VANCOUVER—Bug infestations, intimidation and harassment, no water breaks and cramped housing are among the allegations former workers are sharing publicly for the first time about their brief employment on a large blueberry farm owned by one of B.C.’s wealthiest families.

“In that farm, we lived the saddest part of our lives,” Gloria Suy Hernandez said through a Spanish translator as she choked back tears.

In 2018, she lived in “a small house” provided by the company with 22 other women. They shared three toilets, three working showers and had “no privacy.” The women were often scared of the managers who could enter the home at any time, according to Suy Hernandez.

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Seven former temporary foreign workers at the Aquilini family’s Golden Eagle Blueberry Farms in Pitt Meadows, told their stories at a press conference organized Tuesday by the Vancouver-based non-profit Migrant Workers’ Dignity Association.

On May 13, the Ministry of Labour’s Employment Standards Branch ordered Francesco Aquilini, Paolo Aquilini, Roberto Aquilini and their business partners to pay $130,000 in lost wages and vacation pay to 174 workers, most of them from Guatemala.

The ministry’s ruling only addresses working hours and compensation, while the B.C. Federation of Labour has lodged complaints with the Workers' Compensation Board on their behalf around alleged abuse, unsanitary living conditions and threats.

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At the time, the workers made minimum wage or $11.35 an hour while living in accommodations provided on the farm. They arrived under contracts that stipulated they would get 40 hours of work a week for six months. After one month, some workers saw their hours reduced.

For 45 days in the summer of 2018, Mirsa Martinez lived in another housing unit on the farm with 76 residents. There were three to four people to a room and the residents shared five stoves, two dishwashers, five fridges, seven washrooms and 10 showers.

The garbage was never emptied and led to a fly infestation, Martinez said. When it became “impossible to live there,” Martinez and others left the farm with the help of the Migrant Workers’ Dignity Association, which educates and advocates for the rights of temporary foreign workers.

Francesco Aquilini, seen here in this photo from June 7, 2017, published a statement on his Twitter account stating that the workers were “hard working and seemed happy.” (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

Other women reported being denied water breaks while working in sweltering heat, pesticides being sprayed near workers on lunch breaks and lack of clothing for work in cold conditions.

The seven women are part of a group of 15 workers covered by the complaint about discrimination to the Workers' Compensation Board in September. When they raised health and safety issues at work, they felt intimidated and were threatened with losing their jobs. The workers are still awaiting a decision.

The Aquilini Investment Group did not respond to an interview request. The Aquilini family, worth an estimated $3.3 billion, is a major property developer in B.C. and the owners of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team.

On May 21, Francesco Aquilini published a statement on his Twitter account signed by Jim Chu, senior vice president of the Aquilini Investment Group, stating the company first employed workers from Guatemala in 2017 and “they were hard working and seemed happy.”

After Sept. 2018, when the blueberry season ended, some of the Guatemalan workers “went missing from the farm, in direct contravention of their work permits,” the statement said. Some went to the U.S. and a group of 15 stayed in Canada.

“This group of 15 workers lodged complaints with regulatory agencies such as WorkSafeBC claiming mistreatment … These complaints were never raised when they worked with us. We cooperated and continue to co-operate with the investigations and inquiries from Service Canada, WorkSafeBC and the Employment Standards Branch.”

Raul Gatica, a volunteer with Migrant Workers’ Dignity Association, described what took place at Golden Eagle was “labour trafficking.”

“We were rescuing the women because they were living in a terrible condition.” After the women left the farm with the society’s help, Gatica told farm managers they were still available for work, but the managers never responded.

And Gatica said this was not the first time Aquilini Investment Group received complaints from workers and they are well aware of the issues on the farm.

David Fairey, co-chair of the BC Employment Standards Coalition, an independent campaign group of labour experts and workers, said the branch decision to award workers $130,000 was “important” for several reasons.

“The Employment Standards Branch found that Golden Eagle Farm had actually misrepresented the employment they were offering to the Guatemalan workers in Guatemala,” Fairey said.

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Many of the workers, who paid $2,000 to $3,000 to recruiters in Guatemala to get the jobs in Canada, were left in financial limbo when their hours on the farm were reduced, he added.

He also urged the Employment Standards Branch to expedite complaints related to temporary foreign workers. Currently, there is no recognition that workers are in Canada for a short time and may have to leave the country before a decision is made.

In the Golden Eagle farm case, the women had to wait eight months before they were awarded lost wages.