Reclaim May 1st, International Worker’s Day! March for workers’ righ

May Day Organizing Committee
Statement

1 May 2008

History of May Day

We come together today on May First, International Workers’ Day, as a historic commemoration of the social and economic achievements of the working class and labor movement dating back to the struggle for the eight-hour work day in the United States and Canada on May 1, 1886. We continue to come together, 122 years later as an international celebration of the continuing struggle for the end of exploitation and oppression around the world! We, as the May Day Organizing Committee in Vancouver, call upon all workers and oppressed peoples in Canada to Reclaim May 1st and International Worker’s Day! and March for Workers’ Rights!

The International Picture

The international picture may seem bleak. People are facing famine, poverty, war, and political and economic crises at every turn. The workers of the world have not escaped this dire reality. Imperialist globalization, through the deregulation of basic protections, privatization of public services and trade liberalization in order to seek higher profits has workers around the world facing undeniable attacks. Basic workers’ rights are being attacked and those who wish to organize the working class to improve those rights are being targeted and persecuted by the capitalists, with support from their respective governments.

Many countries face the deepening of flexible labour practices, essentially clawing back hard-won rights of workers to maximize their exploitation for maximum profit.

With the U.S.-led permanent “war on terror”, the working-class continues to serve as cannon fodder. We have now reached the fifth anniversary of the illegal war on Iraq, the seventh year of the invasion of Afghanistan, and countless years of U.S.-led military dominance of its neo-colonies such as the Philippines. The numbers of lives lost due to imperialist war is multiplying in the name of profits for the US-military industrial complex.

The leaders of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico have been meeting behind closed doors in their pursuit of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), to create an integrated and secure perimeter around North America and to ensure an uninterrupted flow of goods within North America. ‘Harmonizing” regulations between these three countries has already had its affect. In Canada, there is now a Canadian “no-fly list” and “risk profile” for every traveler and transportation worker, along with increased racial profiling. The SPP has also encouraged public services being undermined in favour of public-private partnerships and further privatization.

If workers do not remain in their countries to be exploited, or are not sent off to war, many instead are sent abroad as migrant workers. Countries desperate for foreign-exchange use this stop-gap measure as it is being trumpeted by international structures as a ‘solution’ and ‘development strategy’ for the Third World. The exploitation and oppression of migrant workers around the world is intensifying  rapidly as their labour power is being exported.

But all is not lost, because the people of the world continue to struggle against these attacks!  Resistance is fertile, where movements are growing around the world, even in imperialist countries such as Canada.

Attacks on the Canadian working-class

Hard-won wages, benefits and social services are now being cruelly eroded as Canada joins other imperialist countries in forcing through policies of flexible labour in the name of ‘free trade’ and the neo-liberal agenda.

Even more vulnerable and under attack are Canada’s immigrant, migrant, and undocumented workers whose numbers in Canada are increasing. The imperialist nature of Canada can be seen through its plunder of the Third World and particularly its exploitation of immigrant, migrant and undocumented workers from the Third World. The Canadian government’s recent move to change the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to allow the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to ‘cherry-pick’ applicants, clearly demonstrates how Canada locks and unlocks the doors to Canada depending on its needs for cheap and flexible labour.

The experience of temporary workers under long-standing programs such as the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) and the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) has shown that migrant workers are vulnerable to many abuses and severe exploitation with little or no protection from their home or host countries. The expansion of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program raises worries of more violations of temporary workers at the hands of unscrupulous employers.

Working class women are experiencing increased exploitation as they are pushed into low-wage and flexible jobs. Cuts to childcare, welfare, and disappearing public services mean that women will continue to perform unpaid or low-paid labour in the home to take care of children and elderly people, in addition to maintaining their families and communities.

Young workers are also being hard-hit by flexible labour tactics and policies of imperialist globalization that are conditioning youth with ideas like “life-long learning” in the face of rising tuition fees while preparing youth to accept low-paying, unstable and perpetual contract work.  Immigrant and migrant youth end-up in low-wage work at fast food chains or in factories with little to no knowledge about their rights and protection. With these rapid changes and the increasing use of cheap migrant and immigrant labour, racism is being used to divide workers in Canada, keeping us from seeing our common exploitation and enemy.

Need for resistance and solidarity

It is not surprising that in the last decade, there has been a groundswell of workers’ and people’s discontent and protest in Canada. In B.C., workers’ have been on the verge of launching general strikes twice in the last few years. It is urgent, now more than ever, that workers and the oppressed in Canada stand together in genuine solidarity against these intensifying attacks of the imperialist system.

We must continue our work to reclaim the militant tradition of May 1 as International Workers’ Day. We must continue to march for workers’ rights!

We must continue to foster genuine solidarity amongst all workers, whether they be migrant, immigrant, undocumented, indigenous, or Canadian workers, and all exploited and oppressed sectors in Canadian society.

Expose & Oppose the exploitation of migrant, immigrant & undocumented labour!
No to flexible labour!
Build genuine international solidarity against imperialism!

Members of the May Day Organizing Committee include: Alliance of People’s Health, B.C. Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines, Bus Riders Union, Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), Filipino Nurses Support Group, Filipino-Canadian Youth Alliance-Vancouver/Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada, FMLN, Grassroots Women, IWW Vancouver, Justicia for Migrant Workers-BC, People’s Front, Philippine Women Centre of B.C., Public Service Alliance Canada-Vancouver & District Area Council and SIKLAB-B.C. (Advance and Uphold the Rights of Overseas Filipino Workers), Justicia for Migrant Workers – B.C.

The rally is also endorsed by: Investing in Health Forum, B.C, La Surda Latin American Collective, Worker-Communist Party of Iran, VDLC Young Workers' Committee and the Young Communist League