$600 to share a bedroom: Migrant workers lose their jobs after complaining about rent

Quebec's workplace health and safety board has ordered a food-processing company north of Montreal to reimburse two temporary foreign workers for charging them excess rent.

The board told the company in July it had to pay the workers $3,800 each in housing costs it had deducted from their paycheques since May 2021.

The workers say that last spring, the company asked them to sign a contract raising their rent from $225 to $300 per pay period.

A number of the 48 temporary foreign workers from Madagascar employed by the plant at the time initially refused to sign — and asked the company if it could explain the increase.

Two workers filed complaints to the Commission des normes de l'équité de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST), Quebec's workplace health and safety board, after they said the company wouldn't budge.

A month and a half later, those two employees and three others who had raised questions about the rent were fired. 

"We are having a hard time with this situation at the moment," one of the former employees said during an interview in July. "We live in fear; we live in anguish; we live in uncertainty."

CBC spoke with all five employees who were fired, and has agreed not to name them because they fear reprisals for speaking up, and worry doing so could jeopardize their immigration status.

Many of the workers live in three-bedroom units with three or four other people and have to share a bedroom. CBC visited the building and saw one of the units. It was clean and well lit, but small for five people by North American standards and the workers said needed repairs had gone untouched.

The federal government requires an employer hiring foreign workers for low-wage positions to prove it will not deduct more than 30 per cent of those wages for housing. But Quebec labour regulations cap the amount employers can charge for rent at $53.47 per week — about half of what was being taken from the employees' paycheques.

Christophe Beauvais, the president of the company, Plaisirs Gastronomiques — which makes and distributes prepared foods to the province's major grocery chains — said his understanding is that regulation does not apply in the case of his employees, because he was not required to provide accommodation.

But in an email to CBC, a CNESST spokesperson said the regulation regarding housing costs, Article 6, is valid in cases "when the employer ensures that accommodation is provided to the worker without having the obligation to do so."

The labour board said it cannot comment on specific investigations, even after a decision is made.

The federal government told CBC in an email last week that "employers participating in the TFW Program must abide by both program requirements as well as applicable [provincial and territorial] laws in their region."