Women also face unfair treatment, bias, says researcher citing 'outward forms of discrimination, racism'
Canadians looking to land jobs within the food service could have a hard time both getting a position and excelling should they get one.
That’s because marginalized groups are still viewed poorly by hiring managers in the industry, according to forthcoming research in the Economic and Labour Relations Review, reported CBC.
For example, students who had names "that weren't white-sounding" were "routinely denied access to entry level positions," said Andrew Stevens, an associate professor in the faculty of business administration at University of Regina and co-author of the report.
More than half (51%) of racialized people in Canada aged 15 years old or older have experienced discrimination or unfair treatment in the past five years, according to a previous report from Statistics Canada (StatCan).
The CBC report noted that Restaurants Canada forecasts that the food service and accommodation sector has about 100,000 unfilled positions, accounting for one of every six vacancies. The sector has one of the highest vacancy rates of any Canadian industry.
Yet, Indigenous job applicants seem to be discriminated against in the sector, found the forthcoming research in the Economic and Labour Relations Review.
"We notice a big difference between the number of callbacks an Indigenous applicant would get with the same quality credentials as a white person from Saskatchewan has … a lot of it is stereotypes and biases that would compromise one person's ability because of their ethnicity," said Stevens, according to the CBC report.
Mistreatment of women, temporary foreign workers
One group that has an advantage when it comes to getting jobs in the sector is women, but that doesn’t mean they are being treated fairly, according to the report based on 92 interviews carried out between 2021 and 2022 among business owners, employment agency representatives, union representatives, hiring managers and individuals who had been employed as food service workers in Saskatchewan and Ontario.
"They are overrepresented in the industry. They're also underpaid by comparison. The irony is women are more likely to get a foot in the door, but also less likely to be paid the same," Stevens told the CBC.
The study also found that there were instances where perfectly qualified women would not be hired unless their physical attributes were "deemed to be aesthetically pleasing by that hiring manager”.
"It's not just about diversity. It's about outward forms of discrimination, racism, but it's also about certain assumptions and stereotypes we build in our heads and collectively in society about who is capable and who we deem to be hard-working and who is just thought to be perhaps underperforming," he said in the CBC article.
Stevens also said that temporary foreign worker applications are not being taken seriously from the policy side as employers who say they don't have any qualified candidates are not being interrogated. Employers should be held accountable, especially if there are workers available in Canada, he said.
"There's a lot of folks here going overlooked simply because of assumptions that we hold about particular candidates."
Overall, the number of positions approved to be filled by temporary foreign workers in 2023 stood at 239,646, more than double the 108,988 recorded in 2018, CBC reported, citing data from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC).