
Last week, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal awarded 55 tree planters $700K in relation to the mistreatment and ‘slave-like’ conditions they were forced to endure at the hands of their employer in a reforestation operation in Golden, BC. The Congolese refugees weren’t paid, were segregated from other workers, fed inferior food if they were fed at all, forced to plant on rougher terrain, and housed in shipping containers with no bathroom facilities or clean water. In the ruling—which sees $10,000 dollars awarded to each individual for injury to dignity and self-respect (which they might never see because the company is now bankrupt)—the Tribunal equated the conditions as “comparable to slave-ships” and the workers expressed feeling like prisoners.
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