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Omar Yaqub

Importing Foreign Workers- The Basics - 0 views

www.singleton.com/...reign_Workers-_The_Basics.aspx

work immigrants

shared by Omar Yaqub on 02 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Canada has agreed to the inclusion of the following service sectors in the GATS agreement: business services, communication services, construction services, distribution services, environmental services, financial services, tourism and travel related services and transport services.
  • A GATS professional is one who seeks to engage, as part of a services contract, in an activity at a professional level, provided that the person possesses the necessary credentials and qualifications. There are nine accepted professions under GATS:
  • • engineers; • agrologists; • architects; • forestry professionals; • geomatics professionals; • land surveyors; • legal consultants; • urban planners; and • senior computer specialists.
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  • Under GATS professionals may only work in Canada for a period of 90 days in any 12 month period
  • Spouses Spouses (including common-law partners) of temporary foreign workers can apply for a work permit without a confirmation from HRSDC, provided that the principal applicant is authorized by a work permit to work in Canada for at least six months. Initial this category was only available for spouses of skilled workers but recently it has been expanded to cover spouses of any temporary worker. The spouse of a temporary worker may apply for an open work permit, which allows the spouse to accept almost any job. The spouse's work permit will expire when the principal applicant's work permit expires.
  • As a general rule, a person who is not a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident must hold a valid work permit in order to work in Canada. Work permits are issued by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (“CIC”). Further, as a general rule, prior to the CIC issuing a work permit, the employer must receive a confirmation of employment from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (“HRSDC”). This confirmation of employment is referred to as a “Labour Market Opinion” (“LMO”).
  • Foreign workers may also require a temporary resident visa to work in Canada; however, citizens and permanent residents of the U.S. are exempt from this requirement.
  • Under Canadian immigration law, it is the worker who must apply for and receive the work permit.
  • foreign worker must submit to CIC a copy of the HRSDC confirmation of employment and a detailed description of the employment offer (provided by the employer). There is a non-refundable fee of C$150 for processing an application for an individual work permit.
  • worker may apply for a work permit before entering Canada, at a port of entry or from inside Canada, depending on the worker's status
  • Generally, temporary foreign workers must apply for a work permit before departing for Canada, although the actual work permit will be printed and given to the foreign worker at the port of entry when he/she enters Canada.
  • If the foreign worker is from the U.S. or if the foreign worker does not need a temporary resident visa to visit Canada and an exemption is available from the requirement to obtain a confirmation of employment
  • the foreign worker is prohibited from applying for a work permit until his or her arrival at a port of entry.
  • If the applicant has been working in Canada for at least three months under an exemption, other than as a business visitor, but wants a permit to accept another job the foreign worker can apply for a work permit while already located in Canada
  • The worker is expected to abide by the terms and conditions set out in the work permit. Work permits are valid only for a specified job, employer and time period. However, workers can apply to the CIC to modify or extend their work permit. An application to extend a work permit should be made at least 3 months prior to the permit's expiry.
  • It is currently taking CIC over 117 days to process an application to renew or to change the terms and conditions of entry to Canada
  • Once the application is submitted the foreign worker can continue in employment pending approval of the extension, as long as they remain in Canada while that application is pending.
  • If the employer dismisses the foreign worker, the employee must apply to change their status to a visitor or find a new employer and apply to change the work permit to that new employer. There is no positive obligation on any employer to report the change in employment status to Immigration
  • Confirmation of Employment As a prerequisite to issuing a work permit, an immigration officer will generally require a Labour Market Opinion or a "confirmation of employment" from HRSDC. An employer who wishes to hire a temporary foreign worker is responsible for having the job offer validated by HRSDC. HRSDC will base its confirmation of employment on the following factors:
  • guidelines introduced by Service Canada for minimal recruitment efforts are as follows and are strictly adhered to:
  • NOC O and A Occupations You will have conducted the minimum advertising efforts required if you: • Conduct recruitment activities consistent with the practice within the occupation (e.g., advertise on recognized Internet job sites, in journals, newsletters or national newspapers or by consulting unions or professional associations); or • Advertise on the national Job Bank (or the equivalent in Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan or the Northwest Territories) for a minimum of fourteen (14) calendar days, during the three (3) months prior to applying for a LMO
  • If HRSDC is satisfied that the employment offer to a foreign national will not adversely impact the Canadian labour market, it will issue a confirmation of employment or LMO to the employer and enter the confirmation of employment into a database that can be accessed by immigration officials.
  • The employer then generally sends the foreign worker a copy of the LMO, as well as a detailed employment offer to be presented to immigration officials when the worker applies for his/her work permit at an overseas Canadian Consulate or upon the worker's arrival at a port of entry, if the worker is coming from a country that is visa exempt. Upon receipt of the HRSDC confirmation, immigration officials will decide if the foreign worker otherwise qualifies for a work permit.
  • confirmation process through HRSDC is a distinct stage from that of the work permit issuance by CIC. Currently the processing time at HRSDC is estimated at 3 to 5 weeks after receipt of acknowledgement of the application. Acknowledgements of receipt are currently taking 2 to 3 weeks.
  • Workers who require a work permit but not a confirmation of employment include those who are found to provide a significant benefit to Canada, spouses of temporary foreign workers, information technology workers, graduate students under a specialized work program and those who qualify for exemptions under NAFTA and GATS.
  • a 4 year cap on LMOs and an expiry date so foreign workers must rely on it within 6 months of issue or new recruiting efforts will be required.
Omar Yaqub

This Just In: Job Recovery Rx: Worker Skill Training February 7, 2011 - 0 views

blogs.dc-intl.com/...just-in-job-recovery-rx-w.html

work trends competitiveness

shared by Omar Yaqub on 08 Feb 11 - Cached
  • Job Recovery Rx: Worker Skill Training
  • Neal Peirce’s latest Citistates column suggests that the solution to the U.S.’s impending talent shortage lies in targeted training programs in the country’s metro regions.
  • Cities are beginning to experiment with innovative pilot programs, including those like “Chicago Career Tech,” an intensive six-month, six-day-a-week course that retrains middle-class workers for technology careers.
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  • targeted efforts inside our metro regions.
  • Colleges and community colleges, for example, presumably produce graduates who can think, analyze, read manuals. “But they’re turning out people who can’t do anything” — as simple, Walshok suggests, as working with spreadsheets, building a website or describing a complex piece of technology like an iPad application. So targeted post-graduate job training becomes critical.
  • demand for science and engineering jobs has been growing by about 5 percent a year, and the country has an estimated 2 million jobs unfilled because of lack of job skills
  • “Chicago Career Tech,” for example, is a new program launched by Mayor Richard M. Daley to take in middle-class workers adrift in the current recession and retrain them for technology careers
  • welders. Close to 100 percent of welding school graduates get snapped up by industries spread from aircraft manufacturing and ship building to erecting and repairing bridges — not to mention mass transit and railways along with green industrioes such as building wind energy turbines.
  • twice as many welders are retiring as being trained — the U.S. shortage may be as high as 200,000, in a field that pays solid wages.
Omar Yaqub

globeandmail.com: 'We're getting there, just 40 years later' - 0 views

v1.theglobeandmail.com/...TPComment

shared by Omar Yaqub on 07 Feb 11 - Cached
  • Calgary's mayor tells Marcus Gee how he plans to realize Jane Jacobs' vision on the Prairies. He just has to convince the developers
  • But can he get Calgary to buy in? To an outsider, at least, sprawling, car-dependent Calgary seems to be an unlikely place to realize his Jane Jacobs-inspired ideas about livable cities.
  • Building Up: Making Canada's Cities Magnets for Talent and Engines of Development, he argued that the successful city of the future will be a place in which: "People live where they work and play. Density is high. Public transit is a preferred choice. Young people can afford to live downtown. Classes and socio-economic backgrounds are mixed ...
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  • Calgary seems to violate every one of those principles. With no natural barriers - no lake like Toronto's, no mountains and sea as in Vancouver - Canada's fourth-biggest city sprawls north, south, east and west across the rolling foothills of southern Alberta.
  • Density is low. With the same-sized footprint as the five boroughs of New York, Calgary has one-10th the population.
  • his own immigrant neighbourhood of Coral Springs in the city's northeast, the proportion of non-white residents has soared to 82 per cent from 50 per cent a few years ago, while in the southern half of Calgary, he says, all but 8 per cent are white.
  • three-point plan.
  • First, develop unused downtown lands. Calgary has a bustling downtown with thickets of office towers, including the rising Norman Foster-designed skyscraper the Bow. But there is a lot of barren, underused space in between. Mr. Nenshi has high hopes for the East Village, a once-sketchy area that is to be revived with a new music centre and housing projects.
  • Second, encourage "spot intensification" of residential neighbourhoods. A recent study showed that 80 per cent of neighbourhoods were actually losing population density as householders saw their children grow up and move out. He would like to see developers build high-rises around transit stops and redevelop low-rise strip malls into mid-rise retail and residential buildings.
  • Third, build smarter suburbs. That means more subdivisions with a mix of housing types - single-family, townhouse, apartment block - in place of uniform tracts of identical, knock-off houses. He points to the success of Garrison Woods, a new neighbourhood on former military lands with double the density of a traditional suburb. The developer designed it to be walkable, with shops and schools nearby.
  • Mr. Nenshi wants to charge developers higher fees for building on the city's edges, arguing that the city effectively subsidizes suburban development by charging too little to supply infrastructure and services.
  • It's not that he wants to abolish suburbs. "We have to recognize that a lot of people want to live in them," he says. "I'm not interested in forcing everybody to live in a high-rise building downtown. This isn't Hong Kong." He just wants the price of a place in the suburbs to reflect the true cost of putting it there.
  • When did Jane Jacobs write The Death and Life of Great American Cities? We're getting there, just 40 years later," Mr. Nenshi says.
  • When a project called Imagine Calgary asked residents what they wanted from their city in the future, it found that most wanted to live in a place where they could walk to the store, walk their kids to school, get by with only one car and be surrounded by different kinds of people.
  • If everyone wants that, why aren't we building that?" the mayor says.
Omar Yaqub

Andy Kessler: Is Your Job an Endangered Species? - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3439504576116340050218236.html

work trends competitiveness

shared by Omar Yaqub on 23 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Technology is eating jobs—and not just obvious ones like toll takers and phone operators. Lawyers and doctors are at risk as well.
  • Forget blue-collar and white- collar. There are two types of workers in our economy: creators and servers. Creators are the ones driving productivity—writing code, designing chips, creating drugs, running search engines. Servers, on the other hand, service these creators (and other servers) by building homes, providing food, offering legal advice, and working at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
  • Many servers will be replaced by machines, by computers and by changes in how business operates. It's no coincidence that Google announced it plans to hire 6,000 workers in 2011.
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  • Sloppers are those that move things—from one side of a store or factory to another. Amazon is displacing thousands of retail workers. DMV employees and so many other government workers move information from one side of a counter to another without adding any value. Such sloppers are easy to purge with clever code.
  • Sponges are those who earned their jobs by passing a test meant to limit supply. According to this newspaper, 23% of U.S. workers now need a state license.
  • Supersloppers mark up prices based on some marketing or branding gimmick, not true economic value.
  • Slimers are those that work in finance and on Wall Street. They provide the grease that lubricates the gears of the economy.
  • Thieves have a government mandate to make good money and a franchise that could disappear with the stroke of a pen.
  • Like it or not, we are at the beginning of a decades-long trend. Beyond the demise of toll takers and stock traders, watch enrollment dwindle in law schools and medical schools. Watch the divergence in stock performance between companies that actually create and those that are in transition—just look at Apple, Netflix and Google over the last five years as compared to retailers and media.
  • this economy is incredibly dynamic, and there is no quick fix for job creation when so much technology-driven job destruction is taking place. Fortunately, history shows that labor-saving machines haven't decreased overall employment even when they have made certain jobs obsolete. Ultimately the economic growth created by new jobs always overwhelms the drag from jobs destroyed—if policy makers let it happen.
Omar Yaqub

The awful truth: education won't stop the west getting poorer | Peter Wilby | Comment i... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...tion-jobs-middle-class-decline

education trends competitiveness work

shared by Omar Yaqub on 02 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Skilled jobs will go to the lowest bidder worldwide. A decline in middle class pay and job satisfaction is only just beginning
  • Americans are about to suffer a profound shock. For the past 30 years governments have explained that, while they can no longer protect jobs through traditional forms of state intervention such as subsidies and tariffs, they can expand and reform education to maximise opportunity. If enough people buckle down to acquiring higher-level skills and qualifications, Europeans and Americans will continue to enjoy rising living standards. If they work hard enough, each generation can still do better than its parents. All that is required is to bring schools up to scratch and persuade universities to teach "marketable" skills. That is the thinking behind Michael Gove's policies and those of all his recent predecessors as education secretary.
  • "Knowledge work", supposedly the west's salvation, is now being exported like manual work. A global mass market in unskilled labour is being quickly succeeded by a market in middle-class work, particularly for industries, such as electronics, in which so much hope of employment opportunities and high wages was invested. As supply increases, employers inevitably go to the cheapest source. A chip designer in India costs 10 times less than a US one.
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  • Alan Blinder, a former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has estimated that a quarter of all American service sector jobs could go overseas.
  • Western neoliberal "flat earthers" (after Thomas Friedman's book) believed jobs would migrate overseas in an orderly fashion. Some skilled work might eventually leave but, they argued, it would make space for new industries, requiring yet higher skills and paying better wages. Only highly educated westerners would be capable of the necessary originality and adaptability. Developing countries would obligingly wait for us to innovate in new areas before trying to compete.
  • But why shouldn't developing countries leapfrog the west? Asia now produces more scientists and engineers than the EU and the US put together. By 2012, on current trends, the Chinese will patent more inventions than any other nation.
  • t suggests neoliberals made a second, perhaps more important error. They assumed "knowledge work" would always entail the personal autonomy, creativity and job satisfaction to which the middle classes were accustomed. They did not understand that, as the industrial revolution allowed manual work to be routinised, so in the electronic revolution the same fate would overtake many professional jobs. Many "knowledge skills" will go the way of craft skills. They are being chopped up, codified and digitised. Every high street once had bank managers who used their discretion and local knowledge to decide which customers should receive loans. Now software does the job. Human judgment is reduced to a minimum, which explains why loan applicants are often denied because of some tiny, long-forgotten overdue payment
  • Digital Taylorism makes jobs easier to export but, crucially, changes the nature of much professional work. Aspirant graduates face the prospect not only of lower wages, smaller pensions and less job security than their parents enjoyed but also of less satisfying careers. True, every profession and company will retain a cadre of thinkers and decision-makers at the top – perhaps 10% or 15% of the total – but the mass of employees, whether or not they hold high qualifications, will perform routine functions for modest wages. Only for those with elite qualifications from elite universities (not all in Europe or America) will education deliver the promised rewards.
  • The effects of the financial squeeze and deficit reduction programme will threaten much more than this government's survival. We shall see, in all probability, a permanent reduction in British living standards that can't be arrested by educational reform. Neoliberalism, already badly dented by the financial meltdown, will be almost entirely discredited. Governments will then need to rethink their attitudes to education, inequality and the state's economic role.
  • Omar Yaqub on 02 Mar 11
     
    Skilled jobs will go to the lowest bidder worldwide. A decline in middle class pay and job satisfaction is only just beginning
Omar Yaqub

At last, persistence pays off for never-say-die North West founder - 0 views

www.edmontonjournal.com/...story.html

edmonton work

shared by Omar Yaqub on 17 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • 10,000 new construction jobs, 600 engineering jobs and hundreds of new operating positions.
Omar Yaqub

Pay Teachers More - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...13kristof.html

education

shared by Omar Yaqub on 14 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Until a few decades ago, employment discrimination perversely strengthened our teaching force. Brilliant women became elementary school teachers, because better jobs weren’t open to them. It was profoundly unfair, but the discrimination did benefit America’s children. These days, brilliant women become surgeons and investment bankers — and 47 percent of America’s kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers come from the bottom one-third of their college classes (as measured by SAT scores). The figure is from a study by McKinsey & Company, “Closing the Talent Gap.”
  • Recent scholarship suggests that good teachers, even kindergarten teachers, increase their students’ earnings many years later. Eric A. Hanushek of Stanford University found that an excellent teacher (one a standard deviation better than average, or better than 84 percent of teachers) raises each student’s lifetime earnings by $20,000. If there are 20 students in the class, that is an extra $400,000 generated, compared with a teacher who is merely average.
  • Consider three other countries renowned for their educational performance: Singapore, South Korea and Finland. In each country, teachers are drawn from the top third of their cohort, are hugely respected and are paid well (although that’s less true in Finland). In South Korea and Singapore, teachers on average earn more than lawyers and engineers, the McKinsey study found.
Omar Yaqub

Why US productivity can grow without killing jobs - McKinsey Quarterly - Economic Studi... - 0 views

www.mckinseyquarterly.com/...grow_without_killing_jobs_2748

productivity work competitiveness

shared by Omar Yaqub on 10 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Does higher productivity destroy jobs? Sometimes, but only in the very short term, considering US economic performance over the past 80 years. In fact, every ten-year rolling period but one since 1929 has seen increases in both US productivity and employment. Even on a rolling annual basis, 69 percent of periods have delivered both productivity and jobs growth (Exhibit 1). Over the long term, apparently, it’s a fallacy to suggest that there’s a trade-off between unemployment and productivity. These are among the key findings of the latest report from the McKinsey Global Institute, Growth and renewal in the United States: Retooling America’s economic engine. We are optimistic about productivity because it isn’t only about efficiency; it is no less about expanding output through innovations that improve the performance, quality, or value of goods and services. What’s more, even productivity solely from efficiency gains can, in the aggregate, lead to higher employment if the cost savings are put back to work elsewhere in the economy. Companies can pass on those savings to their customers in the form of lower prices, leaving households and businesses with more money to spend elsewhere. They can also reinvest savings from more efficient operations in new job-creating activities.
Omar Yaqub

Allison Pond: National Rollout - Immigrants' Canada - 0 views

www.immigrantscanada.com/...son-pond-national-rollout.html

work immigrants

shared by Omar Yaqub on 28 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • re-casting the speed-dating model to help skilled newcomers connect with potential employers and circumvent the usual barriers that accompany a resume filled with foreign work experience and education.
  • event is expected to include more than 100 newcomers looking for work in Canada and a similar number of executives and managers from 65 different companies. With four different rooms devoted to information technology, sales and marketing, engineering and finance
  • he biggest barrier to getting work in their field is their need to connect with people in their profession
Omar Yaqub

Worker squeeze to hit oilpatch - 0 views

www2.canada.com/...story.html

work alberta competitiveness trends

shared by Omar Yaqub on 30 Mar 11 - Cached
  • Jobs in Alberta's oilpatch could double over the next decade if commodity prices remain strong, leading to a labour crunch rivalling that of the last boom cycle, according to an industry council.
  • Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada warns the shortage of skilled workers already being felt across the Canadian oilpatch will deepen, regardless of commodity prices and activity levels in the oil and gas industry.
  • "We are headed toward a severe labour shortage, regardless of future energy prices and industry activity," said chief executive Cheryl Knight.
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  • "Our industries will need to be prepared to face a labour shortage more severe than what we experienced in 2007."
  • about 102,300 positions would open in a high-price scenario, up from 57,850 positions in 2009.
  • Alberta ? Low-price scenario: 33,000 net hires- High oil, low natural gas price scenario: 50,800 net hires- High-price scenario: 102,300 net hires- 2009 estimated workforce: 57,850
  • major driver in the forecast is Canada's aging workforce, about 30 per cent of which will retire over the next decade.
  • "Even in the worst scenario, when energy prices and industry activity are low, we will need to hire at least 39,000 workers to replace those who are retiring," Knight said. "If industry expands in a highprice scenario, we will need to find 130,000 workers to fill new positions."
  • The oilpatch already is seeing shortages in skill sets such as geology, engineering and geophysical expertise, as well as on-the-ground field workers.
  • Access to labour and skills determine the unit of production of the petroleum industry."
  • services sector may need to hire as many as 72,000 workers over the next 10 years, he said. Jones noted it takes the average rig worker about 10 years to accumulate enough skills and experience to become a rig manager.
Omar Yaqub

Worker squeeze to hit oilpatch - 0 views

www2.canada.com/...story.html

work alberta competitiveness trends

shared by Omar Yaqub on 30 Mar 11 - Cached
  • council sees demand for workers skilled in new technologies associated with unconventional oil and gas exploration and production, as well as increased demand for employees such as water and environmental management technicians, steam engineers and fracking operators,
  • Attracting workers with the right skills is "essential to sustain growth in the industry," said Jennifer Koury, vice-president corporate services with driller EnerPlus.
  • "Everyone remembers that in 2007 severe labour shortages put serious limits on our industry and it cost us in the industry dearly," she said. "The (report) has shown us that the industry will soon be entering another severe labour shortage and we need to be prepared."
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  • A shrinking labour market will drive up costs and make the industry less competitive, said Gary Leach, executive director of the Small Explorers and Producers Association of Canada.
  • "If you don't have trained workers in key choke points, and we're already seeing that, it's going to affect the development of all sorts of big projects," Leach said.
Omar Yaqub

After wild ride, employers have plenty at stake in this campaign - 0 views

www.edmontonjournal.com/...story.html

immigrants work alberta edmonton

shared by Omar Yaqub on 28 Apr 11 - Cached
  • job-creation plans
  • job retraining programs.
  • To me that's not good public policy because it's essentially paying for jobs
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  • he says, adding the federal government should instead be looking for ways to increase productivity, such as by helping companies invest in labour-saving equipmen
  • Instead of needing help to create jobs, Alberta firms are unique in that they need help finding labour, says Dale Allen, president of the Acheson Business Association and head of SciTech Engineered Chemicals.
  • "And that means it's now becoming difficult to get labour," says Allen, whose company of six employees produces environmentally friendly products such as organic salts for cleaning gas plants. "Everybody is competing for the same people."
  • To help the situation, Allen says the federal government should try to recruit skilled workers from countries like the United States and Great Britain, which are still going through economic difficulty. Bringing in unskilled, temporary foreign workers is a more time-consuming and costly practice for companies, he says.
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