A crowded van picks up an elderly Punjabi grandmother. After a 45-minute unpaid ride to the farm, she picks blueberries in the hot sun for up to 10 hours with no overtime pay. If she slows down or takes too many breaks in the shade, the contractor may arbitrarily decide she hasn’t earned enough hours to qualify for EI to top up her sparse winter income. If the harvest is poor or her employer doesn’t record berry weights accurately, she often earns less than minimum wage.
No one would wish this on their grandmother.
Over the past couple of weeks, Anelyse Weiler, one of the PhD candidates I supervise, has published several pieces of public scholarship related to her research. The excerpt above is from an op-ed she co-authored with David Fairey in the Vancouver Sun on the sub-minimum piece-rate wage for hand harvesters in British Columbia.
Anelyse and Professor Amy Cohen of Okanagan College co-authored another op-ed analyzing how Canadian immigration policy makes racialized farm worker women vulnerable to sexual violence. It was initially published in The Conversation and has since been re-published elsewhere, including The National Post and The Tyee.
In the current labour-themed issue of Alberta Views Magazine, Anelyse reviewed Jason Foster’s new book Defying Expectations, which explores unlikely labour organizing successes of the United Food and Commercial Workers 401. She has also written a forthcoming book review of Good Apples for Food, Culture & Society and a commentary on migrant workers and the national food policy in Canadian Food Studies.
Josée Johnston 