Migrant workers blow whistles

Say factories and warehouses not protected against COVID-19

At the height of the pandemic, Eddie realized his workplace had become a petri dish for the spread of COVID -19: employees without masks crowded in small rooms, breathing within inches of each other’s faces.

The scene was so shocking he took out his phone and filmed it.

When he asked his supervisor whether it was OK to work in conditions that so flagrantly violated physical-distancing protocols, he said he was given a choice.

“He said, ‘If you don’t feel safe, you don’t have to work here,’ ” said Eddie, who did not want his real name published. “So I quit. I didn’t want to risk getting the virus and dying or giving it to someone who might die.”

The experience of Eddie — an immigrant worker employed in a plastics factory — isn’t an isolated one, according to a labour organizer who spoke to the Montreal Gazette. Mostafa Henaway says he has helped employees from nine different warehouses and factories file complaints about working conditions that put people at risk of contracting COVID-19.

“The people in these jobs are desperate for work and their bosses know that,” said Henaway, an organizer with the Immigrant Workers Centre. “They know that these are jobs filled by migrant labour, by vulnerable people who are too scared to refuse to work in dangerous conditions.”

As of last week, there were 35 workplaces struck by COVID-19 outbreaks in Montreal alone, according to Dr. Mylène Drouin, director of the city’s public health department. And there is at least one high-profile case just north of Laval.

Quebec’s workplace safety board (CNESST) had to intervene twice in the case of a chicken-processing plant in St-eustache after two complaints from employees who feared they would contract the virus at work.

During its second intervention at Concord Premium Meats in May, CNESST found that a number of workers there had tested positive for coronavirus. The department of public health did not say how many confirmed cases, but Henaway and one worker said there were more than 20.

The company’s CEO, Irv Teper, said there were “many” COVID-19 cases at the plant but that safety measures had already been in place since March.

These include writing a pandemic manual, enforcing physical-distancing guidelines and buying tents to create more spacious lunchrooms.

Employees are also receiving hazard pay, according to Teper.

“Our guiding principle is the safety of our employees and their families,” Teper said. “A lot of our workers were coming in from Montreal — the COVID hot spot — where they live in homes with their children and their parents. We saw a lot of workers who live in overcrowded conditions, and this may have been a contributing factor.”

There are more than 54,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Quebec and, as of Wednesday, at least 5,448 had died from the virus. Aside from the elderly, a great number of the infected are refugee claimants working as orderlies in long-term care facilities or living in close quarters in some of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods.

Another migrant worker, employed at a warehouse that supplies the Dollarama chain store, told the Montreal Gazette there was nothing resembling physical distancing on the job. He said he raised concerns with a supervisor and — the next day — was out of a job.

“I had worked there three years, I’m not a thief, I’m not a dog, I just wanted to be safe,” said Maxime, who did not want his real name published. “I just wanted my coworkers to be safe.”

In a statement emailed to the Montreal Gazette, Dollarama wrote that Maxime’s claims are “100 per cent false” and that it is working with CNESST to ensure employees are protected. It said the warehouse gives its employees protective gear, disinfects surfaces regularly and staggers shifts to avoid overcrowding.

CNESST confirmed that it’s investigating two complaints related to COVID-19 safety measures at a Dollarama warehouse in Montreal

— which employs hundreds of people. Many of the employees, like Maxime, work for a third-party agency that contracts them and farms them out to Dollarama.

This makes their work employment seem precarious and — because the workers aren’t directly employed by Dollarama — it makes it harder for them to know who they can raise concerns with. Even so, Henaway said a growing number of workers are learning what their rights are and asserting them.

“I think because of the pandemic, because it’s a matter of life and death, we’re seeing people assert themselves on a scale we haven’t seen before,” Henaway said. “They are demanding inspectors come, they’re exercising their right to refuse to work in unsafe conditions.”

Many do so knowing that their status in Canada depends on them having a job in the midst of a pandemic that’s created massive unemployment across the country. They live in neighbourhoods like Pointeaux-trembles and Montreal North, where infection rates are more than twice the Montreal average.

“In the end, the people bearing the brunt of the pandemic are those refugee claimants and those immigrant workers desperate to keep their families in Canada,” he said.

(Workers) are demanding inspectors come, they’re exercising their right to refuse to work in unsafe conditions.