Filipino workers on Deer Island adding to county’s cultural mix

Charlotte County is becoming a community with a wide diversity of cultures, as people are coming from countries ranging from Asia to eastern Europe to work mostly in the county's fish plants. The issues they face run the gamut from learning English and finding transportation to locating a priest to hear confessions in their native language.
Lobster exporter Paturel International, based on Deer Island, is among four large companies in the province that have now hired a significant portion of their workforce from other countries. A quarter of the approximately 100 Paturel workers are from the Philippines, and Connors Bros., Cooke Aquaculture and Ganong Bros. have also hired workers from overseas, including over 100 from Romania.

Fitting into the community
A total of 24 Filipino women are now working at the Paturel plant at Northern Harbour, Deer Island, which exports both live and processed lobsters. The women had left the Philippines to find work and had gone to Taiwan because they found it was easier to get jobs overseas from there. None of them knew each other before coming to Deer Island.
Although they've only been on the island since July, one of the Filipinos, Jackie Lou Vinluan, observes, "All of the people here on the island know us. They're family and very lovable."
Jody Cline, the human resources manager at Paturel, comments, "We're extremely pleased to have them here. They're good workers and very polite. They've fit in very well. Any concerns we had earlier we don't think of now."
"We found out very quickly that this would be a good match," Cline observes. "They're very good with their hands C very dexterous. They worked in computer shops in Taiwan, so they're good with lobsters." He notes that, after four days at Paturel, some of the Filipinos were working as quickly as the fastest worker at the plant.
Some of the women attend church services on the island, with most being Roman Catholic, and they're told about events that are going on so they can go to them. Cline relates, "I told them this is a free country. This is Canada." He adds, "They can't believe the freedom. It blows them away. They're not used to that."
Deidre Richardson, manager of the processing plant, notes that one of the employees from Grand Manan took them there for a weekend, and she adds, "They've seen places in New Brunswick that I haven't seen."
Cline believes that islanders do not feel threatened by any competition for jobs from the Filipinos. The issue, instead, is that "no one knows what to serve them for supper. One girl said, 'I'd like mashed potatoes and gravy.'" Although they like to try the local foods, they usually cook traditional Filipino foods, sharing their meals when they eat.
Noting that working in a fish plant may not be the most appealing type of work, Cline says that the benefits for the company include a boost in morale. "I believe the overall attitude has improved," he says. "They're so positive and happy to have work. It's rubbed off on the other workers and has improved the morale."
Jackie Lou notes that in Taiwan there was discrimination by the Chinese against other Asians, but she hasn't noticed any discrimination since coming to Deer Island. Another Filipino, Jorja Eleccion, says she loves to work at Paturel, "because there's no pressure." When she was working to inspect electronics in Taiwan, she remembers the supervisor would stand over her, telling her to work faster and scolding her if she didn't meet the production requirements. At Paturel, the supervisor works with them, and all of the co-workers help them. They've been "adopted" by one of the supervisors, and they call her their "mother."
On Canada Day and the Fourth of July, they went to Deer Island Point to watch the fireworks, and they like to go there to watch the Old Sow whirlpool. Friends help them with traveling, and they go sightseeing and to the Chinese restaurant in Saint John. They've also met up with some Filipinos from St. George who work for Cooke Aquaculture. At Halloween they gave out treats to the children of other Paturel workers who were in costumes. In the Philippines, Halloween is a time to go to the cemetery and offer prayers for loved ones. In December they saw snow for the first time and tried to make a snowman.
Jackie Lou, who left the Philippines to work in Taiwan when she was 22, says she misses her family but has adjusted to being away. She points out that all of the Filipinos would like to continue living on Deer Island and just return to the Philippines for vacations. "I love it here." One of the Filipinos has already married one of the workers from Newfoundland.

Foreign worker program
The Filipinos have work visas through the federal government's Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Approval for hiring the workers was initially granted for a nine-month period, beginning July 1, but a one-year extension was recently granted.
Six of the Filipinos did leave to work in Nova Scotia, but Cline says that occurred because they had heard that the work permits would expire in January, before the extension was granted. He's heard they would like to come back to Deer Island.
To obtain approval for hiring the Filipino workers, Paturel had to prove that they had sufficient work for 100 people and could not obtain the workers from Canada. Although other companies reported hearing that some local people were upset about foreign workers taking local jobs, Cline hasn't heard that complaint.
Concerning the difficulty in getting local workers, Cline says, "I interviewed 199 people in 2010, and only about a handful came through and most left before the season finished." Among the reasons, Cline believes, are the cost of driving to and from the island and the long hours, with work weeks sometimes ranging from 44 to 70 hours. Employees receive $11 an hour, which Cline says is average for area plants.
The company has been hiring workers from Newfoundland, but the number has dropped now to 23. Cline says that Newfoundlanders began coming after the collapse of the fisheries in the province, but now the younger workers prefer going to Alberta for the high-paying oil field jobs. Some of the Newfoundlanders live year-round on Deer Island, while others work the season at Paturel from April to mid-January.
Paturel pursued obtaining foreign workers after it became difficult to attract the workers from Newfoundland. Cline says, "Last spring I interviewed 35 people from Newfoundland and only three showed up." They eventually left before the end of the season.
Stuart McKay, general manager at Paturel, points out that production was down 30%B40% because the company did not have a sufficient number of workers.

Providing services to newcomers
Cline observes that other companies in the area also have had a difficult time finding workers and are hiring a large number of temporary foreign workers. Cooke Aquaculture has hired 100 or more Romanians, who are living in St. George; one-quarter of Connors Bros.' workforce is made up of people from countries such as Uzbekistan, Korea, China and the Philippines; and Ganong Bros. in St. Stephen has workers from 10 or more different countries, including Korea, Vietnam and Romania, according to Romey Heuff, who is in charge of settlement services at the St. George-based Multicultural Association of Charlotte County. The regional centre opened this summer to provide services to newcomers to the county.
Paturel is the only one of the companies that is providing housing on-site. The Filipinos are living in modular housing at the plant that had housed workers from Newfoundland. The Newfoundland workers now live in trailers at a campground the company built, and some are boarding in homes. Paturel charges the Filipinos $70 a week for the housing, with the company subsidizing some of the cost. The Filipinos purchase their own food and do their own cooking.
At the other plants in the county, the foreign workers get four weeks of housing then have to find their own. They become scattered in different places, with some living in Saint John, "so they don't get the services like the Paturel girls do," notes Heuff. "It's difficult to find the workers and get them services. We're trying to address that by visiting at the workplaces or having them visit the centre." She adds that the companies want to retain the workers, but "it takes welcoming and some help."
An example of the issues that the centre is trying to address is the need for an Eastern Orthodox priest who speaks Romanian to hear confessions for the Romanian workers. For the Paturel workers, the association is helping with immigration issues, new work permits and permanent resident status, which all of the Filipinos are seeking. Heuff says the association also assists with driver's license and Medicare applications, offers classes of English as a Second Language at the Deer Island site, and provides social events. Offering transportation isn't yet an option, since the association does not have funding for insurance and liability for a bus.
"The girls are as happy as can be," says Heuff of the Filipino women. "They love being here. All of them want to stay and bring their families over." The association has been assisting Paturel to hire directly from the Philippines to help the workers bring relatives to the area. Heuff adds, "They are lonely and miss their families. But they've made new friends."