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Robert Wornanu, a 24-year-old Ghanaian permanent resident.

What seemed like a minor error, miscalculating the weight of bread baked at a Regina bakery in a day, left Robert Wornanu suspended from work for five days.

The 24-year-old Ghanaian, who became a permanent resident in 2011 through his dad’s sponsorship, began working at the bakery in 2012.

During the suspension in 2013, the bakery’s manager “scheduled me to work on a day that wasn’t in my normal schedule, so I didn’t show up to work on that Sunday,” said Wornanu. “He didn’t leave me a voicemail or nothing.”

When I came back from that suspension, he suspended me for another five days because I wasn’t there.”

Wornanu, who is pursuing his commercial pilot’s license, says this is one example of situations permanent residents and Temporary Foreign Workers face on a regular basis.

Before quitting his job at the bakery in 2014, he says the manager would threaten employees by telling them those who make mistakes would face consequences. But when the employees were Caucasian, none were given, he said.

In other cases, he says when co-workers left materials where he was working, the manager would tell him, “’If you wanna keep working over here, you better go pick that up and put it somewhere else.’”

Ben Hobbs, who is also Ghanaian and worked at the bakery from 2012 to 2014, says he experienced and witnessed physical abuse there.

One time, a Filipino worker made a mistake and the manager called him a “fucking idiot” and threw bread at him, recalled Hobbs. Another time, he says he was punched by a co-worker for re-tallying the boxes of bread on pallets the man had previously counted.

Kirk Westgard, executive-director at the Ministry of the Economy’s Immigrant Services, says employees—whether permanent residents or Temporary Foreign Workers—can report mistreatment in the workplace through the variety of methods available to prevent it from happening. He says this can be contacting Labour Standards or contacting the ministry’s Program Integrity and Legislation Unit.

The unit enables permanent residents and Temporary Foreign Workers to file anonymous complaints over the phone, through emails, or one-on-one with an immigration officer.

Westgard added these workers “shouldn’t be scared,” because they have the “same rights as all other Canadians.”

A Temporary Foreign Worker contacted for this story says the system, which relies on complaints from newcomers, doesn’t educate them about the resources available to help them, and the rights they have.

Deb Young, media relations manager at the Ministry of Economy, says through the Saskatchewan Immigrant Nominee Program, permanent residents are told about the integrity unit, and how it can help resolve mistreatment in the workplace. They can also learn about the integrity unit through the ministry’s website and various advocates in the community, she added.

She says the integrity unit continues to receive complaints from newcomers, but wouldn’t disclose how many have been filed or investigated into since its inauguration in 2008.

While the integrity unit welcomes complaints from Temporary Foreign Workers, since they are under federal jurisdiction, the provincial government makes no effort to educate these people about it, said Young. This leaves Temporary Foreign Workers with one known resource: Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s (CIC) Ottawa phone number on the back of their work permit.

One Temporary Foreign Worker working at a fast-food chain in Saskatoon since 2013 says this method doesn’t work. She says she called CIC’s helpline five times in 2014 for mistreatment she is facing, every time going directly to voicemail.

Placing a call to an immigration officer at the integrity unit is no different.

Wornanu says speaking up in the work place isn’t always viable, either.

“When you start talking about it [mistreatment], everyone backs up. When they back up, you feel like, now everyone’s gonna see you as the odd person. Imagine going back to work, and when you went back to work, and did something like this, and put their job at risk,” he said.

“Imagine every Friday is good, and when you come back Monday, there’s a list of issues against you, and any time you speak out to defend yourself, you see [your boss] raging.”