A free press helps correct an abused foreign worker program.

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

The guy is right. Can't go head-to-head with a big company like McDonald's, so the best thing to do is to scream to the press and let them do the work. Here's how a free press help justice.

Cheers!

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/ca...249/story.html

His co-workers now call him 'racist,' but he'd blow the whistle on McDonald's again

By Michael Smyth, The Province May 5, 2014

The kid who kicked Ronald McDonald in the keister doesn’t regret a thing.
Kalen Christ is the original McWhistlebower who revealed the use of temporary foreign workers at three McDonald’s outlets in Victoria, sparking a federal investigation and a national moratorium on the TFW program for Canada’s entire restaurant sector.
Christ, a 21-year-old high-school dropout who has worked at McDonald’s for four years, said his decision to blow the whistle on his bosses caused him grief at work.
Co-workers turned their backs on him. McDonald’s management took away his keys and office privileges. One manager even assigned him to clean the bathrooms, a job he didn’t normally do as a full-time “team leader” responsible for training new employees.
So, would he do it all over again?
Faster than the Hamburglar scarfing down a Quarter Pounder.
“I don’t regret it at all,” he told me. “I think this is changing Canada for the better ¬¬— and that outweighs any other concerns I had.”
It all started more than a year ago, when the three McDonald’s restaurants ¬— all owned by the same franchisee — began bringing in full-time temporary workers from the Philippines, while the hours of local employees were cut.
Christ was assigned to train the new workers, who were paid $2 more an hour than he was.
“It was frustrating for everyone to have their hours reduced,” he said. “Then about six or seven months ago, we were told nine more TFWs were on the way.”
He started to wonder: Why was McDonald’s bringing in foreign workers when so many local people wanted jobs?
“I did an interview with a girl who was totally stoked to work there. We didn’t hire her. We didn’t even call her back.
“I saw two or three people come in just the previous week asking if we were hiring. We’d tell them, ‘Yes, we’re hiring.’ We’d take their resumés and nothing would happen.
“Every day I’d see resumes posted on the office wall, including people with a university education. I couldn’t friggin’ believe it.”
Christ said he complained to a manager and was told the company was contractually obligated to give the foreign workers full-time hours, and the TFWs were solid, reliable employees willing to work graveyard shifts.
“But I had a friend who was willing to work late nights,” he said. “He applied. We didn’t hire him. I thought, ‘This isn’t right.’”
He began to research the TFW program, and discovered the government only allows companies to bring in foreign workers in cases where qualified Canadians are not available.
“So I called a lawyer — the first time I’d ever talked to a lawyer in my life. He said it was pointless to sue a billion-dollar corporation like McDonald’s and told me to go to the news media instead.”
So Kalen Christ emailed the CBC, which broke the TFW story on April 7.
Then the special sauce really hit the fan.
The three McDonald’s restaurants were quickly “blacklisted” by the TFW program and McDonald’s Canada announced a “voluntary freeze” on its use of the program pending an outside audit. On April 24, federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney announced a national moratorium on the use of TFWs by all restaurants pending an investigation and program review.
When Christ returned to work, it wasn’t exactly McHappy Land. The previously friendly Filipino workers refused to speak to him.
“They really liked me before because I trained them. One woman who was named employee-of-the-month wanted to make me dinner to say thanks. Another gave me a necklace. But now they wouldn’t look at me and I was called a racist.”
That last part really hurt, he said, because he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body and he personally liked his Filipino co-workers and didn’t want to hurt them.
“That was the hard part,” he said. “They are truly respectful, nice people, but now they despised me.”
He said some other co-workers also froze him out after managers took away his keys and office access and made him clean the bathrooms. He said some customers made racist remarks to the Filipino workers after the story broke.
“If I hear racist remarks, I stand up for them,” he said. “But I can understand why they blame me. It wasn’t a lot of fun.”
But Christ said things have improved since McDonald’s Canada took over the three restaurants and the local franchisee was shuffled out.
His hours have been restored, a newly appointed regional manager has been nice to him, and the Filipino workers — who have not been sent home as the federal investigation continues — have warmed up to him a little.
“That’s something I’m really pleased about,” said Christ, who thinks foreign workers already in the country should be treated with compassion.
“I would have felt really, really horrible if they had all been shipped immediately back to their respective countries. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I just wanted fairness.”
McDonald’s Canada issued a statement saying, “We recognize that we have work to do to make things right with regard to our use of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.”
But the company also said it does not tolerate misuse of the program.
“McDonald’s hires Canadians first,” the company said.
The Canadian restaurant industry, meanwhile, is unhappy the story has led to a moratorium on the use of TFWs for the entire sector.
“There are restaurants that can’t stay open if they don’t have temporary foreign workers,” said Phil Hochstein of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association. “If a restaurant has to shut down, that hurts their employees, their customers, their suppliers and everyone else down the line.”
Kalen Christ thinks that may be true for some restaurants. But he believes many others have abused the program.
“Treat your workers well and they will work hard for you,” he said, noting the Victoria McDonald’s where he works has just hired four new workers ¬— all local job applicants.
“You see how easy that was?” he asks. “I’m glad I spoke up and did what I did. My dad told me, ‘I’m proud of you.’ ”


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