On May 1, the B.C. government will be reminding us of a scheduled increase in the minimum wage on that date from $9.50 to $10.25 per hour. However, this increase will not apply to some of the lowest paid and most exploited workers in the province - farm workers who harvest fruits, berries and vegetables.
That is because on March 9, the B.C. minister of labour quietly announced that hand harvesters of fruits and vegetables would not receive the long overdue minimum wage increases all other B.C. workers received on Nov. 1, 2011 and scheduled for May 1.
Under the Employment Standards Act regulation, farm workers who harvest tree fruits, berries and certain vegetables are not entitled to receive the minimum hourly wage that all other workers are entitled to. Instead, the minimum wage regulation sets the minimum rates of pay for the harvesting of these crops on the basis of either the volume or weight of crops picked.
Between 2001 and 2003, the Liberal government bowed to pressure from the agricultural industry and made sweeping changes to the Employment Standards Act that stripped farm workers of several important rights and benefits, including entitlement to statutory holiday pay and overtime pay, and reduced rights for minimum daily hours of pay. At that time the regulated minimum piece rates for the hand harvesting of crops - minimum rates that previously included an adjustment of 3.9 per cent in lieu of statutory holiday pay - were reduced by 3.9 per cent.
In the fall of 2011, just prior to the second scheduled increase in minimum wages after a decade of no increase, the fruit and vegetable farm lobby pressured the Ministry of Labour to not increase the minimum hand harvester piece rates on November 1, 2011 by the 8.6 per cent that the minimum hourly wage was to be increased by. The government's excuse for not increasing the minimum hand harvesting piece rates at that time was that it was undertaking a study of the piece rate system to determine if the system was working for harvesters and producers.
The study of piece rates by private consultants was conducted in late 2011 after most of the hand harvesting of fruits and berries had ended. The consultants' final report was submitted to the government in December 2011.
Based on this study, the government decided that not only is the minimum piece rate system more beneficial to farm workers than a minimum hourly wage without the consultants having surveyed or consulted a single farm worker, and without listening to farm worker advocacy groups that called for scraping the system, it decided that the piece rates last adjusted on May 1, 2011 should be frozen indefinitely.
This means that while the minimum wage for all other B.C. workers will have increased on May 1 by 28.13 per cent since 2001, for fruit, berry and vegetable hand harvesters their minimum piece rate wages will have increase by only 9.4 per cent - two-thirds less than the general minimum wage! By further depressing minimum wages in agriculture in this way the B.C. government is subsidizing farm operators at the expense of low-income immigrant and migrant farm workers.
The review consultants did not interview or obtain earnings and hours of work data from a single farm worker, therefore the government's statement that "the current piece rates are appropriate for both workers and employers" is stunningly misleading and points to the total failure of the government to consider the interests of farm workers and the impact that a freezing of their minimum piece rates will have on them, or the supply of Canadian workers to the industry.
Another reason that the government should not rely on the consultants' piece rate review as the basis for its minimum wage policy for farm workers is that the study was fundamentally flawed, particularly with respect to the Lower Mainland berry and vegetable sectors. In these sectors the majority of harvesting labour is supplied to farm operators through the notoriously corrupt and exploitative farm labour contracting system. It is telling that not one farm labour contractor cooperated with the researchers to provide data on the pay and hours of work of the berry and vegetable harvesters that they supply to farm owners. This fact alone renders the analysis of the berry and vegetable harvesting sector invalid.
There were other significant deficiencies in the consultants' survey, such as the small and statistically insignificant data samples obtained for farm worker earnings and hours of work by sector, and the lack of hourly earnings analysis at points throughout each harvesting season.
The most serious deficiency in the consultant's survey of the piece rate system was in relation to the large and profitable (for both farm owners and farm labour contractors) Lower Mainland berry sector (blueberries, raspberries and strawberries). In this sector the majority of labour is provided by farm labour contractors, or increasingly temporary foreign workers.
In this sector the Canadian labour force is made up of South Asian immigrants who are paid the minimum hand harvesting piece rates, while the temporary foreign workers are required to be paid the minimum hourly wage.
In addition to the fact that no farm labour contractor provided the researchers with harvester piece rate, earnings and hours of work data, the researchers were unable to obtain that data from the farm owners who employed farm workers through farm labour contractors because in 2002 the government eliminated from the Employment Standards Act the requirement for such farmers to retain records of wages paid to employees of farm labour contractors.
To the very limited extent that the researchers were provided with some earnings and hours of work data for piece rate paid blueberry harvesters for 2011, it is evident that farm workers employed in this sector are the lowest paid and most exploited workers in the province, and in desperate need of more employment standards protections and a minimum hourly wage the same as all other B.C. workers.
The government should eliminate the minimum piece rate regulation for the hand harvesting of any and all agricultural products, and in the event that employers choose to pay incentive piece rates for certain products at certain times of the year, the rule should be (as in Ontario and under temporary foreign worker programs) that such rates must be set at a level so that with reasonable effort farm workers can earn at least the minimum hourly wage for all hours worked.
David Fairey is the co-chair of the B.C. Employment Standards for the Next Decade Coalition.
