Prosperity and the free trade in exploited workers
OTTAWA - While Canadian and Mexican officials continue to discuss the expansion of the Mexican migrant labour force in Canada, the workers themselves continue to be shut out from the conversation.
"Cross border prosperity shouldn't mean expanding the free trade in exploited workers," says Wayne Hanley, the National President of UFCW Canada.
Hanley's comments followed a meeting Friday between Peter McKay, Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs, and his Mexican counterpart Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa, as well as U.S. officials attending a roundtable gathering of The Security and Prosperity Partnership in Ottawa.
McKay and Espinosa had previously discussed the prospect of more Mexican migrant workers for Canada during an official trip McKay made to Mexico in early February.
"Expanding SAWP (the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program) without input from the workers," says Hanley, "means even more workers brought to Canada under a system that historically has failed to provide basic workplace rights and protections."
"Canada and Mexico government officials continue to describe SAWP as a 'model' program but that is not what you hear from the workers."
For over 30 years seasonal migrant workers from Mexico and from the Caribbean have been brought to Canada under SAWP. UFCW Canada has actively assisted and advocated on behalf of these workers since the early 1990s.
Based on reports from hundreds of workers there continues to be a serious shortfall in the monitoring and enforcement of safe and decent working and living conditions for many of them. Often workers who voice their complaints to their employers or to the Mexican consulate are quickly shipped home at their own expense.
"Canada and Mexico have to stop ignoring SAWP's shortcomings," said Hanley, "and stop shutting out these workers and their advocates from coming to the table to talk about these problems."
"If they don't, and they expand temporary worker programs to other labour sectors what this country will end up with is an even larger, isolated pool of exploited workers. That will mean problems for those workers. It will also mean problems and tension for the communities they work in."
"It doesn't have to be that way."
UFCW Canada wholly funds and operates five Migrant Agricultural Worker Support Centres providing a host of support, translation and legal services to SAWP workers in Ontario and Québec on a daily basis.