Enduring Work

If you believed most of what’s said about the Canadian Temporary Foreign Worker program, you might naturally assume that there is a trade-off between workers’ poor experiences with the program and employers’ significant benefits. In fact, neither is quite true: the experiences of workers are, in reality, far worse than is commonly acknowledged, while employers are not reaping as much benefit as the public might suppose. In Enduring Work Catherine Connelly draws on over one hundred interviews with people connected to different aspects of this program, analyzing their experiences from the perspective of organizational behaviour and human resources management. She compares the lived reality of agricultural workers, in-home caregivers, and low- and high-wage workers, showing how and why each group is vulnerable to mistreatment, albeit in different ways. She further explores how employment agencies and immigration consultants contribute to program abuses. Critically, Enduring Work provides the perspectives of employers, distinguishing between the reluctant users of the program who follow the rules and the reckless users who do not. Groundbreaking in its analysis of an issue very much in the news, Enduring Work unpacks the harms within Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program and offers nuanced strategies to improve it.

Comparing the lived reality of agricultural workers, in-home caregivers, and low- and high-wage workers, and integrating the perspectives of employers both reluctant and reckless, Catherine Connelly unpacks the harms within Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program and offers nuanced strategies to improve it.

Catherine E. Connelly is professor of organizational behaviour in the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University.