View cases - Stewart McKelvey

Because they are heavily drawn from a migrant and immigrant population, theseworkers face even more serious obstacles to effective participation in the politicalprocess… Denying agricultural workers the benefits of [collective bargaining] meansthat the legal processes which enable much of the rest of our workforce to beinvolved in decision-making at the workplace in a realistic way are unavailable to thefarm workers. Thus a group of workers who are already among the least powerfulare given even less opportunity than the rest of us to participate in the formulationand application of the rules governing their working conditions.(Putting the Charter to Work: Designing a Constitutional Labour Code (1987), at p.89)2011 SCC 20 (CanLII)See also Task Force on Labour Relations, Canadian Industrial Relations: The Reportof Task Force on Labour Relations (1968) (the “Woods Report”), at p. 86.[349] These conclusions were echoed by the trial judge in Dunmore, Sharpe J., whoseobservations were endorsed in this Court by Bastarache J.:Distinguishing features of agricultural workers are their political impotence, theirlack of resources to associate without state protection and their vulnerability toreprisal by their employers; as noted by Sharpe J., agricultural workers are “poorlypaid, face difficult working conditions, have low levels of skill and education, lowstatus and limited employment mobility” . . . . [para. 41][350] The conditions of singular employment disadvantage for workers in the agriculturalsector, as the trial judge in this case acknowledged, remain operative today. Permitting multiplerepresentatives of disparate individuals or groups in such a workplace effectively nullifies theability of its workers to have a unified and therefore more cogent voice in attempting to mitigateand ameliorate their relentlessly arduous working conditions.