The CEO of Surrey's Community Savings Credit Union is weighing in on what he calls an "alarming" trend of banks like RBC outsourcing Canadian jobs to countries like India, and a group B.C. union pension funds is threatening to pull $1 billion from an RBC investment service.
"As a credit union that is deeply committed to the working community, I am alarmed at the trend of reducing costs by outsourcing to offshore locations when there are Canadian jobs at stake," said Community Savings CEO Doug Eveneshen in a press release.
The Community Savings Credit Union, which is fully unionized, was the first to sign a living wage agreement – the income needed by a family to meet basic living needs.
The pension fund group has sent a letter to RBC warning it plans to withdraw $1 billion worth of pension funds invested in RBC Financial Services if it doesn't reverse its plans to move Canadian jobs offshore.
BC Insulators Union business manager Lee Loftus said the group of pension plans feels it would be hypocritical for its retirement funds to continue to be invested by a company that is "undermining the Canadian economy and hurting Canadian workers."
"If RBC doesn't get that Canadians are furious about this and change course, then we will be forced to relocate over $1 billion in investments with another firm that wants to build our economy in Canada and keep jobs here," Loftus said
CBC broke the story Sunday about RBC adding insult to injury by forcing information technology workers who are to be laid off to first train the foreign workers who will ultimately take their jobs. It was later reported that other banks have also been outsourcing jobs to places like India.
The controversy has prompted the federal government to launch a review to see if RBC is breaching the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which is intended to allow foreign workers to be brought into Canada to fill labour gaps, not replace Canadian workers.
