Quebec Workers Win Union Battle
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Quebec’s seasonal agricultural workers have reason to celebrate, since the province’s labour commission has gone to work on Quebec’s labour code in order to allow seasonal farm workers to unionize.
Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The province’s Commission des relations du travail ruled in favour of Mexican workers employed on a Montreal-area cabbage farm who have declared that a section of Quebec’s Labour Code is a violation of the Charter rights to freedom of association, and therefore “inoperative.”
In response, the commission accredited the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 501 to the farm’s workers. The union will represent the workers’ interests, instead of the staff and management at Ferme L+L.
The debated section declared that permitted workers could only organize on farms where at least three employees work “ordinarily and continually” throughout the year.
Since 2001, Ferme L+L has employed seasonal workers between March and October, usually foreign, to attend to the planting, maintenance and harvesting of its vegetables. The farm primarily grows cabbage. The farm’s owners, Johanne L’Ecuver and Pierre Locas, have been in business for about 30 years.
The commission’s decision is “a victory for these workers and for every other agriculture worker in Quebec who needs and wants a union,” says Louis Bolduc, assistant to UFCW president Wayne Hanley, in a release.
The commission has “recognized that over the decades since article 21.5 was drafted, today’s farms have evolved into large-scale industrial operations.
“They are just like factories, and just because they shut down for a few months a year doesn’t mean the workers should be denied their right to join a union.”
The commission stated that the agriculture sector has undergone “profound transformations” in the past 50 years, with many operations going large-scale and commercial, unlike the mom-and-pop operations of the past.
The United Food and Commercial Workers union estimates that some 27,000 people work on farms in Quebec, of which about 6,000 are migrant workers who travel to the province for work during the growing season.
The union represents workers at four different Quebec agriculture operations. In their statement, the union said they were in contract talks to represent a fifth operation. There are also two certification applications before the commission.
