We, as members, workers, and supporters of the Worker Solidarity Network, demand an end to unfair exclusions in the Employment Standards Act that prevent workers - particularly migrant workers - from having equal access to their rights; and demand meaningful reform that will improve working conditions and move to stop having a hypermarginalized tier of workers that our government allows employers to exploit.

As part of our mandate at WSN, we have become intimately familiar with the concerns facing workers in BC, both migrant and non-migrant workers. All of the workers we have worked with and advocated for are keenly aware of and deeply affected by rising costs of housing, education, food, and other basic necessities in this province; and are in need of a government that will respond to their concerns and alleviate the issues facing them.

Instead, we have seen far too many politicians rely on false solutions, by parroting Trump-style anti-immigrant populism that pits vulnerable workers against each other to distract from the real root causes of the issues. Anti-immigrant populism will not solve the root causes behind the issues facing workers in the province - targeting migrant workers only pushes more migrant workers underground, force them to accept hyper-exploitative conditions, impact all workers by further depressing wages, stroking division and making our province vulnerable to the far right xenophobia that we have already seen grip the United States.

Instead, workers need meaningful reforms that will actually address the concerns of workers regardless of their immigration status. While existent programs for migrant workers, such as the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, are deeply flawed and in need of deep reforms including the granting of permanent residence to migrant workers upon arrival; the provincial government in BC is in control of the methods of exploitation within the Employment Standards Act and the lack of accountability of bad bosses, and could act immediately to improve conditions by removing exclusions in the Employment Standards Act that exclude many marginalized workers from protections and leave them open to hyper-exploitation.

To that end, we at WSN are calling on the Premier and government to immediately remove exemptions in the Employment Standards Act that affect migrant workers. We, as members of the Worker Solidarity Network, call on government to:

- Implement overtime pay and hours of work protections for agricultural workers: agricultural workers are not currently entitled to overtime pay, nor do they receive hours of work protections. This results in workers working full weeks with no days off, often working 16 hours or more, and receiving no overtime pay. This is institutional exploitation of agricultural workers; and with most agricultural workers being migrant workers, amounts to racist and discriminatory exploitation

- End severance exclusions for construction workers: construction workers currently have little protections around employment termination allowing them to be terminated without notice or pay in lieu of notice. This affects migrant workers to a greater degree; as migrant workers on employer-specific work visas are unable to simply find new employment

- End harmful categories for care workers that exclude many from protections: due to the way care worker categorization functions, minor and arbitrary differences in jobs often result in care workers being excluded from overtime protections despite performing essentially the same jobs

- Provide paid sick days to gig workers: gig workers are currently excluded from receiving paid sick day protections, forcing gig workers to work when sick or otherwise risk losing pay and losing out on protections that are available to other workers

Migrant workers are impacted by exclusions in the act the most and are thus exploited more than most other workers. This is despite the fact that migrant workers are part of our communities, part of our workplaces, and have always worked here. They are our domestic care workers, our child-care workers, our neighbours, baristas, farmers, and hotel workers. In our province, migrant workers raise our children, look after our parents, pick our fruit, work our hotels, and over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, we witnessed how migrant workers have cared for our elderly, staffed our hospitals, cleaned our public spaces, and grown our food. All the while, they have been heavily exploited by their employers and have too often worked in horrendous conditions in some of the most insecure and exploitative jobs in the province. We have seen workers brought in as temporary foreign workers, and deported before they receive pay. We have seen them unable to access basic rights, health care, proper working conditions, with most being denied the right to a union. As workers and members of the Worker Solidarity Network, we demand an end to this exploitation, and instead demand equal rights for these migrant workers that are crucial components of our communities. One standard for all workers - we demand basic rights for ALL workers NOW!