Farm workers left in dust: union leader

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Published: March 21, 2002

NAPANEE, Ont. – A new national agriculture policy must include updated

labour laws that protect agricultural workers from workplace abuse, low

wages and unfair or dangerous working conditions, labour leader Michael

Fraser told MPs studying future policy requirements.

Fraser, the national director of the United Food and Commercial Workers

International Union, told the House of Commons agriculture committee

March 12 that labour laws relating to farm workers have not kept pace

with the growth of corporate and factory farms.

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“Agribusiness is reaping the benefits of farm labour legislation that

was enacted to respond to the needs of family-owned and operated

farmers,” he said in a brief to MPs.

“These special legislative exemptions may have been valid 100 years

ago, maybe even 50 years ago, but they are not valid in our current

agricultural industry.”

Fraser said the federal government, as part of its policy planning,

should include national labour standards legislation to protect tens of

thousands of farm workers.

He said his union is targeting corporate and factory farms, not family

farms.

“Hog farms that produce thousands of hogs per week, mushroom factories

that employ 200 workers full-time, year-round, and greenhouse

operations in Leamington, Ont., dependent on thousands of migrant farm

workers for up to eight months a year should not benefit from low

wages, no overtime, no hours-of-work provisions and no health and

safety requirements that our lack of legislation provides,” he said.

The UFCW will aggressively organize farm workers, he added. The federal

government should help with national legislation.

Fraser said a particularly serious problem is the estimated 17,000

foreign workers imported each year to work in the factories and fields.

Up to 90 percent of the workers go to Ontario. They are often isolated,

exploited and unable to speak the local language.

Farming is among the most dangerous occupations in Canada and more than

100 workers are killed in an average year.

While some governments have tried to prohibit farm workers from

organizing, a Supreme Court decision last December said farm workers

have the right to be organized.

“UFCW Canada believes the time for analysis and study is over,” said

Fraser. “We will address this most serious farm labour issue through

union membership and collective bargaining.”

His plan came under immediate attack from Canadian Alliance MP Howard

Hilstrom, who asked for a union definition of family farm and raised

the spectre of hard-pressed farmers finding their hired help unionized

and demanding higher wages and higher costs.

Fraser said he did not have a definition of family farm but the target

is the 50-worker hog barn rather than the family-operated feedlot with

five workers.

He said the union would be happy to see the government define family

farm in legislation so the line could be drawn between who can and

cannot be organized.

Hilstrom was not satisfied.

“We as a government will resist every effort you make because you

cannot define a family farm,” he said.

Later, committee chair Charles Hubbard reminded him the Canadian

Alliance is opposition, not government.

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