Quebec meat plant where asylum seeker was injured subject of probe

Quebec's workplace health and safety board says it will look into conditions at a meat-processing plant in the Montrgie region after CBC News reported last week that a Haitian asylum seeker was badly injured by a machine he says he was not given proper training to operate.

The board, known by its French acronym CNESST, wouldn't say how or when it would be intervening and declined an interview request.

Richard-Alexandre Laniel, the lawyer representing the asylum seeker, whom CBC is calling Paulo, said by law, the board can intervene in one of two ways: by performing a health and safety inspection or by investigating the company's compliance with labour standards.

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Laniel says his client's situation sheds light on the poor working conditions which newcomers to Canada sometimes face.

"It's the tip of the iceberg," he said.

More than half a dozen labour activists and researchers with whom CBC News has spoken say Quebec's Labour Standards Act, which has not been updated in decades, isn't equipped to deal with the rise of temporary work.

The often poor working conditions disproportionately affect immigrants and refugee claimants, they say.

$10 an hour, cash

Paulo says he was recruited to work at the plant by a temp agency, identified by CBC News as YUL Embauche, at a Metro station last September.

He says he was told by a man who approached him that he would be able to work, even though Paulo told the manhe hadn't yet received his work permit.

He says he was paid $10 per hour in cash. The hourly minimum wage in Quebec is $11.25.

Three weeks after he started working, Paulo says he was asked by a supervisor at the plant, Sherrington Cold Storage, to work on a machine that skins the fat off pork.

He says he was shown little more than how to turn the device on and off and that he told the supervisor the machine seemed faulty but was urged to continue working.

Within minutes, Paulo says, the machine slipped and skinned his hand so badly that he had to undergo an emergency skin graft.

Fake ID complicates CNESSTclaim

In Quebec, the official employer of a temporary worker is the agency that dispatches that worker to the actual workplace. That means a work injury is the agency's responsibility.

But declaring an injury rests with the workers themselves, who have to get a doctor's note saying they can't work in order to claim for compensation.

Paulo says YUL Embauche gave him a fake identity under which to work, complicating his claim.

CNESST refuses most requests made by workers without valid permits, according to Flix Lapan of a Montreal-based nonprofit group that supports injured workers, known by its French acronym UTTAM. Nearly a quarter of the cases UTTAM takes on are from temp workers like Paulo.

"What's awful here is that, once again, you have an agency, which doesn't care about the law, doesn't respect labour standards, doesn't respect the minimum wage and is sending people to do dangerous work," Lapan said.

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Paulo does not yet know if CNESST will honour his claim.

If it doesn't, his only option will be to challenge CNESST's ruling before Quebec's administrative tribunal, which has ruled in favour of undocumented workers in the past.

A 2016 report by the Montreal regional public health authority,called "Invisible Workers," cites data collected by Leger for CNESSTthat found 90 per cent of temp workers have experienced a violation of labour standards.

"We have good evidence suggesting that they don't have the leverage to raise their voices, and they are not unionized," said the report's co-author, DanielVergara.

Vergara says the agency's director, Dr. Richard Mass, commissioned the report after hearing about a growing number of problems experienced by temporaryworkers recruited by agencies.

"It isn't clear for workers who is their employer. That's the bottom line."

Disincentives to report injuries

Quebec is the only province in which companies are not obliged to declare all workplace accidents.

Only once hurt workers have obtained a doctor's note ordering them to stop work for a period of time must the employer alert CNESST.

Employers often discourage workers from declaring accidents, sometimes offering to pay them outside of the compensation system, because accident declarations cost the company in higher premiums and may trigger an inspection or investigation of their facilities.

The goal of those higher premiums and inspections is to give companies incentives to increase safety measures, to prevent accidents from occurring in the first place.

However, what happens in practice, said Lapan, is that companies contest the injuries, in order to avoid incurring the extra costs.

Refugee claimants 'victims in all of this'

Just two weeks ago, the Quebec government tabled a bill which aims to patch up some of these loopholes in the Labour Standards Act.

"It's a great step forward, if it's adopted," said former labour lawyer Michel Pilon.

The proposed amendments would require agencies to become licensed and would make the companies that hire their workers share some legal responsibilities.

• Quebec companies look to asylum seekers to help fill labour shortages

But until the bill is passed, Pilon says, agencies and the companies hiring their services will continue to take advantage of vulnerable people desperate to work.

"It's a real jungle, and it creates a system where these refugees are being exploited," said Pilon.

"They are victims in all of this."