On March 17, 1998, at the request of employees and the union local, a complaint was filed concerning the Amway business and promotional activities conducted by a supervisor at the Vancouver offices of the IRB. Specific details of the complaint can not be made public however the purpose of this web page is to warn of the tactics used by Amway distributors on government worksites and to demonstrate the difficulties faced by employees who find workplace multi-level marketing harassment offensive.
Four months after filing the complaint, the complainants still had not received a response. In anticipation of a cover-up, the union, on behalf of the complainants, filed Access to Information Act and Privacy Act requests to determine the status of the investigation, if any.
Preliminary response to those requests were both delayed and incomplete and, as a consequence, complaints against the refusal of the IRB to disclose were filed under both the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act.
What the few documents initially received did reveal was that:
- despite the fact the complaint was sent to the Executive Director at IRB headquarters, he bounced the investigation back to the same regional management whose inaction led to the filing of the formal complaints;
- although prepared at least in draft, no IRB specific policy guidelines have been issued or circulated by either Vancouver regional management or Ottawa headquarters management on the issue of appropriate use of employer facilities and resources. They prefer to rely on Treasury Board guidelines;
- the person subject of the complaint, to no surprise, wrote that there is no such thing as "multi-level marketing harassment";
- Vancouver regional management's complaints about this union web page was the cause of an attempt by their Montreal counterparts to intimidate the web site author.
Background
Accordingly, the grievances were sent to third level, right back to the Ottawa headquarters management who had delegated resolution of employee complaints back to the region.
In letters dated March 10, 1999, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada wrote:
"As a result of our investigation, it has been established that your clients' requests for information were received by the IRB on June 16, 1998 and an acknowledgement of receipt and notification of a 30 day time extension was sent to you on July 16, 1998. It was confirmed that a response was sent to you on August 13, 1998, 58 days after the IRB received the requests.
Upon review, it was determined that meeting the original time limit would not, in fact, unreasonably interfere with the operations of the IRB. Thus, in my view, the extension notice was not valid and the IRB should have responded to your clients' requests within 30 days.
I have therefore concluded that your clients' complaints are well-founded and the department has been so informed."
In a third level grievance response dated March 12, 1999, the (new) Acting Executive Director wrote:
"I have personally discussed the matter with the Regional Director (Vancouver). We both concur with the fact that you should have received a timely response to your complaint. For this, we both apologize to you.
Based on my conversation with the Regional Director and the evidence before me, I am satisfied that the matter has now been dealt with, and appropriate corrective measures have been implemented. Consequently, there is no need to pursue the development of a specific policy related to private business activities at the workplace."
Canadian civil servants are generally level-headed, hard-working and intelligent enough to be leery of Amway's "get rich quick" schemes. However, despite a small pay raise and payment of the pay equity settlement, members of the female dominated work groups continue to remain at the bottom of the pay scale in the civil service.
While perhaps an ironic stance by a unionist, it is my view that Amway and its get rich quick treadmill result in a lack of focus on the job and a weakening of the great Canadian work ethic. This has been evidenced by the actions of some. In the end, this will only support those few but vocal detractors who accuse civil servants of being lazy and disinterested.
Multi-level Marketing harassment is a form of economic harassment in the work place whereby a superior uses his or her power to recruit a subordinate into a multi-level management scheme. Like sexual harassment, MLM harassment can be subtle or blatant. The most blatant form would be using the direct threat of not hiring or promoting, or even firing someone for not agreeing to become an independent MLM agent. Of course, talented managers know many subtle ways to suggest to their subordinates that their success with the company depends upon their saying yes to the boss.
One of the most successful MLM companies is Amway. The basic formula is simple. First, there is the "Company", which has a product or array of products. Second, there are the independent distributors who (a) sell the Company product and (b) recruit new distributors who do the same, ad infinitum if possible. The reason distributors don't just sell the Company product is that they receive "bonuses" for sales made by their recruits. Theoretically, the richest independent distributor would have dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of subordinate distributors who would be doing the actual selling, while the Big One did little or no selling of the Company product at all. That is, the emphasis of MLM schemes is not selling the Company product but selling the Company.
It should be obvious, then, that the Big Cheese of a non-MLM company could stand to reap substantial economic rewards from having a little army of "independent distributors" (read "coerced employees who will buy the MLM Company products and recruit others to do so). MLM infestation is inevitable in non-MLM bureaucracies. The main bait may be the promise of extra cash to the subordinate, but superiors (managers, purchasers, personnel officers, supervisors, etc.) are really interested in their own extra cash. Superiors who have bought into the Unimagined Wealth Dream of most MLM schemes will not have many scruples recruiting their subordinates. It is possible that the superiors may even deceive themselves into thinking that they are offering bona fide economic opportunities to their subordinates. It is also quite likely that many employees will not feel coerced but will buy into the Unimagined Wealth Dream themselves. (Just as some bosses may delude themselves into thinking that they are really offering an opportunity to an employee's sexual happiness when they make sexual advances to a subordinate. And, just as some people who are seduced by their bosses, end up marrying the boss.) These facts complicate matters, and may sometimes make it difficult to prove harassment occurred. After all, if you are agreeable, how can anyone say you were harassed?
But it is not just large, bureaucratic businesses which may see MLM harassment. Schools, for example, may also be prone to MLM harassment. In fact, anywhere there is a person who has power over others, the opportunity for MLM harassment emerges. Fear of not being hired or re-hired and fear of not being promoted or of being fired can be powerful incentives to get on board the MLM bandwagon.
As far as I know, there are no laws prohibiting superiors of non-MLM organizations from recruiting inferiors into MLM schemes. Nor are there laws for discriminating against someone solely on the grounds that they did not want to join an MLM scheme. Thus, even if you could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the only reason you were fired from your last job as a structural engineer was because you refused to become an Amway agent when asked to do so by your superior, you may have no recourse in a court of law.
Because of the potential for abuse of power, one would think that companies and organizations would as a standard rule prohibit MLM recruitment. But how many of us have worked at a place which has a policy against MLM harassment? Very few, I think.
Between November 30, 1998 and March 10, 2001, my Anti-Amway page received 797 visitors (an average of 29 visitors per month over 27 months). Those visitors came from at least 25 countries. For a tiny site like mine to generate such a statistic demonstrates the interest the public has in Amway.
Please visit the sites below for more information on the Amway problem.
The Amway Distributors "Little White Lie"
The Sceptics Dictionary
The Anti-MLM and Anti-Amway Webring
Links to Anti-MLM, Anti-Amway and Other Related Site
Amway: The Continuing Story
MLM Survivor
| About the IRB
| NVP CEIU-IRB
| CEIU Locals at the IRB
| The Bruce Report |
| Video Surveillance at the Montreal IRB
| Censorship at the IRB |
| PSC Appeals
| Tuberculosis
| Using the Access and Privacy Acts |
