Coronavirus sheds light on Canada's poor treatment of migrant workers
Coronavirus sheds light on Canada's poor treatment of migrant workers, Early this year, months before the coronavirus outbreak had been declared a pandemic, Erika Zavala, 35, and Jesús Molina, 36, arrived in Canada. With few opportunities in Mexico, the couple had found jobs under a federal program for seasonal farm workers, and planned to send money home to their family.
After working on other farms, they transferred to Bylands, a plant nursery in the small city of Kelowna, British Columbia, which had gone through a Covid-19 outbreak that ended on 11 May.
When they started work on 27 May, managers told them the farm had a strict policy to prevent spread of the virus: migrant workers couldn’t leave the farm or have visitors. The rule did not apply to Canadian workers.
Government guidelines order workers to isolate for 14 days when they first arrive in Canada, but by then, the couple – who did not have the virus – had been in the country for months. The local health authority had issued an order restricting movement of Bylands workers, but it had been lifted by the time the couple arrived.
On 28 June, Molina and Zavala invited two migrant rights activists to their employer-provided house, but another worker took a photo and sent it to their boss. The manager called them into his office, showed them the photo, and fired them.
He asked them to sign a letter stating they had broken the rules by leaving the property and interacting with people who did not work there. “As a result, you are sent home immediately,” the letter says in Spanish. They asked for a second chance, but his decision was final.
Zavala said she felt she had no choice but to sign. The manager wouldn’t touch the pen she used, as if she were sick, she said. The experience left her feeling fearful, sad and humiliated – “as if I were worth nothing”. The manager did not reply to requests for comment.
Within days, the couple were back in Mexico.
Earlier this month, Justin Trudeau said Canada had handled the pandemic better than other countries – but the prime minister acknowledged that has not been the case when it comes to migrant farm workers.
As in the US and other countries, Covid-19 has spread rapidly through farms that employ migrant workers, aided by inhumane living conditions, lack of legal rights and shoddy federal oversight – all of which predated the virus.
In Canada, the centre is Ontario, where more than 1,000 migrant farm workers have tested positive and three have died. To prevent spread, some employers have implemented strict rules and surveillance to control workers. Under federal programs for migrant workers, their visas are attached to employers, so they can easily be sent home.
“It’s obvious that we need to do a better job of ensuring that the rules are followed for our temporary foreign workers in Canada,” Trudeau said in June after the deaths of three workers who contracted Covid-19. “Every single person who works in Canada deserves to do so in a safe environment and unfortunately that hasn’t always happened.”
But so far the federal approach has been mostly reactive. Trudeau’s government has provided $50m for employers to cover the costs of hotel rooms and food during the 14-day mandatory quarantine when migrant workers first arrive. Advocates say this money amounts to financial aid for employers and doesn’t directly benefit workers.
It’s a racial structure, it’s a system that’s rooted in a system of indentured labourChris Ramsaroop
The federal government is expected to announce new policies for migrant workers in the coming days.
Activist groups are calling for the government to grant workers permanent residency on arrival in Canada so they can leave abusive employers and find another job. (Currently, if a migrant worker is experiencing abuse on the job, it’s difficult to find work somewhere else without risking repatriation.)
Labour lawyer Susanna Quail said the farm which fired Zavala and Molina may have genuinely believed they were allowed to lock down migrant workers to prevent an outbreak. “Whatever they believed, what they did was illegal,” she said.
Employers don’t have the right to restrict employees’ movements, and firing employees for breaking a rule based on their place of origin violates the provincial human rights code, she said.
“This is one of the problematic things about the temporary foreign workers program: employers have a lot of control over who stays and who goes and who gets hired back the next year,” she said. There are avenues for workers to fight dismissal or apply for an open permit to work on another farm, but that’s hard to do if they’ve already been sent home.
Bylands manager Devon Hunt confirmed the farm fired the couple for breaking the farm’s health and safety policies. Hunt said Bylands was concerned about employee safety and didn’t want to risk another Covid-19 outbreak, so the farm developed its own policies in conjunction with the local health authority and the Mexican consulate.
“We regret that this situation has occurred, and we remain committed to ensuring our team and community remain safe and healthy – to do so, we expect all our workers to follow the protocols that we have in place,” he said in an email.
But the problem is much broader than one farm.
For more than 50 years Canada has allowed farms to hire workers from countries including Mexico, Guatemala and Jamaica. About 60,000 workers come to Canada each year, with numbers increasing in response to domestic labour shortages and growth in exports. In turn, billions of dollars of farm produce is exported to the US each year.
“[The federal program] is a legal regime set up based on racist immigration that creates a differential set of standards, laws and practices for migrant workers from the global south as opposed to Canadians,” said Chris Ramsaroop, an organizer with Justicia for Migrant Workers. “It’s a racial structure, it’s a system that’s rooted in a system of indentured labour.”
Ramsaroop said it was important for consumers to ask where their food comes from, who harvests and packages it – and what the conditions are for those workers. “We can’t look at this as something that’s out there; we have to look at this as something that impacts us on a daily basis in our daily lives.”
Back home in Mexico, Zavala said workers who are simply seeking to support their families deserve “dignified, fair and equal treatment”.
She said: “Many employers believe that by giving us work, we belong to them and they can do with us what they want.”
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