The farms-are-different argument is losing steam in Canadian labour
law, says the dean of the University of Saskatchewan law school.
While the Supreme Court of Canada appears to allow room for family
farms to have slightly different treatment, that total defence of all
farms against many labour rights was broken by the recent court ruling
on farm worker rights.
“I think there is a pretty general challenge to the idea that farms as
such – and even family farms – have some sort of sacrosanct character,”
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said Beth Bilson, who teaches labour law at the university and was
chair of the Saskatchewan labour board.
Most provincial governments in Canada have excluded agricultural
workers from labour standards laws because they work on farms and
ranches. Ontario and Alberta ban farm workers from unionizing.
In recent years the special treatment for agricultural operations has
come under attack from labour unions that have argued many farms more
closely resemble factories than farms.
Bilson said the recent Supreme Court decision implies that once a farm
has a certain number of employees, it ceases to have some of the
special protections traditionally given by law.
It also challenges the notion that workers can be prevented from
changing the employer-employee relationship simply because that could
financially hurt a farm.
“I think this case does suggest that to try and exclude them from
participation in collective bargaining simply because you’re concerned
about the economic viability of an agricultural enterprise is not
justified under the constitution,” Bilson said.
Most provinces still exempt farm workers from labour standards laws,
but the Supreme Court’s recent ruling may lead to reviews.
“I think the assumption that agricultural workers are in a separate
category as such has a long history and has been pretty much accepted
and not challenged, and this may mean that governments across the
country may have to reappraise their own legislative regimes and decide
whether the exclusion of agricultural workers is justified,” Bilson
said.
But the court has left room for provincial governments to craft
specific legislation for farm workers, which may be able to modify some
of the rights given to other workers.
“What form (farm worker legislation) might take, or what restrictions
there might be, they sort of leave open,” she said.”They signal that it
would be all right to have some kind of separate format of collective
bargaining for agricultural workers that takes into account … that
there is a justification for treating this area differently.”
