. Darwin award.

It's still the employer's fault though, they're supposed to have managers etc that make sure people conform to safety rules and don't wear loose clothes, have their hair tied back, wear hair and beard nets, remove jewellery, wash hands, etc. Actually (reading further in the article myself now), the journalist is told all that.

But on the other hand, there's religious freedom and rules that come into play. In this case though, if she didn't want to remove or replace the loose clothing, she shouldn't be allowed to work near dangerous machinery.

Re: Undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died

#36
post #3

I don't understand how this strategy works. Company A doesn't want to hire employees because employees have rights. Instead, they hire temps from Company B who abuses their employees' rights. Why doesn't the government start policing the abuse of rights by Company B? Why doesn't the government pass laws that acknowledge that these employees are truly employees of Company A?

Due to this report by the Star, that's exactly what is happening:

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2017/09/11/temp-work...

Good investigative journalism can light a fire under companies and politicians pretty quickly when it makes them look bad.

Re: Undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died

#37
post #17

This kind of article is a reminder of how much we need traditional newspapers, and what we'd lose if they went away. I sometimes read suggestions that independent bloggers will replace newspapers, but I don't think they can do everything newspaper reporters do. This reporter worked undercover for a month. There would also have been a lot of time spent on background research before she went undercover. Then it would h…

Bloggers can one-up journalists though - there's been a number of critical blog posts and articles from (former) employees at Uber, Google, etc, which eventually cost CEO's their jobs. Actually working and living the life is even better than being a journalist and having to dive into it.

Re: Undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died

#38
post #4
post #2

Many companies in countries like Canada and Australia are now trying harder than ever to emulate the United States with it's extremely low wages, health, benefits, etc. for temp or casual workers. Unfortunately, it's a race to the bottom, as tens of millions of Americas will attest to. My simple question is - can we justify treating humans like this in the name of increasing profit?

My second question is : why don't union gets bigger and stronger ? Millions can't be put on the brink on poverty without an answer. Yesterday, on a european TV, I saw a documentary about middle class people who became half-homeless (their words). They were just unlucky to loose their jobs. Now I understand they may have had too much credits or debts here and there but, these were middle class, that is, they went down…

If those people were made homeless after losing their jobs they were definitely not "middle class". There is almost no middle class anymore and nobody wants to accept that they are apart of the poor, lower class. It's hard to change reality when nobody believes it.

Re: Undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died

#39

How is it not her own fault for wearing dangerous clothing (a hijab) in a factory workplace? Something as simple as long hair can be dangerous in such an environment, and a hijab or scarf is unthinkable. Darwin award.

It's still the employer's fault though, they're supposed to have managers etc that make sure people conform to safety rules and don't wear loose clothes, have their hair tied back, wear hair and beard nets, remove jewellery, wash hands, etc. Actually (reading further in the article myself now), the journalist is told all that. But on the other hand, there's religious freedom and rules that come into play. In this cas…

https://www.quora.com/Are-hijabs-safe-in-industrial-areas

In case you don't want to visit quora, there's a picture of what looks like a tearaway hijab.

Re: Undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died

#40
Having worked at two manufacturers in the Midwest, anecdotally the majority of forklift drivers, line workers on specific lines, and even many white collar office roles were filled by temp agencies. A similar structure existed for engineering too; we would have a problem and the engineering firm with workers under the same roof would develop a solution.

For the temp workers the motivation was always very clear and very much based on working around labor laws. If a forklift driver got in an accident, it wouldn't be counted in the same way. Line workers could be less rigidly brought on board or let go with seasonal or other varying demand. They were cheaper too and everyone worked hard to try and become a regular employee.

I am not sure what a solution is, after all these types of temp companies only exist to skirt existing labor laws, suggesting these laws may defy economics a bit too much. On the other hand what other ways do we have of increasing the bargaining position of labor? Growing the economy, but that isn't something a politician can honestly promise. Pulling back from globalization would, but that is bad economics and bad for national security. Perhaps something like earned income tax credit? Or perhaps we should just continue waiting until the rest of the world develops and the supply of labor finally becomes constrained.

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