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Media Reports on Farm Workers

Province challenges OHIP coverage to injured migrant workers

By Nicholas Keung Immigration reporter, Sept 06 2013

The Ontario government is challenging a decision by an independent tribunal that OHIP coverage should continue for two seriously injured migrant farm workers from Jamaica. Kenroy Williams and Denville Clarke, who came to Canada under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP), were among nine Jamaican migrant workers caught in a car accident in August 2012 while being driven by their employer to a farm in Oakland, Ont.

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P.E.I. marked low on foreign worker treatment

CBC News May 17, 2013

Foreign workers lack protection on P.E.I.: report Prince Edward Island received some of the lowest marks in Canada in a new report card on the treatment of temporary foreign workers. The report, prepared by the Canadian Council for Refugees, says migrant workers on P.E.I. have little access to information about their rights, are given no support services, and are isolated by geography and language. Only in access to health care services does the province score above a C.

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Seasonal Farm Workers Receive MB Health Coverage

Kelvin Heppner on Friday, 17 May 2013

Seasonal farm workers in Manitoba will receive provincial health coverage starting this summer. Between 300 and 400 workers - most of them from Mexico, and some from Caribbean countries - work on Manitoba farms each year. "We're very pleased to see the provincial government is stepping up to provide this service," says Jodi Read, spokesperson for the Migrant Workers Solidarity Network. The MWSN conducted a two-year campaign lobbying the province to extend healthcare coverage to the seasonal workers.

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Six undocumented workers arrested

Claire Brownell, The Windsor Star | May 17, 2013

Canada Border Services Agency investigators arrested six undocumented workers during a recent raid on a Kingsville farm. CBSA spokeswoman Jean D'Amelio Swyer was unable to immediately answer when the raid took place, what charges the workers face and what the name of the farm was. Many Essex County farms hire employees through the Temporary Foreign Workers program, which allows employers to look outside the country for temporary help when they can't find Canadians to meet their needs.

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Temporary foreign worker bust made in Kingsville

CBC News May 16, 2013

As CBC Windsor was first to report, the Canadian Border Service Agency recently raided a farm in Kingsville, where agents apprehended six temporary foreign workers from Thailand. A CBSA spokesperson said the six people were "unauthorized workers at a farm in Kingsville."

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Six undocumented workers arrested

Claire Brownell, The Windsor Star | May 17, 2013

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Reforms to foreign worker program are ‘cosmetic,’ workers’ advocates say

Toronto star April 30, 2013 Nicholas Keung

Live-in caregiver Kay Manuel, now with the advocacy group, Caregivers Action Centre, says temporary foreign workers regulatory changes are just empty words without enforcement. She and others have little faith in Ottawa's proposed changes to the temporary foreign worker program.

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Employers fume as Ottawa tightens foreign worker rules

TORONTO, OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail Apr. 30 2013

The federal government has reversed course on its temporary foreign worker program, upsetting business groups – and Alberta – with measures to make it tougher, and less economically attractive, to import short-term labour. Calling it the biggest change to the program in over a decade, Ottawa announced several measures aimed at addressing criticism that the program is suppressing wages and allows employers to skip over Canadians in favour of foreign workers. But labour groups say the changes don’t go far enough.

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Farm sector spared in worker reforms

WENDY STUECK VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail Apr. 29 2013

Ottawa’s overhaul of the temporary foreign worker program has largely spared the agriculture sector because of “proven acute labour shortages.” That distinction is welcome for employers like Rhonda Driediger, who expects to hire about six seasonal workers from Mexico at her Langley berry farm this season.

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Federal government will close wage gap for foreign workers

By Tobi Cohen, April 30, 2013 Vancouver Sun

The temporary foreign worker program is being altered, says Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. Changes to the temporary foreign worker program unveiled Monday are little more than an admission of error and fall short of the massive overhaul the Conservative government promised, critics say.

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Foreign Temp Workers Changes Not Enough: Labour Leaders

By Tom Sandborn, Today, TheTyee.ca

Two federal ministers yesterday jointly announced changes in the controversial Temporary Foreign Worker Program, including a "temporary suspension" of the Accelerated Labour Market Opinion program criticized by labour leaders. But one high profile labour leader described the announced changes as "simply public relations."

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Changes to foreign worker program will hurt business, groups say

By: Dana Flavelle Toronto StarApr 29 2013

Canadian employers say Ottawa’s changes to the temporary foreign worker program will add costs, increase red tape and could even put some companies out of business. “It’s going to drive up costs and make it more difficult to use the program,” said Perrin Beatty, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

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A federal program that allows employers to hire temporary foreign help is under the radar

By Kate Dubinski, The London Free Press April 25, 2013

Dozens of London-area agencies and companies have hired staff the past two years under Canada’s controversial temporary foreign- workers program. Most appear to have followed the rules, and hired one or two workers when needed. But the sheer number and range of companies, as well as the difficulty to find out who hires whom for what, underlines how the program has exploded beyond control, critics say.

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Migrant farm workers inhabit precarious working world

David Goutor Apr 23 2013 Toronto Star

The uproar over RBC’s outsourcing scheme has put Canada’s temporary foreign worker program in the spotlight. RBC has issued apologies and promised to find jobs for the employees targeted for replacement, while Stephen Harper’s government is moving quickly to reform the system. But if politicians, business leaders and pundits want to get beyond instant analysis and quick fixes, and if they particularly want to know about life — and death — in one of these temporary foreign worker programs, a golden opportunity is waiting for them right now in Toronto.

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Carney warns of ‘overreliance’ on foreign workers for low-paying jobs

KEVIN CARMICHAEL The Globe and Mail Apr. 23 2013

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney stepped into the debate over the expanded use of Canada’s temporary foreign worker program, advising against developing “overreliance” on using workers from abroad to fill low-paying jobs. Mr. Carney’s comments came during what likely was his last appearance before the House Finance Committee before leaving his post in June to become governor of the Bank of England. The federal government is reviewing the temporary foreign worker program, which has expanded to cover some 330,000 people, double the number of six years ago.

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Don’t let temporary foreign workers drive down wages: Carney

Les Whittington Apr 23 2013 Toronto Star

OTTAWA—Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney warned the federal government not to allow temporary foreign workers to take jobs away from Canadians or drive down wages. “One doesn't want an over-reliance on temporary foreign workers for lower-skilled jobs,” the head of the central bank told the Commons finance committee. Relying too much on temporary employees from abroad distorts wage adjustments that lead to Canadians getting better pay and delays changes that make companies more efficient, Carney said.

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Jamaican farm worker's death gets human rights hearing

CBC News Apr 17, 2013

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario is hearing evidence today into the workplace death of a Jamaican migrant worker, crushed to death on a tobacco farm more than a decade ago. Ned Livingston Peart died while working on a farm near Brantford, Ont., in August 2002, but the family’s request for a coroner's inquest was refused.

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Temporary Foreign Worker Program: Conservative government must fix what it broke

By: Ken Georgetti Published on Tue Apr 16 2013

Last year the government announced changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP)Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), indicating that it would fast-track the processing of employer applications for migrant workers and allow employers to pay them up to 15-per-cent less than prevailing wages. The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) warned that those changes would make an already flawed program worse. I met with Human Resources Minister Diane Finley shortly after the announcement and provided her with a book of abuses that one of our affiliates had compiled. The CLC urged Finley not to implement the changes and to conduct a thorough review of the program.

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Hundreds of foreign farm workers delayed from entering Quebec

CBC News Apr 14, 2013

Some Quebec farmers are worried they won’t be able to find workers to plant their spring crops after hundreds of farm workers from Guatemala have been delayed from entering the country. According to FERME, an organization that recruits temporary foreign agricultural workers, more than 500 Guatemalans who were expected to arrive in Quebec are still waiting for their visas.

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Key mechanism of foreign worker program comes under scrutiny

By Olesia Plokhii | Apr 12, 2013 2:31 pm

Amid ongoing controversy over Canada’s temporary foreign worker program and the Prime Minister’s renewed vow to reform it, an obscure mechanism of the federal program has emerged as its central flaw. A labour market opinion, or LMO, is Human Resources and Skills Development Canada’s chance to pass judgement on how a foreign hire under the program would impact the Canadian labour market. The opinion is not needed in all temporary foreign worker hires, but for those employers who need one — and they’re the majority — a positive opinion is a necessary stamp of approval. According to some critics, though, it’s become little more than a rubber stamp.

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Foreign workers and national brand loyalty

By Janice Kennedy, Ottawa Citizen April 12, 2013 5:27 PM

The RBC debate shows the need for regulation. To eliminate Canadian jobs by hiring cheaper temporary foreign workers, igniting an angry firestorm across the country — or not: that is the question. And a fascinating one it is, too. With Canada’s largest bank in accelerated damage control, the ensuing show has been riveting. Although RBC (née the Royal Bank of Canada) initially defended its decision to axe Canadian workers and outsource their jobs, the bank has now changed its tune.

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RBC iGate scandal: Ottawa urged to publicize Canadian employers using foreign temps

By: Nicholas Keung Immigration reporter, Published on Wed Apr 10 2013

Ottawa must make Canada’s temporary foreign workers program more transparent and accountable by publicizing the names of employers who bring in migrant workers and the jobs they fill, critics say. Canadian taxpayers have a right to know which employers are benefiting from the $35.5 million a year taxpayers pay to process their applications for a “labour market opinion,” say major labour groups. Potential employers aren’t charged a fee for this service, which is required to justify their claim that they need to bring in foreign workers to fill a need.

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Rise in foreign temp workers questioned by labour groups

By Amanda Pfeffer, CBC News

The Alberta Federation of Labour called for an inquiry Tuesday after it obtained a government list of more than 4,000 companies given approval to hire temporary foreign workers last year, many in the service industry. "You look down this list and what you see is McDonald's, Tim Hortons, and Subway. This list goes on. It stretches the bounds of credibility that all of these employers have been using temporary foreign workers to hire skilled workers," said Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, on CBC News Network's Power & Politics.

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Senate Talks on Farmworker Program Inch Forward

By ASHLEY PARKER Published: April 8, 2013

WASHINGTON — After hitting a snag last week, negotiations in the Senate for an agricultural workers program — the last piece of a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws — appeared to be coming back from the brink on Monday. Representatives of farmworkers and growers inched closer to a deal on wages for workers, under pressure from a bipartisan group of senators who want to move forward soon with a broad immigration overhaul. Though the overall structure for the agricultural workers program had been set, the deal broke down last week over the issue of wages and the number of visas — known as H-2A visas — the program would provide to low-skilled farmworkers.

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Temporary Foreign Worker program under review

March 19, 2013

Diane Finley, federal minister of human resources and skills development, and Jason Kenney, citizenship and immigration minister, are reviewing the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program. The CRFA says it recently met with both ministers, along with national employer associations, unions and organizations for migrant workers, to discuss the importance of the program.

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Use of migrant workers undercuts wages

by Anelyse Weiler and Gerardo Otero

In 2013, for the first time in Canadian history, retirees will outnumber young people entering the workforce. Immigration is a sensible way to offset population shrinkage and economic decline and, for decades, federal programs have invited new workers to settle in Canada for precisely that reason. But now, on the cusp of Canada’s Baby Bust, a migrant workers boom is underway. Since 2006, the number of guest workers has surpassed that of economic immigrants who can become permanent residents and ultimately Canadian citizens. This policy shift not only increases the vulnerability of these workers, but also undermines wages and conditions for all workers in Canada.

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Surge in foreign workers shows challenge for job training

DEMOGRAPHICS REPORTER — The Globe and Mail Mar. 20 2013

Over the past decade the number of temporary foreign workers in Canada has tripled. The rise of temporary foreign workers, who now occupy one in 50 jobs, has become a source of controversy as the economy sputters. Critics of the program argue that it depresses wages and fosters unsafe work conditions. Employers say it provides a reliable stream of labour and fuels economic growth. As the government prepares a budget focused on addressing what it sees as a shortage of skills and labour, the number of jobs being filled by temporary workers can only fuel concern about Canada’s ability to train its own people.

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Canada gets failing grade for looking after foreign workers

Friday, March 15, 2013

Despite being touted as the 'best practice model" in the U.S., Canada is not doing a great job of looking after its temporary foreign workers, a union representative told American researchers gathered in Virgil Monday. Stan Raper, co-ordinator with UFCW Canada and the Agricultural Workers Alliance, was invited to speak to University of Arizona journalism graduates working on a documentary about the treatment of what the U.S. calls "guest workers," who arrive in their county under programs similar to the Canadian program that began bringing agricultural workers to Niagara more than 40 years ago.

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Toronto considers giving underground migrants access to services without fear

Nicholas Keung Immigration reporter Feb 18 2013

Councillors are being asked to make Toronto a “sanctuary city” where where non-status migrants can access services without fear of being jailed and deported. Maria didn’t go to police after her Canadian husband beat her up. When the food bank staff asked for her ID, she just left. And when she was owed $1,600 in back wages for two months’ work as a cleaner, she could do nothing but bite her lip.

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Pick this fight

By Signe Langford NOW Magazine

Locavores know where their food comes from – now it’s time to care about who harvests it. But, we locavores can be a smug bunch. We Pin and tweet pictures of our righteously delicious meals – Lake Ontario perch on local sunchoke purée – and call ourselves urban farmers when we grow a tomato or two in the backyard.

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Ontario crash that killed 10 migrant workers was ‘driver error,’ coroner says, declining inquest

RENATA D’ALIESIO The Globe and Mail Feb. 04 2013

Ontario’s chief coroner’s office has decided against holding a public inquest into a road crash that killed 10 farm workers and a truck driver last year, concluding one of the province’s deadliest-ever collisions was solely the result of driver error. Dan Cass, interim chief coroner, said Monday the decision was made after reviewing the deaths and consulting with the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ministry of Labour.

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Union angered by lack of action after workers' deaths

February 4th, 2013

LONDON - The coroner's rejection of an inquest into the deaths of 10 migrant workers in a horrific crash near Stratford a year ago puts the onus on Ontario's new premier to take action, a farm workers' union says. "If the coroner's office is not going to be holding an inquest then it basically leaves it at the footsteps of the new premier and minister of agriculture (premier-designate Kathleen Wynne has said she'll take on the job of agriculture minister for a year) to look at this matter and put in some regulations to make sure these types of things don't happen," Stan Raper, a national co-ordinator with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), said Monday.

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The Mexico-Canada Guest-Worker Program: A Model For The U.S.?

by Carrie Kahn January 31, 2013

In the U.S., farmers and farm workers alike say the current system to import temporary workers, especially in agriculture, is slow and fraught with abuses. But the shape of a new guest-worker program is still being hashed out. Some say the U.S. should import temporary workers the same way Canada does. For nearly four decades, the governments of Canada and Mexico have cooperated to fill agriculture jobs that Canadian citizens won't do, and that Mexicans are clamoring to get.

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Advocate Decries Loss of EI for Seasonal Migrants

By Sebastian Salamanca, 23 Jan 2013, TheTyee.ca

Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Lucy Luna migrated to Canada 16 years ago. Now she advocates for migrants, most of them also from Mexico, who are seasonal agricultural workers. She is coordinator of the Abbotsford regional office of the Agricultural Workers Alliance, an arm of the UFCW labour union. In December the federal government announced that seasonal migrant workers will no longer be covered by Employment Insurance (EI). That news caused hardly a ripple of interest among the wider public but had big implications for the agricultural temporary workers Luna sees daily, she told The Tyee in an interview.

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Foreign worker debate explodes in Canada

November 19, 2012. Douglas Todd

The Vancouver Sun has published several revealing articles and columns in the past few days that highlight a dire economic issue that was, up until now, somehow flying under the radar of almost all Canadians. The dramatic rise in the number of temporary foreign workers allowed into Canada in the past seven years is starting to receive some scrutiny – and observers are not discovering much of an upside for most Canadians, especially the young, or even for the often-desperate foreign workers themselves.

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Federal government puts foreign worker program under review

By Peter O’Neil, Vancouver Sun November 9, 2012

OTTAWA — The federal government moved Thursday to distance itself from its own increasingly controversial decision to grant permits to 201 Chinese nationals to work in a northeast B.C. coal project. Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said the government isn’t satisfied with the process that led to the granting of the permits, and said it has put the Temporary Foreign Workers program under review.

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We still need foreign workers, so let’s fix the system we have

November 18, 2012 - 4:16am By TIM HARPER Toronto Star

The day Canadians decide en masse that they will relocate to northern Alberta or northern British Columbia to take available jobs, we can have a proper debate in this country over the need for the Temporary Foreign Worker program. Until that fanciful day arrives, let’s accept that this program fills a huge void in the Canadian labour market in 2012.

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Union helps migrants counter worst abuses of foreign temporary worker program

By Lori Theresa Waller November 20, 2012

Canada's temporary foreign worker program is in the media spotlight this month, thanks to the growing outcry over a B.C. mining company's plan to import hundreds of temporary Chinese labourers and a human rights complaint recently filed by a group of Mexican workers against their former Canadian employer. The light being cast on the program is unflattering, to put it mildly.

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Temporary workers: Farm workers discouraged from raising concerns: advocate

By Tara Carman, Vancouver Sun November 18, 2012

Temporary workers from Mexico who come to work in B.C.’s agriculture industry put their future employment at risk by raising concerns about living or working conditions, according to a Fraser Valley labour advocate. Those who do complain about problems such as overcrowded, unsanitary housing, verbal abuse or not being paid according to their contract are usually not invited back by their employers the following year, said Lucy Luna, Abbotsford coordinator for the Agriculture Workers’ Alliance.

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Brighton-area apple growers rely on migrant workers

Sep 20, 2012 Northumberland News John Campbell

BRIGHTON -- Local apple growers learned again this year how fickle the weather can be, but there's one thing they always can depend on: migrant workers. If they didn't come back year after year "we wouldn't have a farm, as simple as that, not with our acreage," says Ron Knight, whose third-generation family business, Knight's Appleden Fruit Ltd., has been around for more than 100 years.

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WorkSafeBC gives safety tips to agricultural workers

Sonia Aslam Sep 20, 2012 LANGLEY (NEWS1130)

- Thousands of employers in the agriculture industry are getting tips from WorkSafeBC about the dangers of working in tight spaces. This is a follow-up on recommendations made after a deadly mushroom farm accident in Langley in 2008. "I'm hopeful this is not a substitute for the recommendations being implemented. That's my understanding. This is in addition to those recommendations," says Jim Sinclair with the BC Federation of Labour.

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Redford must protect Alberta farm workers

By Graham Thomson, Calgary Herald September 20, 2012

One was crushed by a falling bale of hay. One was hit on the head by a large steel pipe. Another was pinned between the cab and bucket of a “mechanically unsafe bobcat.” Just three examples of people killed while working on Alberta farms in the past two years. In 2011, 16 people died. In 2010, 22 workers were killed. According to recently released figures, 355 Albertans have been killed and 678 seriously injured in farm accidents over the past three decades. Their deaths were gruesome and some remain something of a puzzle, according to the terse synopsis of farm fatalities on Alberta Agriculture’s web page.

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Immigration laws feed exploitation of workers: report

by Jennifer Brown September 18, 2012 Canadian Lawyer Magazine

Authored by Osgoode Hall Law School professor Fay Faraday, “Made in Canada: How the Law Constructs Migrant Workers’ Insecurity” examines the problems with the current migrant worker systems in place across Canada and makes 22 recommendations as to how it can be fixed. The main recommendation of the report is that Canadian immigration policy must be reframed to ensure workers of all skill levels can apply to immigrate to Canada with permanent resident status.

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Voluntary safety rules for farms ineffective, experts say

By Matt McClure, Calgary Herald September 18, 2012

A provincially funded research body says a leaked proposal for voluntary safety certification of Alberta’s agriculture industry won’t curb the rising rate of farm deaths and injuries. The director of the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research said Monday that his group’s advice to a government-appointed committee — that the province impose health and safety regulations on farms like every other jurisdiction in the country — was ignored.

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Farmer confronts minister over labour

Friday, 14 September 2012 00:01 Collin Gallant

Alberta's Human Services Minister fielded a flurry of heated questions from a farm labour advocate following a lunch speaking engagement in Medicine Hat on Thursday afternoon.

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Ministry investigates after Mexican worker killed in orchard accident

CTV News Sep. 11, 2012

TORONTO - The Agriculture Workers Alliance says the death of a migrant worker in an accident on an eastern Ontario farm on Monday is the 13th in the province this year. The Ministry of Labour is investigating the death of the 38-year-old Mexican worker who was fatally injured at an orchard operation in Prince Edward County.

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A place to call home, far from home

By Jason Miller, The Intelligencer Thursday, August 23, 2012

BELLEVILLE - A local woman is planting the seeds for a Quinte-based multi-cultural centre to handle our growing population of migrant workers. Michelle MacAllister is on a mission to cultivate enough public interest for the facility she says is much-needed in an area where many farms depend heavily on foreign labour. MacAllister said there is ample evidence of the soaring demand for a cultural centre, which she said would alleviate the burden of working so far from family and home for offshore workers, many of whom face cultural and language barriers upon arrival. The centre would serve multiple functions including a meeting place, recreational activities, offer legal advice and a number of other workshops catering to each worker according to their nationality.

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Province neglects to report fatalities

Published August 23, 2012 by Suzy Thompson in News

The Alberta government’s failure to post its annual report of farm work-related fatalities has brought allegations from the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) that the province is deliberately trying to move the issue to the back burner. However, Agriculture Ministry spokesperson Stuart Elson says the statistics will be posted “shortly,” once the ministry finishes its review of how the statistics are reported.

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Farm workers deserve protection

THURSDAY, 23 AUGUST 2012 LETHBRIDGE HERALD OPINON

Province should give farm workers occupational safeguards The province was called upon again this week to give Alberta farm workers the same protections as those in other occupations, and in other provinces. The Alberta Federation Labour was among the voices which used the occasion of National Farmworkers' Day, on Monday, to push the province to take action. AFL policy director Shannon Phillips of Lethbridge, in urging the Alberta government to include farm workers in occupational health and safety and employment standards codes, said, "We are currently the only jurisdiction that has no form of protection for farm workers."

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Union blasts Alberta government's move to discontinue farm fatalities reporting

The Canadian Press 18 September 2012

EDMONTON — The Alberta Federation of Labour is criticizing the provincial government for no longer reporting farm fatalities. The federation says the move is an example of how "agricultural workers are being erased in Alberta." "This decision to stop reporting the number and nature of farm deaths helps to hide the real problem — Alberta's deplorable lack of workplace protection for farm workers in the province," spokeswoman Nancy Furlong said in a release Monday.

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Premier Redford buries her promise Farm workers betrayed by Alberta Tories

Calgary Herald August 21, 2012

As another Labour Day approaches, MLA David Swann can’t be faulted for trying to draw the provincial government’s attention to unregulated child labour on farms, but the issue is much broader than that. Swann singled out potato farms, urging Frito Lay, a subsidiary of PepsiCo. not to buy Alberta potatoes. It’s a seemingly noble gesture, but Swann should not have limited his protest to one crop. Not only are children working on a variety of Alberta farms but adult farm workers are still without protection under occupational health and safety laws.

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Blueberry farm didn't report injured worker's accident

CBC News Aug 2, 2012

One of North America's largest blueberry farms is being accused of failing to report a serious injury. An elderly Indo-Canadian farmworker said his knee was mangled and he ingested pesticides in an accident at the Purewal Blueberry Farms Ltd. blueberry field in Pitt Meadows. Gurdev Khakh, 68, said he was hit by a pesticide trailer that tipped over onto him in April.

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Life insurance for migrants

August 21, 2012

This year so far 11 migrant workers have been killed in southwestern Ontario and no one seems to give a damn. Can you imagine the outrage if 11 cops had been killed in the last five months? While there are a few more this year, usually five or six that get killed every year. Tragically most of these men come to Ontario with plans to send money back to their wife and children. Unfortunately many go home in a pine box leaving their families to go hungry in a country with little or no safety net.

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Renewed calls for farm worker safety

Kim Smith 8/21/2012

Opposition parties and labour groups are calling on the government to improve farm workers safety. The Alberta NDP and the Alberta Federation of Labour want to know why the government stopped reporting farm fatalities. "Alberta is far behind the rest of Canada in regards to farm workers safety," says NDP agriculture critic David Eggen. "We're finding it particular shocking because this year the provincial government has chosen to stop gathering information on statistics on farm workers in Alberta."

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Migrant workers line up for care at mobile clinic

BY SOPHIE BROACH ToledoBlade.com 8/13/2012

WOODVILLE, Ohio – On a recent evening, migrant farm ounselli trickled in from the cucumber fields at Liskai Farms to visit the mobile health clinic that had sprung up in front of the rows of low, white houses where they live during their stay in Ohio.

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Police identify Jamaican farm worker killed in van rollover near Stratford

August 10, 2012, The Canadian Press

BRANT COUNTY, Ont. - Police say a man who was killed when a van rolled into a ditch outside Brantford was a farm worker from Jamaica. Horace Clarke, 42, died Thursday at Hamilton Health Sciences Centre after being ejected from the van. Provincial police say nine workers were in the van when it veered off the road and rolled several times in the ditch. The other passengers were treated for minor to serious injuries at Brantford General Hospital. Safton Bailey, 34, of Jamaica, is charged with criminal negligence causing death, failing to remain at the scene of an accident causing death and careless driving.

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For migrant workers, injury often means a one-way ticket home

August 09, 2012 Nicholas Keung Immigration Reporter

After Eloid Drummond was hit by a car in Exeter, Ont., and suffered a dislocated shoulder, he was declared “AWOL” by his employer — and Canada — because he refused to quietly go home to Jamaica. Unable to continue farm work, he was terminated from Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Program, and hence lost his social insurance card and health coverage for his injuries.

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Farm worker says accident has ‘broke him forever’

By Monisha Martins - Maple Ridge News August 12, 2012 2:02 PM

As a plane soars off a runway at the Pitt Meadows airport, Gurdev Khakh looks at the acres of blueberries in front of him and laments – the fields are in another country. “This is not Canada,” says the 68-year-old, as he wobbles to stand with a broken knee. He says the rights that Canadians cherish don’t seem to apply when he steps onto the fields to work for one of North America’s largest blueberry farms –Purewal Brother Enterprise Ltd.

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P.E.I. Immigration Nominee Program: Chinese Citizens Pressure Province For Refunds After Rejected Applications

Michael Tutton Huffinton Post 08/12/2012

Chinese citizens who gave money to Prince Edward Island's troubled immigration nominee program say they're angry they haven't been refunded, two years after Ottawa rejected their visa applications. Qiu Chuanbo, 47, said in an interview that he is owed close to $91,000 after giving money to the program, which was intended to attract immigrants who would invest in companies in the province. He said the delay in getting his money back is a severe financial blow, making it difficult for him to fund his children's university education in China.

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Farmers say labour shortage reshaping California food industry

Matt O’Brien Aug 13 2012

HOOD, CALIF. — The lush rows of Bartlett pear trees appear boundless from where Pasqual Aragon stands. They make his small crew’s fruit-picking mission seem impossibly daunting. “The truth is that there’s a lot of work and not enough people,” said Aragon, 26, as a dozen men beside him hoisted ladders and stuffed pears into heavy pouches strapped over their shoulders.

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Migrant workers still await answers

Jul 30 2012 The Record

The chill of winter made way for spring, a spring that carried a taste of premature summer. Summer, in turn, has been, in the main, a time of drought and nearly unrelenting heat. And still they come. Migrant farm workers in Ontario may have a less abundant harvest of fruit to pluck this season due to that unseasonably warm spring, a late frost and a sparsity of rain. But if these workers are not in the orchards or the fields, there’s always an abundance of other labour to be done.

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Mexican Field Workers to Get Paid $2.3 Million in Back Wages

By Rosa Ramirez July 31, 2012 WORKFORCE

onion grower has agreed to pay a record $2.3 million in back wages to nearly 1,400 field workers from Mexico on H-2A temporary agricultural visas. The firm, Peri & Sons, will also pay a civil penalty of $500,000, according to a story in Staffing Industry Analysts.

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Far from Home on Father’s Day

BLOG POST posted on JUIN 18, 2012 by SIMON V.V.2

Most of them have not seen their children or their wives in months since they have left Latin America to work in greenhouses, fields or tree nurseries as part of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) or Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP).

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Guatemalan worker struck and killed by lightning south of Montreal

Jan Ravensbergen, The Gazette July 18, 2012

MONTREAL – A 64-year-old man struck and killed by lightning Tuesday evening while harvesting lettuce in an open field south of Montreal.

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Migrant workers deserve to be treated with fairness and equity

July 17, 2012 Toronto Star Alfredo Barahona

The parking lot near St. Michael’s Church in Leamington is full but not with cars — with bicycles — the only mode of transportation most temporary foreign workers can afford. Many have ridden 30 minutes, one-way, to attend mass and socialize with their fellow workers. Others have arrived on buses. It is the only chance they have to see each other all week.

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Rules changed for some temporary foreign workers

By Sheila Pratt, edmontonjournal.com July 16, 2012

EDMONTON - The door is open much wider for temporary foreign workers in six construction jobs, and tradesmen from the U.S. can now pick up work permits at the airport, the federal immigration minister announced Monday.

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Migrant worker changes not affecting agriculture

July 2012, Vol. 36, No. 7 AgriNews Interactive

EASTERN ONTARIO — Changes to the way migrant workers are being hired along with changes to Canada’s Employment Insurance Act could spell trouble for farmers that consistently hire non-Canadians for field workers. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program allows growers to apply to the government for migrant workers to work the fields. The program, jointly managed by the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada and Citizenship and Immigration Canada, comes under the authority of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

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Farm workers push tobacco giant Reynolds to the table

By Eduardo Soriano-Castillo, Labor Notes

The perseverance of Farm Labor Organizing Committee activists in North Carolina paid off in early April when Reynolds American finally agreed to meet with the union. FLOC has been demanding since 2008 that the tobacco giant discuss working conditions for tobacco pickers.

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Money for crash victims on its way

Laura Cudworth, Stratford Beacon Herald Friday, June 15, 2012

Funds raised through the municipality of Perth East and CIBC for victims of the Hampstead crash could be distributed by next week. As of this week the total raised is more than $96,000. On Feb. 6, a 15-seat van was struck by a transport truck when the driver of the van failed to stop at the stop sign. The 13 men in the van had just left a nearby poultry operation where they had been vaccinating chickens. The London trucker, Christopher Fulton, and 10 passengers in the van, predominantly workers from Peru, were killed.

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Crash victim’s family grateful for community support

Janek Lowe, Record staff Jun 08 2012

KITCHENER — “Good night” were the last words that Juan Costillo spoke to his family before he and 10 others died on Feb. 6 in a crash in Hampstead, Ont. “I didn’t say bye, and he didn’t say bye to me too,” says Carolina Enamorada, Costillo’s wife of seven years. “I thought he would come back.”

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Widow of migrant worker struggles to 'keep strong'

CTVNews.ca Staff Sat. Jun. 9 2012

Samaria Carolina Enamorado, the widow of Juan Castillo who was killed in a car crash in Hampstead, Ont., receives a cheque for $240,000 to share with the survivors and widows of the crash at her home in Kitchener, Ont. on Friday, June 8, 2012.

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Seasonal workers anxious about changes to EI system

CBC News May 25, 2012

Farm work is far from easy, and for Aida Mashari it's about to get tougher. The organic farmer goes on employment insurance at the end of each season. She says the new definition of "suitable employment" means people like her will be forced into jobs they don't want to do. Mashari, who works on a farm in Portugal Cove, says that will deter people from even getting into seasonal work.

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Group protests new foreign worker program as tool for cheap labour

Janek Lowe, The Record May 24 2012

WATERLOO — A small group knocked on the door of MP Peter Braid’s Waterloo constituency office Thursday in opposition to changes to Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program. It was one of four groups organized by the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change trying to meet with MPs across Canada, including Toronto, London and Vancouver. The local group stood outside with picket signs and listened to speeches before going inside to ask for a meeting with Braid.

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Wage cuts for foreign workers in Canada discriminatory, critics say

JMay 24 2012 Nicholas Keung Immigration Reporter Toronto Star

Senthil Thevar joined the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change last year, hoping for more equal treatment of the growing ranks of foreign workers in Canada. Changes came last month from Ottawa — letting employers pay temporary high-skilled foreign workers up to 15 per cent less (5 per cent for low-skilled workers) than the prevailing local wage.

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'Bittersweet Harvest' explores largest Mexican guest-worker program in U.S. history

Jeff Scheid/Las Vegas Review-Journal

"Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program, 1942-1964," a touring Smithsonian Institution show focusing on the guest-worker program that brought Mexican laborers to the U.S. during and after World War II, is on display at the Springs Preserve's Big Springs Gallery.

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Mexico wants to increase temporary workers in Canada

May 31, 2012 CBC

Mexico wants to increase its foreign workforce in Canada, despite the Conservative government's new employment insurance rules that aim to fill vacant jobs with unemployed Canadians instead.

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Hampstead crash survivors

May, 09, 2012 - 8:08:38 PM

He has no more tears left to cry — they have been replaced by a void and the pain that comes with memories that will be etched in his mind forever. “I see this truck coming so rapidly and all of a sudden, I lock eyes with the driver and it’s as if my body escaped me. I hung onto that driver’s eyes and my mind locked for that moment in time.” Those were the words of Juan Jose Ariza, recounting through an interpreter, the details of a horrific crash on Feb. 6 near Hampstead, Ont. .

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Peruvian survivors of accident want residence in Canada

Published May 09, 2012

London – Two of the three survivors of a tragic Feb. 6 traffic accident in which 10 Latin American workers perished on Wednesday emotionally expressed their thanks for the support they have received over the past three months and said they wanted to continue to live in Canada. Peruvians Javier Aldo Medina and Juan Jose Ariza were among the 13 migrant farmworkers aboard a van that hit a truck on a rural road about 140 kilometers (87 miles) west of Toronto. .

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Donations help migrant workers who survived crash

CBC News Posted: May 9, 2012 9:00 PM ET

Migrant workers who survived last February's horrific crash that killed 10 of their co-workers are recovering and receiving donations collected from across the country. And while the donations help, the crash near Stratford, Ont., has left the men unable to work while struggling to support their families in Peru. The men have applied to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds. .

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Survivors of horrific Stratford crash back on their feet

CBC News May 10, 2012

Two survivors of a horrific crash near Stratford in February are getting on their feet with the help of a generous donation. Javier Aldo Medina and Juan Jose Ariza were the only two to survive the collision between the passenger van they were in a delivery truck. Ten of their colleagues — all migrant workers — were killed when their van was hit by a flatbed truck. The truck driver was also killed. .

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UFCW Canada Migrant Workers Family Support Fund Delivers First Cheques to Hampstead Tragedy Survivors

UFCW Canada

London, ON - May 9, 2012 - Two survivors of a horrific collision near Hampstead, Ontario that killed or injured 14 people have become the first recipients from a nation-wide fund set up by UFCW Canada and the Agriculture Workers Alliance (AWA) to support and assist the families of the workers killed or injured in the two-vehicle crash in February.

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Brooklyn kosher food maker agrees to pay $577,000 to 20 NY ex-workers to settle federal case

The Washington Post May 8, 2012

NEW YORK — Twenty former food manufacturing employees who complained about working conditions have reached a $577,000 settlement with a Brooklyn kosher food manufacturer after engaging in a five-year campaign that led more than 120 supermarkets to stop selling the company’s products.

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BC mushroom farm deaths preventable

BC Federationist

Dozens of people could have died because of a mushroom farm owner’s negligence, the lead investigator into the deaths of three men on the farm has told a coroner’s inquest. Mohinder Bhatti of WorkSafeBC testified Tuesday the workers who died or were injured had no idea what they were doing when they tried to unplug a pipe on that fateful day in September, 2008. “They weren’t thinking straight,” he said.

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Dozens could have died because of owner’s negligence in B.C. mushroom farm incident: investigator

TERRI THEODORE BURNABY, B.C. Globe and Mail May. 09, 2012

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Hampstead Crash Survivors Receive Support Funding

ionstratford.ca May 8, 2012

Two of the three survivors of February’s horrific crash near Hampstead will be the first recipients from a nation-wide support fund. The fund was set up by UFCW Canada and the Agriculture Workers Alliance (AWA) to support and assist the families of the workers killed or injured crash in Perth East on February 6.

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Human trafficking in Perth County

By Chet Greason, Staff reporter South Western Ontario

At the St. Marys Police Services Board meeting on Wednesday, April 25, Inspector Steve Porter mentioned that human trafficking is becoming an issue in Perth County. “These are indentured servants that are often abused,” he said. “There are people being brought across the border…(and) basically worked as slaves.” Dr. Kerry Preibisch, Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph, specializes on the issue. “In 2002, the Canadian federal government expanded the Temporary Foreign Worker program to include occupations requiring lower levels of training,” she says. “The government invested money in facilitating employer access and speeding up the process, but nothing was put into place to monitor employers or recruitment…The new program opened the industry up to third-party recruitment companies with nothing in place to monitor and sanction abuse.” .

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Does temporary foreign workers program create second class of labourers?

By NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE Globe and Mail Update

There are now more than 300,000 visiting labourers here, triple the number a decade ago, toiling with reduced rights This is part of The Immigrant Answer [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead] -The Globe's series on the future of immigration in Canada. Read the original story here [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/why-canada-needs-a-flood-of-immigrants/article2423585]. Five years of dealing with temporary foreign workers affected Yessy Byl in a way she did not expect. There were the stories, from the more than 1,000 people she spoke with in her job as a labour advocate, of neglect and mistreatment - overtime not paid, commitments not honoured, hefty "hiring fees" deducted from weekly cheques. And yet many of them wouldn't make a formal complaint for fear they'd be fired just for speaking out.

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Foreign worker disappointed by Sask. experience

Migrant workers in Canada ‘sign away rights’ in hope of job security.

By Barb Pacholik, Leader-Post May 2, 2012

REGINA -- The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour is raising concerns about the treatment of temporary foreign workers after three Mexican men say their experience has soured their view of Canada. Ivan Estrada came to the Regina area in late February with dreams of providing for his wife and two children - soon to be three - back in Mexico.

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Survivors and victims’ families share in money raised after horror road crash

RENATA D’ALIESIO Globe and Mail Apr. 27, 2012

About $300,000 has been raised to help three survivors and the families of 11 men killed in a crash on a country road in Southern Ontario two months ago, one of the deadliest collisions in the province’s history. Most of the victims were temporary farm labourers from Peru and the breadwinners of their families. The tragedy struck a chord with Canadians and touched off an outpouring of financial support, said Naveen Mehta of the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada, which set up one of two funds after the Feb. 6 crash in Hampstead, Ont. The Township of Perth East established the other.

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Two-tiered wage system announced by Tories

Migrant workers in Canada ‘sign away rights’ in hope of job security.

April 28, 2012

Temporary workers, such as those who work in Ontario's farms, can now be paid 15 per cent less than the average wage. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has always vehemently denied bringing cheap foreign labour into Canada. Employers had to pay foreign temporary workers “the prevailing wage,” he pointed out.

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How Mississippi's Black/Brown Strategy Beat the South's Anti-Immigrant Wave

By David Bacon, for The Nation, web edition Jackson, Mississippi, April 20, 2012

In early April, an anti-immigrant bill like those that swept through legislatures in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina was stopped cold in Mississippi. That wasn't supposed to happen. Tea Party Republicans were confident they'd roll over any opposition. They'd brought Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who co-authored Arizona's SB 1070, into Jackson, to push for the Mississippi bill. He was seen huddled with the state representative from Brookhaven, Becky Currie, who introduced it. The American Legislative Exchange Council, which designs and introduces similar bills into legislatures across the country, had its agents on the scene.

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Life on the Farm

By Melanie Ferrier April 1, 2012

As the sun rises over Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., a flatbed pickup drives slowly between rows of peach trees. As it passes, Jamaican farm workers hand up baskets filled with firm, rose-tinged fruit. Most of these men arrived in April to start the growing season and will return to Jamaica in December when their visas expire.

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Abbotsford approves monument to farmworkers killed in van accident five years ago

April 3, 2012 BC Federation of Labour

Vancouver, BC - Abbotsford City Council voted unanimously last night to approve a proposal to construct a monument in honour of the three farmworkers killed five years ago in a tragic van accident that was overcrowded, uninspected and had no seatbelts for 17 farmworkers. While the families of Amarijit Kaur Bal, Sarabjit Kaur Sidhu, Sukhvinder Kaur Punia, sat in the audience, B.C. Federation of Labour President Jim Sinclair and local artist Dean Lauze presented the proposal for the monument to the city councillors.

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Recognizing the role of migrant workers on Ontario farms

Mar 23 2012 Kerry Preibisch and Josh Gilbert, The Guelph Mercury

Do good things grow in Ontario? Considering this question as it pertains to labour practices in agriculture will be the theme of Migrant Farm Worker Awareness Week being held at the University of Guelph from March 26 to 30. Organized by students in their final year of sociology and international development, the week aims to increase awareness among the university and broader community of the men and women who grow and harvest our food, as well as their working and living conditions.

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Lawmakers recommend more study on driver's licenses for migrant farm workers

Apr. 4, 2012 Nancy Remsen

MONTPELIER — When a bull kicked Danilo Lopez so hard he thought something might be broken, the 22-year-old farm worker from Mexico couldn’t turn to a coworker to get a ride to the emergency room. Neither he nor his co-workers had Vermont driver’s licenses, and he was afraid to call for an ambulance.

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Can Privatization Kill?

By THOMAS GAMMELTOFT-HANSEN Published: April 1, 2012

ON Oct. 12, 2010, Jimmy Mubenga was deported from Britain. The 46-year-old Angolan had come to the country as a refugee 16 years earlier. But after his involvement in a pub brawl and a subsequent criminal conviction, the government ordered his deportation. Three private security guards escorted him through Heathrow Airport and onto British Airways Flight 77 to Luanda, Angola. The exact details of what followed are still unclear and currently subject to criminal investigation. Several passengers onboard the plane reported that Mr. Mubenga repeatedly complained that he could not breathe and that he was being held down with his head between his knees by security guards. As the airplane taxied to the runway in London, Mr. Mubenga lost consciousness and later died.

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B.C. Supreme Court Asked to Muzzle B.C. Labour Board Regarding Mexico Blacklisting Evidence

27 Mar 2012 - WDM Group PR Network Business Review

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - March 27, 2012) - The Supreme Court of British Columbia begins deliberations on Wednesday whether to prevent the B.C. Labour Relations Board (LRB) from ruling that Mexico prevented union supporters from returning to Canada under the federal government's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). At a LRB hearing, which concluded on March 21, three former employees of the Mexico consulate in Vancouver gave testimony that indicated blacklisting and union busting activities by the consulate and Mexico government.

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Guelph to host migrant farm worker event

Sun Mar 25 2012 - Vik Kirsch, Guelph Mercury

GUELPH — “Got food? Thank a farmworker!” That’s a theme at the Migrant Farm Worker Awareness Week that starts Monday at the University of Guelph. It highlights in a series of events ending Thursday the plight of 100,000 farm workers in Canada, including 40,000 international agricultural sector migrants. Proponents of the awareness week describe the work they do as 3D: dangerous, dirty and difficult.

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Probe zeroes in on who's at fault

TRAGEDY IN PERTH COUNTY: Two released from hospital By JONATHAN SHER, The London Free Press
Investigators have moved closer to finding out who might be responsible for the Feb. 6 crash that killed 10 migrant workers and a London truck driver. A probe by Ontario's Labour Ministry has found that at least some of the migrants had been employed by Marc Poultry Vaccination Services.

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Local food = ethical food? Doesn't always work that way

By WENCY LEUNG Globe and Mail February 15, 2012
While more and more Canadians want food that is organic, traceable and produced within 100 miles, few of us spare a thought for the farm workers who grow it Lionel Campbell says it all started with a pain in his chest. The 28-year-old, who came to Canada from Jamaica as a temporary worker in 2008, had been planting, picking and spraying cucumbers at a Southwestern Ontario greenhouse for nearly two years.

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Survivor of deadly Ontario crash "cannot be happy"

CBC News Mar 5, 2012
One of the three survivors of a deadly crash that killed 11 people in southwestern Ontario last month says he "cannot be happy."The Feb. 6. collision between a passenger van carrying 13 migrant farm workers and a Freightliner truck resulted in the deaths of 10 workers and the truck's driver. Abelardo Javier Alba-Medina, 38, said Monday he is thankful to have survived the crash, but cannot stop thinking about the co-workers and friends he lost.

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Alberta crash kills four Filipino workers

Mar. 05, 2012 Globe and Mail
Members of Edmonton’s Filipino community are in grief after four temporary foreign workers were killed in a head-on crash by the driver of an SUV who RCMP believe may have been drunk as he wildly drove the wrong way on a divided highway. The dead include two 35-year-old men, a 39-year-old woman and a 52-year-old woman. A fifth occupant of the vehicle – a 29-year-old female – sustained serious injuries and underwent surgery Monday.

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Foreign workers allowed to launch class action against Denny's in B.C.

By The Canadian Press | Associated Press March 6, 2012
VANCOUVER - More than 70 temporary, foreign workers can proceed with a $10-million lawsuit against a company operating Denny's restaurants in British Columbia. Supreme Court of B.C. Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick has certified a class-action suit against Northland Properties Corporation, which operates Denny's Restaurants and Dencan Restaurants Inc. According to court documents, plaintiff Herminia Vergara Dominguez was recruited from the Philippines to work in Denny's restaurants, paid thousands of dollars in recruitment fees and was promised employment. She and others involved in the suit allege the defendants failed to provide the promised work, didn't pay overtime and failed to reimburse expenses.

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Migrant workers sue sauerkraut company

By AP | March 06, 2012
GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — A group of migrant workers is suing a Wisconsin sauerkraut company alleging laborers weren't paid enough. Farmworker Justice has filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of the 65 migrant workers from Mexico. The lawsuit against GLK Foods alleges the Appleton company didn't properly reimburse the workers for recruitment, immigration and travel expenses, thereby violating the minimum wage law. WLUK-TV reports (http://bit.ly/xAoblK ) the suit also says the workers weren't paid overtime for working more than 40 hours a week at the Bear Creek plant.

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Filmmaker Hernandez ’11: Migrant Workers are ‘Canaries in the Field’

Mar. 6, 2012 by Cynthia Rockwell
Ruby Blackerby Hernandez ’11 has produced a 40-minute documentary film, Canaries in the Field, to explore the struggles of migrant workers and their families, as well as reporting on current abuses in the U.S. agricultural system. She wants the American public to be aware of what she calls the “corruptions in the agricultural industry.” Hernandez says that most in the U.S. believe that human rights abuses of farm workers ended decades ago. This is simply not true, she wants us to know.

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Guest Workers Weigh Risks When Unions Approach

By Justin Langille, 15 February 2012, TheTyee.ca
[Editor's note: With its high concentration on the kind of farming that requires hands-on care -- fruit and fresh veggies instead of fields of grain -- British Columbia agriculture relies on temporary workers. Migrant 'guest workers,' who often come from poorer countries, do the hardest jobs. What are their lives like here? Supported by a reader-funded Tyee Fellowship, reporter Justin Langille went out in the fields this past summer to find out. (With files from Cindy Hugo.)] Night settles over the Okanagan as I knock on the door of an apartment at Lual Orchards, in Oliver, B.C. I've arrived unannounced and there's a brief commotion beyond the door before it opens. Inside I find two of the flat's tenants washing dishes after dinner, while two more relax on couches, engrossed in Terminator 2's spectacular cinematic cyborg battles.

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Crash fundraiser this afternoon in Waterloo

February 13, 2012 Jeff Heuchert - Staff Reporter
A fundraiser is being held today, Monday, Feb. 13, in Waterloo for the victims of last week’s crash in Hampstead. The event is open to the public and is taking place from noon to 1 p.m. at Renison University College at the University of Waterloo. Guest speaker Pablo Godoy wil speak on human rights and workplace safety. There will also be a screening of the hour-long film “El Contrato,” which follows a father of four living in Central Mexico on his annual migration to southern Ontario to do seasonal farm labour. Money received will be donated to the Migrant Workers Family Support Fund established by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

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Crash victim ‘touched many people’s hearts’

By Brent Davis, Record staff Feb 12 2012
KITCHENER — The strangers who approached Byron Castillo on Sunday afternoon had one thing in common. They’d known his father, Juan Castillo. They’d seen that smile, laughed at his jokes, listened to him speak about his family. And their lives were better for it. “They said, ‘Your Dad was an amazing person,’” Byron said. “He touched many people’s hearts.” Hundreds of mourners packed a Kitchener church on Sunday to remember Juan Castillo and to honour the ten other lives lost in last week’s devastating truck-van crash in Hampstead. “Just to see the overwhelming support has helped my family in dealing with the tremendous grief that we’ve had,” Juan Castillo’s nephew, Dany Mercado, said after the service.

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Invisible in the Fields

By Justin Langille, 9 Feb 2012, TheTyee.ca
[Editor's note: On Monday, 10 migrant workers from Peru and Nicaragua employed at an Ontario poultry farm and one Canadian truck driver were killed in a horrific highway collision. The tragic accident once again brings many questions about Canada's guest labourers to the fore: Who are they, and what are their lives like? What protections do we afford them? And what is gained, and lost, during their time in this country? With its high concentration of the kind of farming that requires hands-on care -- fruit and fresh veggies instead of fields of grain -- British Columbia agriculture relies on such temporary workers. Many are migrant guest workers coming from poorer countries to do the hardest jobs on B.C. farms. Similar seasonal workers in the United States tell tales of near slavery. Are workers here getting the same dirty deal?

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Labor Dept. Issues New Rules for Guest Workers

By JULIA PRESTON February 10, 2012
The Labor Department on Friday unveiled rules that reshape a program for foreign migrants in work other than agriculture, which officials said would strengthen protections for those workers and also spur recruitment of Americans for such jobs. It was the latest move in a protracted battle between employers and the Obama administration over the nation’s temporary guest workers.

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Ontario crash survivor had just ended his first shift

February 9, Globe and Mail
The last thing Juan Ariza remembers was shielding himself with his hands and screaming, “Stop! Stop!” Moments earlier, the Peruvian had finished his first shift at his new job at a chicken farm in Canada, climbing into a passenger van with 12 of his new-found friends. The migrant workers had discussed marking the moment by heading out for a celebration.

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Activists decry migrant worker transportation standards in wake of tragedy

February 8, 2012 By Don Fraser, Standard Staff
Stan Raper says the ways he’s seen some migrant workers transported along Niagara's roads would make your head spin. “They had no roof, they’re flat-beds and workers are hanging off them,” said Raper, the national coordinator of the Agriculture Workers Alliance. “We took pictures of workers being loaded into the back of a U-Haul truck,” he said. “They weren’t going far, but there were no seats, no seatbelts in the back of the truck.” “I’ve seen it in Niagara, Leamington and Simcoe,” Raper said, adding pictures were shown to local police who replied there’s nothing they can do to stop the way they’re being transported. "

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Stratford Van Crash Highlights Plight Of Canada's Migrant Workers

February 7, 2012 The Huffington Post
TORONTO -- A horrendous crash that killed 10 migrant farm workers and a truck driver in rural Ontario is raising concerns about labour rights and safety in the agriculture sector. Stan Raper of the Agriculture Workers Alliance said migrant workers toiling on Ontario's farms face long shifts under often difficult conditions. "You couldn't be more precarious,'' he said Tuesday. "There has to be a more humane way to provide work to people."

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Migrant workers killed in crash were 'breadwinners'

February 8, By Andrew Davidson, CBC News
Seasonal workers, often 'invisible' to Canadians, put in long hours for families back home Georgina Graham remembers talking to her husband for the last time on the phone early in the morning of Aug. 17, 2011, from her home in Manchester Parish, Jamaica. Omar Graham, 33, was spending his second season in Canada as a migrant worker at a tobacco farm near Paris, Ont., far away from his wife, his grandmother and his three sons, including three-week-old infant Onjordie.

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Canada's migrant farm worker system - what works and what's lacking

February 8, CBC News
The fatal crash of a van carrying migrant farm workers in southern Ontario has raised questions about the kind of workplace protections Canada offers to such workers. At this time, there is no evidence that Tuesday's accident was related to issues of workplace safety, but those familiar with the world of migrant workers say they are not adequately protected and that the problem lies less with a lack of rules than with a lack of enforcement and inadequate sanctions for employers who violate them.

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Migrant workers: Who they are, where they're coming from

February 7, CBC News
A flatbed truck and passenger van collided on Feb. 6 near the hamlet of Hampstead, Ont., killing 11 people — most of them migrant agricultural workers from Peru — and seriously injuring three others. Migrant workers have become an important source of labour for Canada's agricultural sector, and they're being recruited from a growing number of countries around the world.

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Migrant community mourns in disbelief after Ontario crash

February 7, 2012 By KIM MACKRAEL , ADRIAN MORROW , COLIN FREEZE AND RENATA D'ALIESIO From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Nine Peruvians, one Nicaraguan among the 11 killed in horrific crash in southwestern Ontario. On Sunday night, Juan Castillo was at his home in Kitchener watching the Super Bowl with his 15-year-old stepson. Less than 24 hours later, on his way home from his job vaccinating chickens at a poultry farm, the Nicaragua native met his death along with nine co-workers and the driver of the flatbed truck that crashed into their van. The calamity, said to be one of the worst traffic accidents in the province's history, left families in tears from southwestern Ontario to Lima, Peru.

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Van of migrant workers in deadly crash ran stop sign: police

CityNews.ca 02/07/2012 | Shawne McKeown and Michael Talbot,
Police say a van carrying 13 migrant workers ran a stop sign before being struck by a truck, killing 11 people in one of the deadliest crashes ever in Ontario. The collision happened around 4:45 p.m. Monday in Hampstead, near Stratford.

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Recently reunited father and son among dead in Hampstead, Ontario

National Post Feb 8, 2012 Adrian Humphreys
HAMPSTEAD, ONT. • Even in the first frantic moments of chaos it was clear people were dead and more were dying amid the crushed metal after a truck broadsided a large passenger van packed with migrant workers in rural southwestern Ontario Monday.

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Canadian road accidents involving migrant workers

By Joseph Engelhardt, CBC News Feb 7, 2012
A collision between a flatbed truck and a van that killed 11, including 10 migrant workers, on Feb. 6 in Hampstead, Ont., is the latest road accident in recent years involving temporary migrant agricultural labourers in Canada.

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No more illiterates for 'farm work'

February 01, 2012
PERSONS who are illiterate will no longer be allowed to participate in the Government's overseas work programme, commonly called 'farm work'. "We have found that many persons applying to participate are not sufficiently literate and numerate," Derrick Kellier, the minister of labour and social security, told the House of Representatives in a statement yesterday. According to Kellier, "the literacy level of workers taking part in the overseas work programme of the ministry is of paramount importance to their safety".

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At Wish Farms, labor for harvest is a worry

CHARLES JOHNSON Feb. 2, 2012
With workers busy harvesting strawberries on a crisp winter morning, all looked normal in fields around Plant City, Fla. But a worrisome question hung over the scene: Will there be enough laborers for harvest come spring, when competition from other crops like blueberries tends to entice workers away?

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Labour Relations Board to examine alleged migrant workers' blacklisting

Vancouver Sun January 31, 2012 6:05 AM
A hearing into charges of blacklisting of Mexican migrant farm labourers working in British Columbia is scheduled to begin in mid-February before the Labour Relations Board in Vancouver. The case was launched by the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Local 1518 on behalf of about 100 of its members, all of them Mexican nationals. The union claims the federal government of Mexico, along with its Vancouver consulate, conspired with two Fraser Valley employers to keep specific seasonal workers out of the country because they are union sympathizers.

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Boosting Mexican ties with Canada

By David Parker Calgary Herald January 31, 2012
Fernando Villar is settling into his position as Mexican consul in Calgary, and says he is very impressed with the city, the welcome he has received, and the enthusiasm and positive approach to business here. It is his first posting as a representative of his government, one that he considers a real privilege to be offered, as he was well aware of Calgary and Alberta through his previous 25 years in various government foreign service positions in Mexico City. Much of that time was with the finance ministry and in the energy sector working for Pemex, the state-owned petroleum company, where he became familiar with the industry in Alberta.

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Organizer Understands Plight of Migrant Worker

By Matthew Pleasant THE LEDGER January 22, 2012
WINTER HAVEN | The mound of cherries sometimes stood taller than the little girl who walked home from school during harvest season to find it waiting for her. Nilda Soto and her siblings would circle around the pile and sort the ripe, red cherries from the green ones on her family farm in Utuado, Puerto Rico. The cherries held coffee beans, her family's cash crop.

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Labour Relations Board to examine alleged migrant workers' blacklisting

January 31, 2012 Vancouver Sun January
A hearing into charges of blacklisting of Mexican migrant farm labourers working in British Columbia is scheduled to begin in mid-February before the Labour Relations Board in Vancouver. The case was launched by the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Local 1518 on behalf of about 100 of its members, all of them Mexican nationals. The union claims the federal government of Mexico, along with its Vancouver consulate, conspired with two Fraser Valley employers to keep specific seasonal workers out of the country because they are union sympathizers.

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Boosting Mexican ties with Canada

January 31, 2012 By David Parker Calgary Herald
Fernando Villar is settling into his position as Mexican consul in Calgary, and says he is very impressed with the city, the welcome he has received, and the enthusiasm and positive approach to business here.

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Natyshak outraged by plea deal in death of migrant workers

January 18, 2012 Leamington Post
NDP Labour Critic Taras Natyshak expressed his outrage over the news that the trial of the owners and operators of a farm where two Jamaican migrant workers died in 2010 was set aside for a plea bargain on Jan 11. Charges against the owners were dropped, while supervisor Brandon Weber pleaded guilty to a single charge and was fined $22,500.

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Increasing Reliance on Guest Worker Programs

January 14, 2012 Americas Program website By David Bacon
Over the last 25 years, guest worker programs have increasingly become a vehicle for channeling the migration that has stemmed from free market reforms. Increasing numbers of guest workers are recruited each year for labor in the U.S. from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean under the H1-B, H2-A and H2-B programs. Recruiters promise high wages and charge thousands of dollars for visas, fees and transportation.

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$22,500 fine in deaths of migrant workers
By Rob Gowan, Jan 12, 2012
The trial of four people charged in the farm deaths of two migrant workers in September 2010 near Ayton did not proceed after all but one of the charges were dropped on Tuesday.Brandon Weber pled guilty to one charge under the Occupational Health and Safety Act relating to failing as an employer to take precautions to protect a worker and was fined $22,500. Weber has six months to pay the fine, according to court documents.

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Slap on the wrist after farm worker' deaths
By Jasminee Sahoye, Jan 11, 2012
A court ruling made in the case of two Jamaican migrant workers who died while attempting to fix a pump for a vinegar vat when they were overcome by fumesat Filsinger's Organic Foods & Orchards, a farm at Ayton, Ontario, has been described as a slap in the face for the families of the deceased. Ralston White 36, and Paul Roach 44 of Jamaica died in September 2010.

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UFCW Unhappy With Fine Levied in Migrant Farm Worker Deaths Near Ayton
Jan 11, 2012
A $22,500 fine has been levied against a Midwestern Ontario man in connection with the death of two migrant farm workers. 44-year-old Paul Roach and 36-year-old Ralston White died in September 2010 while working at Filsinger's Organic Foods and Orchards near Ayton. They were attempting to fix a pump for a vinegar vat on the farm when they were overcome by the fumes, and died later in hospital. Eight charges were laid under Ontario's Occupational Health and Safety Act following an Ontario Ministry of Labour investigation. The United Food Commercial Workers union doesn't agree with the fine. UFCW spokesperson Stan Raper says they wanted a court case.

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US: Ark. firm agrees to $1.5M migrant worker pay pact
Jan 10, 2012
A federal judge in Arkansas is on the verge of giving final approval to a settlement of a class-action lawsuit that would pay about 1,500 migrant workers a total of $1.5 million to make up for unpaid wages and expenses. The lawsuit was brought in 2007 by the Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of workers who packed tomatoes for Candy Brand LLC in Bradley County. Several other defendants were also named. Settlement documents filed in U.S. District Court in El Dorado show the workers would travel to southern Arkansas to pack tomatoes during the eight-week summer harvest. The proposed settlement says they weren't paid federally-mandated minimum wages or paid proper overtime.

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How US Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration
Jan 10, 2012
Roberto Ortega tried to make a living slaughtering pigs in Veracruz, Mexico. “In my town, Las Choapas, after I killed a pig, I would cut it up to sell the meat,” he recalls. But in the late 1990s, after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened up Mexican markets to massive pork imports from US companies like Smithfield Foods, Ortega and other small-scale butchers in Mexico were devastated by the drop in prices.

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Mexican farm workers file suit against Canada
By Armina Ligaya, CBC News Nov 24, 2011
Migrant workers say they were fired by Ontario farm without explanation
Three Mexican migrant farm workers have filed a lawsuit against the Canadian government and their Ontario-based former employer for terminating their contract and sending them home without reason or explanation.

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Migrant workers sue Ottawa and farm for breaching contract, charter rights
Colin Perkel Nov. 24, 2011 Globe and Mail
Three Mexican farm workers who claim they were arbitrarily booted from Canada are suing the federal government and an Ontario company in a case that raises questions about the vulnerability of migrant labour.In what could be the first such suit of its kind, the three argue their constitutional and contractual rights were violated when they were sent packing without cause or explanation.

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New Data Indicates Mexican Migration Decline; A Separate Report Predicts Immigrant Integration
Nov 15, 2011
At a time when statistics suggest that fewer Mexicans are setting out on the perilous journey across the border, a new study projects that newer immigrants, particularly Latinos, are expected to learn English, buy homes and acquire citizenship at high levels in the coming decades.

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Migrants slam 'union blacklists'
By Suzanne Fournier, The Province November 15, 2011
Workers accuse consulate in Vancouver of sending names back to Mexico
Migrant workers from Mexico gathered at the Mexican consulate on West Hastings Street on Monday to protest the "blacklisting" of migrant labourers who join a union. The protesters deposited a large black coffin on the polished consulate floors, but two Mounties blocked their way to the elevator and Mexican government officials refused a meeting, although they accepted a petition.

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Searching for answers in migrant worker's death
By MONTE SONNENBERG, SIMCOE REFORMER Oct 21, 2011
Norfolk General Hospital will collaborate with the Agricultural Workers Alliance to improve the delivery of medical services to migrant farm labourers. Senior managers at NGH met with AWA officials and their associates Oct. 4 to discuss ways of improving health care for offshore workers, many of whom are stationed in Norfolk County for up to eight months at a time.

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Charges proceed in death of migrant workers
By Scott Dunn Sun Oct 20, 2011
The deaths of two migrant farm workers a year ago has resulted in charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Ralston White, 36, and Paul Roach, 44, both of Jamaica, died after a mishap Sept. 10 at Filsinger's Organic Foods & Orchards on Grey Rd. 9 near Ayton.

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Mexican labourers keep B.C. wine flowing
Globe and Mail Sun October 14, 2011
Growth in outsourcing of agricultural work raises concerns about regulatory oversight and the possibility of exploitation and abuse A Mexican flag flies in front of a new, 6,000-square-foot building at Hidden Terrace vineyard, near Oliver in the Okanagan Valley. Inside, bottles of hot sauce sit on tables in a kitchen that looks out onto rows of gewürztraminer grapes, which are tended by 18 Mexican workers who live in the building eight months of the year. They're here under a program that provides foreign workers for agricultural jobs that Canadians won't do - more than 3,000 a year in British Columbia alone, up sixfold since 2005.

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Labour sympathizers 'blacklisted': union
By Darah Hansen, Vancouver Sun October 18, 2011
Mexican workers face hurdles coming to Canada.A Canadian labour union representing migrant farm workers in British Columbia is claiming the federal government of Mexico, along with its Vancouver consulate, conspired with two Fraser Valley employers to keep as many as 100 of its members - all of them Mexican nationals - out of the country because they are union sympathizers.

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The Nation: The High Cost Of Anti-Immigrant Laws
October 17, 2011 Greg Asbed and Sean Sellers
Sean Sellers, a former Kellogg Food & Society Fellow, and Greg Asbed, co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, have harvested watermelons in Florida, Georgia, and Missouri. This past summer, the Econo Lodge off Interstate 75 in Tifton, Georgia, where we and other watermelon harvesters from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) have stayed on and off since 1997, was eerily quiet. Gone were the sweat-soaked shoes piled outside motel rooms, and gone were the workers hanging out during their evening downtime, chatting casually or talking to their families on pay-as-you-go cellphones. In their place, a phone card salesman at the hotel's front desk told anyone who would listen that his sales had dropped by at least 50 percent this year.

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Mexico claims immunity in B.C. charges over migrant worker blacklisting
October 17, 2011
The British Columbia Labour Relations Board (LRB) has been tersely told by Mexico that the LRB does not have the jurisdiction to hear unfair labour charges that the federal government of Mexico and its Vancouver consulate conspired with two BC agriculture operations to blacklist certain Mexican seasonal migrant workers from returning to Canada ever again because they were union sympathizers.

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U.S. seeks to strengthen safety rules for child farm workers
WASHINGTON | Wed Aug 31, 2011 6:28pm EDT
(Reuters) - The Department of Labor is proposing revisions to child labor laws that would strengthen safety standards for young agricultural workers, the government said on Wednesday.The revisions would extend restrictions on child labor, including barring children under 16 from cultivating tobacco or operating most power-driven equipment, in the first update to the Fair Labor Standards Act concerning child farm workers since 1970.

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Answers sought in migrant worker’s death
September 25, 2011, By MONTE SONNENBERG, SIMCOE REFORMER
The Agriculture Workers Alliance has requested a meeting with the CEO of Norfolk General Hospital and its board of directors. AWA wants to discuss the circumstances leading to the death of a Mexican migrant worker Sept. 16. AWA also wants to discuss issues related to health care for offshore labourers in Norfolk County.

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Report Says Migrants Mistreated by Border Patrol
September 22, 2011
TUCSON, Ariz. - Denial of food and water, sleep deprivation and physical abuse of immigrants in custody. Those are some of the charges leveled at the U.S. Border Patrol in a new report from the Tucson-based humanitarian group No More Deaths. The report analyzes some 13,000 interviews of deported immigrants conducted in Mexican border towns over the past three years.

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Questions surround migrant worker’s death
September 20, 2011 Randy Richmond, QMI Agency
LONDON, ONT. - Farm worker advocates are calling for an investigation into the mysterious death of a Mexican worker who was sent home from a hospital in Simcoe, Ont., before dying in London.

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Record prices reported for Ontario farmland as demand and commodities surge, says RE/MAX
September 11, 2011
Serious inventory shortage characterizes the market MISSISSAUGA, ON, Sept. 12, 2011 /CNW/ - Rising agricultural commodity values and tight inventory levels have seriously contributed to a significant upswing in the price of Ontario farmland in 2011, according to a report released today by RE/MAX Ontario-Atlantic Canada. The RE/MAX Market Trends Report - Farm Edition 2011 found that shortages exist in the vast majority of centres studied, with pent-up demand fuelling unprecedented momentum virtually across the province. Upward pressure on acreage values has been consistent as a result. Of the 12 major agricultural communities examined, 11 (92 per cent) reported tight inventory levels, while nine (75 per cent) noted an increase in price per acre. Despite the current volatility in commodity prices, the long-term prospects for the agricultural industry continue to be bolstered by global realities, including population growth, an international grain shortage and decreased availability of quality farmland from a worldwide perspective.

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Production celebrates migrant farm workers
September 11, 2011 By Angela Scappatura, St. Catharines Standard, Niagara Region, Sun Media
It wasn't easy to convince many of the migrant workers in Niagara to speak about their experiences working in the community, Brock University professor David Fancy said.And it was even more of a challenge to get farmers to tell their side of the story. In fact, none wanted their names used.

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La. Business Owners Sue Over New Rules for Guest Workers
September 11, 2011
EUNICE, La. — The workers have been in fine spirits this summer in the small plant where Dexter Guillory cuts up alligator meat to feed the growing demand from Southern restaurants for the swamp creatures’ steaks.

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Farm worker slips into harvester
August 2011
Man suffers no broken bones but is flown by air ambulance to Royal Columbian Hospital for treatment
A migrant worker employed at a local farm was injured Tuesday morning when he slipped into a harvesting machine.Delta police spokesperson A/Sgt. Paul Eisenzimmer said officers received a distress call at about 10 a.m. Tuesday from a farm in the 4200-block of River Road.

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Feds removing Manitoba meat inspectors
August 2011
Manitoba’s agriculture minister says the federal government is simply looking to offload costs onto provinces by pulling its meat inspectors from provincial slaughterhouses. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced Wednesday it will work to transition meat inspection services to provincial jurisdiction by 2014. According to the CFIA, it has only been providing inspection services in the provinces of Manitoba, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. In all other parts of Canada, provincial and territorial inspectors carry out the duties.

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Migrant farm worker injured in harvesting accident
August 20 2011
A migrant worker employed at a local farm was injured Tuesday morning when he slipped into a harvesting machine. Delta police spokesperson A/Sgt. Paul Eisenzimmer said officers received a distress call at about 10 a.m. Tuesday from a farm in the 4200-block of River Road.

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Labour ministry awaits police report on farm worker death
August 20 2011
The Ministry of Labour has received the preliminary report on the death of a Jamaican farm worker, who was reportedly killed in an accident while on the job in Canada. Alvin McIntosh, the Ministry of Labour’s permanent secretary, said the ministry is now awaiting the police report on the incident, which has resulted in the death of Manchester resident, Omar Graham.

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Clientele shifts but Mexican food stays authentic
August 20 2011
Mexican-born Noe Martinez opened a restaurant catering to migrant workers in the Holland Marsh and ended up serving far-flung urbanites hankering for true Mexican food.With the seasonal workers, the place proved a hit when the squat La MexiCanada Restaurant opened on the main street of Bradford, with two small rooms, a pile of party sombreros and promise of authentic Mexico City cuisine.

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Berry pickers’ pay under review by B.C. Labour Ministry
Lowest per-pound rate yields less than minimum hourly wage
The B.C. Labour Ministry is reviewing whether berry pickers and other field workers should continue to be paid per pound of product picked instead of receiving hourly wages.“We were hearing from workers and workers’ advocates, as well as from employers, that maybe the system wasn’t working any more,” Labour Minister Stephanie Cadieux said Tuesday.

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Cross-Cultural Sports Day returns to Leamington
August 18, 2011 Leamington Post
A sporting tradition started by OPP Constable Kevin O'Neil last year — will continue this weekend.In an effort to bridge relations between the Leamington community and the migrant worker community, O'Neil has organized 'OPP Cross Cultural Sports' Day, which will be held in conjunction with the Tomato Festival this year.

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Minimum pay rates for farm pickers under review
By Jeff Nagel - BC Local News August 17, 2011
Lower Mainland berry pickers and other harvesters are being promised a provincial review of minimum wages for farm work won't leave them earning less than they do now. More than 10,000 pickers are paid piece-work rates based on how much they harvest.

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Foreign Students in Work Visa Program Stage Walkout at Plant
August 17, 2011
PALMYRA, Pa. — Hundreds of foreign students, waving their fists and shouting defiantly in many languages, walked off their jobs on Wednesday at a plant here that packs Hershey’s chocolates, saying a summer program that was supposed to be a cultural exchange had instead turned them into underpaid labor.

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Zara accused in Brazil sweatshop inquiry
Aug 18 2011
Spanish fashion chain's parent denies claims but will compensate 15 migrants 'rescued' from Sao Paulo worlkplace. Retail fashion chain Zara is under investigation by Brazil's ministry of labour after a contractor in Sao Paulo was found to be using employees in sweatshop conditions to make garments for the Spanish company.

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Migrant farm worker dies after truck collision
The Hamilton Spectator Thu Aug 18 2011
PARIS, ONT. A migrant farm worker is dead after being thrown from a pickup truck in a crash Wednesday.Brant County OPP say the 33-year-old Jamaican man was pronounced dead in Woodstock General Hospital after co-workers drove him there following the 6:20 p.m. collision.His name has not been released.

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Migrant Workers File Lawsuit Against Food Company
Reported by: Kirk Chaisson 16 August 2011
MCALLEN - Dozens of Valley workers claim Pioneer Hi-Bred International violated their federal rights when it underpaid them and forced them to work in fields that were being sprayed with pesticides.

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Repealing the Guest Worker Program
Andy Schupak The Huffington Post 15 August 2011
I recently interviewed Harry DeMell, an immigration lawyer and member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, who recommends that we consider a "third way" to solve America's immigration problem.

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UFCW Canada Campaign for Mexican Migrant Farmer
Monday, 15 August 2011
UFCW Canada has called for greater transparency and accountability of the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (CSAWP) to ensure the rights of Mexican migrant farm workers in Canada.UFCW Canada is Canada's largest private sector union with more than 250,000 members across the country.

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Chinese workers could replace Mexican immigrants
By DUDLEY L. POSTON JR. and PETER A. MORRISON HOUSTON CHRONICL Aug. 12, 2011
Until now, Mexico has supplied the United States, especially Texas and California, with immigrant workers to fill low-wage jobs. That's about to change, in the wake of an unprecedented decline in Mexican immigration and a new influx of Chinese immigrant workers who will be fleeing hopeless conditions in China; many of them will enter the U.S. undocumented.

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Summertime and living’s not easy for migrant workers
By: Diana Swift staff writer August 4, 2011
Today’s migrant farm labourers face conditions not unlike those in The Grapes of Wrath. Photo: Richard Thornton / Shutterstock.com As you drive to your cottage, you may see them toiling in the hot summer fields. They wear the turbans of India, the shawls of Pakistan, the broad straw hats of Latin America and the bandanas of the Caribbean. They are the foreign migrant agricultural workers, who each year come here to plant and pick the fruits and vegetables that make Canadians one of the best-fed peoples on earth.

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HELP WANTED: AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY SEEKING LOCAL WORKERS TO COVER LABOUR SHORTAGE
August 3, 2011 By Paul Everest - Osoyoos Times
Cold and wet weather this spring and the cutting of federal funding to a program designed to bring workers to the area from Quebec is forcing the local agriculture industry to put out a desperate call for fruit pickers.

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Migrant workers in Quebec face risky work conditions: rights group
By Lindsay Jolivet, THE GAZETTE July 18, 2011
MONTREAL - Migrant farm workers are more numerous than ever in Quebec, according to the province's workplace health and safety board, and a local rights group says that means more people are being exposed to dangerous and unfair work conditions.

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Pedal power for farm workers
by Catherine Nowe-Huffman Jul 11, 2011
Pedal power for farm workers. Andrea DesRoches, Melissa Nguyen, Michael Dirisio, Milica Njegovan and Ben Krawec were all smiles for a great cause amidst the overly warm and humid weather Sunday as they prepared to lead other volunteer cyclists on a ‘Bike Delivery Ride’ from the core of St. Catharines down to Virgil to deliver bikes to the Agricultural Workers Alliance Centre.

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Supreme Court narrows constitutionally protected collective bargaining
Contributed by Heenan Blaikie LLP June 29 2011
Historical context
Supreme Court decision in Fraser
Implications
On April 29 2011 the Supreme Court of Canada released a landmark decision in Ontario (Attorney General) v Fraser(1) holding that the Agricultural Employees Protection Act 2002,(2) which created a new and distinct industrial relations regime for agricultural workers, is constitutional. Fraser makes clear that the guarantee of freedom of association in Section 2(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms(3) does not require the enactment of a particular model of industrial relations or a particular model of collective bargaining, and represents a significant retrenchment from prior case law granting constitutional protection to collective bargaining.

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HSA turns up heat after rise in farm deaths
By Martin Ryan June 28, 2011
Farm inspections by officers from the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) are to be increased almost three-fold this year, as the focus for safety concentrates on serious injuries and fatalities in the workplace.

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UN migrants’ rights official hails new pact protecting domestic workers
21 June 2011
The head of a United Nations expert committee on migrants’ rights today welcomed the recent adoption by the International Labour Organization (ILO) of an international convention designed to protect the rights of domestic workers, millions of whom are migrants.

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Guatemalan banana union leader murdered
02-06-2011
Violence against banana unions in Guatemala is escalating. On May 26, Joel Hernandez Godoy, finance secretary of the IUF-affiliated banana workers union SITRABI, was shot dead by a gunman on motorcycle while driving through the village of Cristina to the union headquarters in the town of Morales.

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Georgia Immigration Law Forces State To Replace Migrant Farm Workers With Criminals
06/22/11 The Huffington Post
LESLIE, Ga. (AP) — It's 3:25 p.m. in a dusty cucumber field in south Georgia. A knot of criminal offenders who spent seven hours in the sun harvesting buckets of vegetables by hand have decided they're calling it quits – exactly as crew leader Benito Mendez predicted in the morning.

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Edmonton immigration consultant charged with fraud
June 3, 2011 By Elise Stolte, edmontonjournal.com
EDMONTON - An immigration consultant in Edmonton has been charged with fraud after allegedly forging a dead man’s name to bring in temporary foreign workers.

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Labor shortage: With help from agency, Mexican laborers may get visas temporarily to work farms in New Mexico
06/12/2011
Jaime Campos thinks he's come up with a solution for a shortage of farmworkers that some New Mexico chile and onion farmers face each year during harvest time, which is beginning. Campos, president of Workonnection, a not-for-profit farmworker employment agency based in El Paso, is in the process of getting U.S. Department of Labor certification to allow his organization to obtain temporary work visas for Mexican workers to work at farms in New Mexico.

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Unions Cross Borders to Organize Guestworkers
June 13, 2011 Jenny Brown
Faced with a surge in guestworkers laboring in the fields, farmworker unions in the U.S. and Canada are crossing borders to organize them and to hold governments to account for programs that exploit workers.

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Mexicans find better lives in area fields
Business Tapestry looks at the social and economic forces that have propelled ethnic or racial groups into particular lines of work. Today's story is about the thousands of Mexican farm workers who work the fields in the region's rural areas.

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Native Workers May Not Ease Labor Shortages
June 7, 2011 By Jeanne Bonner - ATLANTA
Farmers are picking a variety of signature Georgia crops right now, including peaches. Some have said they are seeing labor shortages among migrant workers who fear the new immigration law.

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Just Temporary
DAILY NEWS Jun 7, 2011
There has been much talk around temporary foreign workers (TFWs) of late. In past, the occasional media blip about some person from some other country being injured or abused at a Canadian workplace failed to inspire much more than passing notice.

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Immigrant-Law Ruling Irks Some Businesses
May 28, 2011 Wall Street Journal
A Supreme Court ruling this past week upholding an Arizona state law that cracks down on employers of illegal immigrants is irking some businesspeople who expect similar measures to spread to other states and threaten economic recovery in sectors that rely on unskilled workers.But other businesses say they don't mind the extra requirements for them to prove they're hiring legal workers.

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Fraser decision “troubling” according to lead counsel for UFCW Canada at Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights Forum
The conclusion of the majority of Supreme Court of Canada justices on the Fraser decision is “troubling from a number of perspectives”, said Paul Cavalluzzo – lead counsel for the UFCW Canada in the case that was heard before the Supreme Court – during a labour law/human rights seminar recently held in Toronto.

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Caregiver sues former employer, claiming $162,000 in lost wages
May 29 2011 Toronto Star
At 21, Lilliane Namukasa left Uganda to make a new life in Canada as a live-in caregiver for two small children. But after working full-time for two years, she was paid just $2,100 by her Brampton employer and then fired without cause, forcing her into a homeless shelter, Namukasa says in a claim filed in Ontario Superior Court.

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Ethical food isn’t ethically produced in BC
2011-05-28 By Krystle Alarcon
For sustainable consumers, it might come as a surprise that eating local produce does not equate to ethically produced food.Raul Gatica, an organizer for seasonal agricultural workers, has seen the exploitation of Latin American workers first-hand. He asked, “When you bite into an apple, do you think about whose hands toiled to pick them?”

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Foreign workers uniting to seek better treatment
May 29 2011 TORONTO STAR Nicholas Keung Immigration Reporter
Foreign farm workers, nannies and other temporary labourers in Canada are forming a united front to fight for better treatment by employers.

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Why the immigrants come
May 27, 2011 By Maya Shwayder
The image of the impoverished immigrant, whether depicted being jammed with others in the trunk of a car or ducking through the underbrush to reach the border, has become a cultural meme. The endless influx of immigrants has spurned controversy and consternation, not to mention volatile rhetoric countered by off-the-cuff rationalizations on their motivations.

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Documentary tells stories of foreign workers
Project features those who have lost their rights
Vancouver Sun May 27, 2011
Junko Ota-Paul learned her rights the hard way when she came to Canada four years ago as a live-in caregiver. Ota-Paul said her employer, who hired her from the Philippines under Canada's temporary foreign worker program, paid her less than $8 per hour.

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Aware of Its Dependence, Napa Takes Care of Migrant Workers
By SCOTT JAMES Published: May 26, 2011
A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization providing local coverage of the San Francisco Bay Area for The New York Times. To join the conversation about this article, go to baycitizen.org.A worker trimmed excess branches and leaves from vines.

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N.B. welcoming more immigrant workers
Faced with shortage of available labour, N.B. employers bringing in overseas workers
For years, New Brunswick farmers have hired migrant or seasonal workers to help tend their fields and harvest their crops.But now, because of a change in the province's demographic picture, agriculture isn't the only industry looking for imported help. Imperial Manufacturing Group's warehouse in Richibucto has employed 16 Romanian workers, who have been in the province for about a month, on a year-long term. The workers are staying in the former Silver Birch Motel, which Imperial specifically bought and renovated to house the workers.

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Farm labor: Children in the fields
Byron Pitts reports on the legal but controversial practice of employing children to work on America's fields
May 22, 2011 – Play CBS Video Video The debate on child farm labor In agriculture, children as young as 12 are allowed to work unlimited hours outside of school. Byron Pitts reports on the "Migrant Stream" and the families who are part of it whose children work alongside them in the fields for minimum wage.

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Human traffic victims hope to stay
After 3 years, 19 want to rebuild lives
May 24, 2011 By Don Lajoie, The Windsor Star – In the largest local case of its kind yet, 19 victims of human trafficking are appearing before Canadian immigration officials in Windsor to determine whether they should be allowed to remain in Canada.

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N.B. welcoming more immigrant workers
May 26th, 2011
Faced with shortage of available labour, N.B. employers bringing in overseas workersFor years, New Brunswick farmers have hired migrant or seasonal workers to help tend their fields and harvest their crops.But now, because of a change in the province's demographic picture, agriculture isn't the only industry looking for imported help. Imperial Manufacturing Group's warehouse in Richibucto has employed 16 Romanian workers, who have been in the province for about a month, on a year-long term. The workers are staying in the former Silver Birch Motel, which Imperial specifically bought and renovated to house the workers.

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City launches multimedia campaign for public feedback on migrant workers
May 25th, 2011
For the first time, city councillors, community representatives and residents have the opportunity to discuss the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and its impact on Vancouver. As part of a multimedia campaign to raise awareness, the Vancouver Public Library will host a documentary film screening followed by a public discussion on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

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What happened down on the farm?
A recent B.C. complaint is the latest in a series of controversies relating to the rights of migrant agricultural workers in Canada May 24, 2011 Macleans – The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), a union that represents food industry workers in Canada and the U.S., filed a complaint to the B.C. Labour Relations Board against the Mexican government and a Mission, B.C.-based farm, for allegedly blocking the return of a seasonal Mexican worker to Canada for his involvement in a union. The UFCW claims it has a Mexican government report blacklisting Victor Robles Velez, who had worked the last four years at Sidhu & Sons Nursery Ltd., for his union involvement. “The Mexican consulate has gone to the farms and injected themselves in the democratic process by telling workers and threatening workers that if they unionize or vote for a union they’ll be sent back to Mexico immediately,” says Wayne Hanley, the UFCW president. The hearing for the complaint, filed last month, is expected to take place in the next couple of weeks.

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Mexican Workers In Limbo
Thursday, 19 May 2011 – Vegetable producers in the Portage area are facing a labour dilemma.Hundreds of Mexican workers, who are in Manitoba as part of the Canadian Seasonal Agriculture Workers Program, are without work, and facing an uncertain future due to the controlled release of water from the Assiniboine River. Several of the province's largest vegetable operations are located immediately downstream from the breach.

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Devastation from Slave Lake fire ripples overseas
May 18 2011 AMY DEMPSEY/TORONTO STAR – ATHABASCA, ALTA.—As he drove away from the burning town, Harry Laraya had more on his mind than where he’d go or the things he left behind. His gravest concerns were a continent away. “Home. The Philippines. My sisters,” Laraya says, with his eyes cast downward and a grim half-smile.

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Mexican drug gang suspected in Guatemala massacre
By Edgar Calderon (AFP) – SAN BENITO, Guatemala — Guatemalan authorities on Monday identified 15 of 27 migrant farm workers beheaded near the Mexican border in a weekend massacre they blamed on Mexico's brutal Zetas drug gang.

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Mexican consulate blacklists migrant workers: Union
By Cheryl Chan, The Province - May 17, 2011 Every year since 2004, Victor Robles Velez has left his hometown of Tlaxcala, Mexico, for eight months to work on a Mission farm. For the past four years, he was hired at Sidhu & Sons, a 240-hectare nursery and blueberry farm - one of more than 3,000 Mexican workers that help harvest B.C.'s crops, earning roughly minimum wage.

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Mexicans in the Labor Market of the United States
Almost 22 months after the recession officially ended, there are still 14.5 million unemployed workers in the U.S. In April 2011, the Department of Labor announced the general unemployment rate had declined to 8.8 per cent, its lowest level in two years. The department also indicated that recent job creation largely benefited two groups: white women and Hispanics, for whom unemployment fell by 0.2 and 0.3 per cent respectively.

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Migrants and minorities still vulnerable to discrimination at work – UN report
16 May 2011 Migrant workers and minorities are among groups that continue to face discrimination in the labour market as a result of the global economic crisis, despite positive advances in anti-discrimination laws, the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) said in a report unveiled today.

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Tougher penalties, Coroner’s inquest needed into mushroom farm deaths
May 13, 2011 The BC Federation of Labour is calling for a Coroner's inquest into the deaths of three workers at a Langley mushroom farm in 2008 following guilty pleas today by the owners of the farm. The farm owners pled guilty to 10 charges, including failing to have a safety program in place, failing to educate the workers, failure to properly supervise workers and the failure to identify confined space hazards and take the required precautions. .

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Mexico blocking labour activists: Canadian union
CBC News May 10, 2011 CBCA Canadian union accuses Mexican consular officials in Vancouver of blacklisting and harassing Mexican farm workers who voted in favour of forming a union at two Surrey, B.C., farms.

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Mexican consulate blacklists migrants: Union Food union files claim against Mission farm, embassy as pro-union workers denied B.C. entry
By Cheryl Chan, The Province May 11, 2011 Every year since 2004, Victor Robles Velez has left his hometown of Tlaxcala, Mexico, for eight months to work on a Canadian farm.For the past four years, he was hired at Sidhu & Sons, a 240-hectare nursery and blueberry farm in Mission -one of more than 3,000 Mexican workers that help harvest B.C.'s crops, earning roughly minimum wage.

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Mexican Gov't Union Busting in BC, Charges Union
By Tom Sandborn, Today, TheTyee.ca Guest workers pressured by Mexican officials to decertify unions, says UFCW. The office of the consulate general for Mexico in Vancouver has been involved in union busting activity among Mexican workers brought to B.C. under federal temporary worker programs, charge lawyers acting for the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

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Did Mexican consulate try to bust a B.C. union of Mexican migrant workers?
VANCOUVER, B.C. – May 10, 2011 – Charges filed at B.C. Labour Board allege blacklisting by Mexican consulate in Vancouver against unionized Mexican migrant workers in B.C. A leaked document has been deposited with the British Columbia Labour Board to back up charges that the Mexican consulate in Vancouver allegedly blacklisted Mexican migrant workers who were union sympathizers from returning to Canada this season to the two Lower Mainland farms where those workers had successfully unionized.

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Poor working conditions 'Canada's shameful secret'
THE AGRICULTURE Workers Alliance in Canada has described the treatment of Jamaican migrant farm workers as "Canada's shameful secret" and "indentured servitude". Stan Raper, national coordinator of the alliance, spoke with The Gleaner on Tuesday, describing the relationship between many farm workers as a power imbalance."Farm workers have little ability to complain and deal with issues affecting them," he said.

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Farm workers await union right verdict
The Province April 28, 2011
The Supreme Court of Canada will rule Friday on whether farm workers across Ontario can join a union. "This is really, really it," Stan Raper of the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada union said Wednesday morning. A lot is at stake for Ontario's estimated 80,000 farm workers, Raper said.

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Three Amigos await word
By Carol Sanders Winnipeg Free Press April 25, 2011
Carol Sanders - They made it through Christmas and can stay put past Easter but the foreign workers dubbed the Three Amigos might be getting the boot from Canada Tuesday. That's when the temporary workers -- who haven't been allowed to work since their arrest for illegally working at a gas bar in Thompson last summer -- are to meet with the Canada Border Services Agency.

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A heartless boss - Former farm worker claims inhumane treatment at hands of Canadian employers
Laura Redpath, Senior Gleaner Writer April 25, 2011
AS HE shared his story, George became adamant that Canadian employers have no regard for Jamaican farmers who toil on their farms for months at a time, sometimes during winter. The Canadian farm-work programme, which began in the 1960s, has created years of misery for one Jamaican who has been going back and forth between Canada and Jamaica since 1988.

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Labour scholarship empowers Canadian migrant workers
Nicholas Keung Immigration Reporter April 25, 2011
Jesusa Santos’ hard work not only helps support her family in the Philippines, but has now earned her 9-year-old nephew Mark Beunaventura a scholarship.A live-in caregiver in Toronto, Santos is one of five temporary foreign workers in Canada whose children and relatives overseas have been awarded the inaugural United Food and Commercial Workers Canada prize due to their ties here.

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Temporary foreign workers and the election
CCPA April 26, 2011
An election should be a time to discuss key policy directions. One of the biggest policy transformations in the Harper era has been the enormous growth in Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) –– “guest” workers who come to Canada for short periods, generally tied to specific employers, without future prospects for immigration or citizenship, and without a genuine ability to defend and protect their workplace rights (if they believe their employment rights or workplace safety has been violated, and they complain, they may be rewarded with a ticket home).

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Supreme Court to rule on farm workers' union rights
By Sharon Hill, The Windsor Star April 27, 2011
WINDSOR, Ont. -- The Supreme Court of Canada will rule Friday on whether farm workers across Ontario can join a union in a lengthy legal battle that has Essex County roots.“This is really, really it,” Stan Raper of the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada union said Wednesday morning.

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Supreme Court: Key farm decision Friday
By Randy Richmond The London Free Press
Canada's highest court will announce a decision Friday that could change the landscape of agriculture in Ontario.The Supreme Court of Canada ruling will allow, or deny, Ontario's 80,000 farm workers the right to join a union.The court case has pitted the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) against farm owner associations and the Dalton McGuinty government..

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Migrant workers not given proper training or housing, researchers say
Many migrant farm workers who come to Canada every year are not given proper safety training, live in hot and cramped quarters, have no access to clean water and see their health suffer as a result, say two new research papers.Researchers found that many workers from Mexico, Jamaica, the Philippines and other countries develop ailments linked to the gruelling work they do on Canadian farms, largely in British Columbia and Ontario.

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Farm workers suffering in Canada - study
Laura Redpath, Senior Gleaner Writer April 21, 2011
CANADIAN researchers have revealed that some farm workers in Canada, including Jamaicans, developed health conditions such as chronic pain, gastrointestinal ailments and other illnesses from long-term exposure to pesticides and other chemicals.The research, published on Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, cited harsh living and working conditions for the onset of chronic ailments and other illnesses in migrant workers of various nationalities.

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Migrant workers have inadequate health care in Canada, studies show
ALISON AULD April 18, 2011
Many migrant farm workers who come to Canada every year are not given proper safety training, live in hot and cramped quarters, have no access to clean water and see their health suffer as a result, say two new research papers.

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Iowa Farmer Fined for Hiring Undocumented Mexicans
DENVER – An Iowa farmer must pay $150,000 in fines and penalties for having hired three Mexican workers whom he knew to be undocumented, federal prosecutors said. Kenneth C. Birker, a 62-year-old resident of Vinton, which is northeast of Des Moines, pled guilty on Jan. 7 to having hired Jose Alfredo Tinajero-Uribe and wife Alejandra Sarabia-Lule in November 2001 and Carmen Gonzalez, Uribe’s sister, in May 2004.

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Gruelling conditions, poor health are seldom reported
The Canadian Press April 18, 2011
Many migrant farm workers who come to B.C. -- and elsewhere in Canada -- every year aren't given proper safety training, live in hot and cramped quarters, have no access to clean water and see their health suffer as a result, say two new studies.

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Migrant workers’ health suffers due to housing, labour: Study
JASON KRYK/THE CANADIAN PRESS April 18, 2011
Many migrant farm workers who come to Canada every year are not given proper safety training, live in hot and cramped quarters, have no access to clean water and see their health suffer as a result, say two new research papers.Researchers found that many workers from Mexico, Jamaica, the Philippines and other countries develop ailments linked to the gruelling work they do on Canadian farms, largely in British Columbia and Ontario.

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Hundreds march in farmworkers rally
By Shaun Griswold | New Mexico Daily Lobo April 4, 2011
More than 300 people celebrated labor activist Cesar Chavez’s efforts Saturday.Supporters marched through the downtown Barelas neighborhood to the National Hispanic Cultural Center. More than 100 people stayed to enjoy live music and dance performances in Chavez’s honor at the NHCC.

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Bill would make it easier for California farmworkers to unionize
By Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times April 1, 2011
The legislation would give farmworkers the option of unionizing without the usual petition, followed by a secret-ballot election. Instead they could submit cards signed by a majority of workers to state labor officials.Reporting from Sacramento -- State lawmakers acted Thursday to make it easier for California farmworkers to unionize.

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Unfair to Immigrants, Costly for Taxpayers
Op-Ed Contributors April 4, 2011
EVERY year thousands of immigrants being held on Rikers Island are transferred to federal custody and deported. Only about half of them have a criminal record, many of them are here legally, most of them have their due process rights violated and all of them are subjected to substandard conditions before being returned to their countries of origin.

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Foreign-worker restrictions panned
edmontonjournal.com April 1, 2011
EDMONTON - Edmonton-Strathcona candidate Linda Duncan is getting widespread support for her call to fix the federal migrant worker program.A new federal policy forcing people who immigrate under the program to leave the country after four years, then wait four more years before they can reapply, comes into effect Friday. “It’s rather counter-intuitive,” Alberta Minister of Employment and Immigration Thomas Lukaszuk said.

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Mexican Police Find 89 Migrants Inside Truck
March 31, 2011
MEXICO CITY – Federal Police officers found 89 illegal immigrants who displayed “evident signs of dehydration” inside the trailer of a truck in eastern Mexico, the Public Safety Secretariat said.

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'Stimulus Loan' and State Money Used for Slavery, Workers Say
March, 2011
NASHVILLE (CN) - Landscaping companies that won millions of dollars in state contracts and "stimulus loans" hired Mexican workers, confiscated their visas and passports, put them to forced labor, stashed them in inhumane labor camps controlled by armed supervisors, 15 workers say in Federal Court.

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‘Perversion of the law’ forces migrants to pay smugglers, lawyer argues
Globe and Mail March 31, 2011
Lawyers for some of the MV Sun Sea migrants say federal immigration rules have forced their clients to sell their belongings and family land so they can pay off smugglers and be released from detention.

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Happy Cesar Chavez Day 2011
Edmonton Journal March 31, 2011
Cesar Chavez Day is also the day of Chavez's birth, March 31! Today, country offices including schools will be closed throughout the country as the U.S. honors and remembers the life and accomplishments of Mexican-American farm worker turned advocate, Cesar Chavez.

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Time to track farm safety
Edmonton Journal March 30, 2011
Re: "Farm safety picture distorted," by Thomas Lukaszuk, Letters, March 22.Employment Minister Thomas Lukaszuk writes to refute the Journal editorial "Confront lax law on farm safety," Opinion, March 16.The minister cites the huge fines imposed for safety violations and he disputes the stats used by The Journal.

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Chipotle fires Mexican workers for crime of working
March 29, 2011
The words "Mexico" and "Mexican" can hardly be found on the website of the country's largest chain of Mexican fast food restaurants, Chipotle. Yet almost everyone working in almost every location is Mexican, or at least Latino.

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Immigration Bills Rile Farmers
ROBERTA, Ga. 03/28/2011
Arizona-style immigration bills are under attack in several states, with some of the strongest opposition to the proposals coming from agricultural interests like the cotton and peach farmers here in central Georgia.

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Keeping memory of Chavez alive
McClatchy-Tribune Regional News 03/28/2011
Mar. 28, 2011 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- STOCKTON -- Elaborate dresses that resembled flowers from a distance drew Elizabeth Chavez to the Dean De Carli Waterfront Square on Sunday.

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Migrant workers plight to be showcased at Vancouver meet
03/22/2011
Community advocates, trade unions and academics are preparing for a loud yet peaceful march to raise public awareness of the plight of migrant workers at Denny’s restaurants in B.C.

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Noisy protest held on behalf of migrant workers outside Denny's on Davie Street
03/26/2011
About 40 people gathered outside a West End Denny's restaurant today (March 26) to protest the treatment of migrant workers. The rally was organized by the immigrants'-rights group Migrante-B.C. and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

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Mexican workers claim forced labor in lawsuit
Globe and Mail March 24, 2011
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A group of Mexican guest workers claims a former employer engaged in human trafficking and forced labor. A suit filed in federal court in Nashville on Thursday claims armed managers with Vanderbilt Landscaping LLC subjected foreigners working under the H-2B visa program to constant surveillance and threats.

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Down on the farm with robo-milker
THE TENNESSEAN 03/24/2011
There’s a new kind of worker doing the chores on Canadian farms. Robotic farmhands are helping farmers keep costs in check as they struggle to compete with global rivals. The new farm-bots are harvesting tender fruit, milking cows – even planting greenhouse flowers – for owners who are under pressure from the larger-scale operations, longer growing seasons and lax labour practices of factory farms in the United States, Mexico, South America and Asia.

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Protest to target migrant workers rights
THE TENNESSEAN 03/20/2011
Students and activists calling for fairness to produce workers are planning a protest at a local supermarket on Saturday.The Fair Food Rally will be held from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. in front of a Publix grocery store at 3532 Murfreesboro Pike in Antioch.

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New, more reasonable, approach to immigration policy
OAKLAND, CA 03/17/2011
Last week the Utah legislature passed three new laws that have been hailed in the media as a new, more reasonable, approach to immigration policy.

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Three migrant workers ordered to leave Canada for not having proper work permits
Winnipeg Free Press 03/16/2011
WINNIPEG - Three migrant workers from the Philippines have been ordered to leave Canada because they were working without the proper documentation. An Immigration Board adjudicator issued exclusion orders Tuesday for Arnisto Gaviola, Ermie Zotomayor and Antonio Laroya to leave Canada.

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For Mexican workers, journey to Arizona fields an epic one
Cronkite News Service 03/15/2011
SAN FRANCISCO—More than 50 former workers at a now-defunct supermarket chain in Santa Clara County (aka Silicon Valley and San Jose) are suing their former employer for unpaid wages.

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Mexican Grocery Chain Workers Sue for Unpaid Wages in Silicon Valley
03/15/2011
SAN FRANCISCO—More than 50 former workers at a now-defunct supermarket chain in Santa Clara County (aka Silicon Valley and San Jose) are suing their former employer for unpaid wages.

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New farm safety advisory council named
03/15/2011
Alberta has proven unwilling to extend basic employment laws--including health and safety protections--to agricultural workers. This is becoming a public-relations problem as Alberta is the last hold out province in the country and even judges (who typically stay out of policy debates) are now opining there is no justification for such an exclusion.

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Bipartisan effort to create Utah migrant worker program unveiled
03/03/2011
SALT LAKE CITY — Lawmakers unveiled a bipartisan effort Wednesday to create a migrant worker program between Utah and a state in Mexico.The proposal is the first to unite the various factions in the state's divisive debate over illegal immigration. Democrats and Republicans joined Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff to announce the proposed Utah Commission on Immigration and Migration Act.

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Agriculture representatives see need for more money available to industry
03/03/2011
MCKAYS — While Elvis Gillam is hoping it will not happen in his life time, he believes the time will come “when humanity is going to lose the ability to feed itself.”That was one of his comments when reacting to a meeting held at the Three Rivers Lions Club on Wednesday where the presentation of findings from an Agricultural and Agrifoods Industry Assessment final report took place, in addition to discussion on issues dealing with it.

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Windsor-Essex agency reaches out to victims of human trafficking
03/02/2011
WINDSOR, Ont. -- Among the community of migrant farm workers in the Kingsville area last October, the van-load of Thai women stood out from the crowd.The men working the farms could not believe their luck that these 10 or 12 young beauties might be working alongside them, said Cathy Kolar, an immigration specialist with Legal Assistance of Windsor.

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Bank fees 'killing' migrant workers: ACORN
03/03/2011
An international community-based, low-income advocacy organization is calling on the Canadian government to regulate the “predatory” remittance industry.The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) says the unregulated practise of charging up to 50 per cent for money transfers — a $400-billion industry according to the World Bank — is punishing migrant workers and immigrants, many of whom send money to their families back home.

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Bipartisan effort to create Utah migrant worker program unveiled
03/02/2011
SALT LAKE CITY — Lawmakers unveiled a bipartisan effort Wednesday to create a migrant worker program between Utah and a state in Mexico.The proposal is the first to unite the various factions in the state's divisive debate over illegal immigration. Democrats and Republicans joined Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff to announce the proposed Utah Commission on Immigration and Migration Act.

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Migrant workers dream of a better life for their children
02/27/2011
For 20 years, Amador Bernal traveled back and forth from Toluca, Mexico, to work at a low-paying job in Kennett Square. His goal was to give his children a shot at a better life in the United States.

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Canada near top in integrating immigrants, survey says
02/28/2011
Canada’s integration policies rank just short of the best in the world, according to a major international survey of Europe and North America. Canada place third behind Sweden and Portugal on the latest Migrant Integration Policy Index, a benchmark European study that measures a range of indicators, from political engagement and paths to citizenship to public education.

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UPA, WRAP chiefs named CFA vice-presidents
02/27/2011
The presidents of the general farm organizations in Quebec and Alberta are now the first and second vice-presidents of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.Christian Lacasse, a dairyman from St-Vallier, Que. and president of Quebec's Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA), was elected last week in Ottawa as the CFA's first vice-president, replacing Garnet Etsell.

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UAW plans to send organizer to Mexico
02/28/2011
The United Auto Workers plans to dispatch an organizer to Mexico to help Mexican workers campaign for better wages and workers. Cynthia Estrada, the UAW vice president in charge of organizing, said the goal isn’t to bring Mexican workers into the UAW. “Mexican workers are capable of organizing themselves,” she said during an interview at a conference at UAW headquarters in Detroit.

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Migrants workers get paid.
02/26/2011
It turns out 130 migrant workers will be compensated after a local farmer stopped paying them weeks ago and then left the country.Thanks to help from the Agriculture Workers Alliance and UFCW Canada, the workers will get the nearly 250 thousand dollars total they are owed after the Simcoe farmer declared bankruptcy back in November.

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'Bitter the Fruit' throws spotlight on farm workers' plight
02/24/2011
As I walked into a standing-room-only matinee of "Bitter the Fruit" last Sunday at the Broadway Playhouse, I turned to the house manager and said, "You guys don't need my review. Look at this!" And as I did look, I noticed it was the most ethnically diverse audience I have ever seen at a theatrical production in Santa Cruz.

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Manitoba hog farmers backed for manure storage, treatment
02/24/2011
Manitoba hog producers will be able to get public funds to help build or repair manure storage on their farms and set up manure treatment systems to cut the risk of phosphorus runoff into waterways and wells.

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RDOS HAS EYES ON LAND WEST OF TOWN FOR SEASONAL WORKERS’ CAMP
02/23/2011 OSOYOOS TIMES
The Regional District Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS) board of directors agreed on Feb. 17 to apply to the provincial government for a licence of occupation for a piece of Crown land west of Osoyoos to create a camp for seasonal farm workers.

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Yukon can fast-track some foreign workers
02/23/2011 CBC NEWS
The Yukon government is now able to fast-track the entry of foreign temporary workers that are urgently needed in some sectors, such as hospitality and mining.The federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which allows employers to bring in foreign employees for short periods of time, usually requires employers to prove that they cannot find the workers they need in Canada.

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Canadian workers compete with Mexican "slavery"
02/22/2011 By Laura Walter
OTTAWA, Straight Goods News with YouTube video, February 15, 2011 — As part of a world-wide series of rallies and protests, labour activists met in the cold outside the Mexican embassy here, to protest human rights abuses in Mexico and hear from union leaders about discussion with Mexican and federal government officials.

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OSHA, Mexican Consulate Form Alliance to Promote Safety for Mexican Workers
02/22/2011 By Laura Walter
An alliance signed Feb. 18 by OSHA and the Mexican Consulate in Little Rock, Ark., strives to enhance workplace safety and health for Mexican workers in Arkansas and Oklahoma. “We welcome this unique opportunity to join with the Mexican Consulate in emphasizing safety and health in high-risk industries,” said William Burke, OSHA’s acting regional administrator in Dallas. “The joint resources of this relationship will provide access to education and training to protect their occupational safety and health.”

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Fraudulent labor recruiters dupe Mexican migrants
02/17/2011
It's estimated that poor Mexican workers have invested more than $2 million in U.S. jobs that don't exist. JEREMY HOBSON: In some parts of Mexico, getting a work-visa for the U.S. is like winning the lottery. Unless, of course, that work-visa is a fraud.

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Private member's bill latest bid to eliminate CWB monopoly
By Angela Hall, Regina Leader-Post 02/14/2011
REGINA — The introduction of a private member's bill seeking to eliminate the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) monopoly on the marketing of western wheat and barley has turned up the heat in an age-old debate.

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Low literacy rates may kill New Brunswick potato break
Tamsin McMahon 02/14/2011
For more than 50 years, schools in the heart of New Brunswick’s potato country have arranged their schedules to coincide with the annual harvest — closing for two weeks in late September so students can work the farms. North Carleton County is, after all, the self-appointed French Fry Capital of the World, home to Potato World museum and the McCain Foods global headquarters.

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2010-2011 Migrant farm workers report published
02/10/2011
Canada’s most comprehensive annual report on the challenges facing migrant farm workers has been released. It confirms that abuse and exploitation of migrant farm workers are rampant in Canada’s agriculture industry.

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Farmworker fight continues for AFL
02/10/2011 Trevor Busch
Groups agitating for extension of the province’s occupational health and safety laws to protect farm workers are again attempting to push the contentious issue to the fore in Alberta. Earlier this month, the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) called on Employment Minister Thomas Lukaszuk to yield to pressure to include paid agricultural employees under the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the Workers’ Compensation Act.

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5th Que. bus-van crash victim dies
02/10/2011 CBC News
A fifth person has died after a van collided with a school bus Wednesday in Ste-Geneviève de Berthier, Que.Provincial police said Thursday morning that Gilles Chartier, 26, had died of injuries sustained in the accident.

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Chipotle Chipocrisy: Dissing Its Mexican Workforce
02/08/2011 by Eduardo Soriano-Castillo
The Mexican-themed fast food chain Chipotle likes to hold itself up as a model of social responsibility, but labor activists in Minnesota say its idea of ethical behavior doesn’t extend to its immigrant workers.

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Immigration programs still poorly tracked: Volpe
1/31/2011 By David McKie, CBC News
Canada's Citizenship and Immigration Department needs to do a better job keeping track of business-class immigrants, says the chairman of the parliamentary public accounts committee.She found that Citizenship and Immigration failed to assess "cost and benefits, risks and potential impacts" of its programs.

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Ex-labourers do the "Marathon of the death" in Morelia, Mexico
1/31/2011 Media Summary
Mexican elders, who were rural workers in USA during the Second World war and up to the War of Vietnam, protested at the headquarters in Michoacan of the Partido Accion Nacional (PAN), the party of the president of Mexico.

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Beamsville farm fined in tractor roll over
1/31/2011 Siobhan Morris, 610 CKTB News
A Beamsville farm operator has been fined for the injury of one of his workers this spring.In May the 34 year old Mexican worker was driving a tractor between farms on the North Service Road near Bartlett Road North.That is where a car rear-ended the tractor, causing it roll over and throwing the farm worker.

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UN urges probes into abuse of migrants in Mexico
1/21/2011
GENEVA (AP) — The U.N.'s top human rights official urged Mexico on Friday to investigate possible abuses and complicity by officials in kidnappings and extortion involving 40 Central American migrants.

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IUF and FLOC launch campaign for justice and an end to impunity in Mexico
1/28/2011
Farmworkers travelling from Mexico to work in the United States are prey to unscrupulous labour contractors: in the course of their journey to work in the fields, migrant workers are often extorted and abused.

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B.C. Denny's workers seek $10M damages
January 12, 2011 CBC News
A group of temporary foreign workers hired by the Denny's restaurant chain in Vancouver is suing the company for $10 million. Fifty workers from the Philippines say they were hired to work at Denny's as cooks and servers through the Canadian Temporary Foreign Worker Program last fall. But they allege they were cheated out of wages and accuse Denny's of not paying back the recruitment and processing fees they were forced to provide in order to come to Canada.

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Filipino workers' class action says Denny's owes $10m
By Sean Sullivan, The Province January 12, 2011 They claim the restaurant chain refused to pay for overtime, airfares A $10-million class action lawsuit has been launched against Denny's restaurants in B.C., charging the family friendly diner chain wronged foreign workers by slashing hours, refusing to pay overtime and failing to pay for the workers' round-trip airfare.

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Some migrant workers get paid, some don’t
AgMedia Inc. December 9, 2010
Rol-Land Farms Ltd’s workers are paid, but 136 migrant and Canadian farm workers from Ghesquiere Plant Farm Ltd are still owed four to five weeks salary plus vacation pay. It’s still unclear whether Mexican and Caribbean migrant farm workers at a bankrupt Simcoe-area berry plant farm will get all of their pay but workers at another financially-troubled farm fired two years ago eventually got most of what they were owed.

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Wrong not to protect farm workers who produce our food
Yet again a farm worker tragedy has occurred and the charade continues. I can just imagine the police calling Occupational Health and Safety to a site with a couple of dead persons lying on the road, as they would normally do with a workplace fatality, only to have the OHS officer tell them to do their own fatality investigation because they're not allowed to be involved due to the kind of work they were likely doing -- just farmin'! It never ceases to amaze, this social injustice being perpetrated on farm workers who produce food.

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Dead ducks seem more important than dead children
By Will Verboven, For The Calgary Herald December 2, 2010
It seems that government ineptitude is becoming dangerous to the health of Albertans, if the ongoing health-care crisis is any indication. Well, it gets worse if you happen to be involved in the agriculture industry. Most citizens would be unaware that during a 15-year period, 1,769 fatalities and more than 14,000 related hospital admissions occurred in this country in a sector that involves just two per cent of the economy.

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Greenhouse gets approval to house 128 migrant workers
By Sandor Gyarmati, The Delta Optimist December 1, 2010
Civic politicians have approved an East Ladner greenhouse's application to build housing for migrant workers. Delta council approved an application by Houweling's Nurseries Ltd. last week to build on-site housing for migrant farm workers. The greenhouse on 64th Street in East Ladner asked to add 16 factory built housing trailers to accommodate 128 workers from out of the country.

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Farm workers deserve more protection
Calgary Herald, November 29, 2010
It's a nice idea per se -- but the province's new farm safety advisory council is no substitute for bringing farm workers in under workplace health and safety laws. The province said Tuesday the new council will have a diverse membership made up of safety groups, farm organizations, municipalities and farm workers, and will look at initiatives to increase safety without financially burdening small farms or indulging in overregulation.

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Migrant farm workers fear repercussions, seek protection
Wednesday, November 24, 2010 CBC News
Migrant farm workers fear repercussions, seek protection SIMCOE, Ont. -- In a little office just off the main drag in this small southern Ontario town, a handful of Mexican workers sit around and drink coffee. They would rather be digging and grading strawberry plants, the jobs they were hired for, but the farmer who hired them has left the country without paying them the thousands of dollars they're owed.

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Ont. farm accused of not paying migrant workers
November 24, 2010 By Maureen Brosnahan, CBC News
Berry plant farm ran into financial trouble this fall.Migrant workers at a farm near Simcoe, Ont., say they are owed tens of thousands of dollars after their employer ran into financial trouble and left the country without paying them.

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Labour watchdog slams Ontario’s ag worker act
November 22, 2010 by KRISTIAN PARTINGTON
BETTER FARMING The head of Ontario’s agriculture labour issues coordinating committee is surprised that an international labour organization has ruled “that Canada and Ontario, through Ontario’s ban on farm unions, violate the human rights of the more than 100,000 migrant and domestic agriculture workers in that province.”

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Major Grower to Join Wage Plan
OCTOBER 13, 2010 By EVAN PEREZ
A major Florida tomato grower agreed to join a program aimed at raising wages and improving working conditions for migrant fruit pickers, after years of boycotts and federal probes into the treatment of workers.

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Labour ministry halts work at farm following fatality
Oct. 27 2010 ctvottawa.ca
Ontario's Ministry of Labour has halted all work at a farm southeast of Ottawa after a worker died in a corn silo mishap earlier this week. The owner of Brugine Farms, near Chesterville, discovered the 51-year-old worker unconscious in a silo at the farm on Nation Valley Road on Monday afternoon.

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Union wants investigation into death of Jamaican farm workers
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
ONTARIO, Canada — A Canadian labour union is calling on the Ontario coroner to hold an inquest into the deaths of two Jamaican farm workers who died there last month. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCWU) said Ralston White, 36, Paul Roach, 44, died while trying to fix a pump for an apple cider at Filsingers' Organic Foods and Orchards in Ayton, 70 kilometres south of Owen Sound, Ontario.

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ERNIE HARDEMAN: Has rejected a union’s claims about farm safety
October 12, 2010 By JOE BELANGER The London Free Press
Agriculture critics aren’t buying a union leader’s claim that Ontario’s four-year-old effort to protect agricultural workers is failing miserably.Stan Raper, co-ordinator for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Canada, maintains the inspection system installed in mid-2006 is slow to reach the fields and focused more on pet clinics and landscape companies than actual farms.

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Hard Thanksgiving for Injured Farm Workers
11 October 2010, TheTyee.ca
BC pickers were hurt while riding unprotected with produce bound for holiday tables -- adding to history of carnage.
When B.C. residents sit down this weekend to their Thanksgiving dinners, few will pause to think about those who pulled the vegetables from the fields, or to give thanks that we don't have to live with the dangerous working conditions and government neglect that can turn the lives of farm workers into a long harvest of heartbreak and injustice.

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Central New York farmers find federal program makes it harder to bring in migrant workers
September 14, 2010 Debra J. Groom / The Post-Standard
Lysander, NY — Before a single strawberry, squash, tomato or eggplant was picked, Lysander farmer Tony Emmi spent thousands of dollars and many hours filing paperwork to get good help.
To make sure the migrants who work his farm are legal, he participates in the federal government’s H-2A program. It screens potential migrant workers, determines how long they can stay and specifies where they can work.

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Quebec Agribusiness Ramps Up “Exploitation Express” With Honduras Migrants
Federal Government Asked to Intervene After Quebec Agribusiness Owners Cut a Deal With Honduras Under Federal Temporary Foreign Workers Program.

MONTREAL, QUEBEC–(Marketwire - Aug. 31, 2010)
Migrant agricultural workers from Honduras began toiling in Quebec fields this week, after a Quebec farm lobby group and Honduran officials cut a deal to bring the workers to Canada under the federal government’s controversial Temporary Foreign Workers (TFW) program. The TFW program provides no oversight to prevent the abuse of foreign workers contracted to Canadian employers, yet it is a program the federal government has aggressively been expanding by the tens of thousands of workers.

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Shortage of pickers
Canada: Early start to bumper apple season
The apple harvest has come early for growers in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island this year. This because of a mild winter and good summer weather, it is the earliest harvest since 1946.This does not come without it’s problems though, the growers rely on migrant workers to pick the fruit and they are not expected to turn up until at least the third week of September. These workers come from Quebec, Newfoundland and as far away as Jamaica.
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Farm safety issue should be tilled the Alberta ‎way
Posted: 17/08/2010
If there is one issue that seems to drag on forever it is the Alberta government’s reluctance — ‎better yet pigheadedness — to address farm worker safety and workplace rules. No amount of ‎shame, human misery or common sense seems to be enough to move government politicians and ‎bureaucrats to do the right thing. ‎‎

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Alberta government heads down dangerous path with farm-worker ‎discrimination
Posted: 17/08/2010
Excluding farm workers from workplace protections a legal minefield -
allows unsafe work to continue ‎
Reports that the Conservative government is likely to ignore an Alberta judge’s ‎recommendations to include farm workers in health, safety and employment ‎standards legislation is a step down a dangerous path, says Gil McGowan, President ‎of the Alberta Federation of Labour. ‎

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Farm safety education favoured over legislation
Liberal critic says workers need legal protection‎
By Renata D’Aliesio, Calgary Herald August 5, 2010 ‎
T he Alberta government is seeking feedback on a proposal to create a new farm safety organization, ‎but its latest round of consultation is silent on mandating the province’s second-largest industry to ‎follow workplace health and safety rules. ‎

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Seasonal fruit pickers illegally camping ‎causing big issues‎
By Kristi Patton - Penticton Western News July 22, 2010‎
Seasonal fruit pickers are an integral part of the local agricultural industry but for some ‎communities they are becoming a hindrance to the tourism industry.
‎“Dollar wise and tax-wise it really impacts our tourism industry and what happens in our public ‎spaces,” said Osoyoos Mayor Stu Wells. “It does generate complaints and of course, with any ‎group there is the majority of them that are excellent and there are always some troublemakers ‎involved and if you talk to the merchants on Main Street, shoplifting is a major, major issue this ‎year.”‎

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Migrant farm workers need access to public healthcare ‎
Guest Commentary by Lynne Fernandez CCPA - Manitoba Office
In spite of contributing to the Canadian economy and paying taxes for 4 to 5 months for up to 25 ‎years, these workers are marginalized from the healthcare coverage their taxes should entitle ‎them to while they are here.‎‎

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Foreign workers earn ‘substantially’ less than Canadians
Many here as live-in caregivers, housekeepers, cleaners and farmers
Jun 08 2010 Nicholas Keung Toronto Star
Temporary foreign workers earn substantially less than their Canadian counterparts and their ‎most common jobs are as live-in caregivers, housekeepers and cleaners, says a new report.‎
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Area farmers eyeing abundant harvest
AGRICULTURE: Soybeans, corn and grain are thriving thanks to ideal growing conditions that ‎have sped the planting season
By HANK DANISZEWSKI, The London Free Press June 2, 2010 ‎
For London-area grain farmers, this spring weather has been spectacular. About 90% of ‎soybeans are planted, winter wheat will likely be harvested well ahead of schedule and the corn ‎crop was thriving in last week’s heat wave, Peter Johnson, a crop specialist with Ontario Ministry ‎of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, said.‎
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‎21st Century and Some Child Labor Still Legal in U.S.‎‎
by Tula Connell, May 6, 2010‎
Did you know it’s legal for kids as young as 12 and sometimes younger to pick food on U.S. ‎commercial farms? According to a new report by Human Rights Watch, hundreds of thousands ‎of children are employed as farm workers and they often work 10 or more hours a day with sharp ‎tools, heavy machinery and dangerous pesticides.‎
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May Day marchers focus on migrant workers
By TAMARA CHERRY, Toronto Sun May 1, 2010 ‎
It wasn’t just about jobs for a group of Torontonians marching through the city Saturday.For many who gathered ‎around St. Clair Ave. and Bathurst St. under the umbrella of the May First Movement Coalition, May Day was ‎about the barriers that migrant workers face when they arrive in Canada. Language, economic and immigration ‎barriers — they were all part of the discussion as dozens of Torontonians took to the streets with flags, banners ‎and chants of, “The people united will never be
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Union victory for Quebec farm workers
Workers at Mirabel-area farm go union with UFCW Canada after ‎Quebec Labour Relations Commission strikes down 40-year-old ‎labour code regulation as unconstitutional
Montreal (22 April 2010) - Seasonal domestic and migrant ‎agriculture workers in Quebec have had their Charter rights to ‎unionize upheld by a decision rendered by the Quebec Labour ‎Relations Board (QLRB). The QLRB decision to certify a union ‎bargaining unit at a Mirabel-area farm comes 20 months and 36 ‎days of hearings after a majority workers at the farm chose to join ‎UFCW Canada.‎

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N.B. farm looks to Jamaica for workers
CBC News April 29, 2010 ‎
N.B. farmer Mike Slocum can’t find local help, so he is applying to bring migrant ‎workers from Jamaica.‎
Slocum, who operates one of only two farms left in the Waterborough area, has a ‎regular crew of 24 workers who return every spring. He doesn’t have enough workers ‎to run shifts when demand is high.‎
His farm grows berries, corn, potatoes and tomatoes. Everything but the potatoes must ‎be harvested by hand.‎

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Americans Are Mostly Blind to Mexican Workers’ ‎Plight. Will Ariz. Law Trigger Change?‎
By Roger Bybee - In These Times April 27, 2010‎
Arizona’s new law requiring police to determine the status of any suspected “illegal immigrants” ‎has triggered a massive reaction by the Latino movement and its allies, including Americans ‎deeply troubled by the prospect of legalized racial profiling and pervasive police intrusion.‎
The stunning step, led by Arizona Republicans, will undoubtedly produce huge turnouts for the ‎May 1 immigrant rights rallies across the nation as the new threat to anyone with a dark ‎complexion reverberates across the nation.‎

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Quebec board shoots down limits on farm unions
Farm Business Communications, 4/22/2010‎
Quebec’s labour relations commission has cut out language in the province’s labour code ‎that had blocked seasonal farm workers from unionizing.‎
Ruling in favour of Mexican workers at a Montreal-area cabbage farm, Ferme L+L, the ‎province’s Commission des relations du travail (CRT) last Friday declared a line of ‎section 21 of the Quebec Labour Code unconstitutional, a violation of Charter rights to ‎freedom of association, and thus “inoperative.”‎

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Polk County Migrant Workers Settle Class Action Wage ‎Suit
By Kyle Kennedy THE LEDGER - January 13, 2010 ‎
TAMPA | A class action settlement has been approved in a lawsuit on behalf of migrant ‎workers who contended they were underpaid while picking citrus in Polk County.‎
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‎25 Days In Federal Prison For Littering? Border Patrol Cracking ‎Down on Human Rights Activists
By Jessica Weisberg, AlterNet. - December 14, 2009‎
Walt Staton was dropping off water jugs for people who attempt the often deadly trek into Arizona ‎from Mexico when the Feds ticketed him for “knowingly littering.”
On Friday December 4th, an Arizona District Court judge told Walt Staton, a 28 year-old seminary ‎student, that he might be facing 25 days in a federal prison. His crime was “knowingly littering” ‎along the U.S.-Mexico border.‎
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Inquest jury recommends growers be made more responsible
Canada Views Dec 11th, 2009 ‎ ‎
On December 17, 2009, CCLA will present arguments before the Supreme Court of ‎Canada in Attorney General of Ontario v. Fraser et al.. The case concerns the legal ‎protections, or lack thereof, available to Ontario agricultural workers in their exercise of ‎freedom of association. CCLA will argue that the government must provide insular, ‎discrete and marginalized minorities with meaningful protection of their freedom of ‎association.
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Push for guest worker program revived‎
November 30, 2009 ‎
ADDISON COUNTY — Though the flurry of news and rumors regarding the federal government’s ‎employment record audits in mid-November has died down, farmers and migrant workers alike are still ‎fretting about what the immigration sweep could mean on Vermont dairy farms. And, for some Addison ‎County farmers and migrant workers advocates, the I-9 audit — meant to suss out employers shirking ‎immigration laws — has spurred a renewed push for a guest workers program to legally supply dairy farmers ‎with a source of foreign labor.‎

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Immigrants trail on wages and jobs‎
Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew, Toronto Star - Nov. 24, 2009 ‎
Immigrants face lower wages and are more likely than Canadian-born workers to be ‎forced into temporary or part-time jobs, according to a new study.The report from ‎Statistics Canada, made public Monday, also found newcomers tend to end up in ‎jobs for which they are overqualified.‎

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Immigrant workers protest against “sweatshop” boss
Toronto - November 19, 2009 ‎
A group of new Canadian workers came together with UFCW Canada activists in ‎Toronto on November 19 to draw attention to what they describe as the callous and ‎abusive actions of their employer, Lincare Limited. Lincare, a Toronto commercial ‎laundry facility that holds contracts with numerous GTA hotel chains, has been ‎subjecting its over one hundred employees to working conditions akin to a sweatshop, ‎according to workers at Lincare.‎

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Stable farm labor seems elusive in global economy ‎
By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian ‎- Nov7, 2009
Experts, growers and data show that most farmworkers in the United States are foreign-‎born Latinos. White, non-Latino, U.S.-born farmworkers are “not a dying breed, it’s a ‎dead breed,” says William Kandel, a sociologist with the U.S. Department of ‎Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. An Oregon grower and two workers talk about ‎why that’s the case. ‎

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Public discussion on guest workers
Toronto Star ‎- Nov5, 2009
Canada prides itself on being a nation of immigrants, but it is fast becoming a ‎clearing house for temporary workers.The traditional Canadian narrative – of people ‎landing here to build a country and lay the foundations for citizenship – is going ‎underground. Now, we are recruiting an army of 200,000 guest workers every year – ‎almost as many as regular immigrants.‎

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‎’Guest worker’ abuses blasted‎
Lax federal controls leave migrants open to exploitation, report says
Les Whittington Ottawa Bureau ‎- Nov4, 2009
‎”It’s wrong, it’s in shambles and it leads to exploitation,” said MP Olivia Chow on the ‎temporary worker system in Canada.‎
AUDITOR’S REPORT
• Echoing the findings of Star investigations, Auditor General Sheila Fraser ‎found the Temporary Foreign Worker program is open to abuse.‎
• A response plan to deal with emergencies such as the H1N1 outbreak is still ‎in the draft stage almost six years after conception.‎
• Ottawa’s foreign aid program is bogged down by bureaucracy and has failed ‎to provide effective help to the world’s poor for the past 15 years.‎

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US blueberry farms accused of using children as pickers
Supermarkets blacklist firm after young children exploited for small hands
By Stephen Foley in New York - Nov2, 2009
Stills from ABC News footage shows children as young as five working alongside their ‎parents on a blueberry farm in Michigan.
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, is embroiled in a child labour scandal in the United ‎States, after children as young as five were found working on a farm that supplies ‎blueberries to the company.‎
The revelations came as federal authorities said spot checks on farms in the state of ‎Michigan found that more than half were violating child labour or migrant housing rules.‎

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‎Manitoba welcome host for guest workers in ‎Canada

Sandro Contenta- Nov3, 2009
BRANDON, MAN.–By any measure, William Cruz is a success story. He has ‎realized a dream as old as Canada.‎
In 2002 he came from El Salvador with almost nothing. He braved the winters in this ‎prairie town and the hard slog of its meat plant.‎
Back home, he had been a cellist with a symphony orchestra. Here, he was cutting ‎out the big bone from a pig’s shoulder, a new one arriving on the “disassembly” line ‎every 16 seconds. Virginia, also from El Salvador, did the same nearby with a ‎smaller bone. How could they not fall in love?‎

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‎“Star Investigation: A temporary worker’s ‎Catch-22‎”‎‎

Staff Reporters ‎ ‎ - Nov2, 2009
In Mumbai, Mac Akela was a top chef at a luxury hotel, running a department of 72 ‎people and preparing meals for the rich and powerful. Life was good. He had a wife ‎and three children. And his $15,000 yearly salary got him far, particularly with the ‎rent-free home his employer provided.One day, a visiting Toronto restaurateur fell in ‎love with Akela’s cuisine. He offered him twice his salary, and by November 2007, ‎Akela was cooking up a storm in a north Toronto restaurant. Six months later, he ‎was broke and living in a homeless shelter.‎

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‎“How we’re creating an illegal workforce”‎‎

Staff Reporters ‎ ‎ - Nov1, 2009
Tony, 29, from Honduras, now works illegally in Toronto. He “escaped” an Alberta ‎farm where he spent 12 hours a day on his knees picking green onions.‎
VINCE TALOTTA/TORONTO STAR ‎
HOW THE TEMPORARY FOREIGN WORKER PROGRAM WORKS:‎
The program is made up of four streams: the Live-In Caregiver Program, the ‎Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, and programs for high-skilled workers and ‎low-skilled ones.‎

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UN calls for better deal for migrant workers.
Warns of backlash against world’s 1 billion migrants

CBC News - Oct 5 2009 ‎
The global recession presents an opportunity to come up with a new deal for the world’s ‎migrant workers, a UN report suggested Monday.‎
The 2009 Human Development Report said “the recession should be seized as an ‎opportunity to institute a new deal for migrants — one that that will benefit workers at ‎home and abroad while guarding against a protectionist backlash.”‎

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Another Voice / Farm labor
Bill would protect workers from terrible abuses

Buffalo news - 18 September 2009‎‎
A bill is pending in the New York Senate that will ensure that farm workers are provided ‎the rights, protections and benefits that all other workers throughout New York State ‎receive. New York State and U. S. citizens benefit immensely from the farm workers’ ‎hard work but we have to ensure that the farm workers receive just wages and good ‎working conditions.‎

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Calderon to press Harper on visa issue at Three Amigos ‎summit

Canwest News Service Aug. 6, 2009 ‎
OTTAWA — Mexican President Felipe Calderon will press Prime Minister Stephen ‎Harper to drop the visa restrictions that Canada recently imposed on Mexican nationals ‎when the two leaders meet this weekend at the Three Amigos Summit, Mexican sources ‎say.‎

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Matching Canadians to jobs ‎

Globe and Mail ‎ Aug. 3, 2009 ‎
Unemployment has risen fast this year, but employers still bring in temporary foreign workers ‎at a near-record pace. It is a sign that Canada isn’t doing a good job of getting domestic job ‎seekers to where a job is waiting. The country needs more nimble systems for matching job ‎seekers to job openings elsewhere, and some incentives to ease the move.
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Our shameful secret?

Niagara Magazine July 14, 2009 ‎
‎“Up here we are seasonal workers, not people with a name or an identity.”
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That comment from a migrant worker on a Jordan farm perhaps best sums up the life—and in many cases the plight—‎of an entire community in Niagara, one that is largely hidden away from view despite their integral role in local ‎agriculture.

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The Windsor Star ‎-Jun 26, 2009 ‎ ‎
LEAMINGTON, Ont. — Another immigration raid in Leamington has netted six ‎people.The Canada Border Services Agency confirmed Thursday that officers had ‎conducted an investigation at a Leamington business Wednesday morning. “Officers ‎detained six individuals for possible violations of the Immigration and Refugee ‎Protection Act,” agency spokeswoman Teri Mailloux said Thursday afternoon.‎

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Canadian support for immigrants slipping: poll
Results show little sympathy for undocumented workers

Edmonton Sun ‎-Jun 26, 2009 ‎ ‎
OTTAWA — The number of Canadians who say immigration has a positive effect on their community has dropped ‎‎”noticeably” over the past two years and is now at the lowest level since the government started tracking attitudes ‎in 2004. ‎

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Date set for ag worker labour law hearing

WASHINGTON D.C. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) ‎-Jun 26, 2009 ‎ ‎
Along with fixing the financial mess, waging two different wars and trying to ‎reform the health care industry, add immigration reform to the president’s to-do ‎list. He discussed the issue Thursday with congressional leaders from both ‎parties.There are definitely people here in West Michigan who are pushing for ‎immigration reform, but it’s unclear whether a bill could even make it into ‎Congress this year. ‎

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Panel slams U.S. over immigration raid tactics

Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer‎‎-Jun 19, 2009 ‎ ‎
The commission, which included U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Alameda ‎County Superior Court Judge Dennis Hayashi and others, was set up by the United Food ‎and Commercial Workers, a union representing workers at several Swift meatpacking ‎plants where raids took place.‎ ‎

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Mexicans in US face cashback crisis‎

Business reporter‎ ‎‎-Jun 19, 2009 ‎ ‎
For centuries, workers from many parts of the globe have been coming to ‎the US to find work and support themselves.‎
Many migrant workers have families back in their native countries who depend on ‎them for remittances. But for some, a difficult economic climate, triggered by a ‎collapse in the housing market, is causing the dream to evaporate. ‎
The worst US recession in decades has eliminated job opportunities for many ‎immigrants, slowing the flow of money back home down to a trickle. ‎

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Vernon Company Fires Hundreds: Workers Allege Racism ‎at Protest

EGP News Service-June 04, 2009 ‎
A Vernon food processing and packaging company was accused of racism on Wednesday, after 254 ‎employees who had been with the company between five and 20 years were fired for “discrepancies with ‎their Social Security numbers.”‎slumps.‎

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Business, labor, Hispanic groups make ‎new push for immigration amnesty‎

Phoenix Business Journal ‎-June 03, 2009 ‎
Business interests, labor unions and Hispanic activists are launching a summer push ‎for federal immigration reform — including legalization of some illegals already in ‎the U.S.‎

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Beekeepers frustrated by delays in getting ‎seasonal workers to Canada

CBC News-June 02, 2009 ‎
Beekeepers in Saskatchewan and other Prairie provinces say their industry is suffering ‎because of delays in processing visas for seasonal workers from the ‎Philippines.Beekeepers have already recruited the workers, but the Canadian embassy in ‎the Philippines has been slow to process the necessary paperwork, said John Gruszka, an ‎apiculture specialist in Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Agriculture.‎‎

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Reign of immigration raids in Southern Ontario continuesBBC News-29th May 2009
Leamington, ON – May 28, 2009 - In the early morning of Wednesday, May 27, Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers agents raided Lakeside Greenhouse in Leamington, Ontario and arrested nine female migrant workers. One of the women arrested and detained is pregnant.‎

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Global crisis ‘hits human rights’ ‎
The global economic crisis is exacerbating human rights abuses, Amnesty ‎International has warned. ‎
BBC News-29th May 2009
In its annual report, the group said the downturn had distracted attention from abuses and ‎created new problems. Rising prices meant millions were struggling to meet basic needs in ‎Africa and Asia, it said, and protests were being met with repression. Political conflict meant ‎people were suffering in DR Congo, North Korea, Gaza and Darfur, among others, it said.
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“Congress weighs ag immigration law”
BY CHRISTOPHER A. KEROSKY-25th May 2009
A law proposed in the U.S. Congress last week could help local growers who rely on immigrant labor and ‎those immigrants who do the work.The proposed law, the Agricultural Job Opportunities and Benefits Act ‎‎(“AgJobs”) would improve the temporary labor program known as the H2 visa that many growers use to ‎bring in foreign labor. ‎

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“Agriculture profits up 63% in 2008 but what about the workers? ‎
Bumper year for owners but not for exploited workers”
AWA Canada-26th May 2009
Profits in the Canadian agriculture sector have jumped a second year in row while the ‎workers in the field continue to be one of the most exploited labour forces in Canada — ‎including the more than 22,000 agriculture workers who come to Canada each season ‎under the federal government’s Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program ‎‎(CSAWP).‎

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“‎Fields of fear for Colorado illegal farm laborers”
The Denver Post ‎-18th May 2009
For a group of farm laborers working in the U.S. illegally, it wasn’t jail or deportation that ‎scared them - it was their “contractor.”
They lived in squalor — ratty tile floors, holes in the walls, mold, disgusting bathrooms, ‎unsafe water — and worked jobs that left them bone-weary. ‎

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“Housemaids remain the most vulnerable to forced ‎labor: ILO”
Adianto P. Simamora , ‎-20th May 2009
Domestic workers are still the most likely group to be subjected to forced labor in Indonesia, with employers ‎demanding they work long hours on a monthly income of less than Rp 300,000 (US$30). ‎
Such conditions have remained unchanged for decades because there is no law to protect them from their ‎employers, a UN report says. ‎A study conducted by the International Labor Organization (ILO) said many countries, including Indonesia, ‎have not yet issued a policy to prevent domestic workers from being exploited in their work places. ‎

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“Hog-Wild: Mexico Officials Pig Out On Pork”
MEXICO CITY, May 15, 2009
Mexican officials are going hog-wild over pork to encourage their countrymen to put the pig back in the taco. ‎

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“Immigrants shunning P.E.I. over investment scandal, Opposition says‎‎”
CBC News ‎-8th May 2009
Disillusionment over the government’s handling of an immigrant investor program is ‎beginning to hurt P.E.I.’s reputation overseas, Opposition leader Olive Crane told MLAs ‎Thursday.”As an immigrant puts it,” she said, reading a letter in question period, “Up ‎until now we have no intentions to leave Prince Edward Island. However, much will ‎depend on how Prince Edward Island will handle this scandal. As you can understand, we ‎do not want to be part of a society in the knowledge that a part of our tax money is going ‎to be used paying for criminals, thieves, frauds, and Pinocchios.”‎

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“Checks on farm workers ‘racial profiling”
By TOM GODFREY, SUN MEDIA-1st May 2009
Mexicans unwilling to seek medical help; fearful of extra costs
Simcoe Reformer- April 29, 2009
Mexican and Guatemalan farmhands are “racially profiled” and forced to undergo swine flu checks before being allowed to board flights to Canada to work, a Toronto support group says.
Canadians and others flying from Mexico should be forced to undergo two medical checks by two doctors — the same as the farmhands — before being allowed to board flights, according to Justice for Migrant Workers.

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“Migrant workers at risk: union”
Mexicans unwilling to seek medical help; fearful of extra costs
By: Gabrielle Giroday- April 29, 2009
Union worker Gustavo Mejicanos says a lack of adequate health insurance may prevent seasonal farm employees from seeking medical assistance. Without improved benefits, the province has a gaping hole in its defence against the swine flu outbreak, he warns. (RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)
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“Seasonal workers raise swine flu fears on farms”
Toronto Star- April 29, 2009
LEAMINGTON, Ont. – Manuel Martinez arrived from Mexico Monday night and sailed through Pearson airport without problems or questions on his way to a job as a farm worker.
Sitting in Tony’s Tacos here yesterday, Martinez, 63, and five other farm workers said they were tested in Mexico for swine flu symptoms before boarding their Air Canada flight.

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“Growers worry about labour”
Gary Rennie, The Windsor Star- April 28, 2009
Greenhouse owners and vegetable and fruit growers are worried the offshore worker program could be temporarily halted by the outbreak of Mexican swine flu.
About two-thirds of the 5,000 migrant workers who come to Essex County for months at a time are from Mexico.

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“Mexican workers will face ‘great scrutiny’ before entering Canada”
Vancouver Sun- April 28, 2009
VANCOUVER — Mexican farm workers coming to B.C. will have to undergo a double screening process for swine flu before boarding flights to Canada.

Migrant workers are still being allowed into Canada, but will be under “great scrutiny” before their travels, Estela Garcia, of the Mexican Consulate in Vancouver, said Monday.
“Every worker will be screened,” Garcia said.
Workers will first go for a routine medical examination a couple of weeks before their scheduled departure. If they do not have any flu symptoms at that time, they will be given the green light to travel to Canada.

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“Migrant workers won’t be banned”
Staff Writer - April 28, 2009
OTTAWA will still allow migrant Mexican workers to come to Canada this year — including an estimated 90 seasonal workers headed for Portage la Prairie-area farms — despite worries over a potential swine flu pandemic, federal officials said Monday.
But the government will step up screening of migrants before they arrive, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Monday.
All migrant workers will have to fill out a questionnaire and undergo a physical examination and fever check by two doctors before being cleared for departure to Canada. The examinations will occur in Mexico when the workers go to pick up their work permits.
Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said she directed the Public Health Agency of Canada to send two people to Mexico to help with screening and lab supports. Aglukkaq said the two are already in Mexico. Seasonal workers from Mexico are critical to portions of Manitoba’s agriculture industry. Provincial Agriculture Minister Rosann Wowchuk said about 90 Mexicans worked in the area last year, tending vegetable crops.

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“GROUPS OF SEASONAL MEXICAN FARM WORKERS DELAYED”
April 27, 2009
B-C FARMERS ARE CONCERNED AFTER MEXICAN MIGRANT WORKERS EXPECTED TO ARRIVE THIS WEEK ARE DELAYED FROM COMING.
SO FAR THIS WEEKS GROUPS OF MIGRANT FARM WORKERS HAVE NOT BEEN ALLOWED TO COME INTO THE COUNTRY WITH THE RECENT SWINE FLU OUTBREAK.
THE IMMIGRATION DEPARTMENT IS PREPARING TO SCREEN THEM ALL BY AT LEAST TWO DOCTORS.

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“Farm workers from Mexico screened for swine flu”
ctvbc.ca April 27, 2009
Thousands of seasonal agricultural workers from Mexico, who come to Canada to work on Fraser Valley farms, are now being subjected to mandatory screening for swine influenza.
Currently, Canadians returning home from Mexico and Mexican tourists are only being encouraged to go to a clinic if they have any symptoms of the illness.
At a support centre for migrant workers in the region, the outbreak in their home country is causing workers major concern.
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“Migrant workers lose out in NAFTA nations, reports argue”
Frontera NorteSur- April 22, 2009
In many respects, the Canada-Mexico program is similar to the old bracero system of contract labor that brought millions of Mexican farmworkers to the United States between 1942-1964.
Two new reports charge Mexican and other Latino migrants continue facing a host of human rights violations and labor abuses in Canada and the United States. In Mexico, an assessment prepared by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) group in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies reconfirmed previous reports of bad conditions experienced by thousands of Mexican agricultural workers enrolled in a temporary labor program in Canada.

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“Building Codes Will Apply To Manitoba Farm Buildings”
By Staff- April 22, 2009
Manitoba’s Labour and Immigration Minister Nancy Allan has introduced amendments to the Buildings and Mobile Homes Act which would require farm buildings to be designed and constructed to meet building codes.

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“6,000 Jamaicans to be Employed on Canadian Farms this Year” - TORONTO (JIS) April 19, 2009
Approximately 6,000 Jamaican men and women are expected to be employed on farms in Canada this year.

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“Immigration Accord by Labor Boosts Obama Effort ” The New York Times- April 14, 2009
The nation’s two major labor federations have agreed for the first time to join forces to support an overhaul of the immigration system, leaders of both organizations said on Monday. The accord could give President Obama significant support among unions as he revisits the stormy issue in the midst of the recession.

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“Supreme Court will review farm union case ” Guelph Mercury- April 2, 2009
The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear the Ontario government’s fight against farm-worker unions. The high court’s decision yesterday opens another legal chapter in a bitter battle between the province and some of its most vulnerable workers.

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“High court to hear Ontario’s fight to keep farmers from unionizing ” THE CANADIAN PRESS- April 2, 2009
Another chapter in a long-running and bitter battle between Ontario and some of its most vulnerable workers was opened today when the Supreme Court of Canada agreed to hear the province’s case against farm-worker unions.

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“Minister Day Introduces Legislation to Implement Colombia and Peru Free Trade Agreements” Marketwire-26 March 2009
OTTAWA, ONTARIO–(Marketwire - March 26, 2009) - The Honourable Stockwell Day, Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, today announced that legislation has been introduced in the House of Commons for the free trade agreements (FTAs) Canada recently signed with Colombia and Peru. These agreements will open new doors for Canadian companies doing business in Colombia and Peru by expanding market access in key sectors such as extractive industries, manufacturing, agriculture and financial services.
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“CELEBRATING CESAR ” By KAREN LEE STEVENS -25 March 2009
STOP THE SLAUGHTER. If Barack Obama failed to win the 2008 presidential election, I was seriously considering a move to Canada. After all, our neighbor to the north has a universal health care system and residents say interesting things like “eh” and “aboot.” Then again, Canada is infamous for its baby seal hunts. Link

“Chavez inspires community in service” Karina Yepez-25 March 2009
Monica Cortez, freshman government major, is honored to help promote Cesar Chavez’s legacy and students letting people know the importance of staying in school, fighting for equality, and immigration rights like Chavez did through out his life.
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“Union files complaint against Ontario with UN ” THE CANADIAN PRESS-23 March 2009
One of Canada’s largest unions announced today it has filed a complaint with the United Nations against the Ontario government for preventing farm workers from forming labour unions.
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“Complaints after Ont. farmers banned from union” The Canadian Press-23 March 2009
TORONTO — One of Canada’s largest unions is filing a complaint with a UN agency against the Ontario government for prohibiting agriculture workers from unionizing.
The complaint to the International Labour Organization in Switzerland argues that the ban is unconstitutional and violates the human rights of Ontario farmer workers.
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“A Slippery Place in the U.S. Work Force” The New York Times-22 March 2009
MORRISTOWN, Tenn. - The faithful stand and hold their hands high, raising a crescendo of prayer for abundance and grace. In the evangelical church where they are gathered, the folding chairs are filled with immigrants from Latin America.

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“The immigration imbroglio is the gorilla in the room that won’t go away. ” 17 March 2009
Feeding on this and last years’ gigantic job losses and fear of more to come, anti-immigrant anger is exploding across the U.S. Thus, Nativists like Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio are nudged to over-the-top nastiness: Just a month ago, he proudly paraded his villains (aka illegals) through the streets of Phoenix before deporting them.

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“New protections for migrant farm workers” Northumberland news-11 March 2009
Mexican migrant workers arriving soon to work on Ontario’s farms will, for the first time, have access to Spanish counselling of their rights, 24 hours a day, under provincial laws.Link

“Consulate hires staff to cope with demand for ag workers.”
LANGLEY – The skyrocketing growth of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) in B.C. has overwhelmed the Mexican consulate in Vancouver, vice-consul Estele Garcia Leon told B.C. nursery growers in Langley, January 14. In just five years, the B.C. program has grown to involve over 3,000 workers and over 300 employers.
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“Jump in farm deaths fuels push to expand workplace laws”. Calgary Herald -6 March 2009
Deaths on Alberta farms jumped 58 per cent last year and involved six children, including two who were mistakenly buried and suffocated in mounds of grain, Alberta Agriculture reported.
The spike in farm-related fatalities marks a return to a grim normal, after 2007 deaths declined to a dozen from the provincial average of 19.
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“Enslaved migrant tomato pickers mobilize movement”. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette -5 March 2009
At most grocery stores you can find tomatoes labeled as organic, vine-ripened or hydroponic. But would you reach for that bright red tomato if it had the label “picked under deplorable working conditions”?
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“Now hear this. . . . Protect yourself from farm noise “. Caledon citizen-5 March 2009
The traditional picture of a farm, as a serene and quiet workplace, couldn’t be farther from the truth. Machinery, motors and even sounds made by animals, sometimes create a noisy and often hazardous environment. Link

“UFCW to back Mexican state’s Canadian ag workers”. By Staff-Alberta Farmer -26 February 2009
A major union in Canada’s food processing sector has signed a pact with a Mexican state to represent its residents while they work on Canadian farms.
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“Mexico state and Canadian union sign migrant worker protection pact.”. Exchange -25 February 2009
The State of Michoacán, Mexico and UFCW Canada sign accord to extend protection and assistance to migrant workers in Canada

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“Farm trivia is not trivial “. Kingston This Week-12 February 2009
Fact: Food Freedom Day is February 12, 2009. This represents the day an individual Canadian will have earned enough money to pay his or her grocery bill for the year.

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“Target of Immigrant Raids Shifted “. Reuters -4 February 2009
The raids on homes around the country were billed as carefully planned hunts for dangerous immigrant fugitives, and given catchy names like Operation Return to Sender.
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“Food tracked from farm to store”. The Winnipeg Free Press -29 January 2009
Larry Kusch - The province is setting up a database to trace food products from the farm gate to the grocery shelf in an attempt to address the public’s increasing preoccupation with food safety.

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“Cull of 60,000 turkeys at B.C. farm may begin Monday”. CBC News -26 January 2009
The slaughter of up to 60,000 turkeys will likely begin at a commercial farm in B.C.’s Fraser Valley on Monday after tests showed some of the birds were infected with the H5 avian flu virus.
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“LABOUR: ‘Meltdown Leaves Migrant Workers Prone to Abuse’”. MANILA -23 January 2009
The global recession is causing a heightened sense of job insecurity among millions of migrant workers making them more vulnerable to abuse, say migrant rights advocates.
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“Six million migrants jobless in China over crisis, govt data suggest”. -22 January 2009
BEIJING (AFP) — About six million migrant workers in China have returned to their rural homes after losing their jobs in the cities due to the financial crisis, data released Thursday by the government suggested.
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“Kicked out for being disabled”. Bayshore Broadcasting, Jan 19, 2009.
A LORRY driver from Manchester has been ordered to leave Canada after he was left disabled by a work injury.
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“My Back Still Aches When I Hear That Word”. Globe and Mail, Jan 18, 2009.
Unlike 95 per cent of Canadians, I’ve actually worked on a farm. It’s brutal, dangerous, back-breaking work in the sun with long-hours and short pay. And I don’t believe it should be unionized.
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“Ontario fights farm workers’ union rights”. London Free Press, Canada - 15 Jan 2009
Ontario wants the country’s highest court to throw out a ruling allowing farm workers to unionize, the United Food and Commercial Workers …
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“Farm union blasts McGuinty over legal move”. CTV.ca, Canada - 14 Jan 2009
A union is slamming the Ontario government for seeking to overturn a landmark court decision that gave farm workers the right to unionize. …
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“Ont. to appeal ruling on ag worker bargaining”. Manitoba Co-operator, Canada - 14 Jan 2009
The Ontario government will seek leave to appeal a provincial court’s overruling of a law that blocks farm workers from collective bargaining. …
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“Province appeals court decision about ag labour law”. BetterFarming.com, Canada - 14 Jan 2009
Ontario plans to fight a court decision about a law addressing ag workers’ bargaining rights. by SUSAN MANN Farmers’ expectations were met after Ontario’s …

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“Mcguinty no better than Harris Tories says UFCW Canada president”. Market Wire (press release) - 14 Jan 2009
The McGuinty government’s decision to appeal a landmark November 2008 ruling that upheld the collective bargaining rights of Ontario farm workers “is …

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“Union blasts McGuinty’s bid to overturn farm ruling”. The Globe and Mail, Jan 15, 2009.
OTTAWA — A union is slamming the Ontario government for seeking to overturn a landmark court decision that gave farm workers the right to unionize.
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“Canada’s rights record blasted during UN review”. The Star, Jan 13, 2009.
Submissions to Geneva council include issues such as treatment of indigenous peoples, immigration.
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“WE WANT WORK”. The Gleaner, Jan. 12, 2009.
From the tough inner-city communities in the Corporate Area to that quiet farming district in Westmoreland, the cry for jobs has been echoing across the island.
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“Canada: Grape industry’s expansion gives health unit more work”. FreshPlaza: Global Fresh Produce and Banana News , Jan. 12, 2009.
The growth in grapes in Prince Edward County is inadvertently reaping a heavier workload for staff at the local health unit. “Public health units have been inspecting migrant farm accommodations for a number of years,” said Eric Link

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