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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Slavery at McDonalds in Canada?



Now we have McSlavery?
  • I always treated my employees better than my employers ever treated me.  I paid my employees very well and they were loyal and worked hard.
  • But there is a reason labor unions were created.  Many employers are bastard Simon Legrees who will work you till you are dead and then sell your corpse to medical schools for extra cash.
  • It may not be slavery, but it looks like Serfdom has returned via McDonalds in Canada importing and exploiting immigrant serf-like labor.


Foreign workers recruited from Belize are accusing McDonald’s Canada of treating them like "slaves," by effectively forcing them to share an expensive apartment – then deducting almost half their take-home pay as rent.
 
“When we arrived at the airport, they said, ‘We already have an apartment for you,’ so at that point we already know we don’t have a choice of where to live,” said Jaime Montero, who came to Edmonton with four others in September to work at McDonald’s.

"We had to live there. We were told this is what we are doing," said another worker who didn't want to be named because he still works for McDonald's reports CBC News.

The Belizians said their dream of making good money in Canada to send to their families quickly shattered. Instead, they pocketed less than $800 per month – which they said was barely enough to live on.

“You work for us now, so we are your owners. It’s like that, you know,” said Montero. “We felt like slaves. They just brought us and threw us on the side.”


Records from three employees show they made $11 an hour working at various McDonald’s locations and the company took $280 from their pay for rent, bi-weekly. Their remaining take-home pay for the same pay periods was roughly $350.

“[The apartment lease] contracts are signed by McDonald’s. All of our bills – utility bills – were billed [to us] under the name of McDonald’s,” said Montero.

“They brought us here and they are this big huge corporation. We felt that we didn’t have a chance to even voice our opinion to them because they had brought us here so they could ship us back whenever they wanted to," said Montero. "It was like modern day slavery."

McDonald’s housed them in a penthouse apartment in downtown Edmonton, even though they worked on the southern outskirts of the city. The corporation signed a six-month lease, which the workers said they were expected to honour as tenants.

“It was too far from work and it was very expensive,” said Montero, who said it took him an hour and a half to get to work by public transit.

“They actually said even if we leave the apartment and go rent another apartment, that McDonald’s would still deduct the rent from our salary,” said the other worker.

Since recent Go Public reports about McDonald’s practices with foreign workers, they said the corporation required all staff to sign an agreement, stipulating they would not speak to the media.

McDonald’s fired Montero in November, after he said managers accused him of complaining online about the company and intimidating other workers, which he and the other Belizians insisted is not true.

“It was very unfair the way they did it...this was such a blow to me,” said Montero. He was also evicted from the apartment. He still has a work permit, but hasn’t been able to find another job.

“I even slept once outside in the cold. Then I found out about homeless shelters and I stayed out at the homeless shelters,” he said.

Be a good Serf.  Work hard and your Master will
give you an extra crust of bread.

“Instead of making money here in Canada my family have had to send money.”

The rental contracts show McDonald’s paid $2,359 per month to rent the suite in the Boardwalk building. The corporation didn’t pay utilities or other extra costs.

Five workers paying $280 bi-weekly works out to $3,030 per month. That suggests McDonald’s charged them $600 more for rent than what it paid. Go Public pointed out that discrepancy to McDonald's, but received no explanation.

The lease expired at the end of February and the Belizians have since found a more affordable apartment.

“It’s not easy and it’s not cheap to be here,” said Montero.

Employment Minister Jason Kenney told Go Public if the workers felt coerced to rent a place they didn’t want to live in, that would warrant investigation.

“No one, including an employer, can force anyone to live in a particular place. People are free to choose where they live,” said Kenney, whose department said it is looking into this case.

“It doesn’t matter whether they are a Canadian citizen, permanent resident or temporary resident, they have full mobility rights. And if any employer is somehow using ways to coerce people to stay in a particular place that would be illegal.”

A Serf bows to his Lord.
Free men own private property. Serfs own nothing and serve as tax slaves for the government, or work the businesses and lands of the well connected Elites for almost no pay.  They are forced to turn over the wealth they produced to their Lords and Masters in return for "protection", shelter and food.


The Road to Serfdom Series


The world is moving toward a modern form of Neo-Serfdom where everyone works for the all-powerful State, businesses controlled by the State on businesses that have bought "protection" from the State.  A world where individual property rights and freedom do not exist.

Freedom is slowly vanishing.  What happens when the major employers are owned by government backed investment groups, or your food comes from government owned farms, or your news is delivered by so-called "private" corporations that are in reality connected and interconnected to governments?

George Orwell had a name for it:  Big Brother.  Benito Mussolini had a name too: Corporatism or Fascism.

Please check out other stories in our Serfdom series.

THE FEDERALIST - "Chinese 'Food Colonies' set up in Canada, the U.S and the Ukraine"

THE FEDERALIST - "Chinese Communists buy U.S. pork giant"

THE FEDERALIST - "A Massive Theft of Cambodian land by Europe"

THE FEDERALIST - "Private property confiscated in Ethiopia & sold to multi-national corporations."

THE FEDERALIST - "Tax Slavery American Style - Feds Profit off Student Debt."

THE FEDERALIST - "Slavery returns to Europe"
.
THE FEDERALIST - "China to buy up the Australian dairy industry."

THE FEDERALIST - "China Buys Up the United States."

THE FEDERALIST - "750,000 Chinese have Colonized Africa"

THE FEDERALIST - "Korea secretly buys Australia."

THE FEDERALIST - "Australia and Africa become Arab Food Colonies."

THE FEDERALIST - "China buys Australia (For Cheap Too)"

THE FEDERALIST - "The Chinese conquest of Africa"

THE FEDERALIST - "China buys New Zealand - The Road to Serfdom, Part XVII"

THE FEDERALIST - "Arab Food Colonies in Black Africa."

THE FEDERALIST - "Chinese colonization of New Zealand blocked."

THE FEDERALIST - "Chinese "Slavery" in Africa - The Road to Serfdom, Part XIV."

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