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.
