Food workers' union says Seasonal Agricultural Workers program discriminates against women

Friday, August 1, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

It’s too early for the Ontario Human Rights Commission to say if it will investigate the gender discrimination complaint against the Seasonal Agricultural Workers program brought by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Canada.

Afroze Edwards, Commission senior communications officer, says “we need time to review all the materials. In addition to examining the UFCW’s documents, the Commission must review “what the issue is and whether or not the Commission has any role to play.”

 The Commission’s policy section would be reviewing the documents and Edwards couldn’t say how long that will take. The Commission investigates human rights matters from a broad, systemic perspective but doesn’t investigate every complaint it receives.

In a July 31 press release, UFCW Canada says it filed a complaint with the Commission on behalf of Mexican migrant women workers, asking it to review the recruitment and selection process of the seasonal agricultural workers program. Under the current process, employers using the program “are able to discriminate against migrant women by requesting workers based on gender,” the release says.

Ken Forth, president of the Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services, calls the complaint “frivolous. It looks like somebody making something out of nothing.” The ministries of labour in the participating Mexican and Caribbean countries “are telling us that there’s not enough women coming forward to be recruited. We don’t recruit the workers, the ministries of labour in those supply countries do.”

Forth says a grower in Nova Scotia requested 100 women workers but was only able to get 50 this year and only 40 last year.

 “There are a lot of people who want female workers for things like picking strawberries and fruit and for packing but they can’t get them because there’s not enough numbers available,” Forth says.

UFCW Canada says in its release on average, women make up less than four per cent of the 17,000 migrant agriculture workers from Mexico and the Caribbean coming to Canada as part of the seasonal agricultural workers program.

UFCW Canada had filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, which is mandated to resolve claims of discrimination and harassment brought under the Ontario Human Rights Code, and with the human rights commissions in British Columbia and Quebec. Stan Raper, UFCW national coordinator of the Agriculture Workers Alliance, says they’re withdrawing the complaint with the Ontario tribunal “and going right through the Commission” in Ontario.

Raper says the union is looking for changes “in the process of how they select workers. We have talked with a number of women from Mexico who were hoping to get the opportunity (to come to Canada as part of the seasonal agricultural workers program) but it was not happening so they asked us to investigate.”

Canadian employers can check off on forms requesting workers whether they want male or female workers “and that’s not really supposed to be happening,” he says, adding there are requests for more males than females. “Those practices have been eliminated in almost every job classification in the country.”

Raper says the union originally filed its complaint with the human rights commission in Mexico last year. But the Mexican commission “basically said that the Canadian side, the employers and organizations that send the workers really are the ones determining whether men or women” are sent to Canada to work on farms.

Raper expects the Ontario Commission will launch an investigation and if it does he doesn’t know how long it will take for that process to be completed.

The 48-year-old seasonal agricultural workers program allows employers to hire temporary workers from Mexico and the Caribbean when Canadian citizens and permanent residents aren’t available. Farm employers must provide proof they tried to find Canadian workers to fill the available jobs before being eligible to hire Mexican or Caribbean employees. BF