On average a worker in a fast food outlet in Fort McMurray — and there are lots of them in a place where at almost any time of day there is a long line of pick-up trucks waiting at the drive-thru — earns $14 to $17 an hour. If it’s part-time work, which it usually is, that works out to $400 to $500 week at the most.
In the oil and gas sector in Alberta where wages are mostly driven by the fierce competition for all kinds of labour in the oilsands industry, the average weekly wage as of December 2013 was $2,067, up 73 per cent from 2001.
Construction workers in Alberta earn an average weekly wage of $1,586 — an increase of 83 per cent since 2001.
This is just the average on a province-wide basis. In the oilsands region where competition for labour in both oilsands operations and construction is fierce, the weekly wages are much higher.
So where does that leave the temporary foreign worker or anyone who wants to work in a fast food outlet or a hotel?
Mostly it leaves them at the bottom of the heap when it comes to wages with not much hope of ever moving beyond that. The guest workers keep wages down for themselves and anyone else who takes those jobs.
Where does it leave the small business owner who can’t really compete with the astronomical wages offered by the oilsands industry?
The Chamber of Commerce in Fort McMurray says even with the recent change to the TFW program small businesses are left in a tough spot and the federal government should make special allowances for them.
“Here in Alberta and Fort McMurray, we still have enormous difficulty attracting quality people under the current laws,” Nick Sanders, president of the Fort McMurray CoC told Fort McMurray Today. “For our region, the cap is not appropriate. In fact, we believe it will just hurt our local businesses.”
“And if you look at the predicted job growth numbers, not only in small businesses, but for the oilsands, it’s going to get worse,” Sanders added.
Naturally the Alberta Federation of Labour sees things differently.
“Fort McMurray is ground zero for the use and abuse of this program,” says AFL president Gil McGowan. “It’s here that the program has been used to displace Canadians and it’s here the program is being used by too many employers to suppress wages. It’s particularly bad in a community like Fort McMurray where the cost of living is so high.”
It was the AFL that recently revealed in a detailed audit of the TFW program that many employers were paying workers lower wages than the regional wage rates.
According to the federal government, Alberta has 85,000 temporary foreign workers, more than any other province. At the same time workers in Alberta have earned the highest average wages among the provinces since mid-2005 and there is a virtually no unemployment.
Emilson Silva, a professor at the University of Alberta who focuses on marketing, economics and law, believes the provincial government has a role to play when it comes to ensuring an adequate labour market.
“Public services such as education act as an incentive when people are considering moving their families to another part of the country for work. The government should be putting more money into education not taking it out. That would slow wage inflation,” he told a recent seminar on wage inflation in the oilsands sector.
But the question remains: if there is no shortage of customers with money to spend at the Tim Hortons or the A&W in Fort McMurray why can’t the workers benefit from that sort of demand and earn wages that are more in line with regional wages?
Do we really need to import cheap labour to keep these businesses going?
Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and journalist and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. Her column usually appears every other week.
Source: thestar.com/
Author: Gillian Steward
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