'Solidarity convoy' renews calls for safer conditions, better job mobility for migrant farm workers

Shawn Cotter has vivid memories of the unsafe conditions he was required to work in during his three years as a migrant farm worker.

"The greenhouse was flooded with limestones on the floor everywhere," Cotter said, adding he would breathe it in.

"Chemicals spraying. You're working in it."

Cotter is one of about 30 people — a mix of current and former migrant farm workers along with advocates — who participated in a solidarity convoy Sunday, visiting nine farms in Essex County where injuries and deaths have occurred.

Flowers were also placed on the property of farms where workers died, including one farm where advocates say 40-year-old Tyrone Lee Jackson and 39-year-old Sheldon McKenzie died. 

The first key issues his group wants to see upper levels of government address is the job mobility of migrant farm workers — as many TFWs come to Canada on closed work permits that only allow them to work for their current employer.

"Workers are concerned about being sent home or repatriating for standing up for their rights," Ramsaroop said Sunday. "Injured workers [are worried about] being sent back and not being able to ever come back to work here."

The solitary convoy also placed a renewed focus on occupational health and safety issues, a "lack of protections" in the Employment Standards Act and the barriers of migrant farm workers to gain permanent residency.

Stories of migrant worker deaths and injuries were spoken at each stop. (Sanjay Maru/CTV News Windsor)Among specifics, he said, are TFWs working at height without safeguards — with some alleging they've been sprayed while working with pesticides.

"These issues have remained. It hasn't changed in the last 55 years, and I'm sure they won't in the next 55 years. As we continue to fight, the issues will remain until we put pressure to change policy at both levels of government," added Ramsaroop.

There has never been a coroner's inquest into the death of a migrant farm worker despite three workers dying at Essex County farms just this year, according to Ramsaroop.

Meanwhile, Cotter said he's now working in construction where job mobility and union benefits have been more accessible compared to his time as a farm worker.

For Cotter, it's important that farms share all the information that migrant workers need to live safely in this region.

"To tell them that they should learn their rights and be strong and fight for their rights," said Cotter.

"Don't stay ignorant about all the abuses that are going on in the farm program."