Problems like those that led to the death of farm worker Sheldon McKenzie aren’t limited to Ontario, according to an Okanagan workers’ rights group.
McKenzie, a migrant worker from Jamaica, died as the result of head injuries received while working at an Ontario farm. No longer able to work, he lost his work visa and no longer qualified for health-care coverage. Family members living in Canada say there was pressure to return him to Jamaica.
“I don’t think there is a community in the Okanagan Valley that we can say is issue free when it comes to the treatment and the conditions that migrant farmworkers encounter here. I wish I could say something different,” said Elise Hjalmarson, one of the organizers of Radical Action with Migrants in Agriculture (RAMA).
RAMA is expressing concern over the health and safety risks faced by migrant workers. McKenzie had been working in Canada as a temporary agricultural worker for close to a decade and Hjalmarson said many of the barriers he faced accessing health care in Ontario are the same as those faced by migrant farmworkers in B.C.
In 2014, more than 6,600 migrant farmworkers laboured on B.C. farms. Most came through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), the primary agricultural stream of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Of these farmworkers, approximately 2,000 were employed in the Okanagan Valley. Most come from Mexico, but the number of Jamaican farmworkers in the Okanagan is rising every year.
Migrant workers face occupational hazards common to all farmworkers, including working with dangerous equipment and exposure to chemicals. Many farmers treat their temporary employees well, but Hjalmarson said there are still many migrant farmworkers also report being rushed by their employers and supervisors, encouraged to work at unsustainable paces, sometimes while climbing up and down ladders and often without adequate protective gear.
A Jamaican farmworker previously employed in the South Okanagan described his treatment to RAMA organizers as subhuman.
“We are treated like machines, but we are not machines,” he said. “You can put gas in the crane and make it run, but it is a machine. I am a human. You cannot take out my heart or my liver when they give out. When I’m dead, you can’t fix me up.”
Problems for migrant workers in the Okanagan surfaced in 2014, when two Mexican farmworkers were discovered living in squalid housing on a Summerland farm, living in a dirty garage without electricity or running water.
At the time, representatives of the B.C. Fruit Growers Association said they look into situations based on complaints, and in that case immediately got in touch with the Mexican consulate to get the workers help. However, the BCFGA doesn’t have the resources to go out looking for the problems.
Hjalmarson said not much has changed since that summer.
“I expect to get the same complaints this year that I get every year, unfortunately,” she said, adding that she would like to see the government bring in legislation around living and treatment requirements for migrant workers, rather than the current guidelines.
“They are actually paying a subsidized rent for these spaces and sometimes they are shacks. We’ve seen workers living in refurbished chicken coops,” said Hjalmarson. “We would really like to see random inspections throughout the season.
Similar projects have been initiated in other parts of Canada, she said, but not in B.C.
“It is desperately needed, those types of random checks where workers are given a voice, where their perspective really counts, we really need to see something like that in B.C.”