One of Canada’s largest national public sector unions is formally joining the fight to unionize farm workers, which includes targeting laws in Alberta and Ontario that make farm worker unions illegal.
Last week, the National Union of Public and General Employees signed an agreement with the United Food and Commercial Workers union to co-operate in the organizing drive.
“We’re hoping we can raise the profile of the plight of these workers, particularly migrant workers, and also that we can exert enough pressure to get the laws changed in Alberta and Ontario,” said NUPGE president James Clancy in a Feb. 19 interview from his Ottawa office.
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Stan Raper of the UFCW Toronto office said in an interview the agreement between the two unions will mean more money and organizers for the effort.
“I think with this agreement we’ll see other big unions endorsing us and that certainly will make us stronger,” he said.
It also is an instrument for keeping labour peace. NUPGE has agreed that farm workers who are organized will belong to UFCW. It protects the smaller union from being raided or challenged by the larger union.
“This establishes boundaries and hopefully sets a precedent that other unions will honour,” Raper said.
The UFCW represents 230,000 Canadian workers, including food processing and retail employees. However, it has been less successful organizing on-farm workers, many of them seasonal workers from Mexico and the Caribbean.
“They do work many Canadians won’t do and they are some of the most exploited workers in Canada,” said Clancy.
NUPGE has close to 340,000 members, including employees of provincial governments across the western provinces.
Clancy said he has been interested in the plight of farm workers for more than two decades since he worked as a young labour organizer with legendary American farm worker advocate Caesar Chavez.
“I also have watched the UFCW over the years and it is a good union doing good work,” he said. “I think it is an outrage that in this day and age, there are provincial laws that outlaw unions for workers.”
The argument by farmers, their organizations and the politicians who support them is that they cannot afford the uncertainty of having workers who can strike just when time-sensitive crops must be harvested or marketed. They have raised the spectre of hard-pressed family farmers needing to bargain with a union for their one or two employees.
UFCW said its target is “factory farms” like large Ontario greenhouses or large hog barns and orchards, rather than the family farm with a couple of employees
Clancy insisted the fear of labour disruption at sensitive times in the cycle is bogus because most contracts are settled without work stoppage.
He said farmers would be better off organizing to try to raise their share of the Canadian food dollar than fighting to keep employees outside the reach of labour laws.
“Cheap and unprotected workers are part of a cheap food policy and that should be the target,” he said.
