Comment:

"Rocco Galati: Round 2

Focusing the issue

Attached is a copy of the second Federal Court claim filed by Rocco Galati on behalf of our clients.

Rocco, as usual, gets right to the point.

It’s unfortunate that rather than deal with the issues at hand, Ottawa will duck, dodge and stall. They will bring Motion upon Motion.

We’re ready for the long haul. We expect to be at the Supreme Court on more than one occasion.

Rocco is representing the largest group of skilled trades workers and employers ever to attend in Federal Court.

We look forward to combining, and then transforming, these and follow up claims into a class action covering the several hundred thousand foreign workers in Ontario. The logic here is that governments have had over thirty years to deal with the mess. Since government is incapable of getting its act together on skills training or skills immigration, it will be up to courts to set the rules.

In preparing the court applications, I have been struck with the fact that the foreign worker applicants are overwhelmingly employed by small and medium sized enterprises.

It is becoming clear that the GTA’s large trade’s employers share Ottawa’s position that it’s good to have illegal, highly qualified European workers and legal , less qualified South Asian employees.

What is it with big government sucking up to big businesses’ agenda? Or is it the other way around?

I can understand why big employers would want to marginalize and then rip off their workers and crush the smaller, quality competition. I can even understand why big business looks forward to swamping the trades sector with poorly qualified, but cheap, exploitable and non union, South Asian workers. It worked in the trucking sector. Why not the trades?

What I don’t understand is why Her Majesty has to break trust with smaller employers who need quality workers to do quality work.

Why isn’t there room for both the big gonifs and the smaller, quality guys?  "

Richard Boraks, December 11, 2014