Filipino workers group will be crucial part of Toronto labour movement in 21st century

Filipino workers group will be crucial part of Toronto labour movement in 21st century

JOHN CARTWRIGHT

Interview with John Cartwright

By Mila Astorga-Garcia

The Philippine Reporter caught up with John Cartwright, President of the Toronto & York Region Labour Council, for an interview, midway through the First Filipino Workers’ Network Conference held April 9, 2016 in Toronto.

The Philippine Reporter: How significant is this initiative to the overall labour movement in Toronto, in terms of the organization of the first Filipino Workers’ Network, and the holding of this first conference, only 20 months after it was founded?
John Cartwright: We see this as a historic event of the Filipino-Canadian workers coming together, organizing themselves, reaching out to their Filipino workers, reaching out to the community, and being able to start shaping an agenda for Filipino-Canadian workers. They’ve created a program that will be discussed with the group today, there’s training that will be discussed with everybody today. We had an amazing keynote speaker (Maria Castañeda) who I think has inspired everybody in the room, Filipino and non-Filipino .

This is also a continuation of a journey. Every generation of immigrants who has come to the City has found the need to organize. When we go back a hundred and something years, there were Irish Canadians organizing, and then Jewish garment workers organizing, and then Italian construction workers organizing, then West Indian Health care workers organizing, and now the Filipinos are such fastest growing immigrant group in Toronto, taking that step of organizing as a network. This is a really important time for us.

TPR: With regards with the distinct character of workers here, many of them temporary foreign workers, is that something that would somehow shape the development of the overall labor movement?

JC: There’s a unique character to the Filipino immigration to Canada. So many came as live in caregivers, people came in as temporary foreign workers. And this is especially so in the last decade, with the Conservative government changing the rules, making it so much harder for people to come as landed immigrants. What it caused for is for the labour movement progressives to come together to support the right of everybody to come to this country with full rights, with the full journey to citizenship. And as our friend Maria Castañeda talked about in her work in New York City, her union pushing for regularization of immigration, similarly our union movement in Toronto has been supportive, but it has been very clear that with the Filipino workers they should become more focused on the legislative agenda they have to undertake.

TPR: Do you have anything more to add on the significance of the development of the Filipino Workers’ Network in the overall labour movement in Toronto?

JC: It’s remarkable how much remittances play in the role of the Filipino economy, and play in the reality of the lives of every Filipino worker. And so we know that people are very concerned about making sure that their work is secure, that their work is going to pay decent wages, because many people here are supporting more than just themselves; they support families back home too. So that brings a real immediacy to the need for people to becoming involved in this fight for justice, for economic justice, and social justice. I’m very very confident that the development of the Filipino Workers Network will be become a crucial part of the labour movement in the 21st century of Toronto.