Minister Pat Bell Changes Tune on Temporary Foreign Workers in Coal Mines – Sinclair Calls for Federal Minister to Make Review Public
Vancouver, BC – Minister Pat Bell’s reversal on granting of Temporary Foreign Worker permits for HD Mining raises more questions than it answers, said B.C. Federation of Labour President Jim Sinclair today.
Bell, speaking at a labour relations organization event in Vancouver yesterday evening, acknowledged that HD Mining’s duty to give full effort to hiring Canadians was clearly not followed.
“In light of Minister Bell’s acknowledgement that process was not followed here, and that Canadians have lost confidence in the Temporary Foreign Worker program, the federal government must make its review public,” said Sinclair. “And in this specific case, there must be a full and open review of HD Mining’s specific application for these temporary workers.”
Sinclair said Bell’s reversal only came about after a union court application forced the release by HD Mining of the resumés the company received, and after news reports revealed that the “highly trained miners” from HD Mining’s Chinese operations were provided only three months training before being sent underground.
Sinclair also called on Christy Clark to apologize to the hundreds of qualified Canadians who applied for, and were unfairly rejected for these jobs.
Sinclair said that the Minister and the Premier’s uninformed comments about the nature of the work and repeated insistence that the work was so specialized it could only be done by workers for HD’s Chinese operations showed a deep lack of respect for British Columbians and their skills.
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