Quebec: Demonstration for Justice

On May 5, 2008, undocumented migrant workers marched through the street in Montreal demanding to be seen -- they are tired of being invisible to justice. More than 400 marchers, according to The Gazette, "paraded through the city's working-class Côte des Neiges district demanding recognition, respect and rights for what organizers said are 40,000 non-status migrants in the Montreal region."  Among these migrant workers include a good percentage of domestic workers who help Canadians do their laundry and mind their children.

The Canadian Hispanic Congress tells The Gazette, an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 such individuals are quietly used across Canada to keep the nation's economic wheels turning.  Without immigration papers or status, however, organizers said, they are largely forced to live and work underground.

Easy targets for exploitation, they survive on the margins with virtually no recourse to the basic protections most in our society take for granted - in a nation built by successive waves of immigrants.

In Quebec, "domestic workers are the only salaried workers who are not guaranteed Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail du Québec (CSST) coverage by their employer," Tessalona said, on of the founders of the Immigrant Workers Centre.  Domestic workers and care-givers, usually immigrant and female, who care for children, the infirm or aged but do not live in, are not eligible for compensation when they suffer work-related back pain, muscular or skeletal disorders, allergies, burns, cuts or stress.

The Immigrant Workers Centre used the march to gather names for a two-pronged demand to submit to David Whissell, Quebec's labour minister, seeking:

- Mandatory CSST coverage of domestic workers, regardless of immigration status or validity of work permit.
- That basic CCST information be available in languages other than French.

Together with other migrant workers, visibility is an important success to the larger victory of labor rights for domestic workers.  An important alliance for the domestic workers to consider as a part of a larger strategy to gain visibility is exactly what the migrant workers did in Montreal -- Critical mass to gain visibility as a way to further the movement of all migrant workers.

Original Source