Media Release: Minimum Wage Increases but Agricultural Workers are Still Excluded

(October 31, 2024) – Ontario’s minimum wage increased to $17.20 on October 1, 2024. National Farmers Union (NFU) farm workers celebrate the minimum wage raise even though it is still significantly below the living wage across all regions of the province.

Agricultural workers are excluded from the minimum wage legislation under the Ontario Employment Standards Act (ESA). The Act also excludes farm workers from daily and weekly limits on hours of work, daily rest periods, time off between shifts, eating periods, overtime pay, statutory holidays, vacation with pay, and weekly/biweekly rest periods.

While agricultural workers will not directly benefit from October’s minimum wage increase, a higher minimum wage for other Ontario workers will make it more difficult for agricultural employers to pay less than $17.20 as staff will be tempted to look elsewhere for work, even if these farm workers’ passions lie in farming.

Farm work is dangerous, skilled, and vital. The agricultural sector is in a labour crisis. Farms across Canada are having trouble attracting and retaining staff and are becoming increasingly reliant on temporary foreign workers to meet their production needs. With the average age of a farmer in Canada being 56, and with massive barriers for new farmers to enter into agriculture, we have to ask: who will feed us? A competitive wage, and improved working conditions are key to addressing the agricultural labour crisis and inviting and keeping young people in farming.

Increased wages for farmworkers isn’t why food has become more expensive. Farm operators are being pinched by suppliers and buyers; the farm labour crisis is inseparable from a farm income crisis. Farmer input costs have increased while corporate buyers continue to force farmers into selling their products at the narrowest of margins, while selling high to Ontario consumers. Input suppliers, food retailers and processors have been increasing their profits while farmers and consumers lose out.

It’s time to include agricultural workers under the ESA’s minimum wage legislation. Doing so will serve to elevate the incomes of all agricultural producers, help alleviate the farm labour crisis, and show that the province and its eaters value all those who grow our food.