U.S. officials said the Labor Department had seen a nearly 70 per cent increase in child labour violations since 2018, including in hazardous occupations. In the last fiscal year, 835 companies were found to have violated child labour laws.

U.S. officials told reporters on a Monday conference call that the administration was probing the employment of children at companies including Hearthside Food Solutions and suppliers to Hyundai Motor Co. It has created an interagency task force on child labour, and plans to target industries where violations are most likely to occur for investigations.

The Democratic administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is also pushing for heavier penalties for companies that violate these laws, and more funding for enforcement and oversight, they said. U.S. federal law prohibits people under age 16 from working in most factory settings, and those under 18 are barred from the most dangerous jobs in industrial plants.

“This isn’t a 19th century problem, this isn’t a 20th century problem, this is happening today,” said one of the officials on the call. “We are seeing children across the country working in conditions that they should never ever be employed in the first place.”

The maximum civil monetary penalty is currently just US$15,138 per child, the administration noted in a press release, a figure that’s “not high enough to be a deterrent.”

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) opened an investigation into Hearthside Food Solutions, a U.S. food contractor that makes and packages products for well-known snack and cereal brands, for reportedly employing underage workers and violating child labour laws, officials confirmed on the call.

Reuters reported the DOL’s investigation into Hearthside earlier on Monday.

The company came under scrutiny following a New York Times investigation that said Hearthside’s factories employed underage workers making Chewy granola bars and bags of Lucky Charms and Cheetos, which the company would later ship around the country.

It was not clear whether the probe will lead to criminal charges, fines or other penalties. Hearthside said in a statement the company would “work collaboratively with the Department of Labor in their investigation and do our part to continue to abide by all local, state and federal employment laws,” and that they were “appalled” by the report alleging child labour at their company.

The Hearthside investigation is the latest in a rise in similar probes. Reuters last year published a series of stories on child labour including revelations about the use of child labour among suppliers to Hyundai, including a direct subsidiary of the Korean auto giant, in the U.S. state of Alabama.

The first story in the Reuters series, published in February last year, uncovered young teens working in dangerous chicken processing plants in Alabama.

Earlier this month, a major food safety sanitation company paid US$1.5 million in penalties for employing more than 100 teenagers in dangerous jobs at meatpacking plants in eight states, following another Labor Department investigation.

As Reuters previously reported, a record number of unaccompanied migrant minors entered the country in recent years, with many entering federal shelters and then released to sponsors, usually relatives, while immigration authorities resolve their requests for refuge in the U.S.

But authorities are struggling with long-term follow-up to prevent minors from being sucked into a vast network of enablers, including labour contractors, who recruit workers for big plants and other employers. At times they have steered kids into jobs that are illegal, grueling and meant for adults. The majority of minors Reuters found working were from Central America.

Separately, the Biden administration said earlier this year it will speed up the deportation relief process for immigrants in the U.S. illegally who witness or experience labour abuses.

“We also absolutely need to protect workers who do come forward and participate in wage and hour and other worker protection investigations and activities,” one official said on the Monday call.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nandita Bose in Washington and Mica Rosenberg in New York; additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco and Joshua Schneyer in New York.

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The provincial government on Tuesday updated a mandatory order under its pandemic state of emergency to restrict TFWs from entering the province. The new restriction doesn’t affect the status of TFWs already in New Brunswick, the province said.

With “so many serious outbreaks” of COVID-19 in surrounding jurisdictions, the province’s borders must stay closed for now, Premier Blaine Higgs said in a release.

As of Thursday evening, New Brunswick’s total COVID-19 caseload remains the second-lowest among the 10 provinces, with 118 cases and zero deaths to date. Of those 118, 114 are deemed to have recovered and four cases are active, with none hospitalized.

“Under normal circumstances, we welcome foreign temporary workers as they play an important role in New Brunswick’s continued economic growth,” Higgs said. “But right now, the risk of allowing more people to enter the province is simply too great.”

In a separate release Thursday, the province said it plans to launch a “virtual job-matching platform” on Monday (May 4) to connect New Brunswick residents with “positions that, in the past, have been filled by temporary foreign workers.”

It’s expected there will be up to 600 such jobs in sectors such as agriculture and aquaculture, the province said.

However, in a joint statement Tuesday, the National Farmers Union in New Brunswick, the Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick and farmer co-operative Really Local Harvest said they “strongly disagree” with the province’s decision.

The groups said they want to see measures taken “to hold our promises to the workers that have been assured employment as well as the farms that are awaiting the arrival of employees on which they depend.”

“This is cutting the means by which we have to produce,” Strawberry Hill Farm co-owner Tim Livingstone said in the groups’ release. The province “want(s) us to increase vegetable production but want(s) us to hire people who may leave at the drop of a hat or before our season has finished.”

Strawberry Hill, for one, has invested in training TFWs for over four years and relies on those workers’ “expertise to supervise (the farm’s) local employees,” the groups said.

TFWs “cannot simply be replaced with another worker from another sector,” the groups said, and “our integrity as employers and as a province that has signed contracts with people to ensure our food production and supply, are at stake as we consider breaking these agreements.”

If TFWs who haven’t yet arrived aren’t allowed to enter the province, “we, collectively, still owe them, and the families they support.”

The federal and provincial governments “have moved mountains in the last months to ensure these workers are still able to come to Canada and that precautions are taken to ensure the safety of all,” the groups added.

Specifically, farm groups and several provinces’ officials in March pressed for, and received, a federal exemption allowing TFWs to enter Canada, in the wake of Ottawa’s pandemic-related prohibition on foreign nationals entering the country.

Ottawa later also pledged financial support to TFWs’ employers to allow arriving employees to self-isolate for 14 days before starting work.

Under the province’s new ban, “it would be difficult if not impossible for farms to hire TFWs or any other workers mid-season,” the New Brunswick groups said.

“Even if employees from other sectors or students are put in their place, when the other jobs re-open and school starts, no one will be there to bring in the harvest.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The beef plant at Greeley, about 65 km north of Denver, started operating last Friday after it was closed for about two weeks following an outbreak among workers.

“The uptick in cases in a matter of days shows how serious this crisis is and the dangers that workers are facing every day just trying to do their jobs,” Kim Cordova, leader of the local United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) chapter, said in an e-mailed news release.

Confirmed cases among workers at the plant rose from 120 on Sunday to 245 on Wednesday evening, a union spokeswoman told Reuters, citing numbers from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

JBS USA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the most recent worker death and rising cases in Colorado.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday invoked the Defense Production Act to mandate meat plants continue to function during the pandemic after companies warned of looming shortages. The order is designed in part to give them legal cover with more liability protection in case employees catch the virus as a result of having to go to work.

Cordova reiterated workers’ demands for protective equipment and testing, as well as stronger whistleblower laws and better health care.

“Our members share a common goal with JBS, federal, state and local authorities: to ensure that the plant continues to function to protect the food supply chain and to protect jobs, but it must be done in a way that protects the workers so no one else has to die,” she said.

Some 20 plants in North America have closed in recent weeks. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said they would open in “days not weeks,” in an interview on Fox News on Thursday. He said the department, which is overseeing Trump’s order, is working to ensure workers’ safety.

Brazilian-owned JBS said on Wednesday it was reopening a Minnesota pork plant shuttered by the pandemic to euthanize up to 13,000 pigs rather than produce pork.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tom Polansek; writing by Caroline Stauffer.

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The news of some of the company’s 1,700 employees at the plant testing positive comes a day after a worker advocacy group sued Smithfield over working conditions at a Missouri plant, where the group said employees have been forced to work “shoulder to shoulder” during the pandemic.

More than 5,000 U.S. meat and food-processing workers have been infected with or exposed to the new coronavirus, and 13 have died, the country’s largest meatpacking union said on Thursday.

To contain the virus spread, other companies such as Tyson Foods have also shuttered some pork plants, but the closures are adding to stress for farmers who are losing markets for their pigs.

Smithfield, owned by China’s WH Group, said the Monmouth plant represents about three per cent of U.S. fresh pork supplies.

— Reporting for Reuters by Uday Sampath in Bangalore.

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Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau on Wednesday said officials are reviewing requests from employers to see which ones will qualify to have 100 per cent of their employees’ salaries covered under temporary expansions to the summer jobs program.

Decisions would be finalized soon, she said, but no specific date was given.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on April 8 announced changes to the Canada Summer Jobs program, aimed at businesses delivering essential services with fewer than 50 employees.

Those changes include increasing the wage subsidy so employers can receive up to 100 per cent of the provincial or territorial minimum wage per employee, and extending the end date for employment to Feb. 28 next year.

That move came shortly after the federal government deemed the entire food supply chain an essential service, meaning certain producers and food processors could apply to employ people under the expanded program.

“We will put a priority on those offering essential services,” Bibeau said, adding employers will be informed “shortly” of whether or not they will receive federal dollars from the program.

Concerns over labour shortages in the agriculture sector are mounting, as restrictions around the COVID-19 pandemic makes the problems it already faced finding enough workers even worse.

“We are in a situation where we are facing an even greater labour shortage,” Bibeau said, adding there will be delays or a lack of foreign workers no matter what. “So we have to compensate and we know that we have a great number of Canadians who are unemployed right now.”

A little more than one million jobs were lost in March, with employment levels dropping by 5.3 per cent according to Statistics Canada. The unemployment rate now sits at 7.8 per cent and is expected to continue rising.

Meanwhile, it’s estimated there are only about 15,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada right now – well below the 56,765 that arrived in 2018. According to the federal government, producers have applied for a total of 10,181 positions through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) in 2020.

Approvals to hire temporary foreign workers were granted to 983 businesses for 9,113 positions between January and the end of March.

Bibeau said the rate of temporary or seasonal workers entering Canada is “a bit behind the curve” relative to other years while the industry continues to be challenged by transportation issues and isolation requirements for workers arriving in Canada.

Transfers planned for top-ups

The federal government has made it easier for employers to hire Canadian workers by offering to pay wages, but there has been no action yet to encourage unemployed Canadians to find work in agriculture.

To help employers in “essential” sectors keep workers on staff, the federal government on Wednesday announced it would work with provinces and territories to set up a new transfer program.

Under that proposed program, the two levels of government would cost-share a “temporary top-up” to the wages of any low-income workers deemed “essential in the fight against COVID-19” in those provinces and territories.

The top-up would apply to essential workers earnings less than $2,500 a month, such as front-line hospital workers, long-term care workers and “those working so hard to make sure that there that is food on our shelves and tables.”

Quebec and British Columbia, for example, have already set up direct wage supports for low-income workers in essential-service sectors, and the proposed transfer program would allow Ottawa to cost-share those supports. Further details are to be released “shortly.”

Farm work in particular has become increasingly reliant on imported workers, because it is generally work Canadians don’t want – or need.

“We are actually looking at ways to encourage Canadians to work in the food industry to work in farms and processing plants,” said Bibeau, later admitting that “it’s a challenge… but we still have to do even more to encourage (Canadians) to join the industry.”

The government on Wednesday also announced further tweaks to the Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), retroactive to March 15, that would allow people to earn up to $1,000 a month while also collecting CERB funds.

The changes announced Wednesday also extend the CERB to seasonal workers who have exhausted their regular employment insurance benefits and can’t yet undertake their regular seasonal work because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The CERB will also now be extended to other workers who have recently exhausted regular EI benefits and are unable to find a job or return to work because of COVID-19.

Those changes line up with proposals from a group of 22 senators who wrote to Bibeau on April 6, asking the government to consider allowing Canadians employed in positions typically filled by temporary or seasonal agricultural workers to continue receiving CERB funds while they do farm work.

The senators also suggested Canadians working on farms should continue receiving employment insurance benefits without having their earnings clawed back. As well, they asked the federal government to pay for accommodations for those who would usually live on a farm in a communal setting.

Industry associations echoed those calls.

“We’re trying to figure out if we can find a wider way to support a greater number of producers or if we will have to go through ad hoc… programs, which would be specific to one sector and another. So we are getting there right now,” Bibeau said.

“I know that our farmers deserve you know, more support,” she said. “And we’re working really hard on that right now. A variety of recommendations are coming from the different sectors right now. So we are sorting this out.”

Earlier this week, the government announced it is offering $1,500 for each temporary foreign worker coming to Canada, to help farmers, fish harvesters, producers and processors cover costs related to containing COVID-19.

— D.C. Fraser reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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Federal Public Safety Minister Bill Blair on Thursday released a new guidance document, “Guidance on Essential Services and Functions in Canada During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which maps out the work required across Canada’s 10 “critical infrastructure sectors.”

“Food” is a stand-alone sector among those 10, which also include health; water; transportation; safety; energy and utilities; information and communication technologies; finance; government; and manufacturing.

The idea is to help “critical infrastructure employers” in the public and private sectors in “identifying and managing their workforce, while fostering alignment and harmonization across sectors.”

The government emphasized its guidance is “non-binding and advisory in nature, and should not be considered to be a federal directive or standard.”

“Through this incredibly challenging time, Canadians want the services they rely on every day for their health and safety and economic well-being to continue,” Blair said in a release. “We have put together this guidance to help support critical infrastructure employers in identifying and managing their workforce while responding to COVID-19.”

Apart from those in the retail grocery and take-out and delivery foodservice businesses, as well as those working at companies’ in-house employee cafeterias, the “Food” list of “essential services and functions” includes:

• agriculture and aquaculture workers and support service workers, including handlers of field crops and agricultural inputs and staff of storage facilities;
• animal agriculture workers, including those in the raising of animals for food; animal production operations; veterinary health; manufacturing and distribution of animal medical materials, animal vaccines, animal drugs, feed ingredients, feed, and bedding; transportation of live animals and animal medical materials; transportation of deadstock; and slaughter and packing plants along with their “associated regulatory and government workforce” including inspectors;
• workers in animal food, feed, byproduct and ingredient production, processing, packaging, and distribution; manufacturing, packaging and distribution of veterinary drugs; truck delivery and transport; and farm and fishery labour needed “to harvest and produce our food supply domestically;”
• workers undertaking “traditional” harvesting activities, including fishing, hunting and agricultural activities;
• employees of companies in the production of “chemicals, medicines, vaccines, and other substances used by the food and agriculture industry, including pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, minerals, enrichments, and other agricultural production aids;”
• employees in the manufacture and maintenance of equipment and other infrastructure necessary to agricultural, aquaculture, and fishery production and distribution;
• employees and firms supporting food, feed, and beverage distribution, including warehouse workers and “vendor-managed inventory controllers;”
• workers supporting the “sanitation of all food manufacturing processes and operations from wholesale to retail;” and
• workers in food testing labs.

The “Other” list of essential service employees also includes veterinarians, veterinary technicians and their support staff as well as those involved in the health and welfare of animals, including boarding kennels, stables, animal shelters, zoos, aquariums, research facilities and other such providers.

The federal public safety department said Thursday it will “continually consult on and amend the list as events unfold” and noted the current list is “meant to be broadly representative.”

In a related statement Thursday, Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said she would “assure you that our government is taking all the necessary measures to ensure that Canadians always have access to quality food at affordable prices.

“We know how essential the women and men who work on farms, in processing plants and throughout the food supply chain are to our collective well-being. When we go to the grocery store, we can be confident there will be food on the shelves.”

In spite of their own concerns over safety in the current pandemic, she said, “food workers are on the job, working hard to make sure we all have enough to eat” and “businesses and public health departments are working to protect the health of food workers.”

Some industry groups had recently pressed for agriculture and related sectors to receive a “critical infrastructure” designation. John Barlow, agriculture critic for the federal Conservatives, added to that call in a Facebook post Tuesday.

“By declaring the agriculture sector as essential during this crisis, the agri-food supply chain will remain intact and Canadians will be able to continue to count on access to safe and affordable food,” he wrote, adding Bibeau had “so far failed to follow through on this promise” for such a declaration.

“Farmers and producers will be making key decisions in the coming days and weeks which will have a huge impact on Canada’s agriculture sector,” he wrote. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Earlier this week, police made 10 arrests and cleared a blockade in eastern Ontario that had been stopping freight and passenger traffic for almost three weeks on one of Canada’s busiest lines.

The blockades were held in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en people in British Columbia, who are seeking to stop TC Energy from building a gas pipeline over their land.

“In the absence of illegal blockades on our network over the last 24 hours, and while we are keeping a close watch for any further disruptions, we have started calling back many of the temporarily laid off employees based in Eastern Canada,” CN CEO Jean-Jacques Ruest said in the email seen by Reuters.

The email did not specify how many of the 450 workers were being called back.

After 21 days of disruptions, “there is a significant backlog of trains parked on our tracks and in our yards that will be processed,” the email said.

“The complete network recovery process will take several weeks.”

Montreal-based CN said the company was on its way to recovering in Western Canada, and said products such as export grain, imported containerized goods, coal, potash and other commodities are moving to market.

Canada relies on CN and rival Canadian Pacific Railway to move crops, oil, potash, coal and manufactured goods to ports and the United States. About half of Canada’s exports move by rail, according to industry data.

— Reporting for Reuters by Allison Lampert in Montreal.

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AgSafe Alberta, an industry-led collaboration of farm groups, has set up and will operate a hotline that farmers can call at any time. The number is 1-833-9AG-SAFE (1-833-924-7233).

“This hotline is available 24-7, year round and all calls are connected directly to AgSafe Alberta,” the organization said in a news release. “Those in need of assistance will receive informed and compassionate support from an AgSafe Alberta employee.”

Calling the hotline is voluntary and any information provided is kept confidential. If the incident is reportable, AgSafe Alberta will help determine what reporting needs to be done.

Should a farm or ranch experience a serious incident — including an injury, fatality, property damage or near miss — a response from an Occupational Health and Safety officer may follow.

For more information, go to the AgSafe Alberta Hotline page.

There is no charge for calling the hotline. Support for serious incidents could include an on-site visit or over-the-phone assistance.

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Farmers in Canada have long reported challenges in recruiting farm workers because the rural-based work traditionally involves a high degree of manual labour, long hours, and is often seasonal.

In 2017, Canada’s agriculture sector was short 16,500 workers, a labour crunch that cost farmers $2.9 billion in lost revenues, the council said in a new report on Canada’s agricultural workforce prepared with the Conference Board of Canada.

“In the coming years, the gap between the sector’s labor requirements and the available pool of domestic labour is expected to widen considerably, a trend that would place more agricultural businesses at risk and seriously impede the sector’s growth potential,” the report said.

The agriculture industry’s struggle to find domestic workers means farmers are heavily reliant on temporary foreign labour, brought to Canada though various streams of the Temporary Foreign Worker program. Foreign labour now accounts for 17 per cent of the sector’s employees.

On Tuesday, the council said the agriculture sector’s job-vacancy rate is “the highest of any major sector in the Canadian economy.” About two million Canadians are employed by Canada’s agriculture and agri-food sector, accounting for one in eight jobs or 12 per cent of total Canadian employment.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government challenged Canada’s agriculture industry to increase its exports to $75 billion by 2025. Canada is currently the world’s fifth largest exporter of agricultural goods.

— Reporting for Reuters by Kelsey Johnson in Ottawa.

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Canada’s biggest private-sector union said NAFTA should be scrapped if Mexico cannot agree to better labour standards, clashing with Mexican business leaders who argued that workers rights were a matter for each country to resolve internally.

Mexican political and corporate leaders firmly resist demands to bring wages into line with U.S. and Canadian levels, arguing the big cost advantage the country enjoys over richer peers should decrease as economic development advances.

Labour union leaders in the two wealthier nations say laxer labour standards and lower pay in Mexico have swelled corporate profits at the expense of Canadian and U.S. workers, making resolution of the issue a major battleground of the NAFTA talks.

Jerry Dias, national president of Canadian union Unifor, said NAFTA had been a “lousy trade agreement for working-class people” and that the union was pushing his government to walk away from the talks if it could not secure them a better deal.

“If labour standards aren’t a part of a trade deal, then there shouldn’t be a trade deal,” Dias told reporters in Mexico City on the sidelines of a second round of negotiations to update the 1994 trade agreement among the three countries.

Worker pay is a sensitive issue in Mexico, a country riven by sharp inequality and which has struggled for years to alleviate poverty, which affects well over 40 per cent of the population.

Bosco de la Vega, head of Mexican farm lobby group the National Agricultural Council, said more trade, not intervention in labour markets, was the best way for the region to grow economically.

“Mexico can’t interfere in the labour market issue in the United States and Canada. We ask the same: that they don’t interfere in these matters,” he told reporters at the talks.

Mexican business leaders argue that integrating Mexico into North American supply chains has made the entire region more competitive. Recent studies have shown, however, that wages in Mexico have experienced significant downward pressure.

Deal breaker?

Given Mexico’s higher inflation rates, wages in that country are lower now in real terms than when NAFTA took effect, according to a report published last month by credit rating agency Moody’s.

From 2001 to 2015, Mexican hourly wages in U.S. dollars grew only nine per cent, less than in the U.S. and far below the 120 per cent increase in Brazil, said the Moody’s report.

Some Mexican private-sector negotiators have described the labour market as a potential deal breaker in the talks, although there is a growing consensus on the need to improve pay.

Most formally employed workers earn significantly more, but the statutory minimum wage is a mere 80 pesos a day (C$5.57).

Federico Serrano, head of Mexican exporters’ lobby Index, said a recent survey showed average pay in the manufacturing sector was three to four times higher than the minimum wage.

But workers in Mexico’s auto industry, the main source of the country’s US$64 billion goods trade surplus with the U.S. — a key irritant to U.S. President Donald Trump — earn far less than their U.S. counterparts.

According to the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Mexican auto workers earn average hourly wages of less than US$6 excluding benefits, compared with about US$28 in the U.S.

Steve Verheul, Canada’s chief NAFTA negotiator, told reporters his country would defend its interests at the talks, and when asked about the need for tougher labour standards, said: “It’s an important issue.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Dave Graham and Sharay Angulo; additional reporting by David Lawder and Michael O’Boyle in Mexico City.

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