CHAPTER 2: Union Made

While the government mulled over the FWOC’s submission, the organizing committee took its next step. It drafted a constitution and called a founding convention for a farmworkers’ union for April 6, 1980.

The convention, attended by more than 200 delegates and observers, established Local 1 of the Canadian Farmworkers Union. It also garnered promises of financial help from the Canadian Labour Congress and other large trade unions such as the B.C. Government Employees Union. Unsolicited, the CLC announced it would donate $40,000 for organizing farmworkers.

FWOC president Raj Chouhan was elected present of the local, with Jawala Singh Grewal as vice-president, Charan Gill as secretary and Sarwan Boal as treasurer. Grewal summed up the organizers’ strategy: "We all have to make one fist - if we don’t make one fist, nothing will change."

Chouhan summed up the optimism of the moment and the conditions that spawned the new union: "At last, the farmworkers have a union! This evening we are here to celebrate. The founding of the Farmworkers Union is indeed an historic occasion. This is the first union in the farm industry in the history of Canada...It is indeed incredible that in this day and age and in a country like Canada, a whole section of workers should be compelled to earn their living in such deplorable and discriminatory conditions as farmworkers face. It is clear that farmworkers are not considered to be like other workers - that they are denied the status of workers in Canadian society.

"The law says that workers should not be expected to work more than a certain number of hours per day, and if they do, they should be entitled to overtime rates of pay. The law says that all workers should be entitled to certain holidays, that the conditions of work should be such that the workers do not face undue hazards and risks to their lives. The law says that if a worker gets injured while at work, he or she should be entitled to compensation. The law lays down the method of periodical payment of wages. All these and other similar laws are there to protect the working people from the unbridled and pernicious exploitation by the owners.

"None of this applies to farmworkers in B.C. They have simply been left at the mercy of the contractors and farmers. And we can well imagine the consequences that follow. Long hours of back-breaking work, exposed not only to such hazards as roasting heat and freezing rain, but also to seriously injurious pesticides and other chemicals; wages that often do not amount to more than a dollar or two an hour if you add up all the hours expended in traveling and the cuts taken by the contractors; wages that do not even get paid on time. Farmworkers, victims of the archaic contract labour system, earn not only for themselves, but out of their earnings they have been fattening the middlemen - the labour contractors."

The CFU’s solution to the contract labour system was simple: abolish it in favor of a union hiring hall that would cut out the middlemen and increase wages and protection for the workers without increasing the cost to the farmers or consumers. At the founding convention, Chouhan put the growers on notice:

"The thousands of working men, women and children who provide the hard labour to produce the necessary food for the society have in fact been excluded from the category of working people. But there has to be an end to all this. The farmworkers of this province have realized that these conditions will not change until they organize themselves....I want to make it clear to all who oppose us that the union is here and we are going to organize every field in the Fraser Valley.

"Our advice to farmers is to accept the fact that there is a union and to negotiate with us. We are willing to talk to any farmers any time. If there is confrontation there will be strikes. We may be forced to call a boycott. If there is a boycott it will be a successful one. We have the support of the trade union movement, church groups, students and the general public. Our cause is just and enjoys wide support. Now it is up to the farmers to choose the course of action - negotiation or confrontation. We hope it is negotiation."