Temporary Foreign Worker Permits Are Destroying Trucking

2026/05/05 2 Comments

Another area of less expensive temporary workers being used, similar to the restaurant and food service industry:

…If the goal is to fix the transport trucking industry, and protect the workers who keep it running, the solutions are not complicated. They do, however, require political will, and perhaps most importantly, workers and unions organized and willing to fight. 

The Teamsters are calling for: a reduction in closed work permits that tie workers to a single employer; a meaningful wage floor and enforcement to ensure pay for all hours worked; pathways to permanent residency for migrant workers; stronger enforcement against employment misclassification and other labour violations; and recognition of truck driving as a skilled trade. 

All of these proposals would raise standards for migrant and Canadian-born workers alike, and should form the basis of solidarity. 

What’s happening in the trucking industry is not unique. It’s part of a broader pattern in the Canadian economy whereby employers refuse to accede to demands for better pay and working conditions (even when their own cost-cutting produces a qualitative labour shortage), instead depending on a supply of precarious and exploitable workers. 

As the Teamsters’ report makes clear, we are faced with a choice. We can continue down the current path, where labour shortages are solved not by improving jobs, but by making workers more disposable. Or, we can raise wages and improve work as the foundation of a better economy. As Burgan put it, “Trucking can’t be outsourced abroad. These jobs are here to stay. So let’s make sure they’re good jobs.”

The trucking industry, like so many others, doesn’t have a labour shortage. It has a shortage of good, union jobs. 

Source: Temporary Foreign Worker Permits Are Destroying Trucking

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Exposé of immigration scheme in Canadian trucking prompts warning from feds

2019/10/10 Leave a comment

The Globe’s excellent exposé on practices in the trucking industry (Canada Ottawa to probe possible abuse of foreign workers as B.C. reviews trucking rules)gets noted in the North American trucking press:

The Canadian government said any employer found to break the rules of a temporary worker program would face “serious consequences” after an investigation by The Globe and Mailexposed a scheme that saw trucking companies with poor safety records luring inexperienced foreign workers into driver careers.

Canada’s second-largest newspaper found that some trucking companies and immigration consultants were exploiting job-seekers through Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which allows companies to temporarily fill vacancies from outside the country when the jobs can’t be filled. The investigation revealed an array of allegations such as payments for jobs.

“Any employer found to have violated the rules of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program will face serious consequences,”  Isabelle Maheu, a spokesperson for the program’s administrator, Employment and Social Development Canada, wrote in an email on October 8.

Maheu would not say whether Employment and Social Development Canada was investigating any employers mentioned in The Globe and Mail’s report. But she wrote that allegations of misuse are being investigated.

“The Government of Canada takes very seriously its responsibility to protect the integrity of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, as well as the safety and welfare of temporary foreign workers, and does not tolerate any abuse or misuse of workers,” Maheu wrote.

But within the industry, there is growing anger about employers who cut corners to fill trucks and improve their operating margins.

“The article put the final piece of the puzzle together,” said Wendell Erb, CEO of Erb Group, an Ontario-based trucking company that specializes in refrigerated transport.

The Canadian Trucking Alliance responded to the Globe’s report, saying it was “embarrassed by the actions of a small element of our sector.”

The organization, which represents carriers across Canada,  called on improved oversight by federal and provincial authorities and also singled out a practice known as “Driver Inc.” where drivers are intentionally misclassified as independent contractors to avoid tax withholding.

The organization also stressed the importance of immigration programs that help fill trucks and other positions in the industry.

Source: Exposé of immigration scheme in Canadian trucking prompts warning from feds

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