Fruits of their labour

For 18 years, Fracisco Bautista has been travelling to Ontario from Mexico for seasonal employment on farms. Currently, he’s working eight to nine hour shifts, Monday through Saturday, planting green, yellow and red peppers in a greenhouse.

The days are long, but he says he's not complaining.

“[I] came to try to find a good future for [my] family,” says Bautista, who spoke through a translator.

He says while this work provides a great opportunity for him and his family back in Mexico, he knows that farm workers in the province are not treated equally.

“If [workers] feeling bad they need to go to a doctor and the farmer they don’t want to take them to the hospital,” Bautista says.  “That is the most problem that they have.”

He also says workers are hesitant to speak out against this treatment because they are afraid to lose their jobs.

Ontario and Alberta are the only provinces where agricultural workers are denied the right to unionize.

But now the law governing agricultural workers in Ontario may be on the Supreme Court chopping block.

The courtroom food fight

On Nov. 18, the United Nations’ International Labour Organization ruled that Canada and Ontario are violating the human rights of agricultural workers in the province by preventing these workers from unionizing. United Food and Commercial Workers Canada, which advocates on behalf of agricultural workers, brought the complaint to the ILO in March 2009. 

Under the 2002 Agricultural Employees Protection Act of Ontario, domestic and migrant agricultural workers are denied the right to form a union and collectively bargain with their employers. They do have the right to join an employees’ association and present their  grievances to employers.

But Stan Raper, national president of the Agricultural Workers Alliance, says this part of the act is essentially “toothless” because employers are not forced to act.

In 2004, UFCW Canada represented workers at Rol-Land Farms, a mushroom factory near Kingsville, Ont., after 300 workers made efforts to organize.  The employer heard the association’s representation, but nothing ever came of it.

Four workers at Rol-Land Farms, a mushroom factory near Kingsville, Ont., were fired without notice.

“That’s all [the employer] had to do to meet the provisions of the act under the AEPA was hear our case,” Raper says. “They heard it and walked away and said, ‘See ya later.’”

If workers still have grievances, as four workers from Rol-Land Farms did, they can then go before a tribunal. But Raper says this process is just as ineffective.

“The tribunal has proven to be a joke,” Raper says. “[It] heard the case and basically fell apart because [the AEPA] is still tied up in the courts.”

Following the Rol-Land Farms case, UFCW Canada sought legal action against the Ontario government, stating that the AEPA was in violation of the democratic right to freedom of association. 

In 2008, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the union and on Jan. 14, 2009 the provincial government appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The case has now been heard and a decision is expected any day.  With that decision pending, the Ontario government declined to comment.

But Wayne Hanley, national president of UFCW Canada, says this is just an “easy cover” for the government.

“They can, in fact, do more than comment,” he says. “They can take a role of responsibility . . . to give farm workers the rights that every other worker in the province has.”

Biting into the issue

The work that farm workers do is very valuable to our society. They put food on our tables.                    — Wayne Hanley

However, farm employer representatives say allowing these workers to unionize would be damaging to the family farms that are the backbone of Canadian agriculture.

Ken Linington is a policy advisor for the Labour Issues Coordinating Committee — a coalition of organizations that represents farm employers.  He says agriculture’s dependence on seasonal and climatic changes makes farming a very fragile industry.  If agricultural workers were allowed to unionize and collectively bargain, then workers could take advantage of these conditions.

“If you’re negotiating, when’s the most powerful time for the worker? Well, the most powerful time is when the worker is in the greatest need,” says Linington. “Bargaining will likely occur just before harvest and we would argue that is shifting the balance so far in favour of the worker. We’re going to see some businesses go out of business.”

Kerry Preibisch, a sociology professor at the University of Guelph, disagrees. She says the farm lobby argument is not valid in today’s agricultural system.

“A lot of the farms in Canada that are hiring high numbers of farm workers . . . no longer fit this ideal of the family farm,” she says. “In fact, they’re corporate farms.”

But Linington says the majority of Canadian farms are still family-owned, where spouses or extended family members form partnerships and incorporate for business administration and income tax filing. 

What’s the ILO got do with it?

Linington says the report that came out of the ILO ruling should not be used as evidence in the Supreme Court decision.

“When you look at a workplace, where only the worker perspective is offered, is it a complete and balanced report?” Linington asks. “How much value or credit or support should you place on it?”

He says UFCW Canada has sensationalized the report in the media.

We’re all hoping for a nice Christmas present, but at this point you’d need a crystal ball to determine when that day will be.    — Stan Raper

Yet neither Raper nor Preibisch say they expect the ILO ruling to influence the Supreme Court decision. Rather, Preibisch describes it as more of a symbolic gesture.

“The ILO ruling really shames the position of the Ontario government,” she says. “They continue to legally challenge farm workers — one of the most vulnerable occupations in the province — in this way and their right to unionize.”

Raper adds that while UFCW Canada is anxiously awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court, he is not going to start guessing when the court will rule.

"We're all hoping for a nice Christmas present," he says, "but at this point you'd need a crystal ball to determine when that day will be."

 In the meantime, Raper says the organization will continue its fight for equality for agricultural workers across Canada.

“We’re not going away. I think that the industry understands that,” he says. “The steps may be small, but they will be continuous.”

Cropping Up: The growing number of seasonal and temporary farm workers in Canada

According to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, agricultural workers coming to Canada from Mexico and the Caribbean through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program totalled just over 27,654 in 2009. 

Working primarily in the sectors of fruit, vegetables and horticulture on large commercial farms, these men and women are also working with the Agricultural Workers Association and United Food and Commercial Workers Canada to change the labour policies that currently govern the agricultural industry.

Click on each province or territory below to see where these workers are going, what they are harvesting and what they are earning for their efforts.