The Immigrant Worker Center IWC is a social justice organization based in Montreal, Québec, Canada. Their goal is to defend the rights of immigrants in their workplaces through a community labor approach and by offering resources and referrals to immigrant workers.
Contents
Mission statement
The Immigrant Worker Center is defending the rights of the immigrants in their shoes. The organization’s main objectives are to improve the working conditions of the immigrants and to offer them referrals regarding issues at work such as harassment, threat, workplace accident, lack of paid vacation and overtime, or maternity leave. The IWC has a community labour approach, as its goal is to educate, not only the immigrant workers but also the population in general on the situation.
History
The IWC was founded in 2000 by a small group of Filipino-Canadian workers. The idea of a center came from the experience of two of the founders: Tess Tesalona and Marco Luciano. Both had previously worked as union organizers and became aware of the lack of resources available to immigrant workers. The goal of the center was therefore to provide a place for workers to talk about their situations and provide a critique of unions A year after its creation, the Immigrant Worker Center received a grant from the social-justice fund of the Canadian Auto Workers and was able to expend the scope of its activity to address broader immigrant workers issues by providing educational tools and critical analysis beyond the concern of the unions.
Current activities
The Immigrant Worker Center offers a broad range of activities to the immigrant workers and their communities. The organization helps union organizing in workplaces with an important proportion of immigrants. The IWC it also provides individual-rights counseling and workshops on issues like the history of labor movement. In addition, it offers a program called “Skills for Change”, which teaches computer literacy and gives immigrants the opportunity to learn how to create, format, and edit documents, and become skilled in the use of Internet. The program also incorporates information on labour rights in Canada and general social policy education. The Immigrant Workers Center launched, in 2005, a community festival called MayWorks, dedicated to teaching the community about the struggles of the immigrant women through artistic projects. The cultural event took place on Women’s day and the Center’s goal is to raise awareness to the condition of immigrant women by repeating the festival every year.
Following the Haiti earthquake of 2010, the Immigrant Worker Center joined with UFCW Canada and made a donation of $10,000 to Doctors Without Borders in order to assist in the relief efforts. “As an organization that works to further migrant rights, we pledge to continue to work in solidarity with the Haitian community of Montreal to support workers’ rights as Haitian workers struggle to aid their family and friends back home”, declared Jill Hanley from the Immigrant Workers Center regarding the Center’s donation
Campaigns
The IWC campaigns are usually the result of workers seeking the help of the Center for specific, personal issues. The first campaign of the IWC occurred in 2000 and aimed to defend a domestic worker, Melca Salvador, a “domestic worker admitted to Canada under the Live-in Caregiver Program, against deportation”. The IWC helped Salvador win her case and brought the issue of importing immigrant labourers to the public sphere.
The second campaign conducted by the Immigrant Workers Center concerned the Labour Standards Act. Since most immigrant workers are not unionized, the Act represents their rights and is one of the only resources available to them. In 2002, the IWC and several other social justice groups started a campaign in order to reform the Act and succeed in including the coverage of domestic workers. Although the campaign was considered an important victory, the Labour Standard Act still has many flaws that the Immigrant Workers Center has not been able to change.
The Immigrant Workers Center initiated many actions related to the North-to-South relocation of production trend that occurred in Montreal since 2003; this tendency resulted in several job losses without proper compensation, especially affecting immigrant employees. The first accomplishment of the Center was to convince the Montreal Jazz Festival to stop selling T-shirts manufactured by Gildan because of their factory closures in Montreal and poor labour practices in locally and in Honduras. The festival consequently adopted an "ethical buying" policy. L’Amour Inc. also followed that pattern of transfers and started to close its operations in the city around 2006 and relocated its factories in South America. Over 600 jobs were lost in the process and former employees, most of whom were immigrants, did not get any compensation. In 2007, a group of workers, unexpectedly laid off by L’Amour Inc., went to the Immigrant Workers Center seeking for help. The campaign eventually expanded to include 70 workers protesting their situation and seeking compensation for years of service. In 2008, the Immigrant Worker Center allied with the Unit Here organization to help laid off workers of manufacturing company Golden Brand get a compensation. The company eventually agreed to give $3,5 million to its 540 previous employees but, while this was an historic victory in the clothing industry, most of them still face unemployment On June 12, 2009, the IWC and former textile workers organized a rally at the National Assembly in Québec to meet with Minister of Employment Sam Hamad and asked for better regulations and retraining programs. Although Hamad promised to remedy the situation and find employment for the laid off immigrant workers, no solutions were actually put in place. Here the point is that non- immigrant visa only for those who want to work in USA after migrating from their native countries. The people who are warmly welcomed are doctors, engineers, computer professionals, nurses because the United States can use their skills for its own betterment.
Research and publication
The Immigrant Workers Center conducted several researches, mostly based on real cases brought to them, including the Report on Systemic Discrimination: Employment and Poverty in 2000. In 2007, five members of the IWC published Fight Back: Workplace Justice for Immigrants. Drawing on the experience of 50 foreign workers, the book relates the challenges they face when trying to join the workforce in Canada and the exploitation they are victimized by.