Canada’s federal government is facing a nearly half-billion dollar class action lawsuit from seasonal agricultural workers who say they were denied benefits and exploited, thanks to what they’re calling racist policies from the 1960s that are still in place today.

One of the plaintiffs…told CTV News in an interview from Jamaica that in his six years labouring as a temporary foreign worker eight months at a time in Leamington, Ontario, he lived with 12 men in one room and didn’t get paid overtime. He says his health was also affected by the pesticides he sprayed…

Palmer was let go with no notice. Because his work permit was tied to his employer, he had to leave the country, and was not eligible to receive any employment insurance, even though premiums had been withheld from all of his pay cheques…

EI payouts are denied for around 50,000 temporary foreign workers who come to Canada every year to work the fields, before heading back to their homes in countries that include islands in the Caribbean, Mexico, India and the Philippines, Century said.

The lawsuit alleges that over the past 15 years, the federal government has taken in some $472 million in EI premiums…