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http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2 ... l?cmp=fbtl

Ridiculous.

   

Feriners just keep takin our jerbs!

   

In fairness, some times Canadians simply aren't willing to move across the country or aren't interested in a job that requires getting your hands dirty. Other times, people simply don't have the skills to get the jobs that are available.

That's not saying that I support increasing the numbers of foreign workers, but there are sometimes reasons why jobs go unfilled despite high unemployment.

   

Sorry Boots, not buying it. It's the old 'supply and demand' story. If business had the will to get Canadians into those jobs they would through moving allowances or training etc. For example, there are lots of jobs in Cold Lake, but no employer is willing to pay enough so that people can afford to live there. And people that have been living there have to take extra jobs to be able to afford to keep living there.

I've been paid to move to a job, trained to do the job, and been paid enough to live in my new place. That was at a time when hiring temp forgien workers was unheard of.

Right now, it's just easier and cheaper to hire a temporary worker who already has the skill set, than to move someone and train them to do the work.

   

What do people think would happen if we restricted immigration? Canadians wouldn't suddenly start taking those shitty low-wage jobs. All that would happen would be that fruit wouldn't get picked and hotel rooms wouldn't be cleaned. The notion that immigrants take jobs from residents is patently false.

I sometimes think we could do with another Great Depression. People who lived in those times knew what work ethic was. They didn't have the sense of entitlement that has gripped the <40 demographic in North America. I think of the pictures of the high-scalers working the air hammers on the canyon walls when they were building the Hoover Dam. Those guys were hanging from a rope on a swing seat 1000' in the air in 120 degree heat, all for 75 cents an hour. And it was work they were happy to have.

   

+5

What he said.

Just one caveat. Allowing foreign workers doesn't include the high tech or bank type jobs that corporations abuse for the bottom line. They can fuck themselves and pay Canadians a decent wage.

   

Really? I worked at a Denny's that was so underpowered they brought in three guys from Bangladesh. You're telling me that's cheaper than having people move to where the jobs are? The jobs exist, the problem is that nobody is moving to where they are and as a result Sask and Alberta are fighting over immigrants.

   

Temporary foreign workers aren't immigrants.

The sense of entitlement for the under-40 is an illusion--or, more accurately, a cognitive dissonce--held by the over-40 of every generation. IT is eupemistically called "You kids today..."

Hopefully this is a legacy issue as the government has removed the economic incentive that allowed employers to pay foreign workers 15% less.

   

Yes, that's what I'm saying. Not cheaper for companies, but better for Canada. Lower unemployment isn't always a bad thing. The job I was describing was in Fort Mac. While I was there, I was surrounded by Newfs. There were no jobs in Newfoundland, there were jobs in Alberta - so they moved. And they thrived. And after a few job changes, I was no longer able to afford to live there on what I was offered as pay. I saw the whole cycle, from companies holding job fairs in Newfoundland and pitching moving allowances and training allowances and flights back 'home' every so often; to the other extreme, where Tim Hortons was paying $17/h and giving double shifts to people to try to keep them because they couldn't be replaced as no one could afford $1700 a month for a 1 bedroom basement apartment because people were being offered $50 an hour as labourers for plant shutdown work.

When I was leaving, a Chinese construction company just hired a bunch of Chinese forgien workers, and managed to get them killed. Presumably they had the forgien workers in mind when they invested in the construction company. Perhaps a Canadian couldn't do the job, or wouldn't do the job. But shouldn't it be offered to one first? (I'm thinking BC Coal mine here too)

I know people don't want to move, uproot their families, learn a new job. But unemployment sucks. I know, I just did 3 months of it and it's hard. Like Lemmy points out, sometimes you can't be too proud and you have to take what ever comes along that puts food on the table.

   

No, it's much more than "You kids today" and it absolutely is a labour market phenomenon supported by empirical evidence. We've never experienced a labour market with as high a jobless rate as we currently have while simultaneously having as many job vacancies as we have. We're also currently experiencing the highest turnover rates for unskilled work that we've ever seen, which is especially unusual given that the minimum wage has never been as lucrative (ie, creating an incentive for workers to stay in those minimum wage jobs).

Yes, grumpy old men have always said "these kids today", but those grumpy old men are more right about it now than ever.

   

How are you defining lucrative? I agree that minimum wage has never payed better, but it also seems that the opportunities to advance within a company from minimum wage to something better are disappearing.

   

Maybe. My own approach would be to examine other factors that may be at play, since human nature stays the same from generation to generation, whereas economic and social factors are highly fluid. Not to mention that technology is accelerating at a faster and faster pace.

Most of the "studies" done on Gen Y entitlement are highly anecdotal and confirmation bias is pretty evident. For those more academic studies involving experiments, results are mixed, and no study I could find compares test results to previous generations (probably because such test results don't exist). Which makes the whole thing pretty speculative.

Even so, it would probably more conducive to a solution to discuss "changes in career expectations", rather than the more pejorative term "sense of entitlement."

   

Gen X and Gen Y got screwed, not by the labour market, but by being sold a model of higher education that's obsolete. Instead of the guidance counsellors in high school and their parents moving them towards areas where workers are needed (especially the trades) they were pushed to areas that are still massively over-staffed with baby boomers. I'm not sure about Canada, but in the American context that means they come out of university with a barely useful degree, tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and into a job market where they're competing against those who have held those same kinds of jobs since the 1970's.

It's less that the jobs aren't there, it's more that the school system especially is doing such a horrible job of directing new workers towards fields and career paths in which they can thrive.

   

They taught you the liberal arts and what you really needed to know was how to TIG weld.

   

I hold a B.A,B.Ed,CE and an MA and my wife has a BEd(4yr - which has been phased out now) and an MEd....we're doing pretty good. Mind you there are times that I wish I'd gotten a trade or a tech diploma. My BiL could have gotten into any Engineering program in Canada, but chose to go to trade school as a mechanic. He ended up with his Master Tradesman about 10 years ago and makes a fair chunk of change.....which mostly goes straight into his farm.

   

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