Unfree Labour: COVID-19 and Migrant Workers in the Seafood Industry in New Brunswick

This report is the second in a series of community-based research projects undertaken by the Migrant Workers in the Canadian Maritimes partnership. It draws on desk research and qualitative interview data conducted with 15 temporary foreign workers who arrived in New Brunswick after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Interviews took place between October 2020 and December 2021. Our first report, Safe at Work, Unsafe at Home: COVID-19 and Temporary Foreign Workers in Prince Edward Island, published in June 2021, revealed some of the challenges workers faced throughout the pandemic. Migrant workers described overcrowded housing as a severe and ongoing issue, and recounted workplace safety violations, long workdays with no overtime pay, lack of paid sick days, and reluctance to complain out of fear of being fired. Workers were made vulnerable by these conditions, which exacerbated the already existent power imbalance between them and their employers in Prince Edward Island. Our partnership has continued to explore how COVID-19 has affected the health and safety of temporary foreign workers in New Brunswick, another Maritime province reliant on foreign labour, especially in the seafood processing industry. This report documents the social impact of COVID-19 on temporary foreign workers and includes policy recommendations to improve the working conditions of migrant workers in New Brunswick.