A migrant's Journey: Arrested Movements 'El Contrato' (Farm Labour in Ontario, the SAWP, and the Response of Organized Labour )

In Ontario, the new century has seen a major upsurge of interest and activity surrounding the interrelated questions of farm labour unionization and the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP), a "guest worker program" which brings thousands of migrant farm labourers to the province each year. Recent scholarly studies and the documentary film El Contrato (2003) have offered vivid portraits of the sub-standard living and working conditions of the migrant workers, as well as critical commentaries on the SAWP. In 2001, several major unions backed the Canadian office of the United Farm Workers of America in launching the Global Justice Care Van Project, whose findings were the basis of a much-publicized report and a series of public policy recommendations. In the prime years, union officials have followed up with court actions, reports, and position papers, and a Toronto-based group, Justice for Migrant Workers [JMW], has campaigned for far-reaching reform of the Canadian state's policies toward SAWP-enrolled workers. Almost without exception, these programs have adopted, explicitly or at least tacitly, a liberal-legalistic frame of reference. From academics to social movement activists to union officials, the assumption appears widespread that "justice" for farm workers can be won through pressuring governments to enact new forms of protective legislation, extend trade union rights, and eliminate the more obviously discriminatory features of the SAWP. Court challenges, moral and public education constitute the tactical repertoire of this essentially legalistic and legislative strategy, which accepts as a given the durability of capitalist exploitation.

Furthermore, the case of farm labour is particularly revealing of the politico-ideological limits of "social unionism" - the most ostensibly progressive form of mainstream unionism in Canada over the past quarter-century. Often contrasted to a business unionism that is wholly thoughtful with narrowly defined collective-bargaining issues, social unionism claims to address wider questions of social justice and welfare, including gender and racial oppression, as well as international solidarity and, more rarely, environmental issues. On the contrary, a perspective will be require, sooner rather than later, the compass of a class-struggle and internationalist socialist program and one that is not only attentive to the new conditions, opportunities, and challenges confronting organized labour, but has also assimilated fully the political, strategic, and tactical lessons of labour's past.