Sowing the seeds of justice for farm workers

Next year at this time, I hope I will be writing a different kind of column about Kevan Chandler. But that all depends on a promise Premier Alison Redford made when she visited the Herald editorial board during her leadership campaign late last summer. I have faith that she will act on that promise.

This June 18, it will be six years since Chandler died by suffocation in a grain silo on a High River-area farm — and Alberta still has no legislation in place to protect farm workers. During her meeting with the editorial board, Redford promised to bring in that legislation.

“We have to have farm workers protected . . . hired employees on farms are entitled to that protec- tion,” she said.

Now that she’s starting a new term as an elected premier, one of the first orders of business should be that legislation. To start, Redford needs to do away with the exemption that keeps farm workers outside the Labour Code, and prevents them from coming under minimum-wage jurisdiction and regulations about paid holidays and sick leave. Next, she has to ensure that occupational health and safety laws apply to them. In 2010, 22 workers were killed on farms in Alberta. They died from being crushed by a falling hay bale, hit on the head by a steel pipe, getting tangled in a baler, run over by a tractor, to list just a few. Eric Musekamp, president of the Farmworkers Union of Alberta, told me Tuesday: “That’s only the guys we buried in the ground from whatever happened to them. That’s people killed on the spot. We have industrial diseases, but we don’t track them. We’re exposed to chemicals, pesticides. We get farmer’s lung.” A disease similar to the black lung that miners get, Musekamp says farmer’s lung is “caused by spores, moulds. It’s slow pulmonary failure (from breathing dust near) grain bins, (along with) mould spores, mouse droppings; there’s hantavirus, and histoplasmosis (from breathing in the spores of the fungus Histoplasma capsulatum) is relatively common. Chemical poisoning, we see that quite a bit.”

Musekamp says the provincial government needs to “put WCB at the top of a list at the stroke of a pen, and take the financial risk away from us (farm) workers.”

If Redford will act on the occupational health and safety law, Musekamp has a plan modelled on British Columbia’s strategy, which he says has reduced farm injury rates in that province by 45 per cent.

“It’s OHS legislation coupled with a farm and ranch training society, which is a free-standing entity funded by industry and government. Its mandate is to facilitate compliance with the legislation.”

The board is comprised of representatives from the farm workers’ union, the agriculture industry and government.

“Workers and farmers work together on this thing. It also addresses the needs of Hutterite colonies and Mennonite enclaves,” Musekamp said.

The co-operative venture has worked so well that Musekamp said, “it has changed the culture of the industry over time and reduced deaths and injuries. B.C. almost never has child injury on farms; we have five or six every year.”

Bob Barnetson, an associate professor of labour relations at Athabasca University, has researched the Alberta government’s reluctance to protect farmers and demolishes its rationale quite nicely. For example, there’s the assumption that farmers can’t afford regulation.

“There is no evidence suggesting this is the case — it is just a bald statement,” Barnetson writes on his blog. “Further, we expect all other businesses to bear the cost associated with workplace safety. MLAS never explain why farmers should be allowed to externalize those costs (in the form of injury) on workers.”

Another objection MLAS have raised is that farmers employ friends and family members, which precludes regulation. “This ignores that friends and family members are employed in many businesses (e.g., restaurants, construction, retail), all of which the government successfully regulates. Again, we have a largely invalid narrative,” Barnetson writes.

The province has also tried to change the focus to education.

“MLAS have (at times) suggested that information prevents injury. At other times, MLAS have asserted that education is more effective than regulation at preventing injury,” Barnetson writes.

“These assertions . . . run contrary to the bulk of the studies about the effect of educational programs on workplace safety.” He adds that “only active regulation has been shown to reduce workplace injuries.”

Meanwhile, Musekamp says he’s been treading water:

“I would love it if we could work with Alison, and just start this. It’s the same thing as the Famous 5, the suffragettes — the basic fundamental tenet of equality. Farm workers are persons in the Dominion of Canada, and every person is equal to another. If we want to subsidize agriculture, we need to do it from the public purse, not on the backs of the innocent and vulnerable.”

In January 2009, Justice Peter Barley issued his recommendations after an inquiry into Kevan Chandler’s death. He said that farm workers should be protected by legislation. Alberta is now the only province that doesn’t protect its farm workers. Unlike other workers in this province, farm workers have no legislated right even to refuse to do dangerous work.

This is a human rights issue, and it’s long past time for the situation to change.