Migrant workers need government protections
Shelley Gilbert.
Standards must be improved, writes
Migrant workers have come to Canada and our communities to work for our betterment while striving to improve the lives of their families left behind.
Our food security is in the hands of these migrant workers.
However, according to the Windsor-essex Health Unit, as of May 29, approximately
100 migrant workers have tested positive for COVID-19. Many more are afraid.
Migrant workers and advocates appreciate the Windsor-essex Health Unit’s recognition of the risk these workers experience while working in essential industries in our communities.
The recent recognition of farms as “highrisk settings” and “an order to protect migrant workers” highlights the vulnerabilities of migrant workers while harvesting our food and the need to take action.
Previous virus guidelines focused on ensuring residents of Windsor and Essex County were protected from migrant workers and potential exposure those workers might bring to our community.
Guidelines such as quarantining workers for 14 days upon arrival and information in various languages explaining how migrant workers should social distance dramatically lessened the risk workers may have spread COVID-19 to our Canadian communities.
But what was not considered, but known by migrant workers and advocates, are two other realities.
The first is that migrants have always been significantly isolated from the wider communities. Migrant workers are employed in industries where few Canadians choose to work. They work side-by-side with other foreign workers often seven days a week for months at a time.
When they go home after work, they live with other migrant workers and when they shop, during their half day off from work on Sundays, they shop with other migrant workers.
The second unexamined fact is how the living and working conditions of many migrant workers have caused harm to their physical and emotional health — even previous to this pandemic.
Migrant workers often experience harassment and racial abuse while being pressured to meet unreasonable production quotas or face firing and deportation. Many live in dilapidated housing with colleagues in bunk houses and often in bunk beds without privacy. Landlords in the private market often exploit workers by charging exorbitant rent amounts for single rooms in overcrowded, rundown rooming houses.
As a means of addressing harassment and abuse, the federal government introduced the Open Work Permit for Vulnerable Workers in June 2019. Workers being abused or harassed at work are eligible to apply for an open work permit if they have evidence of abuse or harassment in the workplace. The permits allow workers to choose where they want to apply and work for one year.
However, this remedy is not available to workers who have been tricked or deceived into overstaying their existing work permits by exploitive individuals with promises of decent work and work permit extensions.
These, now undocumented workers, continue to work in essential industries with little to no protection. Pathways for permanent resident status should be provided to all workers and would raise the expectations and employment standards for everyone working in the agricultural industry.
In the interim, migrant workers should receive open work permits allowing them to seek and find adequate and safe work.
In addition, workers should be afforded frequent voluntary health checks, have access to health clinics with confidential and professional translation services available when needed, as well as real-time and more frequent inspections of workplace and housing on employer properties or in the community.
The pandemic underlines our collective need to establish principles rooted in human rights and standards of employment and housing in which all individuals are protected and safe from harm.
It is in our collective best interest to ensure human rights benchmarks are established and maintained after this pandemic is over.
We have an opportunity to examine how the current systems in place have contributed to the harm experienced by migrant workers.
Collaboration involving all levels of government, migrant workers and advocates is crucial to ensure workplace and housing conditions improve in order to prevent further harm to all people living and working in our communities. Shelley Gilbert is the coordinator of Social Work Services for Legal Assistance of Windsor.