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Assessing temporary foreign worker programs through the prism of Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program: can they be reformed or should they be eliminated?

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Abstract

This article assesses Temporary Foreign Worker Programs (TFWPs) through the prism of Canada’s Seasonal Agriculture Worker Program (SAWP), often represented as a model because of the many rights granted workers and the multiple forms of protection put in place to protect those rights. A careful study of the extant anthropological and sociological literatures, including the author’s work, reveal the immense power that growers wield over temporary foreign workers from Mexico and various English-speaking Caribbean nations. Two consequences of this power have been rises in productivity and the expansion of the SAWP, to the point that it dominates key sectors of Canadian agriculture. Workers are either prevented from joining unions or punished, via blacklisting in some cases, for forming local bargaining units. The author suggests that all such programs be dismantled. At the least, the question of the future of TFWPs merits open and frank discussion.

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Notes

  1. Tanya Basok observed in 2007 that “Compared with permanent forms of migration, policymakers consider temporary migration more attractive for a number of reasons. In particular, temporary migration permits greater flexibility in the labor market and can seem more acceptable to electorates that find permanent immigration ‘threatening.’” It feels strange to be revising this essay the very evening (January 2019) that President Donald Trump gave a speech to the nation focused on the “emergency” on the US southern border and the need for a wall to protect innocent white United Statesians from brown-skinned rapists, drug runners, and terrorists.

  2. The Caribbean participants include Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, and eight members of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States: Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent & the Grenadines.

  3. The British West Indies Temporary Alien Labor Program operated largely in eastern and southern areas of the USA. It survived the 1964 termination of the much larger Bracero Program.

  4. Since the mid-1990s, Mexico has captured more than half the total positions annually. Language differences might play a role, as might growers’ racist fears of sexual miscegenation between black Afro-Caribbean men and white Canadian women. (Growers have a perhaps misconceived idea that Mexican males are more family oriented and less threatening than Caribbean males.) Also, Sazewich (2007) provides evidence that the 1974 invitation to Mexico to join the SAWP followed Caribbean pressure for higher wages. Thus, the invitation to Mexico was part of a “divide-and-conquer” strategy to depress wages.

  5. Hutchinson alluded to the “dual frame of reference” when she noted that, “For some [TFWs], particularly low-skilled workers, the conditions and pay may still be better than in their home country, and they are therefore more likely to endure substandard treatment” (2016: 14). Also, see Wells et al. 2014.

  6. A good example of the operative power of the dual frame of reference in shaping individual decisions can be insinuated from case studies in Ferguson (2007a).

  7. In a personal communication (email of 11/4/18), Laura Velasco of Mexico’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte made a similar point with respect to US H-2A, stating that “the people I interviewed compared their work in San Quintín and the United States and felt a greater demand for intense work in the latter, where they were not allowed to rest even for a minute over the course of hours” (my translation). With reference to H-2A citrus harvesters in Florida, Roka et al. (2017) stated, “Probably the biggest advantage employers have found with the H-2A program is the opportunity to ‘build’ a more productive work force. This process typically takes at least three years as the employer selects the most productive workers and invites them back the next year.”

  8. Tree planting is considered nonagricultural work by the US Government, for which reason TFWs are ascribed to the H-2B program.

  9. NOC C and D refer to National Occupational Classifications C and D, composed of occupations that require low or nil levels of formal education. Previously, the Agricultural Stream was known as the Low-Skilled Pilot Project, which the government opened in 2002.

  10. The material was taken from the website of FARMS.COM. The advertisement is no longer available.

  11. Hutchinson (2016, 6) discusses in general terms “structural dependence on TFWs” in Canada. In all sectors, the number of TWFs in Canada grew from 101,000 in 2002 to 338,000 in 2012; during this period, the national unemployment rate varied from 6 to 7%. According to Hutchinson, “There is evidence that many employers and industries have become reliant on this increased access to TFWs, and that they are being used not just for relief during acute labor shortages, but as a more permanent fixture in Canada’s labor market. Almost one-fifth of employers using the TFWP in 2013 had a workforce of at least 30% TFWs, and almost one-tenth of employers had a workforce of at least 50% TFWs” (6).

  12. On the decline in state support for domestic agriculture (with the exception of the SAWP and other TFWPs) see Mysyk 2000, especially chapter 4.

  13. Employers hiring through the Agricultural Stream apply for a Labor Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) from Employment and Social Development Canada. If the ESDC judges that hiring TFWs will not adversely affect Canadians, then employers can seek workers from any country in the world. The Canadian government is only minimally involved in the Agricultural Stream and source country governments have no role at all..

  14. Ontario (58.1%), Quebec (15.0%), and British Columbia (16.7%) collectively accounted for 89.8% of 41,702 SAWP participants in 2015.

  15. In Ontario, SAWP workers who have completed five consecutive years of employment with the same employer are entitled in the sixth year to a meager recognition payment of $4.00 per week and a maximum of $128.00 per season. In an average 60-h work week, recognition pay adds less than 7 Canadian cents per hour to the paycheck.

  16. Section 2(d) of the charter grants everyone the “freedom of association.” Section 15 treats Equality Rights and states that “(1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. (2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability” (Government of Canada n.d.).

  17. Sidhu & Sons Nursery Ltd. employed only Mexican workers.

  18. Evidence of blacklisting exists for other TFWPs (see Bailey 2018; Wheat 2018; Binford 2013, 163–164, 218; Russo 2011, 138).

  19. Recruitment of Guatemalans through the Agricultural Stream has been assisted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). In 2015, the Agricultural Stream accounted for only 8% of Ontario’s agricultural TFWs.

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    Arthur Leigh Binford

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Binford, A.L. Assessing temporary foreign worker programs through the prism of Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program: can they be reformed or should they be eliminated?. Dialect Anthropol 43, 347–366 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-019-09553-6

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