New documentary exposes temporary foreign workers’ conditions in New Brunswick [video]

To coincide with International Workers’ Day, the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre launched an important new documentary film, Chaos and Control, which reveals the appalling working conditions for thousands of temporary foreign workers in the province. 

Researchers from Dalhousie University and St. Thomas University previously released a damning report in March 2023 about working and housing conditions in the seafood industry in New Brunswick titled Unfree Labour: COVID-19 and Migrant Workers in the Seafood Industry in New Brunswick. 

The documentary is produced by Amy Floyd, the Madhu Centre’s housing justice coordinator, and Drew Gilbert, a local documentary filmmaker and member of the New Brunswick Filmmakers Cooperative.

Central to the 40-minute documentary’s narrative are the anonymized testimonies of temporary foreign workers, all of whom come from Spanish-speaking areas. Their testimonies are subtitled for the public.

According to government statistics, there were close to 4,500 temporary foreign workers in New Brunswick in 2023, coming into the province through four different streams which are principally in the caregiving, agriculture, and seafood industries.

At the beginning of the documentary, workers candidly comment on their reasons for coming to New Brunswick to work; most cite the need to earn money to help loved ones in their home countries.

The filmmakers’ choice to blur the image and change participants’ voices speaks volumes about the risk of retaliation by employers: most participants might not have participated on camera. Towards the end of the film, the producers thank them for their courageous contribution.

Workers interviewed in the film sadly echo the findings of the 2023 research. They report numerous abuses by their employers including harassment, blackmail, bullying and other psychological abuses. 

Unfree Labour’s researchers found that, in the seafood industry, “dependency on their employers makes workers prone to accept harassment and verbal abuse.” According to workers speaking in the documentary, harassment exists in almost every case.

Some people interviewed described physical harms, often resulting in stressful situations, as essential healthcare is not always guaranteed and translation often not provided. 

These physical and psychological maltreatments add to the often-difficult material conditions the workers face, as was reported by the Madhu Centre’s new report on the subject: Ensuring the Housing Rights for Migrants in New Brunswick. 

That report makes formal recommendations to both the provincial and federal government in order to remedy these miserable conditions. 

Key to the workers’ complicated circumstances is being tied to one employer for their work contracts. This makes leaving to seek another employer practically impossible in most cases, while complaining carries the risk of being labelled a troublemaker.

Members of the Madhu Centre’s board Aditya Rao and Tracy Glynn are featured prominently in the film along with Niger Saravia and Sonia Aviles, both of them organizers from the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, a group that has been active since 2009 in Ontario. Saravia and Aviles speak candidly about the changes necessary and the abuses they have witnessed over the years.

Chaos and Control was produced with support from the Catherine Donnelly Foundation, an organization that “strives to transform the lives of the underserved by supporting initiatives in the areas of access to housing, the environment, and civic engagement for social change.”

Sophie M. Lavoie is a member of the NB Media Co-op’s editorial board.