Canadian dream eludes immigrant
He took a job cleaning floors after he couldn't find work in his
field. Now he's on strike
ANTHONY REINHART
areinhart@globeandm
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March 22, 2008
With his university degree and 23 years of relevant experience, Andy
Chiu could very well qualify to teach business operations management
at Seneca College in Markham, a job that pays $92,817 a year.
Instead, he makes less than a quarter of that, cleaning the college's
floors for $9.90 an hour on the overnight shift.
At least he did until March 10, when he and 19 co-workers, in a fight
for their first contract, went on strike against Aramark, a huge U.S.
multinational that provides cleaning services at the campus.
Mr. Chiu, a married, 50-year-old father of one who arrived from Hong
Kong in 2005, took the floor-cleaning job for a reason familiar to
thousands of immigrants in the Toronto area. More suitable employers
wouldn't acknowledge his long career as a purchasing manager for a
rainwear manufacturer, because it wasn't "Canadian experience."
As he endures the foul weather, boredom and lack of pay that come with
strikes, Mr. Chiu faces an added indignity: vehicles racing through
the picket line, many of them driven by young students who will earn
lesser credentials but higher salaries than his.
"The majority of the kids are patient and listen to us," he said,
taking a brief respite this week in a small trailer equipped with a
pair of portable heaters. "But some of the kids have a really bad
attitude. They're just really selfish and they don't care about your
safety."
Mr. Chiu learned this the hard way, five days into the walkout. He and
the other pickets stopped a black pickup truck, as is their legal
right, as it left the campus.
As Mr. Chiu rounded the front of the vehicle, intending to talk to the
driver, "he got impatient and he sped up. When the car moved, I lost
my balance and hit the hood." As the truck passed him, its side mirror
struck Mr. Chiu's arm, leaving a bruise. The driver stopped about 50
metres down the road to check his vehicle for damage, then sped off.
"It wasn't the first time," Mr. Chiu said, adding there had been five
such incidents as of Wednesday, none resulting in major injuries. In
one case, on March 13, York Regional Police charged a 21-year-old man
with dangerous driving.
Students' impatience with the strike was apparent one late morning
this week, when a young driver sped through an opening in the picket
line, revving the car's engine loudly.
Outside the campus's main building, Mark Sinus, a 19-year-old
marketing and e-business student, said he understands the strikers'
plight, but is tired of being held up as he hurries to arrive in class
on time.
"They're just always in the way," said Mr. Sinus, who added he's had a
few "run-ins" with the pickets. "It's not our fault they're not
getting [decent] wages. We're paying for this, you know what I mean?"
To Mr. Chiu, however, the workers are paying as well, to an extent
that some inconvenienced students do not appreciate.
In a brief e-mail interview this week, Karen Cutler, a spokeswoman for
Philadelphia-
it has made a fair and comprehensive offer" to the Seneca workers,
though she did not give details.
Mr. Chiu's union, Unite Here, says Aramark's offer of a 1.25-per-cent
wage increase amounts to less than 10 cents an hour for most workers.
They are asking for an hourly wage of about $12.50, to bring them in
line with employees in similar jobs at other Seneca campuses.
Aramark, a publicly traded company which employs 250,000 people in 19
countries, had sales of $12.4-billion (U.S.) last year. Its annual net
profit has averaged $229-million (U.S.) over the past five years.
After two years of odd jobs and fruitless searching for work that fit
his qualifications, Mr. Chiu answered a newspaper ad and joined
Aramark last summer. While the wages were low and there was no
pension, he was attracted by the promise of employee benefits, which
he said were supposed to kick in after his three-month probation
period ended last fall, but that he was still awaiting when the strike
began.
That, combined with similar stories from his co-workers - many of them
recent immigrants with a hazy knowledge of their rights - prompted Mr.
Chiu to join the union bargaining committee.
It's not the future he envisioned in the late 1980s, when he studied
psychology and economics at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan,
and returned to Hong Kong with a bachelor's degree.
Mr. Chiu said he does not regret leaving a good job behind to give his
daughter, 17, a shot at a better life in Canada. He does, however,
want others to know there are countless people like him, qualified for
better positions but scraping by on low pay, just to survive.
"In Canada in the past three or four years, the economy's been good;
their living standard is rising," he said. "How come we're staying
like we were 10 years ago, at that level?"
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