GETTING IN THE WAY
VPI inc. is a Canadian-owned “workforce management services company devoted to helping individuals and organizations better define and meet their goals.” (That’s just BS, business-speak, for “employment agency.”)
Recently, a local company hired a new employee. (I’ve been asked to withhold their name and any identifying information.) This person was put in contact with VPI by this employer immediately after being hired but before their first day on the job. This was done so that it looked like VPI found the employee for the employer, so that the employer could then receive, through VPI, a government subsidy. VPI paid the employer $6000 for taking on this worker, in compensation for their “training”. This employee, however, was fully qualified for the job, with seven years experience (which is why they got the job in the first place) and did not undergo any additional training, formal or informal, by their new employer. Not only that but, despite being able and eager to work, the employee was forced to wait an entire week to begin working because this was the earliest the paperwork for the above subsidy could be put through; and the employee needed to be on the books with VPI before appearing on the books of the employer.
As this kind of fraud happens all the time, and in every industry, nobody is surprised or even upset by it. (Such is the sorry state of things). And I wasn’t that disturbed by it either until I learned more about VPI and this story.
The silliness only continued when the employee learned through VPI that they qualified for a work-related expense subsidy. The employee was told they could be reimbursed for some of the clothes the job required and for the bus pass needed to get to work. This was great news, or so the employee thought.
Of course pre-approval was needed for any items they wanted subsidized. This meant the employee had to pay up front for these cost, as there was no way to get approval, buy clothes, submit receipts, and get reimbursed before the first day of work, despite the unwanted delay of a week. Mind-bendingly, any clothing the employee wanted reimbursement for had to come with receipts dated after the official start date of their employment. That’s right, in order to qualify, the clothes that were to be subsidized needed to be purchased after the employee’s first shift. In this way VPI’s services and subsidies would be of little help to someone who desperately needs them: like someone who is unemployed and without a lot of spare cash on hand, say; like the kind of person in need of an employment brokerage service. (Further, it’s clear to me that if an employer has a required dress code they should be supplying the clothes, or a basic subsidy for its employees – and they should be more than happy to cover such a minor cost; if for no other reason that out of guilt for having milked the government and the public who funds it for money they did not earn.)
The situation was just as ridiculous when the employee sought pre-approval for the bus pass subsidy also on offer. The process involved sending a request for approval, waiting days to receive notice that pre-approval had been granted (of course they couldn’t get a subsidy for a pass purchased before approval was granted), and then purchasing the bus pass and taking the receipt into the VPI office to sign-off on the requisite paperwork. But that wasn’t the end of the bureaucracy, no. A week later, when the reimbursement cheque was issued, the employee then had to go back to the VPI office once more to sign for and collect the cheque.
Now, what could be wrong with this? If you’ve never had trouble paying your rent, or the joy of worrying about being able to feed yourself, or contemplated the crippling burden of your student debt,then, undoubtedly, you’ll feel that complaining about this scenario is over the top. You’ll be thinking something along the lines of, “This person just got a free bus pass!” The consternation you feel is just you brushing up against the curtain separating the culturally distinct classes within our society. So let me open the curtain and walk you through to see what’s behind.
You have here someone who aspires to be able to afford to ride the bus; and, if lucky enough, to have the additional luxury of being granted a pass that will allow “unlimited travel”. (“Unlimited”, of course, only if you ignore the meaning of that word. “Unlimited” within the extraordinarily limited public transportation system of Hamilton, Ontario. “Unlimited” only in your number of trips within the extremely restrictive hours and operating parameters of the system.) This is the starting place and the golden ring to which this employee sought to reach.
So what did the employee actually have to do in order to get the bus pass subsidy? Not only did they have to make two separate trips, spending an additional four hours on the bus, but of course the VPI office is only open during regular business hours, just like their place of work. This meant the employee had to wait until they weren’t working and make these two separate excursions on two separate days off. And they had to pay for these and weeks worth of transportation while waiting for approval, despite being hired and fully entitled to free transportation the whole time. So they got one week worth of “free” transportation when they were entitled to four.
So what then, I would like to know, was the purpose of the pre-approval process? Just to further demean the unemployed, minimum-wage hopefuls that come through their office? Pre-approval meant VPI knew days in advance of the employee’s arrival that they were coming all the way to their office just to bring them a valid receipt in person. (A receipt that could have been sent from anywhere, instantly, using the magic of modern technology or, in fact, very old and unremarkable technology...) There is no version of reality in which it didn’t make much more sense to write a cheque or count up a small amount of cash right there and then. In fact, the cheque could have been mailed to the employee’s home or workplace or, God forbid, someone could have processed an obscenely quick and simple electronic money transfer (an option available for more than a decade now to anyone or any organization with a bank account.) And any one of these options could have been carried out in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost incurred by everyone involved. Alternatively, VPI or the employer could even have acquired the bus pass themselves once approval was granted – thereby, again, saving everyone involved much time and money.
There are multiple ways and countless reasons to avoid the ridiculousness needlessly embedded here. Is there any doubt that these additional layers of bureaucratic nonsense are at the very least degrading the humanity of everyone involved? What we’re talking about here is a broker, a middleman, who has placed themself between a government and the people whose difficulties, minor as they may seem, these policies are specifically intended to alleviate. This company can be seen to get in the way and cause problems, and to profiting from doing so, all while claiming to be of immense benefit to all.
And yet, I am sad to report, it’s all dodgier than just the above. If you do the math, the employer got a significant amount of money for taking on no burden, providing no service, and conducting no training of any kind. And then the broker, VPI, can be seen to have engaged in actively inhibiting and withholding employment under the guise of aiding government, business, and the unemployed. And the only loser in all of this was the one party that really could have used some help. Forced to miss a week of work meant the employee – someone who successfully found their own job, remember – missed out on hundreds of dollars in wages directly because of VPI. And, even as VPI reimbursed the employee for some clothes and a bus pass, in the end this was far less than the sum they lost to this wayward and ridiculous bureaucracy.
So can it be said that VPI is “truly about people helping people” as their website suggests? Or are they about business helping business? To me, the policies and practises carried out at VPI are a clear indication that profit is the organization’s central focus.
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