Growing Justice: Health, safety and dignity for South Asian farmworker women in British Columbia
Anelyse Weiler , Associate Professor of Sociology • Anushay Malik , Social Historian at Simon Fraser University • David Fairey , Labour Economist and Labour Relations Research Consultant • Jasmine Padam , PhD student (University of Victoria) •
May 6, 2026
Reprinted from BC Policy Solutions
For decades, South Asian immigrant farmworker women have faced exploitative practices like wage theft, lack of access to clean washrooms and excessive and unpredictable hours. This report seeks to address these issues via policy reform.
These practices include wage theft, pressure to accept unsafe transportation along with excessive and unpredictable hours. Agricultural workers in general are excluded from several of the basic rights granted to other workers such as overtime pay, statutory holiday pay and annual vacation pay. South Asian farmworker women who are new immigrants face additional vulnerabilities such as language barriers and a lack of formal job training. In short, previous research and advocacy have shown that the people who harvest the province’s vegetables, grow ornamental flowers and pack berries face low wages, high risks of injury and weak workplace protections. Since the late 2010s, the BC ministries of agriculture and labour have acknowledged the vulnerabilities facing agricultural workers, but it is unclear whether commensurate improvements have been made in recent years to support their workplace rights.
Our research examined what has changed in recent decades for immigrant farmworker women and what has not.
We sought to hear directly from farmworker women about their contemporary experiences and workplace conditions and to determine how effectively public policies support their health, safety and dignity. Our report is based on in-depth interviews and one focus group conducted in 2023 with 20 farmworker women in BC’s Fraser Valley. All the women we spoke to had immigrated to Canada from India and interviews were mainly conducted in Punjabi. The women worked in multiple sectors including seasonal berry harvesting, mushrooms, vegetables, canneries and packing and ornamental nurseries. Most earned less than $25,000 annually.
Our findings expose how workplace inequities are entrenched in the structural organization of agricultural labour across the province. Despite these women’s essential contributions to the local food economy, many continue to occupy some of the most precarious and undervalued roles in agricultural production.
First, our report shows that health and safety risks are pervasive, including a lack of clean, accessible washrooms, potable water, chronic and acute physical injuries, unsafe machinery and retaliation for voicing safety concerns. These issues are intensified by weak enforcement and deceptive employer practices such as temporarily installing handwashing stations during WorkSafeBC inspections only to remove them once inspectors leave. Specifically for women, these health risks are compounded during menstruation when inadequate sanitation contributes to discomfort and potential infection risks during long shifts. Long, unpredictable or inadequate hours are made more challenging by the fact that many women are engaged in a heavy “double shift” of paid labour combined with housework and childcare.
Second, interview participants recalled experiences of wage theft and barriers to accessing upward economic mobility. Our findings highlight how the privatized, profit-driven farm labour contracting system intensifies women workers’ vulnerability. Contractors, who act as a go-between for workers and employers, often control access to work, transportation, wages and avoid responsibility for workers’ welfare. For many women, particularly those with limited English proficiency or without independent transportation, this system creates a dependency that is frequently exploited. Almost universally, participants reported that a barrier to obtaining better-paying jobs was a lack of proficiency in English.
Third, a persistent challenge for many of the women in our study was a lack of basic respect in the workplace. Participants often emphasized to us that they took pride in being able to engage in physically arduous work for long hours without complaint. However, bullying and harsh criticism from supervisors or bosses undermined their sense of dignity. Amid these challenges, participants also shared stories of resilience and agency. Some women spoke with pride about their work and their role in sustaining local food systems. Others described acts of resistance, including organizing union drives and filing legal complaints, often at great personal risk. These stories spotlight how Punjabi immigrant farmworker women are not passive victims of exploitation, but rather, active agents navigating complex and constrained environments with strength and determination. At a societal level, reframing farm work as skilled, dignified and essential is a critical step toward disrupting entrenched patterns of gendered and racialized exploitation in BC’s agricultural sector.
Based on our research, we offer the following policy recommendations to the BC government and its institutions to improve health, safety and dignity for farmworker women:
Farm labour contractors: Eliminate the privatized and profit-driven farm labour contracting system under the Employment Standards Act. To identify a replacement, the government should commission research on the feasibility of a provincial or regionally based cooperative or non-profit labour supply/labour exchange agency or hiring hall system. Existing non-profit organizations that have built trusting relationships with farmworkers could serve as a vehicle for this hiring hall. This system could be licensed to be the exclusive means through which employers can hire agricultural workers and processors and it could support workers with safe transportation to and from farms. It could also train farmworkers themselves to participate in oversight of the hiring hall.
Piece-rate wages: Implement the Fair Wage Commission’s 2018 report recommendation that all farmworkers who are paid under a piece-rate system receive at least the minimum hourly wage for all hours worked.
Living wage: Raise the hourly minimum wage to the level of the annual living wage, beginning with an increase to $20 per hour in 2026.
Employment standards exclusions: Eliminate the exclusion of farmworkers from the hours of work, overtime and statutory holidays with pay provisions of the BC Employment Standards Act.
Occupational health, safety and hygiene: WorkSafe BC and the BC Employment Standards Branch should specifically check for access to hygienic washrooms and lunchrooms, paying attention to whether these washrooms are sufficient to provide privacy to women and a place where they can wash their hands, change clothes and dispose of hygiene products.
Workplace inspections: WorkSafeBC and the BC Employment Standards Branch must institute frequent, proactive and unannounced regulatory compliance inspections throughout the farming season. Workers must have safe, language-appropriate channels to communicate their concerns to inspectors without employer oversight or mediation. Inspectors should receive trauma-informed training that allows them to respond skillfully to the unique vulnerabilities facing workers (e.g., sexual harassment, risks of job termination).
Health and safety training: At the beginning of each season, WorkSafeBC should provide mandatory, paid and language-appropriate farmworker safety training to farmworkers, farm labour contractors (until, ideally, they are phased out) and employers.
Support to non-profits for training: In addition to workplace training, the Province should provide funding to non-profit organizations such as Archway Community Services and Progressive Intercultural Community Services to host free, language-
appropriate and accessible workshops to women on their rights as workers (e.g., workplace injury prevention, sexual harassment in the workplace, how to assert one’s labour rights, how to join a union, etc.).Transportation training: To support immigrant women’s independence in a motor vehicle-centric culture, the Province should offer funding to non-profit organizations that provide training and guidance on driving, purchasing a vehicle and obtaining a driver’s license.
English-language education: The Province should fund free, community-based English language training courses that are accessible to farmworker women, ideally taking place close to their workplace and while their children are in child care (or with child care on-site).
Childcare support: The provincial government should provide high-quality, accessible child care for farmworker women who are employed in agriculture, including those on a seasonal, casual, or full-time basis.
