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Workplace representation – the process through which workers voice concerns, negotiate conditions, and participate in decision-making – can be a crucial mechanism for reducing employment strain. Access to such structures is particularly vital for precarious workers, like temporary migrant farm workers in Canada, who face intensified demands owing to employer-tied contracts, congregate living arrangements, and persistent fears of job loss and deportation. Drawing on qualitative interviews and focus groups with migrant farm workers in three agriculturally dense regions in southern Ontario, this study explores the workers’ perceptions of one form of workplace representation: peer representation. While peer representation may foster lateral communication and social support for an otherwise isolated workforce, it is complicated by the structural precarity that intensifies competition and conflict among migrant farm workers. This article demonstrates how the conditions of entry and residency for migrant farm workers in Canada generate lateral surveillance and intra-worker control, amplifying workplace pressures and demands and reinforcing the strain that peer representation might otherwise help to alleviate.
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Migrant labour has become indispensable in North America and Europe for the functioning of the agrifood sector. However, unfair labour mobility regimes and the structures of opaque agrifood supply chains thrust migrant farmworkers into an industry rife with inequitable employment conditions, limited regulatory protection measures, and suboptimal living conditions. Over the last 30 years, several certification initiatives have been introduced to engage governments, farmers, retailers, nongovernmental organizations, and consumers in providing new avenues for improving migrant labour conditions in the sector. Certification programs have become an effective strategy to tackle issues related to labour exploitation. In some cases, these programs have led to the creation of communities and workers’ coalitions, thus facilitating spaces for conversations surrounding policy changes and temporary-program restructuring to make conditions fairer to migrant, racialized, and indigenous workers. The purpose of this paper is to review some of these good practices and to identify the necessary conditions in an effort to develop an operational framework for a Fair Farm Work certification initiative in Canada. This Fair Farm Work initiative is focused on exploring the potential of coalitions and partnerships between employers, workers, distribution chains, and policy makers to develop a certification scheme that helps improve migrant workers’ employment conditions in Canada’s agrifood sector. Our analysis shows that the success of certifications relies on the incorporation of worker-driven models and the inclusion of elements such as third-party audits, rigorous standards, clear enforcement strategies, worker education, clear food-labelling strategies, and community engagement to raise awareness and render these efforts visible to consumers. While migrant workers’ participation is pivotal in implementing certifications, retailers’ participation is a powerful incentive to garner support from other stakeholders and to harness consumer power through Corporate Social Responsibility mandates and engagement campaigns.
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