Ensuring Health and Safety of Migrant Workers
Michel Pilon is the Executive Director of the Réseau d'aide aux travailleuses et travailleurs migrants agricoles du Québec (RATTMAQ).
As far as RATTMAQ is concerned, we have many questions about the problem of ensuring the health and safety of the workers we represent. This is mainly due to the fact that the new law adopted by the Quebec government, which is presented as a modernization of the occupational health and safety system, provides that in 80 per cent of companies there will now be health and safety committees.
The big problem for us is how to choose the workers. Will the employer choose them and they will then become puppet committees? How are we going to implement these committees in our sector, who is going to train the workers, and who is going to defend them in case of problems, if the employer is not satisfied with a decision that the worker makes? I am talking about non-unionized workers because 60 per cent of the people we represent, are non-unionized. Who is going to represent these non-unionized workers if they face retaliation from the employer?
The second concern is the whole problem of work injuries and occupational diseases. We denounce the judicialization of this whole process. Employers have the upper hand. They can challenge anything they want and they do it systematically. Non-unionized workers do not have the means to defend themselves. They often give up their rights that exist in the law.
One of the big problems we face is the Prevention Mutuals. These are big law firms in Montreal where lawyers are paid about $200,000 a year to challenge just about anything that can be challenged. But there is no access to justice for workers. They call themselves Prevention Mutuals but I call them Management Mutuals. They don't do any prevention. All they do is manage the file so that it costs employers as little as possible. Their method is to systematically contest the Labour Standards, Pay Equity and Workplace Health and Safety Board (CNESST) files.
We have reached a situation where employers are dictating to the temporary worker which doctor to see and that doctor is often a pro-employer doctor who hides the fact that the worker is suffering from an occupational disease. We often end up with the employer's doctors disputing the diagnoses, the permanent damage, the functional limitations.
Workers do not have the means to access justice. For years, we have been demanding that workers have the right to a lawyer to defend themselves before the courts.
At RATTMAQ, we represent temporary workers, but those we represent and defend in court are the tip of the iceberg. Workers are afraid to make claims. They have closed work permits. They are tied to a single employer. There are plenty of others that we could defend but there are so many employers who have not filed a worker's claim with the CNESST. And there are also so many workers who have not filed a claim with the CNESST because they don't know their rights. First of all, they don't know French and when they finally know their rights, they are often too late with the six-month deadline to file a claim.
I'm thinking of this case of a worker, a case of a worker with lung cancer from the use of fungicide pesticides. I won it last year despite a year and-a-half delay in filing the claim. The judge ruled in my favour because the worker did not know his rights. But, do we have to plead reasonable cause for filing a claim late every time a worker doesn't know his rights?
In order to do our work to defend the rights of migrant farm workers who come to work in Quebec, we have a permanent booth at the Montreal Airport, and we welcome them when they arrive. They all arrive through the Montreal Airport. Last year, we met about 38,800 workers in total at the airport. We have a team of six full-time people on site to greet them. As soon as they leave the international area, they come to our booth.
They are given a diary in which they can write down their working hours, because they often don't write them down. In this diary, there are also barcodes that inform them about their rights in terms of health and safety at work. We set up a WhatsApp link with them, which allows us to send them videos and allows us to communicate visually. Among other things, RATTMAQ has made 14 videos on YouTube on a variety of topics, including one on workplace accidents and illnesses, one on labour standards and one on the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms because we are using both. WhatsApp is free, which is also a big plus. These workers go to work in several regions, sometimes as far away as the Magdalen Islands or the North Shore, and call us for information or even cases.
Recently, a worker was hit by his employer. We went to pick him up, we put him up in one of our emergency residences that we have at RATTMAQ, we filed complaints for assault against the employer and we are in the process of applying for an open permit as a vulnerable worker.
These workers are all in the agri-food sector, whether it is agriculture or food processing, meat or fish. They come from several countries, including Mexico and Guatemala.
It is my ardent wish that the situation of temporary
agricultural workers will improve, that they will have better
access to justice. They don't have it right now. I hope that
this accessibility will be something concrete, and that they
will stop attacking the workers with prevention mutuals that do
not think about prevention but think about the employers'
pockets.
(Translated from original French by TML.)
This article was published in
Volume 53 Number 5 - May 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/Articles/M5300513.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca