RBC Chief Unaware Foreign Workers Used by Multinational Outsourcing Firm

“Really,” said Royal Bank of Canada CEO Gord Nixon, “I’m as surprised as everyone else to find out that iGate Corp. employed foreign workers to replace our Canadian employees.”

 

“I mean,” Mr. Nixon continued, “it wouldn’t be fair to jump to any such conclusion about one of our contract suppliers simply because of the fact that it is an India-based multinational outsourcing firm. India-based outsourcing firms can and do hire Canadian workers as well.”

 

Former RBC staff have been upset about being asked to train the Indian IT workers to whom their work was outsourced, but the RBC chief said that former employees should not be so quick to blame RBC management for recent developments, “Management cannot be expected to look over the shoulder of every contract supplier to make sure they’re using Canadian workers. As everyone knows, over-regulation is a huge problem in the banking industry.”

 

Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers program was used by iGate Corp. to bring prospective Indian IT workers to Canada for training to replace more expensive Canadian workers. This is against the program’s stated rationale, which is to facilitate the hiring of foreign workers with skills not widely available in Canada.

 

Harper Government Unaware Temporary Foreign Workers Being Used as Cheap Labour

 

Although the Temporary Foreign Workers program provides for foreign employees to be paid a fraction of the wages paid to Canadian workers for the same job, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada Minister Diane Finley said “I did not know that temporary foreign workers were being used as cheap labour in the banking industry. But you can be sure that we will be looking into the matter to see who we can blame.”

 

David Bernans is a Québec-based writer and translator. He is the author of Collateral Murder . Follow him on twitter @dbernans.

 

* Note from the author: Although this article bears an uncanny resemblance to certain recent events, it is entirely satirical in nature.