Labour ministry to probe Canadian farm
Published:Thursday | April 28, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Laura Redpath, Senior Gleaner Writer
The Ministry of Labour has ordered an investigation into a Canadian greenhouse farm following revealing reports from two Jamaican farm workers.
Pearnel Charles, minister of labour and social security, said the ministry would be unwilling to dispatch workers to the farm in question, which is located in Simcoe, Ontario, provided that the reports of abuse there are true.
"The liaison officers will investigate and if what the farm workers have said is true, then we will ask the Canadian authorities to investigate," Charles told The Gleaner yesterday.
Five farm workers who were among a batch heading to Canada yesterday bemoaned what they call the lack of confidentiality between the Jamaican liaison officers and the farm workers.
Two workers who gave formal reports to the Ministry of Labour complained they are not allowed to take breaks to which they are entitled. One of the workers described the situation on the greenhouse farm in Simcoe as "prison".
There are approximately 1,500 farms available to Jamaican farm workers in Ontario alone. Some nine liaison officers have been charged with the responsibility of ensuring disputes are settled and the appropriate living standards, inclusive of health care, accommodation and food, are upheld.
not enough breaks
"The work is not the problem, is the break," one of them said. We don't get enough breaks. We're supposed to get two 15-minute breaks; one in the morning and one in the afternoon plus half an hour for lunch equalling a total of one hour.
"We are used to eight hours a day. When you start work 6 o'clock inna the morning and you get lunchtime 12 o' clock and we start work back at 12:30, it is unfair to work to 11 o'clock (at night) again without any break. What it state on paper, we not getting it," said the farm worker, who described the farm as "prison".
The Ministry of Labour has rejected research findings from two studies, which sampled 600 workers of which 100 were Jamaican, according to one of the researchers, Jenna Hennebry, social scientist at the International Migration Research Centre at Wilfred Laurier University in Ontario.
According to the research, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal last Monday, there are cases where farm workers work for over 12 hours in a day, hindering access to clinics and the ability to run basic errands such as grocery shopping.
Alvin McIntosh, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Labour, has not seen the studies, but said he does not think they are "authentic".
"I don't think they're objective," he asserted.
"There's a motive for sending out these damaging findings to damage a (farm work) programme which has been so useful to Jamaica over so many years. Four and a half decades, thousands of Jamaicans are going up each year helping to build their families back home, helping to educate their children," McIntosh said.