Maintaining a Bargaining Unit of Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (Sawp) Employees

2019 ◽  
pp. 65-83
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Labor Laws ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work ◽  
Conditions Of Work ◽  
Work And Employment

This chapter analyzes how threats and acts of blacklisting impeded the fair application of the collective agreement between UFCW Local 1518 and Sidhu & Sons. The detection and analysis of the blacklisting of bargaining unit members at Sidhu uncover important “truths” about the management of migration among temporary migrant workers with the prospect of return. Broadly, it demonstrates that institutionalized programs' mechanisms, promoted in the global policy discourse embracing migration management as a means of stemming the flow of “irregular migration,” can impede access to and the exercise of labor rights. More narrowly, it shows that SAWP's “best practices” are by no means neutral, but are instead consistent with the dynamics of global capitalism, producing a race to the bottom in conditions of work and employment. This model temporary migrant work program (TMWP) permits state officials to behave in unprincipled ways that can involve, among other things, defying collective agreement provisions by delegating key responsibilities related to readmission—such as recruitment, selection, and aspects of documentation—to those in the interior and posted abroad. It also illustrates vividly how a labor relations tribunal compelled to prioritize national, and thereby sending-state, sovereignty, can be inhibited in—and even prevented from—implementing and enforcing host-state labor laws under its oversight.

Deportability among Temporary Migrant Workers

2019 ◽  
pp. 11-41
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Essential Condition ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
Migration Management ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work

This chapter develops the argument that deportability, as it applies to participants in a temporary migrant work program (TMWP) permitting circularity, is an essential condition of possibility for migration management. Under this paradigm, TMWPs—such as the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP)—which are perceived to represent “best practices” by, for example, offering participants the prospect of return, simultaneously sustain this approach to governing migration and represent its limit, including in contexts in which unionization is permissible. The legal struggle of SAWP employees of Sidhu & Sons to unionize, secure a first collective agreement, and maintain bargaining unit strength gives substance to these claims. It reveals how deportability is lived among temporary migrant workers and the central modalities through which it functions. As such, these SAWP employees' experience provides rich empirical evidence for a grounded critique of migration management revealing that, despite its call for “regulated openness,” this global policy paradigm introduces new modes of control.

Disrupting Deportability

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah F Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Collective Representation ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work

This book highlights obstacles confronting temporary migrant workers in Canada seeking to exercise their labor rights. It explores the effects of deportability on Mexican nationals participating in Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). The book follows the decade-long legal and political struggle of a group of Mexican SAWP migrants in British Columbia to establish and maintain meaningful collective representation. The case study reveals how modalities of deportability—such as termination without cause, blacklisting, and attrition—destabilize legally authorized temporary migrant agricultural workers. Through this detailed exposé, the book concludes that despite the formal commitments to human, social, and civil rights to which migration management ostensibly aspires, the design and administration of this “model” temporary migrant work program produces conditions of deportability, making the threat possibility of removal ever-present.

Getting Organized

2019 ◽  
pp. 42-64
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work

This chapter details the attempts of the union representing Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) employees at Sidhu & Sons to organize, gain certification, and secure a first collective agreement for a bargaining unit encompassing participants in a temporary migrant work program (TMWP) permitting circularity. Through an analysis of the legal proceedings surrounding United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 1518's bid for certification, it explores SAWP employees' two important motivations for organizing: namely, to preempt termination without just cause prompting premature repatriation and to secure mechanisms for recall suitable to workers laboring transnationally. Local 1518, in seeking to represent SAWP employees, came up against tensions arising both from the Labour Relations Board's (LRB) understanding of its role of facilitating access to collective bargaining under the Labour Relations Code (LRC) and from limits posed by the parameters of the TMWP in play. Consequently, the unit obtained certification, but only on a restricted basis. At the same time, it introduced mechanisms aiming to limit termination without just cause prompting premature repatriation and offered novel provisions on recall and seniority.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 110-120
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Incremental Change ◽  
Migration Management ◽  
Legal Case ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work

This concluding chapter reflects on the significance of the legal case of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) employeess at Sidhu & Sons for expanding understandings of the meaning of deportability and its applicability to temporary migrant work program (TMWP) participants laboring not only in Canada but also in other relatively high-income host states embracing migration management and the measures it prescribes. Obstacles to limiting deportability writ large will persist so long as migration management dominates paradigmatically. Nevertheless, in combination with the forward-looking organizing efforts already being undertaken by unions and worker centers, in areas where unionization is difficult to achieve partly because of the still-dominant Wagnerian-styled model of unionization, certain modest interventions in policy and practice hold promise in forging change and curbing deportability among temporary migrant workers. Because the foregoing case study focused on the SAWP, the alternatives outlined in this chapter primarily address this TMWP. Given, however, that the SAWP is often touted as a model of migration management, they seek to provide meaningful avenues toward incremental change in other TMWPs in Canada and elsewhere.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Management Program ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Migration Management ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work ◽  
Significant Phenomenon ◽  
Migration Experiences

This introductory chapter provides an overview of temporary migrant work. In the age of migration management, temporary migrant work is a significant phenomenon in many countries where relative labor shortages fuel demands for temporary migrant work programs (TMWPs) that provide comparatively low labor standards and wage levels. In this context, workers laboring transnationally in such programs are turning to unions for assistance in attempt to realize and retain access to rights. Yet even those engaged in highly regulated TMWPs permitting circularity—or repeated migration experiences involving one or more instances of emigration and return—confront significant obstacles tied to their deportability. This book tells the story of Mexican nationals participating in a subnational variant of Canada's model of migration management program, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). It explores how these workers organized to circumvent deportability, but despite achieving union certification, securing a collective agreement, and sustaining a bargaining unit, ultimately remained vulnerable to threats and acts of removal.

Sustaining Bargaining Unit Strength

2019 ◽  
pp. 84-109
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Subsequent Growth ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Labor Practices ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work ◽  
Work Programs

This chapter explores challenges to maintaining strong bargaining units posed by threats of attrition, either through formal decertification or by other means producing similar outcomes. It first documents trends in numerical attrition at Sidhu & Sons, in the context of Canada's introduction of other more highly deregulated temporary migrant work programs (TMWPs) operating in agriculture and those programs' subsequent growth. The size of the bargaining unit at Sidhu, comprised of SAWP employees exclusively, shrank after certain employees' attempt to decertify it, despite the fact that the Labour Relations Board (LRB) had refused to cancel its certification. Given the absence of an active attempt to decertify the bargaining unit, it is nevertheless difficult to determine how attrition continued at Sidhu. To demonstrate the how of this often subtle modality of deportability, the chapter then chronicles strategies fostering attrition in the bargaining unit encompassing SAWP employees at Floralia Plant Growers Ltd., which the union originally tried to draw into the foregoing complaint of unfair labor practices and coercion and intimidation directed at Sidhu.

scholarly journals The extension of collective agreements as a way to promote collective bargaining

2021 ◽  
pp. 281-292
Author(s):  
Bojan Urdarević
Keyword(s):  
Collective Bargaining ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Joint Decision ◽  
Fourth Industrial Revolution ◽  
Collective Agreements ◽  
The Social ◽  
Work And Employment

Collective bargaining is a process of joint decision-making in which the social partners, representing the interests of their membership, try, in good faith, to determine the content and conclude the collective agreement. In this sense, collective bargaining is a way to resolve many issues related to the work process, to the satisfaction of all parties. In a context in which labour markets are characterized by inequality and uncertainty, the extension of the collective agreement is a key public policy instrument for the promotion of collective bargaining in general. However, certain principles must be represented to allow as many workers as possible to be covered by the extended effect of the collective agreement. These principles are set out in Collective Agreements Recommendation no. 91 of International Labour Organization and need to be followed to ensure respect for the free and voluntary nature of collective bargaining. With the fourth industrial revolution, the world of work changed radically, but the institute of the extended effect of the collective agreement can offer some answers to new circumstances, such as the increase of flexible forms of work and employment, migrant workers, or posted workers.

scholarly journals Migration Labor Laws

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 118
Author(s):  
Maria Pitukhina
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Labor Laws ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
International Labor ◽  
Unfree Labor ◽  
Social Explanations ◽  
History Of

This study continues to discuss the various legislative structures associated with migrant workers 'unfree labor;' as it also continues to question as to how a set of laws and standards regarding international labor will articulate and justify this problem adequately and would then attempt to fix it. The study continually relates to the exploitative, enforced labor activities, involving slavery, debt slavery, forced labor and trading in labor. A "labor -based framework" could possibly be regarded as an empirical paradigm that takes into account the political and economic history of exploitation; emphasizes on the deterrence and social explanations for inequality and abuse rather than on the enforcement of slavery; recognizes the value of labor rights and other labor market regulatory frameworks and considers the progression of spectrum within these regards.

scholarly journals On the Social Sustainability of Industrial Agriculture Dependent on Migrant Workers. Romanian Workers in Spain’s Seasonal Agriculture

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1062
Author(s):  
Yoan Molinero-Gerbeau ◽  
Ana López-Sala ◽  
Monica Șerban
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Industrial Agriculture ◽  
Temporary Migration ◽  
Agricultural Work ◽  
2030 Agenda ◽  
Migrant Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Migration Program ◽  
The Eu

Since the beginning of the 21st century, Romanian migrants have become one of the most significant national groups doing agricultural work in Spain, initially coming via a temporary migration program and later under several different modalities. However, despite their critical importance for the functioning of Europe’s largest agro-industry, the study of this long-term circular mobility is still underdeveloped in migration and agriculture literature. Thanks to extensive fieldwork carried out in the provinces of Huelva and Lleida in Spain and in the counties of Teleorman and Buzău in Romania, this paper has two main objectives: first, to identify some of the most common forms of mobility of these migrants; and second, to discuss whether this industrial agriculture, hugely dependent on migrant work, is socially sustainable. The case of Romanian migrants in Spanish agriculture will serve to show how a critical sector for the EU and for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations, operates on an unsustainable model based on precariousness and exploitation.

Inter‐ethnic and labour‐community coalitions in class struggle in Taiwan since the advent of temporary immigration

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 482-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Tierney
Keyword(s):  
Support Groups ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Community Coalitions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Labour Unions ◽  
Illegal Migrants ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Temporary Migrants

PurposeThis paper aims to analyse the class dimensions of racism in Taiwan against temporary migrant workers and migrants' efforts to build inter‐ethnic and labour‐community coalitions in struggle against racism.Design/methodology/approachAn important source of data for this study were the unstructured interview. Between September 2000 and December 2005, more than 50 temporary migrants and their support groups in Taiwan were interviewed, specifically about migrants' experiences of racism and their resistance strategies. These interviews were conducted face‐to‐face, sometimes with the assistance of translators. Between 2001 and 2007, some 70 people were interviewed by telephone, between Australia and Taiwan.FindingsIn Taiwan, temporary migrants suffer the racism of exploitation in that capital and the state “racially” categorize them as suitable only for the lowest paid and least appealing jobs. Migrants also suffer neglect by and exclusion from the labour unions. However, migrants have succeeded, on occasions, in class mobilization by building powerful inter‐ethnic ties as well as coalitions with some labor unions, local organizations and human rights lobbies.Research limitations/implicationsThe research raises implications for understanding the economic, social and political conditions which influence the emergence of inter‐ethnic bonds and labour‐community coalitions in class struggle.Practical implicationsThe research will contribute to a greater appreciation among Taiwan's labour activists of the real subordination of temporary migrant labour to capital and of the benefits of supporting migrants' mobilization efforts. These benefits can flow not only to migrants but also to the labour unions.Originality/valueA significant body of academic literature has recently emerged on temporary and illegal migrants' efforts to engage the union movements of industrialized host countries. There is a dearth, however, of academic research on the capacity of temporary migrants to invigorate union activism in Asia, including Taiwan.

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