8 THE VOICE | TUESDAY, NOV. 28,2017 | EDITOR SHOJI WHITTIER Specialinvestigation No easy living in migrant jobs Foreign workers come to support their families, face terrible conditions = By LINDSEY LLOYD AND ALLISON HAYES hen a Mexican mi- grant worker arrived at an Abbotsford farm 11 years ago to work, he found himself sleeping on a floor. He came to Canada as a farm worker with the federal govern- ment’s Temporary Foreign Work- ers Program that allows Canadian farm owners to bring foreign work- ers to Canada for eight-month ag- ricultural seasons. “First time here, it was very bad,” said the worker, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal. “[I didn't] have a bed, only the floor. Had to sleep on the floor. ‘They didn’t even have a mattress, No laundry... Four people in one room... where [we] all slept with a kitchen and washroom in the same room.” The Voice interviewed two mi- grant workers from Mexico as part of its investigation into their work- ing condition on Metro Vancouver farms. Both recounted stories of abuse, exclusion and vulnerability. Raul Gatica, director of the Mi- grant Workers Dignity Association in Vancouver, said workers continue to face the same problems he saw 11 years ago when he began the ad- vocacy organization. “Helping the farmworkers, no- body does that,” he said. “Nobody goes to the fields.” Faced with a lack of employment in Mexico, the migrant workers said they come to Canada to pro- vide for their families back home. But both said that the substandard working and living conditions have stayed not improved over the years. ‘The second migrant worker, who has been coming to Canada for seven years, said one farm that he worked at had 16 people sleeping in the same room. “We don't have privacy... every- body uses everything. You make meals for the next day, somebody eats it, or takes it away,” he said. ‘The first migrant worker, who previously worked on an Abbots- ford farm, said the farm operator used to verbally abuse him, com- menting he “had no brains.” After several months of prob- lems and abuse by the Abbotsford employer, some of the Mexican migrant workers took their com- plaints to the Mexican consulate in Vancouver. The consulate took several months to respond to their con- cerns, but did eventually speak with the farm operator. But the prob- lems persisted. ‘The migrant worker remembers his boss yelling obscenities and continuing to insult the workers. “It almost became physical... I felt his intention was to fight me. I felt powerless,” he said. “When we first come here we have no knowledge of labour laws or rights and employers use that to their advantage,” he said. Today he still categorizes his liv- ing situation as “very bad.” Started in 1966, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program plays a critical role in Canadian agricul- ture by hiring migrant workers for seasonal agricultural jobs that are difficult to find Canadians to fill, according to experts. Since 2010, the number of mi- grant workers in the SAWP has in- creased, with almost 7000 coming to work in B.C. in 2015, according to Statistics Canada. UBC law professor Robert Russo said filing complaints or reporting workplace injuries is challenging for migrant workers, as they do not have the same employment protec- tions or rights as Canadian workers. “With housing and working con- ditions, it is not clear what level of government will respond to [com- plaints]. The SAWP is a federal program, so if you try to complain about a housing issue, they would say, this is not our mandate you need to talk to the provincial gov- ernment. If you try and talk to the provincial government, they'll say the housing issue is a municipal- ity responsibility,” Russo said in an interview. “It is a shuffling between levels of government back and forth.” When filing a claim with Work- SafeBC, the workers usually cannot get past the first step of reaching someone over the phone because they speak minimal English, said Kassandra Cordero, director of eq- uity and human rights at the B.C. Federation of Labour. WorkSafeBC told The Voice that they do not have data on the number of claims from Temporary Foreign Workers because they do not collect this information from claimants. Seasonal agricultural workers come to B.C. to work because they cannot find jobs in their home countries but can end up on farms that have substandard living and working conditions. 1 ivoSey LLova PHOTO Burnaby-Edmonds MLA Raj Chouhan began campaigning for better conditions for farmworkers in the 1970s. He is meeting with mistreated workers decades later as an elected official. “Many of [the] workers experi- ence huge difficulties to achieve justice at their workplace,” said Chouhan, the founding president of the Canadian Farmworkers’ Union. “If they are involved in some kind of work- related dispute or they make a com- plaint, they are sent back [to their home country] and_ blacklisted. Then they will not be able to come back for several years to B.C.” One of the migrant workers in- terviewed agreed. “The em- ployer feels empowered because he knows no one is there to _ protect us,” he said. Russo said that while the migrant work- ers see the Mexican consulate as rep- resenting them in Cana- da, the consulate’s primary role is to serve the needs of the Mexican govern- ment. The Mexican govern- ment wants to send the maximum number of workers to Canada be- cause the workers send cash back to their fami- lies in Mexico, he said. Migrant workers have the right to unionize but both Russo and Cordero said that efforts have been made to stop them from contacting unions by Mexican officials. Russo said that farm owners want the program, claiming that without it, “the agricultural sector would go under economically.” But the biggest problem with the program is that the temporary workers don’t have an open permit, meaning they can't switch employers if they are abused on the job, he said. Nor do they have a clear path to citi- zenship. “The open work permit would change the relationship between employee,” Russo said. The B.C. government = an- nounced in August that it plans to create a temporary foreign worker registry that would collect the names and jobs of all migrant work- ers in the province so they would have recognition and there would be more trans- parency. The federal govern- ment also announced within the 2017 bud- get that it would in- crease onsite inspec- tions of workplaces that employ foreign workers and collabo- rate with community organization to protect vul- nerable migrant workers. Chouhan said these workers “are providing a very important func- tion for our economy and they should be treated with respect and dignity.” “If somebody is coming to this country and working year after year, why don’t we use the same laws that allows people to come and work and stay here permanently?” he said. “They should not be treated as second class citizens.”