Conservative MP

[M.Dancer]

You are just going to run right over to your fax machine and apply for that one then, since only the best people will work there?

Seriously, if you see this ad as expressing any interest in the quality of worker, then you speak a different language than I do.

http://www.agri-labourpool.com/showJob.aspx?id=10223

I don't see anything offensive about the ad. They are looking for low skilled labour...what more should they ask for? An interest in film and literature?

[eyeball]

Maybe if they weren't allowed to import workers they would be forced to pay a decent wage and people would want the work. If that means we have pay a little more for our produce, so be it.

And maybe the cost of food would rise so high that cheaper imports from latin america will be more common....thus providing work for latin americans in their own country...

Everyone wins....

Everyone was supposed to win...

By the way what sort of subsidies do Xmas tree farmers get?

[Jerry J. Fortin]

This MP was out of line, period. Its the way he choose to respond that is problematic. That same response can be expected from most members of the Conservative Party. When you find one that doesn't talk that way, be happy. Otherewise just keep voting to the right and realize what you get for it.

[Molly]

Locals may or may not have internet, ... they may or may not be actively seeking farm labour specifically as opposed to general labour, and they may or may not know that an in-house ag-labour site exists, even after a search, but brokers/recruiters/importers of workers would know ALL about it.

Locals looking for a job, though, would certainly look on more common sites-- job bank, kijiji, craigslist... even Monster, and any number of others, and they'd check the paper, see posters.... An ad placed where potential employees are likely to be looking would bring more applicants than posting it where they might, by some off chance, find it.

Imagine hiring someone to find you a temporary labourforce. If all they did was put an uninviting ad on one obscure website, wouldn't you can their butt for sheer incompetence? I would.

You actually might have a point wrt housing... if you assume that bodies would have to be housed. If they were local, they wouldn't.

[M.Dancer]

Imagine hiring someone to find you a temporary labourforce. If all they did was put an uninviting ad on one obscure website, wouldn't you can their butt for sheer incompetence? I would.

Why would you assume that the website these job offers are on is the only one?

You actually might have a point wrt housing... if you assume that bodies would have to be housed. If they were local, they wouldn't.

We have to define what is local in context of the story...

To wit: if there are jobs available in the Annapolis Valley and there are unemployed do nothings in Halifax...and the do nothings decide that spending the summe on the farm is better than boozing ...they would need housing. The commute would kill them.

In this case local is within the province as opposed to hiring workers from the carribean or latin america..

I've known plenty of folks when I was younger who for the summer went tobacco picking, tree planting, fruit picking for summer jobs. They always got room and board.

Edited November 25, 2009 by M.Dancer

[Molly]

Enough anyway.

I called BS on the 'looked but can't find a staff' garbage, and got tangled in a nitpickers nightmare. The fact is, Dancer, that if employers were sincerely looking for staff locally, they would do something to make locals aware that they were looking for staff. As a local, I see no such effort.

As a local who pays close attention to exactly that kind of recruitment, I see no such effort Not just 'minimal effort', but no such effort at all..... so either these guys are very, very bad at doing what they do, or they are feeding us horsepucks. Since they tend not to be penniless, I subscribe to the latter.

[M.Dancer]

The fact is, Dancer, that if employers were sincerely looking for staff locally, they would do something to make locals aware that they were looking for staff. As a local, I see no such effort.

So we are back to the "If I don't see it it don't exist" arguement.

There is a distinct possibility, you just don't know where to look.

[madmax]

This MP was out of line, period.

That's it in a nutshell. The language used by the Conservative MP wasn't accepted in the House of Commons by the speaker. The MP spoke like a jackass and that is why its news. Something you want to retract, but the Genies out of the bottle.

[Molly]

Duh! If I don't know where to look, why would any other potential employee?

For pity sake! They are claiming to be recruiting, not playing internet hide-and-seek, expecting a staff to find them!

Edited November 25, 2009 by Molly

[M.Dancer]

Duh! If I don't know where to look, why would any other potential employee?

???

Maybe because they already know? Maybe because they are looking?

Are you looking for farm work?

[DrGreenthumb]

Tree planting, another job I did in my youth. I actually loved that job because it paid by piecework. I could work from morning til night if I so chose, and was able to make a lot of money. That job gave me most of the money I needed to buy a nice shiney Pontiac Trans-am as a 16th birthday present to myself. Piecework jobs rule, because they reward the hardest workers with the most money. I probably made the most money (as an employee) working as an auto-mechanic on piecework than any other job I have had that paid by the hour.

If more jobs provided additional incentives to perform we would have a much more productive work force. Extra pay for extra effort is a great motivator.

Edited November 25, 2009 by DrGreenthumb

[M.Dancer]

If more jobs provided additional incentives to perform we would have a much more productive work force. Extra pay for extra effort is a great motivator.

Unions hate piece work.

[M.Dancer]

Now if I was interested in working on a farm for a summer...

I might start here...

http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/rural/rsj/rjs_index.htm

[Molly]

Dancer, nobody, ab-so-lutely.....no..... body.... is all industry-specific when ready to take a short term, minimum wage, dirty-hands-and-sore-back, money-is-the-only-incentive job. No one. If you are in that market, it's anything for a buck. You would paint a fence, or dig a hole, babysit, or wash dishes, sit at an assembly line, or push a wheelbarrow.

If you are talking industry specific searches, then minimum wage and 'whatever conditions the employer cares to throw at you' aren't likely to be part of any deal you'd make.

[M.Dancer]

Dancer, nobody, ab-so-lutely.....no..... body.... is all industry-specific when ready to take a short term, minimum wage, dirty-hands-and-sore-back, money-is-the-only-incentive job. No one. If you are in that market, it's anything for a buck. You would paint a fence, or dig a hole, babysit, or wash dishes, sit at an assembly line, or push a wheelbarrow.

If you are talking industry specific searches, then minimum wage and 'whatever conditions the employer cares to throw at you' aren't likely to be part of any deal you'd make.

I fail to see how that is relevant. The issue is whether Nova Scotian farmers are needing to hire offshore workers while there are unemployed in Halifax too lazy to work.

[madmax]

I fail to see how that is relevant. The issue is whether Nova Scotian farmers are needing to hire offshore workers while there are unemployed in Halifax too lazy to work.

Funny that this business is quite popular and many of my friends had no problem wanting to do the work and earn some money. I think your comments are absurd to believe that these jobs couldn't be filled by Nova Scotian workers. I also know that in NS there are some other jobs that pay FAR LESS then what I saw printed in the paper that the Mexican says he receives. Infact, I would like to see that Mexican Labourers paystub, just to be certain because someone in NS who is unemployed would be doing quite well taking that job even if short term.

One consistent thought of government bureaucrats listening to lobbiests is to use the populism against immigration against future immigrants, and to use the importation of migrant workers to do the work in this country. You can work here, just don't live here.

That's how we end up with Dead Chinese Migrant Workers in ALberta.

Chinese workers ripped off, gov't admits

EDMONTON - Chinese workers who helped build a series of tanks in northern Alberta last year took home a small fraction of what their Canadian counterparts were paid.

By The Edmonton JournalJune 18, 2008

EDMONTON - Chinese workers who helped build a series of tanks in northern Alberta last year took home a small fraction of what their Canadian counterparts were paid.

Some details of the wage discrepancy emerged only after the widows of two Chinese workers killed when a tank collapsed got life insurance and agreed to speak with a Canadian union and The Journal.

Someone from the company had signing authority on all of the workers' bank accounts. The workers were living in a camp and could request spending money to buy items from the camp store, said union representative Wayne Prins.

That signing authority could also have been used to take money from the accounts.

On Saturday, Liu Ruijuan, the 26-year-old widow of welder Ge Genbao, said her husband told her he would make the equivalent of $600 Cdn a month. He should have been making $30 an hour, or at least $4,800 a month, plus overtime and benefits, according to the union's collective agreement.

[M.Dancer]

Funny that this business is quite popular and many of my friends had no problem wanting to do the work and earn some money. I think your comments are absurd to believe that these jobs couldn't be filled by Nova Scotian workers.

You misunderstand me. I believe fully that the jobs could be filled by Nova Scotians...if they wanted the jobs.

[Cuzzin E]

LOL I think molly is either a) one of said unemployed or works for the gov't

As a local who pays close attention to exactly that kind of recruitment, I see no such effort Not just 'minimal effort', but no such effort at all..... so either these guys are very, very bad at doing what they do, or they are feeding us horsepucks. Since they tend not to be penniless, I subscribe to the latter.

none at all in Nova Scotia.

http://www.nsapples.com/harvest.htm

That is NS.

I spent 2 minutes looking and came up with handful of jobs...you said there were none.

Duh! If I don't know where to look, why would any other potential employee?

For pity sake! They are claiming to be recruiting, not playing internet hide-and-seek, expecting a staff to find them!

[Molly]

Cuzzin, that's a nothing link. You would know that if you had looked at it, but you didn't.

I think that you are 1) too intellectually lazy to spell your own name right, 2) more interested in being a jerk than in addressing the subject under discussion.

Edited November 27, 2009 by Molly

[madmax]

Cuzzin, that's a nothing link. You would know that if you had looked at it, but you didn't.

It is a nothing link. However, I too am prone to making comments assuming the link was valid.

Regardless, just because people are misinformed doesn't mean they don't have an opinion.

[Goat Boy©]

I don't know what unemployed people get in Nova Scotia, as far as EI or welfare but most of the time doing those jobs don't bring in enough to survive on.

I really don't understand this argument. I hear people complaining about making $12/hr, how they can't get by, yet in the next row down there is a single mother surviving off of $8/hr. I'm lower middle class and have never complained once about a wage, from $3/hr chopping wood as an 8 year old to $12/hr for throwing fish.

As a resident of Canada, forget that, as a human being....how can one complain about not getting by, with shelter and a full stomach? Over half of the residents of the world have to choose one or the other, if they have the opportunity to choose. I'm going to complain about not being able to take a holiday, go to the school I want or buy an LCD TV tomorrow, meanwhile 40,000 people die of starvation?

As a resident of North America (8% of world pop) we consume somewhere around 40% of the worlds resources. Combined with Europe, that number jumps to 60%. We're friggin rich, all of us.

[madmax]

I really don't understand this argument. I hear people complaining about making $12/hr, how they can't get by, yet in the next row down there is a single mother surviving off of $8/hr. I'm lower middle class and have never complained once about a wage, from $3/hr chopping wood as an 8 year old to $12/hr for throwing fish.

As a resident of Canada, forget that, as a human being....how can one complain about not getting by, with shelter and a full stomach? Over half of the residents of the world have to choose one or the other, if they have the opportunity to choose. I'm going to complain about not being able to take a holiday, go to the school I want or buy an LCD TV tomorrow, meanwhile 40,000 people die of starvation?

As a resident of North America (8% of world pop) we consume somewhere around 40% of the worlds resources. Combined with Europe, that number jumps to 60%. We're friggin rich, all of us.

Missed this earlier. Round of applause for ya Goatboy. I can't disagree with the thought behind those commentsl.

Sometimes we forget out wealth. Lets not forget about how we treat our own either. Perhaps if the MP could have been as articulate, he wouldn't be the bane of jokes in the cartoon media.