`I WAS CRYING': FARM MIGRANT
Sick workers still being left alone in local hotels
Adelmo, a Guatemalan migrant worker about to head home in time for Christmas after a twoyear stint at a Leamington greenhouse, hopes to return someday to Canada to work again, but not if it's with the same employer.
Half of the more than two weeks he spent this month at hotels in Leamington and then Windsor in COVID-19 quarantine was spent in isolation and fear.
For the first week after he tested positive, Adelmo said he was ignored and completely on his own, with no communication from his employer or health authorities. Three times a day, a meal was dropped off outside his door, and he was told not to leave the room.
“Nobody checked on me, there was nothing at all.... I was very scared, I was crying,” he told the Star through an interpreter.
Adelmo was not the first taken off his farm when he was driven to a hotel on Dec. 1, but more workmates at the large greenhouse operation growing tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers — all temporary foreign workers — would soon follow.
A supervisor told him he'd be at the hotel for three days to recover, but eight days later, not hearing a word from anyone for days, another Spanish-speaking colleague suggested he call a person known to help vulnerable farm workers.
“He called me, he was very anxious, he said, `I have trouble breathing,' ” Santiago Escobar, of the Agriculture Workers Alliance support group, recalled. “I find this very problematic,” he told the Star.
Escobar, a national representative of the United Food and Commercial Workers who assists foreign workers in the agricultural sector in need of help, said he reached out to the Windsor-essex County Health Unit. The next day, Adelmo and about nine others at that hotel from the same farm were transported to a hotel in Windsor.
In Windsor, “I was checked every two days, I received medicine, everything was fine there,” said Adelmo, adding he was also allowed to leave his room. He was released on Thursday, eight days later, and returned to the farm on the edge of uptown Leamington where he shared on-site accommodations with 19 others.
More than half the local Covid-19-positive cases during the pandemic's first wave last spring and early summer were from among the thousands of migrant workers employed in the agri-food sector in Essex County.
The situation, which drew international attention and headlines, was eventually brought under control following a large-scale intervention by outside health and government authorities. But it has since begun flaring up again. As of Friday, three agri-food businesses in Leamington, and three more in Kingsville, represented more than half the local number of COVID-19 outbreaks.
Adelmo — the Star agreed not to use his real name to protect his future Canadian employment prospects — said his employer never informed employees when other co-workers took ill. The employer gave him a mask, and only once, but he didn't like it and began covering his face with a cloth.
“It is important to protect my health,” said Adelmo, adding he and his colleagues were purchasing their own personal protective equipment, including handmade masks sewn together by a co-worker.
“I'm shocked and amazed that this is still happening — I expected better,” Leamington Mayor Hilda Macdonald said when told of the worker's experience. “There were no new numbers coming from the agricultural sector, I assumed all measures were in place.”
Joe Sbrocchi, general manager of the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, which represents almost 120 agri-food operations in Essex County, said the recent rise in COVID-19 cases on local farms came as no surprise given the worsening situation with a second wave hitting the general population.
But he expressed surprise and anger to hear of at least one instance where a large local grower appears to have eased off on the vigilance needed to keep the pandemic from spreading.
“I'm disappointed I'm hearing this — we've been telling our members, `You don't let your guard down,'” said Sbrocchi, adding his organization has been helping make sure local farmers are sufficiently supplied with PPE for their workers.
In an email Friday night, the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development advised the Star it was investigating complaints lodged against the farm that employs Adelmo.
It's been two years since Adelmo, 25, was last with his wife and children, ages six and four. He said he came to Canada, “very happy, with a positive mind,” and was proud to leave behind bleak employment prospects in his Central American home country in order to provide for his family, including his mother.
The first year away was tough, and he describes workplace bullying until he gained a sufficient grasp of the greenhouse routine for work that most Canadians simply won't do. Migrant workers on Canadian farms have a choice to work as many days as they like, and, particularly during the pandemic, when Adelmo said he had to stay on the farm with the exception of one grocery shopping trip per week, he would work seven days a week.
Adelmo said he would typically work 130 to 135 hours biweekly and earn $1,600. “I am good with that,” he said, adding he had debts to pay, including for a house for his family and to pay back money still owed for the births of his two children in private hospitals back home.
“I am very happy to have the chance to go to work in Canada and able to provide for my family,” he said. With his contract coming to an end, he was asked to renew but said no — “they don't care about the workers.” Adelmo said friends at other local farms described much better work environments elsewhere, and he's hoping to perhaps land a job somewhere else in the future.
Asked whether he had met any Canadians in the local community during his two-year stay, Adelmo replied over the phone through the Spanish translator: “No, I didn't have the opportunity to meet other people.”
Nobody checked on me, there was nothing at all.... I was very scared, I was crying.