“She’s a coward.”
Cochrane resident and former farm worker Philippa Thomas’s reaction to Alison Redford’s provincial government’s decision to not introduce any new legislation this spring to address Alberta’s farm safety laws is telling.
“It’s a huge discrimination to have our industry not covered,” Thomas said. “Our premier should be ashamed of herself for making promises in order to get elected…why is legislation in place not to protect farm workers?”
While working at a local equestrian facility in 2006, Thomas sustained an injury, a small cut on her thumb at first, but then progressing into what is called complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) – a chronic systemic disease producing severe pain, swelling, changes in the skin and worsening over time.
Thomas now lives with a spinal cord stimulator in her back to ease the ongoing pain, as well as morphine patches, which she takes multiple times each day. She has been fighting to change the province’s farm safety labour laws ever since.
“I am willing to put my face to this cause,” Thomas proclaimed, saying she has already lost her ability and right to work.
Thomas said the first of her two battles will be to someday get legislation in place to protect farm workers, legislation that is already in place in every province outside Alberta and available to foreign workers.
“Why are foreign nationals covered and we are not?” Thomas questioned, underscoring that Albertans pay into a system that does not protect them. “Albertans need to wake up and create some noise.”
Though many have told Thomas that through her experience she discovered her voice, the 53-year-old Cochranite said her motivation comes from a desire to help those who may follow in her footsteps. She urges parents to make sure their children are covered under the Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB), which leads to the second phase of her battle.
“The WCB is not the be-all and end-all,” Thomas said, who will first concentrate on getting farm workers covered, then work on bettering what coverage the WCB provides.
One of Thomas’ major frustrations when it comes to government bureaucracy is how issues like farm safety seem to get left in the rearview mirror following elections and ministers changing posts.
“These people work for us,” said Thomas, believing that changes in government should be seamless, and those advocating for change should not be forced to start from scratch. “What’s more important than peoples’ deaths?”
Thomas said she understands that her struggle to change Alberta’s laws will be a long haul, and she vows to continue her fight.
Eric MuseKamp, president of the Farmworkers Union of Alberta (FUA), is another fighting alongside Thomas.
MuseKamp said the government continues to stall on the farm worker issue, and with an absence of health and safety legislation and no laws to protect children, Albertans can expect to see ongoing high death and injury rates as a result.
“I expect to keep working with the Wild Rose Agricultural Producers, Dr. David Swann and others to address the child labour issue and press this issue with major purchasers of Alberta produce,” said MuseKamp, citing McDonalds, PepsiCo-Frito Lay and Loblaws as examples. “Alberta’s lack of labour standards, especially the lack of child labour standards, is problematic for these major corporations because they all have ethical procurement policies that preclude child labour and unsafe labour standards.”
According to a study done by the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research called the Canadian Agricultural Injury Reporting, 355 Albertans were killed in agricultural injury events between 1990-2009, 87 per cent being work related. An additional 678 were seriously injured.
Thomas believes that farm workers get the short end of the stick when it comes to safety, saying that 90 per cent of farm owners do not even work on their farms, leaving it to their staff of workers with no safety net when it comes to occupational safety.
“If they (farm owners) don’t have to pay it,” Thomas said, referring to WCB, “they won’t pay it.”
Thomas is passionate and steadfast in her belief that farm workers do not have a voice in Alberta and promises Premier Redford that she will not budge on this issue.
“I know she wants me to go away, but I’m not,” she declared. “I’m a farm worker with a huge pain, and I’m going to be a pain.”
