The Treatment of Migrant Seasonal Workers

Canada has been allowing more people to come in to the country on an annual basis, under temporary employment authorization instead of as a permanent resident. Yet the Canadian population continues to diminish.  We currently have two means of sustaining our population. The first being child births, which we currently have a rate of 1.1 children per woman, and would need at least 2.1 children per woman to sustain our current population, let alone increase it. (Nichols, R. 2012)

Migrant worker are coming here on temporary statuses through different programs such as agriculture. Although the terms in which these workers have to abide by are rather unfair because they are completely tied to the employers who need them here for work and sometimes take advantage or exploit these workers based on their situation.  Some of the issues that migrant workers may face by being tied to an employer include, low wages (often below the official minimum), long hours and no overtime, unsafe working conditions, accommodations that do not meet health standards, denied access to public health care and employment insurance (even though they pay in to it), forced to give up their identification documents to their employers.  Migrant workers are vulnerable to being taken advantage of or abused by their employers due to their temporary legal status, if they were to take a stand against them, this most likely would lead to contract termination as well as deportation. (Walia, H. 2010)

 (Alfredo Barahona on Migrant workers rights)

When looking through the lens of an employer who would consider treating an employee like this; technically the exploitation of the worker would be a win win situation.  They are exploitable because they need the work and although the conditions do not meet Canadian standards they may be better than the conditions in which they are coming from. Flexible for long hours because of the amount of time they have in Canada to earn money, although they should be paid overtime. And expendable, because if one employee talks about worker rights and starts to “disturb the heard” then the employer can have them terminated, deported and replaced by the following week. (Walia, H. 2010)

Unfortunately this has become, as I see it, a vicious cycle. Due to the global market and international trade, Canada has made it virtually impossible for some farmers to sustain themselves through their own work. Therefore it seems as though we are causing a forced migration, so that these once self-sustaining farmers are coming here on a temporary basis to do the same work for much less money.

This is not true of all employers but I would hope that new laws would be put in place to better monitor the treatment of seasonal workers, be they Canadian citizens or temporary immigrants.

 

- Denise

References

Nichols, R. (2012). A Canadian Priorities Agenda: Securing the Fundamentals of Canada’s Prosperity. University of Toronto School of Public Policy and Goverance, 1-15.

Walia, H. (2010). Transient servitude: migrant labour in Canada and the apartheid of citizenship. Institute of Race Relations, 52,71-84.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxkmkmS6DgQ