Private seniors' home in Lévis, Que., under investigation for alleged abuse of migrant workers
CBC
Quebec's immigration and labour minister, Jean Boulet, has sent workplace health and safety investigators to look into allegations that operators of a private seniors' home in Lévis, Que., harassed, blackmailed and underpaid six temporary migrant workers from Africa over the course of many months.
Boulet called on the workplace health and safety board (CSST) to investigate after the French-language newspaper Le Devoir reported Thursday that Villa mon domaine, a 63-room residence, had been paying the workers just $50 to $70 a week.
"I found it revolting, intolerable, unacceptable," Boulet told Radio-Canada.
"We will take whatever steps are necessary quickly. We will investigate, and if it's true, we will remedy the situation."
However, Christine Orain, co-ordinator of services for Le Tremplin, a non-profit support centre for immigrants in Lévis, said she contacted the CSST months ago, to no avail, after hearing complaints from a worker at Villa mon Domaine in January 2021.
The man came to her asking if it was normal to be denied access to his pay stubs.
"We contacted the residence and then realized that it wasn't paying them their COVID bonuses," she said. She said the residence only started to do that once it was pressured to issue the workers their pay stubs.
Eventually, five more employees contacted her for help, she said.
Some of them, who didn't have work permits, told her they were being paid in pre-paid credit cards worth just enough to cover the cost of groceries, said Orain.
She said the operators of the residence promised the undocumented workers that they would get them their temporary work permits. But nearly a year into their jobs, she said, they were still working under the table — and without a proper pay cheque.
"They were calling us every day, crying, sending us text messages that they were getting from their employer containing threatening remarks, manipulative remarks, discriminatory remarks," Orain said.
"It was really daily harassment."
She said the workers had come to Quebec to improve their living conditions and instead found themselves suffering, not understanding what was happening to them.
She compared their situation to "modern-day slavery."
