by SAMER ELATRASH photos by RACHEL GRANOFSKY
It is a summer afternoon on a farm near St-Rémi, a half hour drive from Montreal, and columns of hunching Mexican workers trudge along rows of onions to harvest the crop. They pause when this correspondent and a photographer show up to snap pictures. Two forewomen, young Quebecers both, look on amusedly for a few minutes before shooing us away. This would be another summer of diminishing returns for Quebec farmers, and of defiance from some of their Mexican workers.
The returns of farming in Quebec are as fickle as the weather here, and this year farmers began the season with growing debt and news that the federal government wouldn't meet its promises of assistance. At le Légumière, a farm close to St-Rémi, the boss had another surprise as the summer ended, when he approached three Mexican workers who were organizing to become the first unionized migrant Mexican farm workers in the province and told them they would be sent back to Mexico the next day. One of the workers, Bonifacio Santos, never boarded the plane, opting to challenge the repatriation before the Quebec Labour Relations Commission. The Commission awarded him an injunction and will consider this week a motion filed by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Canada arguing for the migrant workers' right to join a union.
Devil may care
The owners of le Légumière refuse to comment on the case and their lawyer didn't return calls from the Mirror. Santos claims that, ever since he was reinstated, the boss has taken to insulting him before other workers, referring to him as "the devil."
"'Where is the devil?', the boss asks when I'm not around,"
Santos says, shrugging his shoulders. "When he approached me to send me back, he said there wasn't enough work, and that was good enough reason. But he's never done that before. The way they repatriate us is unjust, and I want to say: 'No, this is not right." Over the summer, Santos had gone on St-Rémi's radio station asking for better conditions for the estimated 4,000 migrant workers who came to Quebec this year—3,000 from Mexico, and others from Guatemala and the Caribbean.
Some 150,000 Mexican workers, many from farming communities in the Mexican states of Morelos and Pueblo, have come and gone on a seasonal agricultural workers' agreement between the Canadian and Mexican governments since it began 32 years ago, says the Mexican consulate in Montreal. The workers, most family men, some teenagers and some well into retirement age, might work every day of the week at the height of the season, making enough money to cover their debts in Mexico (many workers, especially the newcomers to the program, come saddled with debt) and to send remittances to their families.
Santos is sitting behind a large table in the meeting room of the radio station, which the UFCW organizers have turned into a makeshift office for the evening. The radio station is across a parking lot from a Provigo. Every Thursday and Sunday, buses bring in Mexican workers from their lodging on surrounding farms to shop at the Provigo, and the workers, dressed in their finest shirts, then stroll out into the lot pushing carts of bread, milk, chips and hot dogs. Every Thursday and Sunday, the union organizers hand out leaflets and go through paperwork brought to them by workers. This evening, two UFCW organizers sit at the end of the table labouring through a thicket of tax and medical forms, surrounded by tired looking workers. All comes to a standstill when Santos, a charismatic man in his 30s who holds the respect of the other workers in the room, thumps the table when asked why migrant workers need to unionize.
"[The people at the Mexican consulate] are a bunch of liars," Santos says. "Workers aren't content if they're tempted to unionize. Ask the consulate how many ill workers they sent back without support or benefits. Ask them how many times they have visited the farms to see the conditions of the workers."
Negotiation without representation
Fernando Borja, the Mexican consular official stationed in Montreal to oversee the migrant labour program, says most workers are happy with their conditions. "The Ministry of Labour in Mexico took a poll of workers in Mexico, and 91.2 per cent say they're happy," according to Borja. However, a 2003 poll conducted in Mexico by the North South Institute suggests 60 percent of surveyed workers supported unionizing in Quebec.
Borja says the Mexican government constantly negotiates the contract with the Canadian government, increasing their wages over the years to $8.50 an hour. When a farm boss has a problem with a worker and wants to repatriate him, Borja is the person whom an employer should approach. He says the consulate takes no sides in these conflicts. "We don't make decisions based on accounts from employees," he says. But, "We also talk to the worker to see who's saying what."
However, Borja says the first time he heard of Santos's case was when he learned Santos hadn't boarded the plane back to Mexico. In that case, he wasn't approached, he says, because Santos was being sent home on grounds of lack of work, and he has learned the details from Santos's lawyers. "It wasn't a repatriation per se," he says. "But apparently he was the one doing union activities."
In the summer, another worker was repatriated shortly after he complained about his conditions in a radio interview, UFCW organizers say. Borja says he hasn't heard of that case, nor of the worker who was sent back after it was discovered he had developed a hernia while in Quebec, according to the UFCW.
Borja refuses to take a position on unionizing, although he says, "If the Canadian government decides this is too much trouble, that the workers are not happy, that could be bad for the workers."
Protection lacking
The UFCW says it has to intervene. "I've never in my life seen a contract negotiated without the involvement of workers," says Louis Bolduc, assistant director of UFCW Canada. "These people have a right to be represented and to join a union. Most farmers are good employers. But some others, they treat the workers as garbage." UFCW organizers and workers who spoke to the Mirror say many of them don't trust the Mexican consulate, which they accuse of usually siding with the bosses, and workers face problems that remain outstanding and ignored. "The migrant workers want to see the contracts respected, have proper wages and housing should be respectable," says Bolduc. "Sometimes the workers are sent to the field an hour after the chemicals are placed," he claims.
René Mantha, who heads Foundation of Companies for the Recruitment of Foreign Labour, an association of more than 300 farms in Quebec that hire migrant labour, says unionizing workers threatens Quebec agriculture by increasing production costs. "There are no unions in agriculture elsewhere," he says. "How can we compete?"
Mantha says he was surprised to hear Mexican workers were calling for a union. "These workers have good conditions," he says. "They're paid more than minimum wage, they come back every year. No one forces them to come back." Quebec farms need the migrant workers because, "There are no Canadians available to do this job," he says. "They have the choice to do something else. We can't force anybody to work in agriculture.
"I don't think consumers are preoccupied by these questions," he says. "They're looking for the cheapest price."
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