Canadians should protest conditions for agricultural workers
Re: Migrant workers essential to farms
For over 50 years, governments (local, provincial, federal) have done little to protect foreign workers from atrocious exploitation by farmers and firms hiring them via the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). COVID-19 has brought the dreadful employment conditions for these workers into the open. It has also revealed the hypocrisy of farmers who insist that unemployed Canadian workers cannot be hired because we do not have the specialized skills of these immigrant workers — workers they refuse to remunerate fairly.
Deaths in the SAWP program are not unknown, but recently two migrant workers, Eugenio Romero and Rogelio Munoz Santos, died of the coronavirus. As a consequence, Mexico announced that it will no longer permit Mexican nationals to participate in Canada’s seasonal worker program, with the exception of the Okanagan region.
Might it be time for Canadians to take concrete action to protest the working and living conditions of “essential” agricultural workers? Can we revive the spirit of Caesar Chavez and boycott key products sold by agribusinesses that refuse to acknowledge the human, civil and fair employment rights of their workers?
There is no better time than now to inform our governments that we demand farmers and food processors be held accountable for their employment practices.
Gerri Patriquin-McKee, Vancouver