The United Food and Commercial Workers Union is urging local health officials to step up and better protect migrant workers in Windsor-Essex.
The union's national representative Santiago Escobar says workers are reporting cramped living quarters, a lack of physical distancing and personal protective equipment and negligent employers failing to protect them from COVID-19.
Escobar says changes to the current system are well overdue.
"The time is now to implement meaningful changes in order to maintain productivity and help secure Canada's food supply. We strongly believe that every worker deserves to be treated with dignity and respect no matter where they come from."
Complaints continue to pile up from Windsor-Essex workers, according to Escobar.
"We receive 25 to 30 calls every day. Most of these calls are from Windsor-Essex County. It's time to implement meaningful protections for agricultural workers in general and especially migrant farm workers."
He says more collaboration between government, employers, and unions is needed to tackle the issue.
"We are asking the health unit, the federal government, the provincial government and basically all the stakeholders to work together and to coordinate our actions and efforts toward protecting the wellbeing of agricultural, both local and migrant workers."
In response, the union has proposed a long list of changes including closing all farms and greenhouses with outbreaks, isolating COVID-19 positive workers in hotel rooms where they can be monitored by health care professionals and providing paid sick leave for those who can't work.
Locally, hundreds of migrant workers have contracted COVID-19 while two have passed away due to complications with the virus.
— with files from AM800's Rob Hindi.