An annual review by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) on labour conditions for migrant farm workers in Canada raises concerns that Ottawa has done nothing about the serious issues facing those workers, the union says.
“If you’ve got problems, keep them to yourself or you’ll be sent packing. That’s the implicit threat that many of these workers tell us they continue to face each day,” said Wayne Hanley, president of UFCW Canada, in a release Wednesday, “and what little protection the system offers them now is getting worse.”
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UFCW, which recently held union drives for migrant farm workers on three farms in Quebec and one in Manitoba, said there has been little change in the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (CSAWP) since its inception, and the new federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program for low-skilled workers “offers even less protection to the participating workers.”
CSAWP was launched in 1966 as a bilateral agreement between Canada and Jamaica, and was expanded to include Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago in 1967, Mexico in 1974 and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States in 1976, to secure qualified labour in season for Canadian farms. Most CSAWP labourers work on vegetable, fruit and greenhouse operations and primarily in Ontario and Quebec, though most provinces take part in the program.
The union said more than 20,000 workers were brought to work on Canadian farms under CSAWP in 2007, and were paid minimum wage and “subject to working and housing conditions that Canadians would find intolerable.”
Among the UFCW’s recommendations in its report are:
- A transparent, impartial appeal process available for any worker before a decision is made to “repatriate” — that is, to send him or her home, with cause, before the agreed work term ends;
- Enforcement of CSAWP provisions that migrant workers get the same pay as the provincial seasonal average wage rate;
- Regular and random inspection of worker housing, before and following occupancy;
- A ban on workers being housed above or next to greenhouses, due to the risks of living in buildings housing chemicals, fertilizers, boilers and industrial fans;
- A rule that all written materials, including instructions and safety signage, be provided in English, French, Spanish and other languages as needed;
- A new rule that any employer found to be withholding workers’ personal documents, such as health cards and passports, be kicked out of the program;
- Ensuring workers get a free medical exam on their return home, to certify they arrive free of workplace illness or injury — and if not, then ensuring worker compensation claims are filed;
- Laying out a process for CSAWP workers to get landed immigrant status after they accumulate 24 months’ Canadian employment;
- Making it a condition of CSAWP that provinces allow workers the right to collective bargaining; and
- Recognition of UFCW as an “equal partner” acting on migrant workers’ behalf in future CSAWP negotiations.
