Growing Justice: Health, safety and dignity for South Asian farmworker women in British Columbia

Introduction

For decades, researchers and advocates have shown how several factors compound the precarity of farmworkers in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley. First, women of South Asian descent comprise a large proportion of this workforce. Their capacity to act independently may be eroded by difficulty communicating in English, being financially dependent on kin and sometimes having an immigration status that ties them to their spouse or family. Second, many farmworker women are concentrated in piece-rate work. Piece-rate payments have been described as an “archaic system,” which has significant discrepancies from BC’s regular minimum wage. Third, almost all these women have been subject to the Farm Labour Contracting (FLC) system, wherein their legal employer is a contractor. Even though the contractor is ostensibly regulated by BC labour laws, researchers and advocates have repeatedly shown that the FLC system has led to exploitation, wage-withholding and coercion so that workers accept unsafe transportation.

Through interviews and focus groups with South Asian farmworker women living in rural Abbotsford, British Columbia, our study builds on previous research and advocacy. The purpose of this study is to hear directly from farmworker women about their contemporary experiences and workplace conditions and to determine how effectively public policies support their health, safety and dignity. 

What has changed in recent decades and what has not?

Since the 1970s, when immigrants who mainly originated in India’s Punjab region became a significant proportion of the Lower Mainland’s agricultural labour force, reports have documented their precarity. The Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU, officially formed in 1980 and representing mainly farmworkers of Punjabi descent) drew particular attention to the issues faced by women that made both them and their children (who they had to bring to the fields with them) unsafe. During the 1980s, CFU founders were threatened with physical harm for insisting that workers be included as equal under the law. Although the CFU’s advocacy achieved some success at the time, many of the issues it raised have reemerged in our research. 

Farmworkers have consistently been treated as unequal by law.

It wasn’t until 1991 that farmworkers were granted protections under the Employment Standards Act and WorkSafeBC. Some positive changes have been made in recent decades. For instance, after a tragic crash of an overcrowded van in 2007 resulted in the death of three farmworkers, more stringent regulations were introduced in 2008. This incident involved a 15-passenger van that was overcrowded with 17 farmworkers. When it overturned, three workers died and others were injured. Prior to this crash, in 1974, an overloaded van driven by a labour contractor overturned, killing one worker. One of the injured female passengers reported that it was commonplace for contractor to put drapes across the window to avoid inspection. The 2007 and 1974 incidents raise pressing questions: why would a labour contractor— arranged by an employer and ostensibly regulated by the government—permit such overcrowding? And why did the workers, who were mainly women, feel compelled to accept these conditions? 

Our central finding is that despite changes such as improvements in transportation inspections, South Asian women farmworkers in BC today continue to experience a double precarity: their economic and workplace vulnerabilities are compounded by social isolation. Specifically, they often lack networks outside their kin group when they arrive in Canada, which means they do not have access to information about their rights and options. In addition, they may have limited English skills and face difficulty obtaining a drivers’ license, which heightens their dependence on employers and the FLC system.

Our report begins with a historical overview of farmworker research and labour organizing in BC. Across the three broad themes examined in the findings section – (1) Workplace health and safety risks; (2) Job security, wages and upward mobility; and (3) Workplace dignity and collective action—we show how women’s experiences of farm work are distinctly gendered. Interviewees described specific concerns such as inadequate facilities during menstruation, sexual harassment and the need to accept unsafe transportation, even after the 2007 crash, because they felt they had no alternative. They also highlighted the heavy “double shift” of paid labour combined with housework and childcare.

Some women who reported positive change over time credited the formation of friendship networks, developing English skills or getting support from community organizations. Such resources helped them form carpool groups, get help with workplace issues or find other employment. The recommendations at the end of this report are drawn directly from these discussions and from the women’s own accounts of what changes they felt would matter.

History: farmworker research and advocacy

Since the 1970s, immigrants from India have been the core of the domestic seasonal agricultural workforce in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley. Some hand harvesters, like those who pick cherries and apples, earn higher wages, but the workforce that mainly consists of older females picks lower-paid crops in the Fraser Valley, berries and vegetables. A substantial portion of this work force has been South Asian women who, in the early 1980s, were estimated to constitute two-thirds of the work force. 

The atrocious working conditions and working lives of these women were portrayed in the 1982 documentary film A Time to Rise and Murray Bush further spotlighted the exploitation of farmworker women in his 1995 book, A History of the Canadian Farmworkers’ Union. , Even in these accounts of farmworkers’ lives and working conditions, direct narratives from farmworker women are limited. Instead, descriptions of their working conditions are often relayed through the voices of male organizers from the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) or translated by the children of the women who worked on these farms. Publications like Bush’s highlight how the main issues that farmworkers faced in the 1970s, including low pay, unsafe working conditions, farmworkers not being included in labour legislation as well as lack of childcare and racial discrimination, continue to the present. 

The first study of the working and living conditions of South Asian women farmworkers was a survey undertaken in 1993-1994 that focused on the Lower Mainland’s small fruit industry. Of the 340 farmworker survey respondents, 56 per cent were women and 56 per cent of all respondents worked for farm labour contractors. One of the report’s main recommendations was to provide farmworker women with more opportunities for networking, education and childcare.

The most-recent study of the working and living conditions of South Asian women farmworkers was undertaken in 2007 by a team of community and university researchers. This qualitative study included focus groups with 28 South Asian immigrant farmworkers in the Fraser Valley, 17 of whom were women. Nearly all study participants had worked in the fields, picked berries and worked with vegetables (e.g., potatoes, broccoli, cucumbers). Their work included planting, thinning, pruning, picking, grading, sorting, cleaning and packing. Nearly all had worked for a farm labour contractor and in the previous season, two thirds had depended on a labour contractor for their transportation to and from the farms where they worked. One third had had their own transportation or shared with family or friends. One of the most striking findings from the 2007 study was that farmworkers typically earned very low incomes and the for-profit farm labour contracting system contributed to their precarity, powerlessness and exploitation. Participants reported being paid through a complex, confusing system that frequently involved FLCs. Workers depended on Employment Insurance in the off-season and at the end of each season, FLCs would sometimes report insurable hours on Records of Employment without having kept daily hours of work records. Earnings depended on many factors beyond farmworkers’ control. This study also noted how the BC government had begun to roll back numerous protections for workers under the Employment Standards Act in the early 2000s. It also observed how, between 2002-2004, BC agribusinesses successfully lobbied the provincial government to allow them to hire Mexican workers on temporary work permits through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, which has since expanded to numerous other source countries and immigration streams.

To address these issues, the authors recommended replacing the flawed for-profit farm labour contracting system with a non-profit farm labour supply agency that would mutually benefit farmworkers and growers. They also recommended to the provincial government, among other measures, that the entitlements of farmworkers to overtime pay, statutory holidays with pay and annual vacation pay be restored. Recommendations included that piece rates either be replaced with the minimum hourly wage or be set at a level so that with reasonable effort the minimum hourly wage be earned for all hours worked. Provincial governments have not acted on any of the study’s recommendations.

Our interviews suggest that certain improvements appear to have been made to farmworker women’s working conditions since the mid-2000s, particularly regarding transportation safety. However, our study also shows immigrant farmworker women in BC continue to face precarious employment and barriers to adequate wages, washrooms, safe transportation, healthy working conditions and a meaningful voice in the workplace. Previous research has shown that piece-rate wage systems (i.e., being paid based on how much one harvests, rather than an hourly rate) can mean that farmworkers are expected to perform at a fast pace of work or endure long hours in order to qualify for Employment Insurance. Pressure to work at a fast pace may be particularly dangerous for older farmworkers during climate-related extreme weather events such as the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome. Further, previous research has shown that a middleperson farm labour contracting system can result in practices such as underpayment, lack of transparency over hours of work and wages and a general lack of control of workplace conditions (e.g., an inability to choose one’s place of work).

Agricultural workforce composition and farm labour contracting

Many farm operators in BC depend on Farm Labour Contractors (FLCs), who directly employ and supply seasonal itinerant farmworkers who are mostly recent immigrants. The FLC system began in the Fraser Valley during the 1970s. During that time, immigration to Canada from India blossomed and the use of South Asian immigrants for farm work in the Fraser Valley increased from fewer than 500 workers in 1970 to about 5,000 in 1978., Growth in the Fraser Valley agricultural industry in this period and its reliance on a seasonal and itinerant labour force gave rise to the business of farm labour contracting within the Indian immigrant community. Organizations with roots in the South Asian community, like the CFU and the Farmworker Organizing Committee that preceded it, opposed this system and proposed it be replaced with a union hiring hall that would cut out the go-between contractors and increase wages and protection for workers without increasing costs for farmers or consumers.

This advocacy led to some changes to the FLC system. In 1982, FLCs became regulated under the Employment Standards Act because of the struggles and campaigns of the CFU to obtain legislated employment rights and protections for farmworkers. Today, FLCs must be licensed by the Employment Standards Branch and post a bond to employ farmworkers who they transport daily to farms, nurseries and greenhouses. A worker who is bonded to an FLC is employed on a temporary basis and assigned to a specific farm selected by the contractor. For small and medium sized farms, nurseries and greenhouses FLCs provide a valuable service recruiting and transporting workers to their farms and places of operation. The contractors also keep track of how much each worker harvests by volume and/or how many hours are worked and they pay workers based on those records.

According to the BC Employment Standards Branch, as of November 2024, 71 FLCs were licensed and bonded for a total of 5,229 farmworkers in the Lower Fraser Valley. In 2024, the number of FLC-bonded workers varied from four to 300 per contractor with an average of 74. Most of these workers hand harvest blueberries, raspberries and strawberries while others harvest tree fruits, mushrooms and a variety of vegetables. They are paid based on the weight or volume of their harvesting, not the hours worked. Some hand harvesters are employed directly by farm owners or operators. Some secure off-season work planting or pruning blueberry and raspberry bushes, propagating and shipping plants in nurseries or processing and packing plants for which they are paid at an hourly rate.

Most BC-resident hand harvesters employed by FLCs (or employed directly by farm operators) continue to be of South Asian ethnicity. To the extent that the names of FLC owners are identified in the FLC license registry, a significant proportion of the contractors also appear to be of South Asian ethnicity. Of the 768 harvesters surveyed by Zbeetnoff and McTavish in 2011, 64 per cent were female of predominantly South Asian ethnicity. A 2019 study estimated that 60 per cent of Lower Mainland hand harvesters were elderly women and 40 per cent were elderly men, both mostly South Asian immigrants.

Workers employed by FLCs are commonly paid a piece rate according to the amount of fruit picked (for example, the legislated minimum piece rates in 2025 were $0.558 per pound for blueberries, $0.502 per pound for raspberries and $0.484 per pound for strawberries). Moreover, the limited data available indicate that the FLC system adds significantly to the cost of labour. In 2018, researchers Taylor and Gonzalez interviewed 10 blueberry growers who collectively employed 1,200 harvesters. They ascertained that when hand harvesters employed through FLCs were paid the legislated minimum piece rate, at that time, $0.438 per pound for blueberries, the FLCs charged farm operators between $0.65 and $0.85 per pound. This represents a labour cost margin of between 48 per cent and 94 per cent above the minimum piece rate paid to hand harvesters. By paying FLCs, employers benefit from a flexible, on-demand labour force that they are not responsible for managing.

Contemporary South Asian farmworker unionization and advocacy

Agricultural workers continue to face significant barriers to unionization across harvesting, processing, packing and propagating. Farm employment tends to be seasonal, itinerant and precarious, which makes it difficult to sustain a union drive and negotiations for the first contract. BC’s Labour Relations Code compounds some of these factors because unions cannot represent agricultural workers on a sectoral or geographical basis (e.g., in the agricultural sector as a whole or BC-wide). Instead under the single-enterprise system of union certification, workers who want to form a union must do so site-by-site at every individual farm. This makes it harder for newcomers to engage in actions that may have them labelled as a ‘troublemaker’, particularly if they have limited English-language proficiency, weak ties to resources and networks in the broader community and a lack of formal education regarding their rights., These factors make workers highly vulnerable to unscrupulous bosses and farm labour contractors and also make it exceedingly difficult for workers to unionize their farms.

Despite the formidable barriers, several unions have successfully organized farmworkers after the decline of the CFU, but these efforts have been sporadic. Before the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) merged with the United Steelworkers of America in 2004, it successfully unionized workers at a BC nursery. However, the IWA lost the certification when ownership of the nursery changed. In the late 2000s, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Local 1518 was engaged in efforts to represent migrant workers at several agricultural sites, including Greenway, Sidhu & Sons and Floralia, but faced considerable obstacles to forming and maintaining a union. In 2024, 400 workers at five Highline Mushroom farms in the Fraser Valley, most of them temporary foreign workers, joined UFCW Local 1518 and obtained their first collective agreement. According to the UFCW, this group of workers became the largest group of farmworkers to unionize in Canada.

Amid limited unionization among farmworkers in BC, non-profit organizations have endeavoured to fill gaps by providing legal advocacy and information. Since 1978, Matsqui-Abbotsford Community Services (renamed Archway Community Services in 2019) has offered information, referrals and advocacy for farmworkers. Their Legal Advocacy for Agricultural Workers program started in 1994 and works with Canadian, immigrant and temporary foreign workers to educate them on their rights and responsibilities. Legal advocates work with agricultural employers and provide mediation if needed. Simultaneously, non-profit organizations have helped provide workers with information about their rights. Based on his interviews with workers, owners and farm labour contractors in the 1980s, Dr. Hari Sharma argued that a lack of information was one of the main reasons that contractors were able to take advantage of farmworkers. Lack of information meant that workers received lower wages, worked longer hours and were unable to determine whether they were getting a fair deal with employers and contractors. Dr. Sharma found that without English-language skills, information about alternative employment or knowledge of their rights, farmworkers were more easily exploited.

Today, BC trade unions appear to have limited connections with the social, cultural and community organizations to which Punjabi farmworker women already belong. This untapped potential is important because immigrant women’s isolation from the labour movement reinforces their precarity. Most of the women interviewed for this project had not heard of a union and several did not know what a union was. A notable exception to this pattern was one of our interviewees who had a union member in her family. Because of her firsthand experience with the benefits unions can offer, she helped lead the formation of a union that, in turn, helped improve working conditions. This information, against the backdrop of the older story of the CFU, illustrates the value of providing South Asian women farmworkers with access to resources and organizations that help them understand their rights and how they can build bargaining power for themselves. Thus, unions that wish to support agricultural workers today may benefit from connecting more deeply with these community organizations.

Many of our interviews indicate precisely this—the CFU may be important in the story of union organizing, but it missed opportunities to prioritize South Asian farmworker women’s leadership. The legacy of farmworker women, however, is felt through non-profit community organizations like Archway Community Services, Progressive Intercultural Community Services (PICS) and Multi-lingual Orientation Service Association for Immigrant Communities (MOSAIC), which provide support to immigrant women. To improve health and safety conditions and the dignity of these women workers, it may be important to work with organizations that have built meaningful relationships with women. Such organizations are well-positioned to provide information and resources to women and thus would likely form an important part of rolling out meaningful policy changes.

Methods

The analysis and results presented in this study are based on interviews conducted with women of South Asian descent working in agriculture. A total of 20 women participated in the study: four took part in a focus group, while the remaining 16 were interviewed individually. The individual interviews lasted between 40 minutes to an hour. All the women were married, and all except one were Canadian citizens. In terms of income, 13 of the participants reported earning less than $25,000 annually from agricultural employment, while the highest income reported (by two interviewees) was $40,000 per year. All the women identified India as their country of origin. The interviewees were mostly between 40 and 55 years old, with only two in their 30s and two above 55. Pseudonyms have been used throughout to protect confidentiality.

The interviewees had experience in various types of farmwork, including harvesting, working in nurseries, canneries and mushroom packing. Women in this sector often juggle multiple part-time jobs and face precarious employment conditions, frequently experiencing layoffs during the off-season. Due to these challenges, gaining access to and establishing trust with potential interviewees was not straightforward. To ensure that participants felt safe and comfortable, we did not approach them directly. Instead, we worked through Archway, a community organization with a longstanding history of supporting this community. Archway has played a crucial role in assisting agricultural workers by providing legal support for workplace issues, offering English language classes and creating gathering spaces for the elderly.

Nearly all interviews took place in Archway offices or other community spaces, ensuring participants a familiar and comfortable environment. Many women chose to bring a friend or family member for support; however, the interviews themselves were conducted one-on-one. Language was a critical consideration as 18 out of 20 interviews were conducted primarily in Punjabi. The women’s social and professional networks—including friends, employers, family members and even the labour contractors who transported them to work—were predominantly other Punjabi-speaking South Asians, often referred to as “apnay”—a term meaning “our own.” Because of easy access to Punjabi speakers, many of the women had limited opportunities to learn English. Some interviewees expressed nervousness before the interviews, fearing they might be required to speak in English. The presence and support of Archway staff, who had established relationships of trust within the community, were invaluable in reassuring participants and making them feel at ease.

Findings

1. Workplace health and safety risks

Toilet facilities, drinking water, lunchrooms and handwashing facilities

Access to adequate handwashing, drinking water and toilet facilities has long been a problem for agricultural workers in North America. Field sanitation risks tend to be higher for farmworkers with language barriers, lower levels of education, temporary immigration status and who are paid on a piece-rate basis.,Previous research documented this health and safety challenge on BC farms. For example, immigrant and migrant farmworkers interviewed by Fairey et al. noted that washrooms were often a long distance from the parts of the farm where they were working. Rigid, limited break times or pressure to skip breaks during piece-rate harvesting made it difficult for workers to walk long distances to access washrooms. Hennebry et al. found that 61 per cent of surveyed migrant agricultural workers in Ontario would go to the bathroom in the field where they worked due to a lack of access to nearby toilets and 31 per cent reported a lack of field handwashing facilities. When workers lack access to toilet facilities, they may drink less water, which can lead to heat stress, genitourinary issues and kidney disease.,,, From a food safety perspective, insufficient, unsanitary handwashing facilities and washrooms can heighten the risk of gastrointestinal illness for workers and consumers.

When we asked farmworker women about their access to toilets and handwashing facilities, they noted that facilities tended to be poorer in farm field sites compared to greenhouses, nurseries or packing houses. Some participants felt facilities had improved over time, particularly given the emphasis on handwashing during the COVID-19 pandemic, but this was inconsistent across farms. For example, one of our focus group participants noted that the nursery where she worked had only a single portable washroom for 40 workers who often had to go to the bathroom outdoors during their limited break time. As she explained, a lack of access to washrooms undermined women’s ability to manage menstrual hygiene and privacy:

Everyone had to use the washroom during our 20- to 30-minute break, so we would go outside in the open… I said this to WSB [WorkSafeBC], that the dock side [outdoor field site] is very dirty for the people because there’s no washroom and so many ladies work there and it’s natural for one of them to get their period, so where do we go to change our pads? We would need to have one person stand outside to cover and watch for us in case any gents came there.

Having washroom facilities that were simply inadequate (in the literal sense of not having enough for workers) or not be sufficient for the needs of menstruating women, resulting in them having to go out in the open, was not an isolated incident. For instance, Charvi immigrated to Canada 30 years ago and is a 52-year-old mother of three. She noted that when she began working in the cannery and packing sector: 

There was no bathroom. Sometimes we would have to sit like this [demonstrating] and watch to make sure no one was coming. Sometimes when we would go to the bathroom like that [outside], men could even walk by. Then we would be embarrassed. We couldn’t really sit and we couldn’t really stand either. It’s been only [three] or four years since we got bathrooms. 

Charvi pointed out that there have been improvements but said that these were insufficient. She noted that just before the COVID-19 pandemic, after workers complained and “the WCB [WorkSafeBC] folks would come by,” the employer finally brought in a bathroom, which was indoors. However, the new toilet was for 100 workers: 

There was one bathroom we would all have to go there. Sometimes we didn’t even want to go in because it was so dirty. They would only clean it after one or two weeks, I’m not sure. Then we would be worried or get infections if we sat on the toilet because it was so dirty. Then we would go outside somewhere. 

Furthermore, Charvi noted that workers were hassled for using toilets outside of designated break times. Similarly, Neha, who immigrated to Canada 15 years ago and is employed within the farm harvesting and nursery sectors, explained: 

They would say things like, ‘Whenever we look, we always see you going to the bathroom’, but if you have to go, you have to go, it could come at any time. It doesn’t necessarily mean we need to go the same time as our break time… Yes, they [portable toilets] were there, but they would often get really dirty and then they would tell us, “You clean them before you leave.” 

Workers also cited instances of employers “staging” better conditions just before an inspection. For instance, Dishmeet, who immigrated to Canada 15 years ago, is 37 years old and works in the farm harvesting and nursery industry, described when her employer generated the appearance of compliance by installing handwashing stations only to remove them later. The employer only showed WorkSafeBC the washrooms in the front area of the worksite and ignored workers’ washrooms in the ‘dock side’ (back), which were in much poorer condition. 

So, when WSBC [WorkSafeBC] was there they would see the nice part and then just leave from there. The washrooms were there, but the back, no one would look at it. I would tell WSBC this, the details. One day, if you got a job there, I’m not lying, you’ll then know the conditions of the back side, how bad it was.

In this case, it was unclear if the front-area bathroom was only for supervisors or if it was too far for workers to practically access, but regardless, workers were not permitted to use it. 

Anjali, another worker who was 54 at the time of the interview and worked in the farm harvesting and nursery sector, noted that prior to WorkSafeBC inspections: 

[Employers] they would train us when they [WorkSafeBC] would visit. If they ask you these questions, you’re going to answer like this.

In a similar vein, Dishmeet noted that the same temporary staging of health and safety compliance occurred with COVID-19 mask-wearing and handwashing stations. 

When I was there and WorkSafe came by it was mandatory to wear masks. We didn’t have any masks because we never wore them, but the owner, I don’t know where she got them from, from Dollarama or something, gave us masks and told us to wear them right away and got a handwash station installed right away… When WorkSafe left, the owner picked up everything again.

Dishmeet also observed that WorkSafeBC neglected to confirm that workers used seatbelts on tractors, for which she received no training.

And WorkSafe, I don’t know why they didn’t check, you can check if they were used or not, but no one uses the belts. There were no rules for this, I didn’t know even from day one when I started. I didn’t get any training. No one got it. Only you watch and learn.

Dishmeet was supported by a non-profit organization, Progressive Intercultural Community Services (PICS), to report her concerns to WorkSafeBC. However, she observed that her employer retaliated against her by assigning her undesirable tasks: 

The owner used my name and blamed everything on me. But I wasn’t worried, I was honest and I did what I was feeling. It wasn’t right, the environment was so gross. He would leave me in the water and say, ‘You work here.’ Where the rainwater would flood in the plants and floor, he would tell me to work there on purpose. He would do this with me. Anyone else’s fault would be blamed on me too. I worked there for three months, but it was the worst three months, very difficult for me.

Like Dishmeet, Charvi, commented that after WorkSafeBC announced its arrival in advance at her workplace, her employer staged the appearance of providing an adequate lunchroom for workers. In reality, there was no lunchroom, which she felt was a sanitary issue because soil would fly into the food.” Charvi elaborated that she couldn’t imagine her employer being capable of change.

It isn’t one to change; how much can you change it? WCB [WorkSafeBC] will come, they will say we are going to be here on this day at this time, once they come, they would take our lunch bags and move them to the lunchroom, how do they know where we have lunch? If I show you pictures, you’ll be in shock where we would have our lunch.

When asked about lunchroom appliances like a microwave to heat food, Charvi was incredulous:

Microwave? We didn’t even have a place to sit. We would sit on crates or baskets, whatever we could find, we would sit on that and eat.

Access to potable drinking water was inconsistent at farms, and women noted that they often brought gallon jugs from home. At Charvi’s cannery, packing and nursery workplace, the employer finally introduced potable drinking water when the toilet was built. Similarly, Falak, who also worked at a cannery, explained: 

That’s how it is at farms [they don’t care]. You don’t even have water in many farms. In many proper farms… some farms do it properly, they have taps, you can take some, some have coolers with water in them. But some farms do not have it at all…

In many farms they do have taps. They have one or two where you can wash your hands and even drink the water. In some they tell you the water isn’t fit for drinking. Some have that so they tell you that you can wash your hands but not drink the water.

For many women we spoke to, one of their main requests to government was to improve the quantity, quality and proximity of basic sanitary facilities, including a clean, designated place to eat and heat up their lunch. Charvi noted: 

We need everything, especially bathrooms. And a water fountain.

Workplace injury

Agriculture is a high-risk industry. Compared to those in other sectors, agricultural workers are more likely to sustain injuries such as musculoskeletal impairment, repetitive strain, equipment-related injuries (e.g., tractor rollovers), heat stress and acute and chronic harm from exposure to toxic agrochemicals.,, , ,In Langley, BC, for instance, an accident on a mushroom farm in 2008 led to three workers dying and two workers with permanent brain damage. In a coroner’s inquest, the coroner’s lawyer asserted that the deaths and injuries could have been prevented if the company had established adequate safety procedures and if the workers had known about the risks.

Many of the participants in our interviews appeared keen to emphasize their resilience and uncomplaining stoicism in the face of demanding physical labour. However, some participants described stories of observing co-workers being injured. For instance, Haroop, who immigrated 20 years ago, is now 40 years old and employed within the farm harvesting and nursery sectors, described how, in her first hour of picking mushrooms, she saw her friend and co-worker fall from the elevated scaffolding where workers are expected to harvest mushrooms.

…[Mushrooms] need a lot of heat, so they’ve made these floors [terraces, balconies] one above the other with small gaps in between them. You use a knife to cut the mushrooms, some are big, and some are small. So, you sit on this thing, you’re on half of it … it’s like a plank … and you keep a box on the other half. Then you cut the mushrooms and put them in the box and then you come down. It’s dangerous.

…A friend of mine fell down. You have this trolly-type thing … like a table with a really high step going to the roof … There’s a chain and you pull the chain, you sit on it, and you pull yourself using the chain. When you get to the top you gather and roll the mushrooms … anyway, the chain broke and my friend fell. She fractured her hip. I had gone there to work but I could only do it for an hour because I got scared and realized I could not do this.

Manpreet, who immigrated 16 years ago, is now 39 years old, and works in the packing, farm harvesting, and greenhouse sectors, echoed Haroop’s comments about hazards in the mushroom sector and observing workers getting injured from blades.

Sometimes the workers would get confused and then hurt. Then they would be given first aid and sometimes they would even call an ambulance. Most people would get hurt in the mushrooms by the sensor that was in front of the blades. If they accidentally passed their finger in front of the sensor the blades would start moving. Then the finger could get cut. This was where the mushrooms would be cut and scaled. 

How do I explain? The blades could be set off, but the workers had received training on how to use the machines, and they would tell us to be careful. But sometimes it would just happen.

Haroop’s and Manpreet’s comments underscore the risks of occupational injury that may be inherent to the design of agricultural workplaces. 

Other participants described personal experiences of being injured on the job as well as claims suppression by employers. While lifting heavy pots at a nursery, Anjali, a 54-year-old mother of two, slipped a disc. She noted that before her workplace was unionized, it was common to engage in 14 hours of lifting with no task rotations between workers to offer reprieve from the repetitive motion. After her injury, Anjali was bedridden for eight months. Immediately after she hurt her back on the job, she encountered a lack of due process and clear channels for reporting the injury. She was informed that because she had reported the injury to the lead hand but not to the supervisor, her injury was not documented. Although she received WorkSafeBC compensation, she felt it was inadequate as she had worked there for 25 years. Her job was terminated without warning or the compensation she felt she was owed.

Now, for the rest of my life, I get nothing.

Charvi described that from her first day at the nursery, pain became a normalized experience with the physically arduous job of repotting plants. She said that despite the back pain she was experiencing, she needed the hours to support her parents’ immigration to Canada.

I thought, okay I have to do this. I have filled out papers to sponsor my parents. I thought, at least I get hours here every day, at least nine hours every day, six days a week. And if I found a job somewhere else, say with Caucasian owners, then I would only get eight hours of work and my income would be lower.

Charvi only earned $24,000 annually. In one place of employment, her supervisor would dock hours and report an amount that was less than she actually worked. The financial pressure to support her family meant she couldn’t refuse unsafe or painful work because it would mean fewer paid hours.

It would hurt our backs,but we had to do it. 

Then the supervisor would come up to us and ask, ‘That’s all you did?’. We would say our backs are hurting, they would respond by saying, ‘Then take the day off’. They would say ‘this is a man’s job, men can do it, old ladies can’t, then take the day off if your back is hurting that’s no problem.’ 

If our back is hurting, then what are we supposed to do? If they’ve put us to work, then it’s going to hurt. We couldn’t talk back at work and tell them we can’t do the work.

Furthermore, Charvi said that if she was in pain, light work duties could be even worse and her supervisor trained workers not to advise doctors that an injury had occurred on the job.

Yes, I would take pain meds, what else could I do? I can’t even say that something is hurting, please give me easier work. Light work was actually worse. The supervisor would say, ‘Don’t work here, work there instead.’ What could I do? She would say, ‘If you’re in pain don’t do the work.’

If I got injured [at work] then she would say go to the doctor, but she would come with us, so we don’t say the injury happened at work. She would tell us to say the injury happened at home. She first wouldn’t take us, and if she did, she would teach us that if we go to the doctors, not to use their [the company’s] name.

Several participants were led to believe that if you worked for a contractor you were not eligible for workplace injury compensation because you worked for the contractor, and not the company. 

According to WorkSafeBC, workers who are injured while on the job, or while being transported to work, are eligible for workplace compensation even if they are hired by a contractor. However, responsibility for worker safety depends on the circumstances of the injury or hazard. If the working condition causing an injury or hazard is within the control of the contractor (e.g., vehicle overcrowding or
accident, handling heavy loads, pesticide application) then the contractor bears responsibility. If the hazardous conditions relate to the field or plant conditions (e.g., highly uneven or muddy ground) the farm owner/operator bears responsibility. In these cases, assigning blame for the injury or adjudication of the cause of injury can be complicated. 

Workers’ belief that being hired through a contractor made them ineligible for workplace injury compensation suggests they likely lack adequate training and information on their workplace rights. Moreover, the system for assigning responsibility for workers’ health and safety may be needlessly complex, which signals an opportunity to simplify accountability for workplace injury.

Sexual harassment and sexual violence

Across North America, farmworker women are at a high risk of sexual violence on the job.,Sexual harassment or sexual violence can occur from co-workers, supervisors or managers or
employers; migrant and immigrant women are particularly vulnerable. Most of the participants we interviewed were older and some felt that being older protected them from unwanted sexual attention on the job. Others expressed that they had never observed this kind of harassment at work. Insiya, who immigrated eight years ago, is 75 years old and employed within the farm harvesting and nursery industries, said “No, never. Nobody could do anything like that.”

However, some participants observed sexual harassment toward younger women, and others experienced sexual violence firsthand.

For example, Leila, who immigrated 31 years ago and is 50 years old, explained how the contractor she worked for, who had a reputation for harassing young women, had sexually exploited her. She was a single mother at the time, and he offered her a much-needed source of flexible income.

I did work for a contractor [name removed] in Abbotsford. He would abuse young girls, and I was also affected by it. I didn’t have any other income at the time, and I was alone with my son. So, I had to go for certain hours when my son was in school…

I met one of the girls who used to work with him many years later and she said that when we saw him come and get you separately in his car we knew and we said to each other – he’s come to take her separately in his car he is going to rape her. And he did.

Nobody tried to warn me. And there were others… I think he must have done it to all the girls who needed work. 

Leila’s account underscores how the contractor could take advantage of women’s financially precarious situation. A lack of access to independent transportation was also identified as a hazard for sexual exploitation. 

Similarly, Dishmeet, who is 40 years old and on an open work permit, noted a pattern of sexual harassment from a male supervisor at her nursery. The male supervisor made her uncomfortable by staring, with unwanted physical touch (e.g., touching her bra strap) and chastising her for not being sufficiently friendly to him. When she reported the concern to the owner, her concerns were not taken seriously. 

I even told them to change my position. I said, ‘Sister, he is touching me this way.’

She [the owner] said, ‘He’s a really nice man… I can’t change anything, and you can’t say anything [negative] at all about him.’

Everyone who complained would say the same thing. He would bother everyone. If you aren’t in the right frame of mind, how can you work?

Dishmeet noted that she knew of four or five women who had experienced harassment before her from the same supervisor and that the pattern of behaviour continued with other women after she left.

I know that even after all this everything is the same there. Nothing has changed. There are more cases like this after I left, harassment cases. 

With the support of PICS, she left her job and was able to receive back wages from WorkSafeBC due to wage losses. Dishmeet’s story highlights the importance of trusted community organizations in enabling immigrant farmworker women’s access to justice.

Transportation

Agricultural workers in North America often face significant risks from transportation to, from and between worksites, particularly when they are obligated to rely on transportation from employers and contractors in overcrowded vehicles. In BC, a major crash on March 7, 2007, brought these longstanding risks to the fore of public and political attention. The driver of a15-passenger van carrying 17 female farmworkers lost control of the vehicle near Abbotsford, resulting in the death of three women. The BC Federation of Labour noted on the crash anniversary: 

Multiple investigations revealed that the employer was at fault for this tragedy. The van was illegally overloaded, had only two seat belts, was riding on mismatched and bald tires, had a wooden bench in the back, a fraudulent safety permit and was driven by someone who did not have the proper licence.

The memory of this tragic accident loomed large for participants in our study and some described how they used to be transported to farms in overcrowded vans from the middleperson contractor. A number of women reported that the 2007 van crash appears to have prompted improvements to farmworker transportation safety, such as an increase in the number of police road checks to ensure vans were not overcrowded and that passengers were wearing seatbelts. Participants in a focus group described this improvement since the high-profile transportation tragedy in 2007.

Participant 3: Things have definitely gotten better since then. Now people know that they can complain. Back then, people didn’t have knowledge about this, didn’t know they could complain. They [drivers, contractors] are also afraid, they know anyone can complain online. They know they can be named in a complaint, with details about what they may have done. Contractors are scared now. [The other women agree]. 

Participant 2: We can also complain to the Gurudwara.

Participant 3: Back then, there was no paperwork. You didn’t know who the van belonged to, who was riding in it. No one knew. Since the accident, it’s now mandatory to have all these details written. The name and number of the company has to be written, which car is it, which company. 

The women in this focus group also said that cases in which workers today were asked to ride in an overcrowded van were “rare.” In addition, they explained that workers themselves were disincentivized to agree to ride without adequate seatbelts because they could receive a ticket during a road check.

Participant 1: So, people now try to make sure they wear seatbelts. Safety has been getting better.

Better transportation inspections, as well as involvement of organizations like PICS, MOSAIC and Archway, appear to have improved transportation safety for farmworker women over the past two decades. However, accounts from participants indicate that newcomers remain highly vulnerable to exploitation. This is especially the case for immigrant women who are either entirely dependent on their families or those like Leila who are cut off from their families. To improve the workplace and transportation safety for immigrant women, it is crucial for them to have accessible training on workplace safety and rights and English-language training.

For participants in our study, one of the primary workplace health and safety concerns related to transportation was the intersection of long, exhausting working days and the reliance on contractors to drive them to the worksite. Haroop, a 40-year-old mother of two earning $40,000 annually, for instance, described her typical 12-hour day of transportation and working at a mushroom farm.

Before, when I went with the contractor, I had to be up at 3-3:30 AM. The contractor would pick you up early because they would have to go and get other people as well. It was a big vehicle and we would get picked up one by one. Those who lived closer to the contractor would get picked up sooner or dropped off sooner as well… We wouldn’t always go to the same place. The location would change. They’d have two or three contracts and would take us where we were needed. Not the same place every day. We’d spend two hours in going around town, picking up others. I’d feel sleepy sitting while this happened. 

We’d work till all the orders were done. Then we’d be picked up, everyone would be dropped off by 5-6 pm. We’d work eight hours, but we’d actually be out for 12 hours. Then we’d get home, do household work for 2-3 hours [making dinner, packing a lunch for the next day], right? And then we’d have five-six hours left for sleep.

Accounts from participants like Haroop illustrate how fatigue from long days of work, having to rely on a contractor for shared transportation and a ‘second shift’ of domestic work could present a safety risk for women in an already high-risk industry. 

Obtaining one’s own driver’s license was a major source of autonomy from contractors and enabled greater control over the length of their working day. Anjali’s sister-in-law had encouraged her to get her driver’s license in Canada, advising her, “You can get by without English, but you can’t get by without a license.”

Because farms were sometimes far from participants’ homes, extreme fatigue could be dangerous. Charvi described how she had to stay until 11 or 12 at night during busy periods and return early the next morning, which resulted in her falling asleep at the wheel. When co-workers said she should just say she cannot stay late she responded, “I can’t tell them this, how do I tell my supervisor that I don’t want to work?”

Charvi’s comment underscores the practical difficulties of refusing long, exhausting working hours. Her co-workers even urged her to take a vacation day to avoid the potentially deadly consequences of extreme fatigue from overwork. Accordingly, even for women who had their driver’s licenses, a lack of bargaining power in the workplace undermined their ability to refuse risky workplace conditions.

2. Job security, wages and access to upward mobility

Job security

Based on our interviews with South Asian women farmworkers in BC’s Fraser Valley, one of the main characteristics of their work is the lack of job security. With a few exceptions, farm work is inherently seasonal, temporary, part-time or casual, with limited or no job security. This work includes fruit and vegetable planting, thinning, pruning, harvesting, grading, sorting, cleaning and processing. A significant part of such work involves repetitive manual labour under adverse conditions. In both indoor and outdoor environments, women might be exposed to poor weather conditions (e.g., hot greenhouses) and in some cases they work alongside hazardous machinery. All the farmworker women interviewed in our study had worked both directly for a farm owner or operator and for a farm labour contractor.

Employment in BC farm harvesting, processing and packing tends to be seasonal, but greenhouses and mushroom farms sometimes offer full-time, year-round jobs. Yet even in the mushroom and greenhouse sectors, immigrant South Asian women reported fewer full-time and part-time job opportunities. Kalyani, who immigrated to Canada 21 years ago and previously worked full-time on a mushroom farm recounted:

We always try to work as many months as possible, but it’s hard to get full time work. In 2018 I got full-time work, but right now I don’t have full-time work. First, I used to get work for the whole year, but now there isn’t work. I just don’t get it. So, it’s not about seasonal. We just don’t find enough work.

Kalyani believed that the reduced availability of work was a combination of mechanization and various streams of the federal government Temporary Foreign Worker Program. This program enables an employer to hire international farmworkers on temporary, closed work permits for either a harvesting season or for up to two years of full-time work, with a minimum number of weekly hours. In Kalyani’s experience, employers did not have as much work after the COVID-19 pandemic and they would put workers’ names on a list and call them as-needed.

I’ve been on the list for two years, but I don’t think anything will happen now because the amount of work they have has decreased so much. Yes, it changed after COVID because there was less work available. I was able to get six days of work and it was all year…

Every time we ask now, they say they never have more than seven hours of work at a time. I think its because they have directly hired people on work permits. Before they used to have workers who were mainly Punjabi and Chinese workers who lived here. Then they put in place faster machines and that already reduced the workers they needed. Then they began hiring many more workers on work permits. Then they have to give those workers their numbers of hours. Then there is much less work left for us to do.

Another interviewee with many years of experience in berry harvesting commented that over the past two years there was less work and that it was harder to get a job. Leila, a permanent resident who has been in Canada for 21 years, recalled that in the 1990s: “I remember everyone picked berries.”

Another interviewee, Jasminder, who immigrated 11 years ago and is 43 years old, observed that there is less farm work available because of the introduction of harvesting machines: 

Now that machines are increasingly used [to pick berries] and there is less need for labour, it is harder to find work.

According to the women who have worked for both farm owners and labour contractors their preference is to work for farm owners because the hours of work were more certain. For example, Manpreet, who works in greenhouse and farm harvesting and packing, described the irregularity of hours:

I prefer being employed by the employer [farm owner] because you knew then how many hours you would work. You knew how much work you would get, you would know your schedule. Whereas with the contractor, there was no certainty not in terms of days, hours, schedule, nothing. Things could change anytime. You could go to work and then just be off at any time.

We were used to doing four hours of work at a time, but what would not be good is if you come in for work, you were up since four in the morning getting ready because the contractor would tell us that work was available and then we would get a call saying, ‘no today you are off because we have enough workers.’

Another negative aspect of working for a farm labour contractor was that workers often depended on them for transportation and they lacked choice about where they might work on a given day. According to Palwinder [With a contractor]: “You don’t get to pick where you work. The contractor decides where you will work and finds where work is available.”

Access to independent transportation offered women greater freedom, according to 59-year-old Guneet, who immigrated to Canada 14 years ago.

Once we got our license, we told the [farm] owner we didn’t want to come with the contractor any longer. We could go in our own car, my husband would drive and then we could work where and when we wanted. We could start an hour before the other workers and finish an hour early too. We preferred working with the owner. The owner would scold us less. … the contractor scolded us. He would tell us to be fast if we went to the washroom, be quick with our breaks, be quick with eating and quickly get back to work.

Another aspect of working for a farm labour contractor that contributes to job insecurity is the fear of losing work if workers complain about their working conditions. For example, Guneet explained why there were no complaints of abuse or harassment lodged with farm labour contractors.

No, there were no complaints. Workers feared if they did [complain] they wouldn’t get any more work. People from India are very afraid (laughs). … if they’re removed from work, how will they find more?

A minority of women expressed a “preference” for working for farm labour contractors because of the work opportunities and transportation they provide. Kalyani said “I prefer the contractor. He takes us directly in the van and I don’t know how to drive.”

Despite the financial challenges of only being offered seasonal work, some women preferred seasonal berry harvesting because of the flexibility it provided regarding when and what hours they worked. This was important because of the need to care for their children. Falak explained:

I worked on a farm last year [2022] as well [as permanent full-time night shift work in a cannery] because, as I said, I have no one to care for my children. There’s no one at home. I can’t do a permanent job and farming is seasonal. Berry picking starts when the kids are also off from school so it works better.

Focus group participant 2 said:

Well with small kids you have to drop them to school [and] after you’re done dropping them you couldn’t really work anywhere else. On a farm you can go to work whenever. After dropping the kids to school you can go at any time.

The context for these comments is that for most of the women interviewed, agricultural work is a ‘second job or shift’ because they are expected to fulfill extensive unpaid domestic duties on top of their paid farm work. Paid child care was either not an option or not something they discussed.

Wages

Under the BC Employment Standards Act farmworkers must either be paid a minimum ‘piece rate’ if they are engaged in hand harvesting of specified fruits, berries, vegetables or flowers or the general minimum hourly wage if they are engaged in other farming, propagating or food processing work. However, in either case, farmworkers are not entitled to overtime pay if they work more than eight hours a day or more than 40 hours a week. Nor are they entitled to statutory holiday pay like most other workers under the Act.

According to the BC Employment Standards Branch website:

Farm workers who harvest crops by hand can be paid a piece rate. They must be paid at least the minimum piece rate for the crop they’re harvesting.

The calculation for piece rate work is: 
Piece rate x volume or weight picked.

Employers must post notices on-site stating the piece rate for each crop, the size of picking containers and how much is needed to fill a container (i.e., volume or weight). They also need to provide a “picking card” for workers to record the total volume or weight they pick. The Act continues:

Vacation pay (4%) is included in piece rates, except for daffodils.

Farm workers do not receive overtime or statutory holiday pay.

The minimum piece rate regulation applies to 15 agricultural crops harvested by hand and has been in place since 1981. The hand-harvested crops are peaches, apricots, brussels sprouts, daffodils, mushrooms, apples, beans, blueberries, cherries, grapes, pears, peas, prune plums, raspberries and strawberries.

In the case of entitlement to annual vacation pay, while all other workers are entitled to vacation pay as a separate and distinct payment, including commission sales people and hand harvesters of daffodils, farm workers who hand harvest fruits, berries and vegetables and are paid the regulation-prescribed minimum piece rates are not entitled to separate and distinct vacation pay because the minimum piece rates regulation states that a 4% vacation pay is included in the minimum piece rates. However, if an employer is paying a hand harvester more than the minimum piece rate or is paying an hourly rate for hand harvesting, a separate and distinct annual vacation payment must be paid on top of the piece rate or hourly pay earnings. This demonstrates another unwarranted discrimination against farm workers who are hand harvesters.

Although the highly discriminatory exclusion of farmworkers engaged in hand harvesting from the minimum hourly wage, hours of work and overtime pay provisions in the Employment Standards Act have been strongly opposed by farmworker advocates ever since farmworker inclusion was included under the Act. The government-appointed Fair Wages Commission in its March 2018 report recommended that the BC government require that all farmworkers receive at least the general hourly minimum wage by June 1, 2019. This recommendation, however, was never implemented.

Another important aspect of the regulation of wages paid to farmworkers is how and when they are required to be paid. Under the Employment Standards Act wages must be paid at least semi-monthly and within eight days after the end of the pay period. Payment must be made by cheque, draft or money order or by deposit to an employee’s account in a savings institution if authorized by the employee.

Interviews with farmworker women indicate that when they are engaged in hand harvesting, whether employed directly by a farm owner/operator or by a farm labour contractor, they are paid on the piece-rate basis. However, the piece-rate pay system in practice is fraught with abuse and exploitation, especially when administered by farm labour contractors.

The common abuses by farm labour contractors involve failure to comply with the Employment Standards Act; requirements to post notices on-site that state what the piece rate is for each crop, the size of the picking containers and how much is needed to fill a container, inaccurate weigh scales or improperly recorded weights, unauthorized changes to workers’ recordings on their “picking cards”, pay that does not correspond to picking card recorded weights or volumes or conversion of picking card records to hours of work.

In addition, the experience of some women, whether hourly or piece-work paid, is that they are only paid monthly as opposed to at least semi-monthly as required by the Employment Standards Act.

According to interviewee Charvi, who is 30 years old and earned between $19,000-$20,000 annually, underpayment is also experienced in hourly paid nursery work performed by both resident Canadian and migrant workers.

Yes, it [underpayment] happened to the permanent workers [as well as contract/non-permanent workers]. They [employers] would always lie about the hours that the ladies logged versus what they were getting paid for. The ladies would then confront them. They would look dumbfounded and say, ‘Oh really, it was that much?’ Then say they will add it to the next cheque but wouldn’t do it. One man quit, you wouldn’t believe it, but they didn’t pay him for 600 hours he worked [he did not have a work permit].

In a case where a farm labour contractor employed a woman farmworker to assist him with his paperwork in calculating his farmworkers’ pay, Leila, who is 50 years old and earned $30,000 annually, shared that:

The paperwork I did [for the contractor] showed how many times he would tell people that he would owe them less, but kept cash they earned with him.

Even when women worked in jobs that were to be paid at least the hourly minimum wage there were abuses and violations such as not being paid for all hours worked and not receiving the same wage increase as stipulated in the Act whenever the hourly minimum wage is increased. These were ongoing violations.

Participants in our focus group earned between $20,000 to $40,000 annually. According to one focus group participant, when farm labour contractors provide hourly paid workers to nursery or greenhouse operators the contractors receive a significantly higher hourly pay from the operator for each worker than the worker receives.

It’s like that in greenhouses and nurseries when contractors take workers. They take like 20-22 dollars from the company, but they pay the workers the minimum wage like 15 dollars. They have to pay for their gas, insurance and so on.

In one exceptional case, a participant worked for 25 years at a nursery that had been unionized during that time. She reported being paid a good hourly wage that was directly deposited to her account every two weeks, receiving a pay stub, eight per cent vacation pay, overtime pay, health benefits, a shoe allowance and a rain suit every two years.

In most instances interviewees said they preferred to be paid on an hourly basis rather than by piece work for a variety of reasons. The piece-rate system compels workers to skip breaks, work long hours and poor picking conditions impact negatively on earnings. With hourly pay, breaks can be taken regardless of the working and harvesting conditions because pay is guaranteed for the time worked.

Focus Group Participant 3: [In berry picking] … if you break for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, it’s piece work. When ever you have piece work, it’s your own time.

Focus Group Participant 2: You can’t do piece work for a full season. Because your body will get tired, you can do hard work for a while but not all year.

Haroop: With hourly, you get paid even if the work isn’t done or has been stopped for whatever reason. But you’ll be paid for however many hours you’ve put in … you left the house, you put in your hours, right, you should get that much money. With piece work if there’s any problem, if it rains and you can’t pick as many berries, then your time away from home is wasted. You can’t work at home or at work, your time is wasted and your day is wasted and you have nothing to show for it. With hourly, you will get paid.

Haroop explained that she preferred to work directly for farm owners/operators rather than for farm labour contractors because of better earning opportunities.

Because contractors pay you less. They take more from the owner and then take their own profit and won’t pay you any of that their entire lives. Whereas an owner will give you a good pay.

A minority of women preferred piece work because it allowed them to set their own pace. Yet even those who preferred piece work acknowledged the drawbacks. Dishmeet noted:

Piece rate is good, but it’s not good for the health. Because if you work fast, you eat/drink fast, you don’t think I’m going to get many done. Hourly, you know I’m going to work these hours, get paid this much so I work accordingly, but when you do piece work then you get greedy, I think, and it can affect your health more. It’s already so tough to survive with minimum wage as it is.

When we asked participants what they would say to a policymaker about piece rates, Insiya, a 75-year-old mother of two who earned $20,000 annually said:

What is there to ask for except that piece work does not allow us to make do. We need more hours so we can work. There’s so much inflation and everything is so expensive. We can’t make do with piece work.

Access to upward mobility

An almost universal barrier to alternative work and opportunities that immigrant farmworker women from South Asia experience is their lack of English proficiency. 

When women were asked if there was work outside of farmwork that they would like to do, the common response was there was no other option. Neha explained:

I would have really liked to work in a store, but what could we do? No one would keep us. There was the English problem. We did not know English and so we could not do other work. We did not know English and so we had to work on the farms.

Neha described what her employment opportunities might have been like if she could access English-language training and education.

Then I would have stood a really good chance. I would have liked to drive for someone and maybe work in a store. I would have done everything, all the work. If I had been educated or maybe gotten educated when I came here, I really wanted it. If I had gotten a little education here I think it would have been different. I would have worked in some office.

Similarly, Charvi reflected on how things could have been different if she had had the opportunity to learn English.

You know I’m thinking, in the last 16 years, if I worked for a Caucasian company and my English improved and I received benefits then I wouldn’t be in this state. I wouldn’t be this stressed for the last two years.

One of our focus group participants also noted the benefit of working in English-language jobs.

Those who understand English, who want to work with white people where there is only English, they’ll get better jobs and more money. Their work becomes easier and they’re also easier to supervise. Those who have a language problem, or are too old, they are affected.

A lack of English proficiency also creates another barrier to job opportunities and upward mobility—the difficulty in obtaining a driver’s license, which makes farmworkers dependent on work from farm labour contractors. This affects their work because immigrants from India have a non-reciprocal driver’s license in BC, which means these women must pass a vision test, a knowledge test and a road test before they can receive a class 5 license and not depend on an FLC to get them to work. 

This barrier was noted by participants Ekam and Jasminder.

Ekam: I don’t have a license. That’s a reason I ended up working at farms where people give me rides. Like you have contractors. I went with them.

Jasminder: Here for everything you need a license. I would have needed training and that requires time and money.

A lack of access to independent transportation also makes it difficult for women to attend English-language and other educational classes that might offer them a pathway to better-paying, less dangerous jobs. Participants noted that a lack of access to child care was a significant barrier to job mobility. Because hand harvesting on farms may offer flexible hours, it is the only job option available to some women if they lack access to formal child care or informal child care support from their extended family.

3. Workplace dignity and collective action

Disrespectful treatment from supervisors, bosses, and society at-large

A persistent challenge for many women in our study was a lack of basic respect in the workplace. 

Participants often emphasized that they took pride in being able to do physically arduous work for long hours without complaint. However, bullying and harsh criticism from supervisors or bosses undermined their sense of dignity.

For example, Charvi said that when older women reported back pain, they were advised to simply take the day off if they could not handle the ‘man’s job.’ 

We would say our backs are hurting, they would respond by saying ‘then take the day off’. They would say ‘this is a man’s job, men can do it, old ladies can’t, then take the day off if your back is hurting, that’s no problem.’ If our back is hurting then what are we supposed to do? If they’ve put us to work then it’s going to hurt. We couldn’t talk back at work and tell them we can’t do the work.

Dishmeet echoed this view. However, rather than pinpointing employers and supervisors as the source of this disrespect, she felt it stemmed more broadly from societal stigma.

There’s one other thing, farmworkers don’t get enough respect from what I feel. Office workers get more respect, but I feel inside that farmworkers aren’t regarded nicely. When I talk to my relatives they say to me, ‘leave the farm work’. That’s what makes me sad inside, that people don’t respect farmers. We are the ones that bring food to their table, but people don’t respect that. Gents are used to or known more to work in farms [in India]. But for ladies, everyone questions us working there and suggest we work somewhere better.

From Dishmeet’s perspective, Punjabi immigrant women and men faced a gendered double-standard when pursuing farm labour in Canada. Yet Dishmeet also underscored a sense of pride at contributing to the life-giving work of feeding people. 

Collective action: unionization

Demeaning workplace treatment was, as Anjali recounted, sufficiently aggravating to spark a successful unionization drive. At her worksite, poor treatment included expectations for workers to bribe supervisors with gifts in exchange for shifts, an unreasonably fast pace of work and underpayment. Specifically, workers became frustrated when they were pressured to work harder and plant more seedlings in a flat, only to find they were not paid accurately for this work. To make matters worse, Anjali explained, her workplace fired slow workers. 

They used to give us a hard time. They kept ripping us off so everyone got frustrated. So, one lady said ‘you know what? Create a union, create a union.’ 

Anjali said her co-worker’s husband belonged to a union, which made the women aware how they could work together to address their shared grievances. She described how they took advantage of a shared moment of frustration by going to co-workers’ homes after work to get people to sign a union card before people could change their minds. She joyfully recounted how, a few days later, she and her co-workers kept eagerly peeking into the lunchroom where the fax machine was located and where the unionization signatures would arrive.

We’d go the bathroom and look, ‘did it come? Did it come?’. The papers were coming through [the fax machine] and falling down. They were all shocked! Boss said, ‘my workers would never do this! I believe in them so much.’ He couldn’t even do a meeting. Boss wouldn’t believe it. He got his lawyer to check the signatures [and said] ‘you could’ve been friendly about this. They have robbed me!’ And then things got really good.

Anjali said that unionization allowed the women to gain material benefits while also improving the sense of fairness in the workplace environment.

When we got the union, at least we could [work] safely, based on our seniority, there were no arguments, we could do our work.

As time passed, however, she felt that the union had become corrupted by becoming too friendly with the employer and failed to support workers like her who experienced workplace injury. Anjali’s account underscores how farmworker women have been able to use collective action to address the exploitative and demeaning conditions they face in the workplace. Her story underscores that without the empowerment of the women they represent, unions are insufficient vehicles for change.

Summary and policy implications

This report highlights the enduring challenges faced by Punjabi immigrant women farmworkers in BC’s agricultural industry. 

It is based on 20 in-depth interviews and one focus group with women employed in nurseries, packing facilities and canneries, farms and seasonal berry harvesting. The findings expose how workplace inequities are entrenched in the structural organization of agricultural labour in BC’s Fraser Valley. Despite these women’s essential contributions to the local food economy, many continue to work in some of the most precarious and undervalued roles in agricultural production. They are routinely denied basic workplace safety protections and economic stability even though such rights are guaranteed to other workers provincially and nationally. Their exclusion from key provisions of the Employment Standards Act, including overtime pay, statutory holiday compensation and hourly wage guarantees, reflects a broader pattern of political and economic marginalization—especially for those paid under the piece-rate system.

Our findings highlight how the privatized, profit-driven farm labour contracting system further compounds women workers’ vulnerability. Contractors often act as unregulated mediators who control access to work, transportation, wages and avoid responsibility for workers’ welfare. For many women, particularly those with limited English proficiency or without independent transportation, this system creates a dependency that is frequently exploited. Interview participants recalled experiences of wage theft, unsafe transport conditions, verbal abuse, sexual harassment and retaliation for voicing safety concerns. Also, health and safety risks were pervasive, including lack of accessible washrooms, potable water, chronic physical injuries and unsafe machinery. These issues are intensified by weak enforcement and deceptive employer practices, such as temporarily installing handwashing stations during WorkSafeBC inspections only to remove them once inspectors leave. Specifically for women, these health risks are compounded during menstruation when inadequate sanitation contributes to discomfort and potential infection risks during long shifts.

Amid these challenges, participants also shared stories of resilience and agency. Some women spoke with pride about their work and their role in sustaining local food systems. Others described acts of resistance, including organizing union drives and filing legal complaints, often at great personal risk. These stories reveal that Punjabi immigrant farmworker women are not passive victims of exploitation, but rather, active agents navigating complex and constrained environments with strength and determination.

This investigation stresses the importance of trusted relationships between immigrant farmworkers and community-based organizations such as Archway and PICS. These organizations serve as critical bridges to legal rights, institutional resources and social support. They also provide culturally and linguistically appropriate pathways for women to access information, build confidence and advocate for improved working conditions. Our study underscores that meaningful regulatory and policy reform must go beyond surface-level adjustments as structural transformation is urgently needed. This includes dismantling the exploitative contractor system, ensuring equal protections under employment law and addressing systemic barriers such as language, transportation and access to child care. Continued funding for grassroots organizations is also essential as they play an irreplaceable role in supporting unionization and empowering immigrant women farmworkers. Reframing farm work as skilled, dignified and essential is a critical step toward disrupting entrenched patterns of gendered and racialized exploitation in BC’s agricultural sector. These women, whose labour ensures people in BC and elsewhere are nourished, must not be treated as expendable, but as individuals deserving of protection from harm.

Policy recommendations

Based on our research, we offer the following policy recommendations to the BC government and its institutions to improve health, safety and dignity for farmworker women.

1. Farm labour contractors: Eliminate the privatized and profit-driven farm labour contracting system under the Employment Standards Act. To identify a replacement, commission research on the feasibility of a provincial or regionally based cooperative or non-profit labour supply/labour exchange agency or hiring hall system. Existing non-profit organizations that have built trusting relationships with farmworkers could serve as a vehicle for this hiring hall. This system could be licensed to be the exclusive means through which employers can hire agricultural workers and processors and it could support workers with safe transportation to and from farms. It could also support leadership and oversight from farmworkers themselves.
2. Piece-rate wages: Implement the Fair Wage Commission’s 2018 report recommendation that all farmworkers who are paid under a piece-rate system receive at least the minimum hourly wage for all hours worked.
3. Living wage: Raise the hourly minimum wage to the level of a living wage each year, beginning with an increase to $20 per hour in 2026.
4. Employment standards exclusions: Eliminate the exclusion of farmworkers from the hours of work, overtime and statutory holidays with pay provisions of the BC Employment Standards Act.
5. Occupational health, safety and hygiene: WorkSafe BC and the BC Employment Standards Branch should specifically check for access to hygienic washrooms and lunchrooms, paying attention to whether these washrooms are sufficient to provide privacy for women and a place where they can wash their hands, change clothes and dispose of hygiene products.
6. Workplace inspections: WorkSafeBC and the BC Employment Standards Branch must institute frequent, proactive and unannounced regulatory compliance inspections throughout the farming season. Workers must have safe, language-appropriate channels to communicate their concerns with inspectors without employer oversight or mediation. Inspectors should receive trauma-informed training that allows them to respond skillfully to the unique vulnerabilities facing workers (e.g., sexual harassment, risks of job termination).
7. Health and safety training: At the beginning of each season, WorkSafeBC should provide mandatory, paid and language-appropriate farmworker safety training to farmworkers, farm labour contractors (until, ideally, they are phased out) and employers.
8. Support to non-profits for training: In addition to workplace training, the Province should provide funding to non-profit organizations such as Archway Community Services and PICS to host free, language-appropriate and accessible workshops to women on their rights as workers (e.g., workplace injury prevention, sexual harassment in the workplace, how to assert one’s labour rights, how to join a union, etc.). 
9. Transportation training: To support immigrant women’s independence in a motor vehicle-centric culture, the Province should offer funding to non-profit organizations that provide training and guidance on driving, purchasing a vehicle and obtaining a driver’s license. 
10. English-language education: The Province should fund free, community-based English language training courses that are accessible to farmworker women, ideally taking place close to their workplace and while their children are attending child care (or with child care on-site).
11. Child care support: Provide high-quality, accessible child care for farmworker women who are employed in agriculture, including those on a seasonal, casual or full-time basis.