Foreign Workers on Canada Line Win Human Rights Case

FYI.. Canada Line is part of Olympics project in terms of infrastructure and transport etc.

Foreign Canada Line workers win multi-million dollar human rights case

By Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun, December 3, 2008

VANCOUVER - A group of temporary foreign workers who helped build the Canada Line have won a multi-million dollar award from the BC Human Rights Tribunal after it found they were discriminated against by their employers.

SELI Canada and SNC Lavalin, which was boring parallel tunnels under downtown Vancouver, has been under the microscope since early last year after a series of complaints to the Labour Relations Board, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal and the provincial Employment Standards Branch over its treatment of foreign workers.

The Construction and Specialized Workers Union Local 1611 had alleged the company, which was originally paying the 39 mostly Latin American workers $12,000 US per year, unilaterally altered their contract to raise their pay to $20,000 US after they joined the union in mid-2006.

That undermined the union's bargaining powers and let the company set a wage that was below local labour standards, said the union in its filings.

The workers were netting about $20,000 US per year, roughly $14 an hour, plus room and board — about three times what they would make in their own countries but $10 per hour less than the $23 to $24 an hour, plus $4-per-hour benefits, being paid to most local union workers, the union says.

The company had denied allegations that it fraudulently altered the workers' contracts and then covered it up.

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