Some migrant workers get paid, some don't
Thursday, December 9, 2010
by SUSAN MANN
It’s still unclear whether Mexican and Caribbean migrant farm workers at a bankrupt Simcoe-area berry plant farm will get all of their pay but workers at another financially-troubled farm fired two years ago eventually got most of what they were owed.
Matt Blajer, spokesman for the Ontario Labour Ministry, says an investigation into mushroom producer Rol-Land Farms Ltd., which filed for creditor protection in 2008, revealed that workers there were owed severance and termination pay. “All wages and vacation pay had been paid.”
More than 70 Mexican and Jamaican workers employed at Rol-Land’s Campbellville plant as part of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program were fired and sent home just before Christmas in 2008. They were among 97 employees fired by the company from its Campbellville and Summerside, Prince Edward Island locations.
Blajer says the ministry filed claims on behalf of three people working in Ontario with the court-appointed monitor, PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. The rest of the employees filed directly.
He said two of the claims the ministry filed received partial payments from the monitor, while the third was disallowed. The workers received their payments in August and September, 2010.
Blajer says he doesn’t know what happened to the claims of the workers who filed directly with the monitor.
Blajer says he can’t reveal any personal details about the claims, such as where the workers were from or how much they received in payments. If the ministry did reveal personal details “people would be afraid to file claims with us.”
As far as the ministry is concerned the Rol-Land situation has been resolved.
At the other farm, Ghesquiere Plant Farm Ltd., 136 migrant and Canadian farm workers are owed four to five weeks worth of salary plus vacation pay. The migrant workers returned to their countries at the end of November. The farm declared bankruptcy Nov. 30.
Ontario’s labour ministry is also investigating that situation to determine what those workers are owed. They may be able to get their payments by applying to the federal Wage Earner Protection Program. BF