This is Durabuilt Windows & Doors Inc. of Edmonton, Alberta. A company that practises slavery in Canada and somehow gets away with this.
Let’s have look at their practises as far as the treatment of its employees is concerned.
The company is owned by two individuals; father and son. Both uneducated and power hungry. Especially the son, who perhaps due to his short posture (Napoleon Complex) hates everyone who is taller and smarter than him. Since their background is from India, they run the company not the Canadian but the Indian way. They pay very little and hire people that they can disrespect and easily control through the employees’ dependency on them.
If an employee does not smile or clap when the boss wants him to do it, he or she is blacklisted and eventually fired. The father and son have two puppies, whose lives depend very much on the owners’ ingratitude. Their lives and lives of their families’ are totally controlled by the owners. These are: the general and operations managers. While the owners are cashing big, the two puppies are treated with the scraps from the owners’ table but having nowhere else to go, (due to lack of any education or other experiences) they have to love it and to pretend that they are happy campers. At one of the meetings the short one with Napoleon Complex has publicly humiliated the general manager saying that he should shave his legs and wear a skirt. The later did not even respond just pretending that nothing happened. The operations manager if told by one of the owners to roll over, he would without hesitation. He would rather crap into the diaper than go to the restroom without the owners’ permission. Both are so “loyal” to the owners that no matter what, if the owners are right or wrong, they would mistreat the employees every time the owners want them to. On the other hand, and to feel important in the eyes of other employees, these two puppies often like to say: “we, the owners”. They want to belong to the highest class within the company not realising that the employees are mocking them and subjecting to jokes.
Especially women are being disrespected and mistreated within this company. The culture of having a woman as an employee is not letting her advance professionally. Among twenty or so “managers” (they love to call themselves manager) there is no one female. A lady working at Durabuilt is often subjected to sexual remarks and advances, which although known to the owners, however tolerated. Many female employees are leaving the company in tears. There is one individual within the company, whose friends are the general manager and the company’s lawyer. Although endless complaints against him from female employees about his sexual remarks, advances and disrespect, he remains untouched and even advances in his “managerial” career only because his misdeeds are being downplayed and covered up be the previous two.
During a span of one year or so the owner’s son (the short one) has employed quite a few of his “assistants”. Almost all of them have left after few weeks of employment in tears only because they did not want to be his personal slaves and doing things like taking his and his family’s clothes to dry cleaners or to shop for his ties and shoes.
As far as the old man (the father) is concerned he is not better than his son in the area of disrespecting his employees. He is an old, arrogant bully. He runs the accounting department and that department has witnessed the greatest revolving door. The old man likes to employ mostly females for the accounting department because he can practise disrespect, sexual remarks and disrespecting women any other way. If one stands up to this, she is gone within hours. He feels untouchable because the company’s lawyer is his boy, who lacks self-respect and behaves like the owners’ dog sometimes waiting for hours in front of the owner’s door for an audience. Nevertheless, rightfully or not, he also gets some leftovers from the owner’s table such us company’s benefits for him and his family as they were company’s employees. The lawyer’s main income is from defending Durabuilt’s legal troubles of which there are many, not from his strip mall office legal practise. Therefore he also rolls over.
The atmosphere and the environment at Durabuilt as a working place are very poisonous. There is a constant fear of losing jobs by the employees and any small show of independence triggers the owners’ wrath against particular employee. Whoever dares to question this status quo has to leave one way or another. Rightfully or not, ethically or not, legally or not all have to blindly follow the will imposed on them no matter what. The employees’ turnover continues and is tremendous.
However, there are few at Durabuilt that due to their inabilities to obtain any other jobs and lack of self-respect are blindly “loyal” and strictly follow the will of the owners’.
A good example are the two earlier mentioned “musketeers”; the general and operations managers (who are brothers in law). For their blind loyalty to the owners, the general and operations managers are getting a bit more than leftovers from the owners’ table. They are allowed and covered up with their illegal activities in order to make some additional money on the side.
Their scam looks as follows:
Since Durabuilt is owned by Canadians of East Indian background, it is known in India as a potential employer, which may also be the way for an Immigration to Canada. Many have used this way to immigrate to Canada thanks to the “entrepreneurs’” such as Durabuilt’s general and operations managers.
They are not doing this because they are such nice guys. They do it for profit. They have lined up in Edmonton several East Indian Canadians, who act as so called Immigration Consultants. The immigration consultants are sourcing for mostly East Indian people but others too, (whoever wants to pay) overseas and whoever wants to immigrate to Canada. It is not difficult to guess that their search is not challenging at all. Many take the bait and opportunity.
As soon as the immigration consultants find someone suitable and willing to pay under the table (which is illegal according to the Canadian Immigration Laws), they forward the name and the contact info to the Durabuilt’s general and operations managers. These two in turn forward this information to Durabuilt’s HR department ordering it to start the process of bringing that person to Canada, which should be done with conjunction with the specially selected immigration consultants.
The immigration consultants have already charged the person their “fees” and are designing the way for how to bring this person to Canada. Since Canadian Immigration Law requires any employer willing to sponsor a person from overseas to come to Canada and to work for the employer to prove that there is a shortage of potential employees within Canada and that the employer could not find such a person locally, the immigration consultants come into play. For those purposes they create fake positions within the company, put up fake advertisements on the websites that no one reads and wait. The HR department is instructed to ignore any possible applications that may come for these specific positions, therefore creating a fake lack of responses. After some time as required by the Canadian Immigration Law the immigration consultants are “proving” to the Canadian Immigration that although the employer has advertised, it was unable to find anyone for these positions in Canada therefore, the need of a foreign worker has occurred and applied for such person’s foreign worker’s status. During the last few years, when the economical turndown in Canada has taken place and many people in Canada have lost their jobs, somehow the immigration consultants were and still are able to manage that their foreign workers applications are being approved by the Canadian Immigration. Many foreign workers working for Durabuilt were processed by the Canada Immigration under false pretenses. While pretending that there was not enough local people in Canada to fill some of Durabuilt positions, the management had its specific racial preferences and requirements. Some races were welcomed to work at Durabuilt, some were not.
But in order to have everything in place for such a Foreign Worker’s application, the company HR department had to fill out many papers with untrue statements and give it to the immigration consultants for further processing. One of the untrue statements in every case was that if approved, the company will provide the potential foreign worker with the sick leave benefits. None of the foreign workers working for Durabuilt ever has been given these benefits ever! Also, every foreign worker application specifies the pay rate the foreign worker should and will be receiving. In many cases at Durabuilt foreign workers were paid well below this agreement. According to the Canadian Immigration laws the transportation cost of foreign worker from his place of being to Edmonton should be covered by the employer. This has never happened at Durabuilt. Every foreign worker had to pay his own way to Edmonton. None of the foreign workers employed by Durabuilt was working on the position specified by the Foreign Worker’s Canada Immigration Permit. This contrary to the Work Permit.
In addition, the before mentioned two “musketeers” own some real estate properties throughout the city of Edmonton, such as apartments and/or houses. Every foreign worker brought by the above described way to work for Durabuilt had to rent an apartment or house from these two and to pay hefty for it. There is more: for example: if the work contract for a foreign worker was for $30, 00 per hour he had to pay a large portion of it back in cash to these two “musketeers”. After paying taxes and these two, the foreign worker’s compensation left for him was well below the minimum wage as legislated in Alberta at the time. Some of this has been described elsewhere by one of these foreign workers, who has previously worked for Durabuilt but refused to pay any money every month, consequently being terminated from his job at this employer: (link below)
These who stayed and paid the money regularly, have enjoyed special privileges. They have received a special protection from the two managers, whom they paid. For example: if there was a physical fight between two employees, according to the company’s policies this was not tolerated and the guilty of the fight should be terminated immediately. If one of them was a foreign worker, who paid under the table, no matter how many times he started a fight or caused any other serious issues, received only endless warnings. It was not fair and demoralizing to other employees. But both; the general and operations manager were backing him up, instructing the HR to be lenient on him. Otherwise they could lose an extra income.
As much as one could sympathise with the Foreign Workers, even though some are participating in illegal activities of their employer, many of them do that only because such employer as Durabuilt is their only hope for better life in the future. It is not O.K. however, if the employer willingly and knowingly takes an advantage of a vulnerable person in need and bends the Canadian laws for its own purposes. This has become a new “normal” at Durabuilt Windows & Doors Inc. and should not be tolerated in Canada but be punished by law.
Lately, after this article was published, the general and operations managers with the owners’ blessing go around and coerce the company employees to write “positive” (read: fake) reviews on the internet. Some of those, who comply, as a token of appreciation receive from them tickets to the Oilers’ game. Who refuses to comply is in trouble.
Using their IT boy (“manager”), who is their puppet and whose entire life and the life of his family totally depend on his bosses, would blindly follow any instructions no matter what and no matter how illegal they are (this individual lacks self-respect), the two unsuccessfully attempted several times to break in into this account and to delete this very posting. It must bother them extremely if they pursue illegal ways to get rid of any evidence of their misdeeds.
The irony is that the owners of Durabuilt force their employees to pay every week to charities of the owner’s choosing and collecting cash from the employees every week to the point of an annoyance. Whoever refuse or avoids to pay is blacklisted. Later they donate the money to charities and Durabuilt’s owners are receiving all the glory. Not its employees. They should fix their own backyard first, which is inhumane and constantly violates human rights.
Until then such charities should refuse to take money from an unethical employer.
What is the solution? Criminal persecution of Durabuilt and/or a Union in order to control the constant violation of employees’ rights by this employer.
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