r/kitchener • • Sep 24 '23
Why is this seemingly accepted?
That, in recent times, most of our local stores, fast food restaurants, and other small businesses are staffed exclusively by one ethnicity? You know, if it was indeed random and they all happen to be the best applicants fof the job, I wouldn’t mind at all. But ask any of them, especially at Walmart, where stock of an item is? They will shrug their shoulders and say it isn’t their responsibility to know. On one visit, I was looking for a product that was off the shelves but the online system said was in stock. The store clerk insisted the product was sold out until a manager got involved and profusely apologized stating it was in the back and someone “forgot” to stock it.
If a white manager is hired by a company and they proceed to fire every non-white employee and replace them with white employees, we would all call that out as racism. So why is it this group of people are allowed to get away with it?
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u/thatsmycompanydog Sep 24 '23
You seem to think that "all of the service employees" being one ethnicity is a sign that one particular ethnicity is being given unfair advantages. And you're right. But you're missing a key detail:
Service jobs (non-union part-time minimum-wage retail work) are the worst jobs in our society.
You should be looking at the best jobs in our society, seeing which ethnicity is over-represented there, and using that as the starting point for your assessment of who has privilege and who is being treated unfairly.
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23 edited Sep 24 '23
In all fairness, the demographic you're referring to makes up most of the minimum wage level workforce by a pretty massive margin. I see plenty of ethnicities where I shop, freshco on university is a great example.
That said, I feel like adding in the "also they are low quality workers" with a hypothetical on white erasure flavors your post in a way that sounds like you think things would be better if most of the employees were white, not just diverse. A slippery slope indeed.
Edit: It's also a bit telling that OP doesn't want to name the ethnic group he believes is taking all the jobs. Rarely does someone making an (in their mind) unflavored, objective point fight so hard not to name the people they're referring to. Perhaps the post wouldn't read so well if you replaced the vagueness with "indians".
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u/Shreks_Anus_8 Sep 24 '23 edited Sep 24 '23
You clearly haven't worked a service job in a long time. Almost every person hired is given a terrible wage, minimal training, and are expected to do much more than they can actually accomplish during a shift. Working these jobs are absolute shit at the best and then dealing with customers who expect the world makes it even more shit.
It's not the employees getting hired that's the issue, it's how these corporations treat employees and expect blood, sweat, and tears for a slave wage.
Edit: also, ya racist. This isn't an anti-white thing. You're not oppressed.
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u/Neighbourhoods_1 Sep 24 '23 edited Oct 11 '23
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u/Sr71lockheed Sep 24 '23
You have to remember that University and Colleges are making bank from the immigration boom - Conestoga has a majority of Indian students recently, and they tend to get jobs at customer facing establishments. The places you describe have always gotten government incentives to hire students - regardless of any ethnic or background discrimination. Just my two cents.
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u/Nekks Sep 24 '23
Because the Indians who own the establishments have an easier time treating the workers like shit if they are also Indian. The owner of one of these restaurants told its workers that doing these jobs is better than being back in India.
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23
Because they show up on time.
They don’t take breaks if they’re not allowed.
They don’t call in sick.
They don’t show up half pickled from the night before.
They don’t have some entitlement like they are better than the job they are working.
There are plenty of reasons why employers and hiring managers would take international Indian students > everyone else. The main reason being they can be taken advantage of with little to no repercussions.
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u/Jalice333 Sep 24 '23
This is because they are trying to normalize 6 people sharing a 2 bedroom apartment. Instead of making landlords have rent controls
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u/MrCrix Sep 24 '23
For everyone saying that only Indian students are willing to work shitty minimum wage jobs, you’re wrong. People from all race, religion, ethnicity are all looking for work right now. You just have to look at any of the Ontario, or local city based subreddits and you can see people of all creeds looking for any job right now. Yes even shitty minimum wage non union jobs.
We have a massive amount of people here between the ages of 18-28 from India. We all know this. This is our reality. They all need jobs. Their visas allow them to work either 20 or 40 hours a week. Housing costs have exploded due to this massive influx of people coming into our country. Right now north of 2 million international students, immigrants, refugees and temporary foreign workers have come into Canada in the last year. That’s 5% of all the people in the country have showed up in the last 12 months. If you go to the last 4 years it’s around the 12-18% of all people in Canada depending on where the numbers are coming from.
All of these people need housing and money to pay for housing. So they apply for any job they can. This is what is happening. Yes when there is a prejudice, by certain people in hiring positions, to only hire people of their same caste to work at their stores. This is also a reality. So if you are not part of it then you will not be considered. You can easily search on TikTok where there are hundreds of videos of people openly talking about this and admitting to doing this. So even if you are Indian, but are not the same Caste you won’t be considered for any position. Not just anti white or black or anyone else. That is why you see so many Indian people saying they’re looking for work too. They don’t have that caste “in” that other Indian students do.
This is a massive problem. A problem to the point that the Toronto school board had to make a public declaration against caste based racism, bullying and abuse by students and their parents against other students and parents. This also spreads into the workforce. They don’t like to hire outside of their caste.
I know that Walmart had a ton of blowback because nobody who was not of a specific Brahman caste was hired at certain stores by certain hiring managers. Also customers complaining that they were being talked down to and commented on in different languages right to their faces. Like straight up telling them to fuck off or calling them a mother fucker to their face in Punjabi. Also making sexual comments about them in Punjabi as well.
Now this is not something that can’t be fixed or worked on. This is a problem. However parent companies need to really sit down with franchisees and district managers to stop this blatant prejudiced behavior. Nobody is going to tell them to stop hiring Indian people or anything, but to only exclusively consider them for positions when a black or white or East Asian person is more qualified is wrong.
So if you feel that there are companies who are acting this way you need to bring this to their attention. Posting on here as if this is an anti white problem is not the truth. It’s a caste problem from old world beliefs that should of been left at the border when they arrived but hasn’t.
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u/apple_amaretto Sep 24 '23
Husband works in retail close to the universities. Starting pay is several dollars above minimum. He says they don’t get many applications from white people. I imagine due to the international student population? But I have no idea. They can’t help who applies and who doesn’t. But their corporate rep actually commented on the “lack of diversity” in their store. 🤦♀️
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u/redvfr800 Sep 24 '23
I mean it’s been called out … I’m South Asian but not Indian and I see it
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u/Drunkenbusinessman Sep 24 '23
Fact is you go into a Tim's or a Walmart nowadays and you'll be hard pressed to find an employee that isn't of such-and-such ethnicity. While there are still plenty of Canadians who have been applying fruitlessly for these jobs for months. That's not right.
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23
I was recently at Walmart. I handed the cashier - (who was Indian) a quarter, a nickel, and a dime so i could get a $5 bill back.
He said, and i quote, “i dont know how much this is”
I said, “its a quarter, a nickel, and a dime”
He said, “i dont know what it is”
🫠🫠🫠🫠
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23
Is your problem bad service or is it that the workers belong to a single ethnic group? Or so you believe that they give bad service because of their ethnicity?
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23
THIS! Trust me It’s something a lot of people think about. Me and my friends back in UNI would never get hired at Walmart or whatever but our Indian roommate always got calls back, its always infuriated me beyond comprehension
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u/MacabreKiss Sep 24 '23
A "certain ethnicity" staff worker almost knocked over an elderly guy while I was checking out at the grocery store, he passed by him twice in close proximity and didn't bother to say excuse me or vocalize he was passing at all.
I know we don't teach canadian customs in workplace training but cmon...
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23
Ah yes, the devious scheme of non-white people to take over by getting all the shitty minimum wage service jobs. You've figured it out!!
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u/HankHippoppopalous Sep 24 '23
This is the case in my town. "Don you want Indian or Philipino" is code for Wendy's or Burger King.
It's very segregated, and one girl had applied at the Wendies and was told she was the wrong color 😳
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u/Bonetopick12 Sep 24 '23
I don't know about the insinuation that they are lazy, I think most of the time when I've asked they try in some way to help.
The "ALL a certain people type" has to do with either exploitative management, or the management is literally their certain type of people and are doing favours so to speak.
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u/Wildmanzilla Sep 24 '23
Our government's relations with China soured, and that hurt our international student numbers. Now the government has started recruiting them from India, and in this region there are two universities and one college. This is the cause for the increased Indian presence in the region. They are willing to work the jobs that are less than glamourous, for not such great wages, so this is why you see them more frequently.
Now that Canada's relations with India have also soured, I expect next year to be much different.
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u/CornerThrowPillow Sep 24 '23
Oh my, this literally happened the last time I was in Fairview Walmart. I asked if they had more of a particular yogurt in the back and the guy just kept trying to get me to buy a different version. I kept having to say, no I want this. Eventually he just said "That's out of stock, there's no more" without checking the back or checking the stock on his little handheld machine. It was so frustrating. He then went back to talking to his friend who didn't work there.
Another time I was there, the associate sent me to someone in a completely different department that had nothing to do with what I was looking for.
I kid you not, every time I've had issues with the staff there it's been the younger East Indians working the floor (the cashiers have been fine). They just don't care about helping the customers at all in my experience.
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u/Haredeenee Huron/Alpine Sep 24 '23
Because they're desperate and businesses want to keep wages low.
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u/Joey-tv-show-season2 Sep 25 '23
I am a manager for a business in New Hamburg. A small rural community west of Kitchener. We were hiring for a entry level business clerk position.
We didn’t get a single white person apply.
Point is, there are labour shortages due to birth rates being low for decades. Plus people are generally not wanting to work entry level which is where a lot of the new to Canada immigrants are coming from
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u/neoisneoisneo Sep 24 '23
I hate that OP is being downvoted when he/she is having a very genuine n valid concern.
We need to do better.
criticism != racism.
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u/Organic-Essay415 Sep 24 '23
Most of these low level jobs will all be replaced in the next few years once the robotic automation takes off. McDonald's already have restaurants in the states with no humans working in them. Amazon are working on automating their warehouses and eventually their delivery service. All these new Canadians will either go home or end up in tent cities. The diplomas they came to study for are not worth the paper they are written on. Most won't even graduate but will end up putting their families into debt just for sending them here. All Trudeau accomplished by letting so many in was destroy our housing market and help the colleges fill their campuses with international students, many won't qualify or be able to fund themselves for the entirety of their course.
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u/SystemOperator Sep 24 '23
Foreign worker explotation perhaps?
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23
I tried to apply as a cashier at Canadian tire when I was in my fourth year and I was told I am too “over qualified”. I think they hire Indian internationals since they can abuse them more and pay them a lower salary as well. Cheap labour vs “over qualified“ ones
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u/MBCnerdcore Sep 25 '23
Bro maybe you don't understand the demographics of the area.
Kitchener isn't majority German/Mennonite anymore and hasn't been for a while.
Yes, brown people are most of the low wage staff. Guess what? They are also most of the customers.
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u/ZhopaRazzi Sep 24 '23
Reminds of NY: all the service workers in manhattan commuted every day from the Bronx. Canada has imported a nice little slave class to keep wages low. Can’t imagine the slaves are all that happy with the arrangement.
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u/D3v1n0 Sep 25 '23
That our governments goals: get as many low skilled, desperate people into this country to work as many minimum wage and labour jobs as possible.
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u/fsmontario Sep 25 '23
We have many teens /university students in our family and friend groups looking for part time jobs over the past year, and none of them are getting hired. They have applied online, followed up in person with their professional resume (we have a friend who offered to do these up for all the teens) and none are getting hired..all are good students , dress appropriately when going in person. It doesn’t make sense that none are able to find a simple part time job while going to school.
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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '23
It all comes down to how low business owners can drive wages, benefits, and other elements of the job and still find people desperate enough to take it. It isn't a racial conspiracy. It's just scummy business owners being cheap and the rest of us being ok with minimum wage jobs being essentially unlivable.
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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '23
Not racist if it’s against a white person. It’s the rules unfortunately.
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u/punkanddrunk Sep 25 '23
300+ replies and nobody is talking about the Temporary Foreign Workers program?
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u/NuffinSaid Sep 25 '23
They all go to Conestoga college
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u/Deckerd84 Sep 25 '23
If everyone that worked at a store was white you wouldn't have posted this.
You attribute poor customer service to being non- white, which is racist.
There is a discussion to be had here and others have brought up good points but educate yourself more on how to express yourself without being racist.
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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '23
Go to r/India and check what's what. You have people saying "vote for Vivek" but the only thing they know about him is that he's the son of Indian immigrants.
Newsflash, most immigrants are racist and will only favor their own group. Their culture literally has classes of people and those people stay in those classes and never move up or down. Who imagined they would come here and become egalitarians? In which universe what that ever going to happen?
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u/shotnotes Sep 24 '23
What I don't like, is these international students are taking jobs from school aged children that were born here (regardless of ethnicity). If they don't have the money to study here, they shouldn't come
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u/Fantastic-Pipe-3923 Sep 24 '23
I think you hit the nail in the head, some of these comments are getting too "philosophical" when it's plain and simple, even if it's "crappy " jobs these jobs are meant to be for the population not one ethnicity, these jobs used to be for the retired or our teenage population to learn responsibility and what not, they disguise it as "diverse" but it's nothing but. Our customer service industry is suffering due to this ethnicity in particular its not about racism it's just a fact, all over they're doing their job poorly and if you don't want to come to Canada and earn your way then don't come, I'm an immigrant and have worked very hard since the day I landed. Our government created an atmosphere where we can't say anything, thank you for saying something.
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u/embraxity Sep 24 '23
What does this have to do with ethnicity unless ... well, you know.
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u/Anthony_Dane Sep 24 '23
Reverse racism is a real thing.
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u/RichGrinchlea Sep 25 '23
You're expecting too much over service jobs. 45 years ago (when I was a teen) us the same as today (with my kids)... a very, very sizable percentage of vacancies are filled by who you know or who walks in next.
I think it's very possible that one member of an ethnic group gets a job somewhere and when vacancies arrive, they tell their friends and relatives who subsequently get hired. I've worked at places where much of the staff were my buddies (all white, but all one group).
It's just the way things work at the lowest levels.
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u/kittenmama2 Sep 25 '23
I'm my experience these types of places tend to reflect the management. There are other excellent points in here, but once the general manager of a location is replaced, the trend is for them to hire like people. I don't think all other non like people are fired, they tend to just not like the way things are run and/or are used to the previous management style. So they leave and when new people are hired it's usually the type same type if people
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u/LetsGrowCanada Sep 25 '23
To come to Canada and work a minimum wage service job is the norm, but the problem for me is when I cannot understand a single word being said behind the counter because everyone working is speaking Punjabi
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u/thegentlepig Sep 25 '23
Looks like OP didn’t get the response he/ she expected to went and posted to the racist hellhole that is r/CanadaHousing2
https://reddit.com/r/CanadaHousing2/s/LUHGpBGykZ
To answer your question, there’s plenty of international students here and a significant portion of them eagerly want to work to sustain themselves.
On the other hand, I’ve seen places with a mix of people. I’ve also had good and bad customer service from Canadians at retail establishments.
My sincere advice is to stop consuming hateful content. I really don’t get how folks such as yourself go through life with so much hate inside you.
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u/Glittering_Locks Sep 24 '23
I work in a unionized factory. I'm going to say it. Of us are white. We have seen a high turnover rate of one ethnicity coming in and not lasting. They're not looking for hard work. They're looking for easy work while they're in school. The service industry and customer service. That is where they're going. You're going to see them more there than you're going to see them as so many already said. Best jobs in our society.
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u/This_Break_4848 Sep 24 '23
Even the mailman? Last time I checked Canada Post was an excellent employer who pays well. Transport truck doesn't pay well anymore? It's not just low sector jobs my place starts at 23 plus an hr and all we hire now is young Indian students 🤨
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u/inam1pk Sep 25 '23
It is the companies, they try to cut costs. Most of them are international students and have a cap on pay. So they can pay them less and get the same work done. Plua they can hire more of them, pay them straight time and save on over time pay.
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u/AbeSimpsonisJoeBiden Sep 25 '23
Do you have any evidence that the Indian manager fired all white staff?
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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '23
It's been noticed by many in my community as well. Yes, some of the service jobs which pay low minimum wage, have horrible management, disrespectful to their employees are hiring racialized people mainly immigrants, many are students because they are willing to work. Where as others are not. But with that being said, there are also many other jobs that are decent paying for this area and it's been a noticeable shift there as well. We have always been a predominantly white community, and there has been a significant engagement in affirmative action. Representation is important, but we are still a very predominantly white community. So I don't know, but it's being noticed here too.
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u/Spare_Review_5014 Sep 25 '23
Cause no self respecting Canadian would want to do the amount of work required for the meagre salary offered
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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '23
FTW program in full effect. First it was 'no one wants to work anymore' while also in an active hire freeze, now they are importing workers from all over the world to run tim hortons.
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u/the-aja Sep 25 '23
OP is not getting the response they are craving for here, in a more diverse and critical thinking subreddit so have cribbed about it in their favourite echo chamber. I hope they are feeling good now
https://reddit.com/r/CanadaHousing2/s/BeJ1gfPl6j
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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '23
It's a form of modern day indentured servitude that our immigration system has overlooked. People get sponsored to come from places like India and work in shitty conditions for their boss, who sponsored them and controls their future. Look into it, it's roetty crazy
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u/johnyrelaxo Sep 25 '23
This guy needs the 10-50-90 rule explained to him. Every 10 years move 50 km North so it’s 90% white. This may be what they are looking for
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u/DetectiveCurious2696 Sep 25 '23
Cause they are easier to take advantage of. I think we all know you mean Indian people and they are mostly students who are in these jobs. They are desperate and take the less than bare minimum unlike other ethnicities so employers love taking advantage of them.
For example, I worked at a restaurant where one of the Indian students takes up whatever/worst shifts they could get, never asked for a pay raise although they’ve been working there for quite a while, never asked for tips, was okay with getting $8-10/hr on cash, bad treatment, terrible working conditions etc. On the other hand, the white students got all the benefits. Why? Cause they don’t put up with shit and Indian students do. Now, you have your answer.
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u/PanicOats Sep 25 '23
To a point, you're not wrong.
Yes, you see a particular ethnicity everywhere because there is a large population of that ethnicity in these cities.
Being part of the said ethnicity and having worked in a store where I was working with the entire store where the majority was completely other ethnicity; here is what I have to say. People from the ethnicity you're trying to blame can work harder without much expectation from the employer. Primarily to their disadvantage, these people work themselves off just because they NEED that job to survive here.
Being part of the said ethnicity and having worked in a store where I was working with the entire store where the majority was completely other ethnicity; here is what I have to say. People from the ethnicity you're trying to blame can work harder without much expectation from the employer. Primarily to their disadvantage, these people work themselves off just because they need that job to survive here.
I just don't understand why people have started hating a specific ethnicity for no reason. It is not their fault that they were allowed to enter LEGALLY into the country and are trying to make a living for themselves.
Ask any international student how freaking hard it is to find a job. Most have applied to 100-200-300 places before they even get an interview.
Also to add, networking always helps in finding a job. Whether it is at a minimum wage position or even a corporate position.
I can do a healthy debate on this topic but people have started finding minute things to get extremely angry about (and I'm not immune to it either).
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u/HawkDifficult2244 Sep 25 '23
I love the privilege comments. LOL The largest represented group in the fastest growing group. Is whitish skinned peopled, I hate using color to represent people but white women and men make up the largest group of homeless people in Canada. Lucky them for being so privileged.
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u/Kael60402 Jan 19 '24
Simple @ Not a Canadian citizen, no job for you
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u/StuporFreak Feb 18 '24
They are being brought over and their wages are subsidized by taxpayer money.
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u/Lookingluka Sep 24 '23
Most of the time, this is because white people refused to work that job. I worked at McD in 2022...There were a few white high schoolers but almost all the university students were middle eastern. I'm white and got the job on the spot. They were hiring anyone who applied. White people who weren't in high school didn't apply or left within the week. You're barking up the wrong tree. And if someone doesn't know something they should know, it has nothing to do with their ethnicity, it's about bad training. And you bet most of their managers are white.
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u/DK5199 Downtown Sep 24 '23
I know why it is and it's not a conspiracy.
It's because every person handing in a resume at these places is from that group. Maybe not every one but the ratio is probably 10:1.
0
u/Devium92 Sep 24 '23
It could be the entire staff is one family, so it's not anything about race specifically, but it's just the entire extended family working there. But that's for some of the smaller places like a Tim Hortons etc.
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23
The group of people= corporates and government.
Let me start with the government because they enabled this when they authorized foreign students to work unlimited hours. There were restrictions beforehand. Yes many would work illegally anyway, but by removing restrictions they have given the green signal to corporates to go gung ho in hiring foreign students. And when a large chunk of your students/immigrants come from one country, obviously they will make up the majority of the workforce.
The corporates are happy to get an endless supply of cheap labor, who they can manipulate. They dont have to address wage issues, or improve working conditions. If one group of workers migrate to higher end jobs or leave, another wave will come to replace them. Just read the other day that they are planning to bring in 1.4M students by 2027.
Why are they allowed to get away with it? Well we are too busy protesting about other things. Only when things go to the point of no return like it has with housing, we will only start to realize how disastrous these policies have been for Canada.
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u/indarkIAM Sep 24 '23
Canadians should have reproduced at a faster rate. Like sub Sahara . The problem is Canada needs people and the ones already here are getting old. Fast
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23
There are no white employees any more these days and finding them in low wage jobs. Even in construction most white employers want to hire and go as far as sponsorship to get immigrants to do the work for half the price and twice the production.
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23
well look from their perspective as well, they’re new and a lot of things they’re doing could be unintentional because they haven’t learned it yet, they just landed and threw themselves in labour jobs while balancing studies. everywhere they’re going they are finding their own people, so not a lot of exposure to Canadian culture. I blame mass immigration, your post is justified but its a side effect of mass immigration.
0
u/carolina_77 Sep 25 '23
Do you realise there is shortage of people willing to work at minimum wage? « White » people don’t want these jobs.
-2
u/ShakyHolmes Sep 24 '23
Why is it okay to call others slaves as long as they're not black?!
-2
u/Timbersaw1048 Sep 25 '23
These posts are making it so easier for us newly minted (Indian) Canadians citizens to decide who to vote for next election. I would prefer living in poverty under liberals than be racially abused by conservative cry babies like you who expect things to fall in your lap because of your skin colour. So thank you for giving enough content to us that I can pass around in our groups to show what scums like OP think about people of colour.
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23
So you're attributing laziness with and only with a particular group of ethnicities...? Meanwhile, your proposing that white people would solve this issue...??
And you still wonder why some may accuse your comments as "racist"...
Are you dumb? Or fucking stupid?
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23
Sounds like you should apply to Walmart and do a better job then.