There Must Be The Same Playing Field For Chinese Miners
Thursday, December 29, 2011 @ 3:45 AM
The United Steel Workers have a legitimate request to the Provincial government that newly developing Chinese coal mines, near Hudson’s Hope come under the same jurisdiction for safety as other BC mines.
The Steel Workers in a letter to government say they fear that while the workers at the new mines may receive twenty bucks an hour for their work, the safety standards applied may not be up to snuff.
They point to China where 100 Chinese coal miners died in November alone.
The mine plans to hire guest workers at the facility and that in itself, they suggest, is a recipe for problems. If the Chinese miners don’t like the safety standards they can simply be sent home.
Premier Christy Clark says she has turned the matter over to three Cabinet ministers for their review.
It is, suffice to say that, if you want to do business in our country you should abide by the laws in the same manner that we are expected to when we are doing business in China.
If the argument can be made that there are not enough Canadians available to fill the job roster, then guest Chinese miners must fall under the same protection that is offered to our workers in Canada, plain and simple.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s’ opinion.
Comments
Incredible!
With all OUR chronic unemployment there aren’t any Canadians willing to take the necessary training to operate the mining equipment and work in that Chinese owned mine???
However, it may be just the tip of the iceberg. In Africa Chinese government owned companies are steadily acquiring more and more huge tracts of African farmland. They bring in Chinese farmworkers and send all the farm products directly to China. The local poor and unemployed Africans can only watch from a distance and wonder why their government allows this to happen.
I assume that our governments aren’t going to anything either to assert themselves.
I hope these Chinese workers working in Canada get a shot at being Canadian Citizens. Canada’s track record on mistreating Chinese workers isn’t much better than China’s.
Having a few more people in Northern BC speaking Mandarin is probably a good thing for us too.
even our unemployed wont work for $20 an hour.
The royalties for the minerals being taken out of the ground are next to nil. The justification is always jobs, jobs, jobs.
If there are no jobs for the locals, then leave it in the ground for future generations.
It makes no sense for us to give low corporate tax rates to foreign companies, no PST, no jobs for us, all to send the minerals offshore for some other countries benefit.
50 years down the road we’ll have a huge debt and no way of paying it off, and no jobs or resources left for our people.
What is wrong with us to allow this?????
Not “50 years down the road”, RIGHT NOW. We have a HUGE debt, and NO way of paying it off. Nor will we ever have until we understand WHY that is, and make the necessary moves to correct it.
Right on – my2bits!
What is wrong with our governments? The Chinese get the coal and we get the hole! We have people with no job, others trying to make it on minimum wage and we are giving our resources and jobs away to China? Where are all the manufacturing jobs going to? China! Where is all the pollution coming from? China! Where is all the junk products coming from? China! The average Canadian is destined to be paupers in their own land!
It pains me to keep bringing this up about Canada’s past and about what Canadians did in the colonial and post-colonial past when somebody makes a commen like: “Canada’s track record on mistreating Chinese workers isn’t much better than China’s.”
You can’t be referring to Canadian companies operating in China in 2011?
You are wallowing in the past again!
I still have a 1971 Canadian passport, in the back it says: The bearer of this passport is also a British Subject.
Trudeau patriated our constitution in the seventies. Until then we (Canadians) were a semi-colonial commonwealth state of Britain and even now we still have the Queen as our head of state. The building of the first railroads and mines was done under British rule and by British businessmen who ruled supreme over all the affairs in Canada. If they imported Chinese cheap labourers and mistreated them this should be entirely accredited to the colonial power whose laws became and were the laws of the land.
Whining and complaining about this regrettable past of our country should be laid at the feet of those who were in charge at the time. Maybe they can start to feel guilty (I doubt it!!!) and assume responsibility.
Nobody should have mistreated anybody in the past and nobody should do so in the present.
The mistreatment of some a century ago should certainly not be used as an accusatory argument for bad working conditions and needless unemployment of Canadian people today.
My2bits, your post nails it exactly!
Notice also that nobody responded to what I pointed out about Africa and the exploitation of the Africans by the present Chinese government’s actions.
Ask the African ordinary people if they are happy with that situation!
They have been asked and they don’t have anything printable to say!
I doubt that there are not enough Canadians available to work at this mine.
That suggestion is hard to believe.
What ever the truth is regarding ‘guest workers’ there is absolutely no way that ANY company, regardless of what country they are from. should be permitted to operate within Canadian borders without adhering to ALL of our laws and regulations.
Whose bright idea was it to allow foreign ownership of Canadian resources anyway?
Did anyone think to ask John and Jane Q. Taxpayer if they thought that would be a good idea?
metalman.
It is interesting to follow Chinese activities outside of China on the net – both good and bad.
Here is a deal with Zimbabwe:
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/business/industry/5851/chinese-russians-compete-for-zim-spoils.html
In the power deal signed with China, Beijing will help build new coal mines and three thermal power stations in the Zambezi valley along the border with Zambia.
In exchange, Zimbabwe will provide China with chrome.
Chinese companies are also to rebuild Zimbabweâs rail network, supply trains, buses and farm equipment under several other economic co-operation deals between the two countries.
So what is the deal with BC/Canada?
Where can we find out more about this deal? I assume if “guest” workers may be a possibility, that all laws will have to be complied with.
Based on the internet “stories” there are some very bad examples of human rights violations in African countries, for instance. The interesting thing is that some Canadian mining companies are accused of similar conduct.
1. Zimbabweâs Newsday reports the National Mine Workersâ Union has complained about the working conditions at Chinese-owned chrome and gold mines dotted around the Midlands region, saying they were inhuman and unsafe.
http://www.mining.com/2011/06/08/conditions-at-chinese-mines-in-zimbabwe-inhuman-and-unsafe-%E2%80%93-union
2. Zambia – Relations were strained in October last year when two Chinese managers shot and injured 13 workers at a coal mine.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/8315107/China-in-Africa-at-a-glance.html
Is China preparing Africa to buy Chinese produced products?
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=1717&catid=8&subcatid=52
“The mine plans to hire guest workers at the facility and that in itself, they suggest, is a recipe for problems. If the Chinese miners donât like the safety standards they can simply be sent home.”
For anyone who thinks that the Ministry responsible for Labour and WSBC can control how workers are dealt with by emloyers who wish to flaunt the law, please do not forget the case of Khaira Enterprises who operated a forestry project from a camp under a government contract with a safety certificate through B.C. Timber Sales.
I think that matter has still not come to completion. Nor have we heard much from the outcome to date.
We have laws in place to protect our workers. Occupational Health and Safety Regulations are not something you should consider flaunting…unless of course your willing to pay some pretty significant fines. You can check the WCB website and read all about those companies being fined for non-compliance.
Guest workers are only permitted in this country once the employer can demonstrate that there are no canadians willing or able to do the jobs.
Hey … Jim …. how well did the laws work with Khaira …. They contracted with a crown corporation!!!
http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/08/11/ForestCampNightmare
Read the Harris report, you might wake up to the real world that exists around you.
KHAIRA ENTERPRISES: OMBUDSMANâS REPORT SHOWS GOVERNMENT AGENCIES FAILED WORKERS AND BRITISH COLUMBIANS
http://www.asianjournal.ca/july%2029_11/ot_head6.html
from the article: “As we have long claimed, Khaira workers endured appalling living and working conditions for many months. Every government agency responsible for overseeing their living and working conditions knew what was happening, but failed to do anything about it,” said Jim Sinclair, President of the B.C Federation of Labour.
” …. report shows that wages and working conditions contributed to the deteriorating health and safety environment facing these workers”
So, are you one of these government workers, Jim?
IF A TREE FALLS IN THE WOODS AND NO ONE IS AROUND TO HEAR IT…
REVIEW OF FAILURES LEADING TO KHAIRA SITUATION
http://www.bcforestsafe.org/other/prog_report/2010-2011/Formatted%20Khaira%20Report%20v9.pdf
Oh, Jim … if the government were doing their job, industtrial organizations such as BCFSC, FARSHA, SHAPE, etc. would not have had to be created.
“The BC Forest Safety Council was created BY THE FOREST INDUSTRY (both companies and unions) to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries by:
promoting cultural change to ensure that safety is treated as an overriding priority, promoting a safety-conscious legal regime, developing a competent and confident workforce, encouraging SAFE companies to have functioning safety
programs and encouraging and rewarding safe conduct.”
If they use Chinese workers working Chinese owned mines in Canada than its not a stretch to assume they will use Chinese practices here in Canada. If we allow them to subsidize their mines with lax attention to environmental policies and undercutting the Canadian wage standards, then we are in effect subsidizing these firms to displace Canadian firms when it comes to the financial statement… and eventually the ownership competitiveness.
If we allow companies to be subsidized by cheep human labor and lax environmental laws in another country to displace Canadian industry, then that is bad enough, but when we import the globalized practice to Canadian soil then that becomes a bigger problem on many levels as our companies justify lowering their standards to compete.
The way they operate overseas is material in how they intent to operate here in Canada. We are either a sovereign nation or we are a globalization victim to the lowest common denominator economics. Every patriot is right IMO to question where the governments loyalties reside.
How can we be a sovereign nation when we can NOT buy ALL our own Production and fully pay for it from the incomes distributed to us in the course of its making? If we CAN’T do that, no matter whether we would ever want to or not ~ but CAN’T do it ~ how then are we to pay for the EXCHANGE of that Production through international trade? Which is essentially ‘barter’.
International “trade” should be just that. “Trade”. The beneficial exchange of one country’s relative surpluses for another country’s alternate relative surpluses.
A process from which BOTH parties benefit through enabling the diversification of Consumption in each country.
That is the ONLY way international trade makes any sense at all. That is NOT what we’re striving to achieve with the kinds of “trade” agreements we’ve been entering into, nor with this proposal to import ‘guest workers’. Which will have exactly the effects Eagleone has outlined above in putting us ahead on our ‘race to the bottom’.
There is a great difference between having ‘free trade’, as most of us understand that phrase to mean and probably agree with, and having a country that is ‘free TO trade’, and not FORCED to trade by no more than a failing in the way it does its national ‘accounting’.
We should not have to import some other country’s ‘money’ to live.
Their ‘money’ is EFFECTIVE DEMAND for THEIR goods, not ours. And our receiving such only makes sense if it is to be spent on THEIR goods, as a medium of exchange for ours. Not as it is at present, to provide an excuse for the Bank of Canada to increase the money supply of Canadian money in a way that will simply cause an inflation in Prices here. This not only filches the purchasing power of our money away from Canadian consumers, it filches our sovereignty itself.
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