UEST COLUMN

Reaction to migrants
is a double-standard

by Seth Klein

| othing lays bare more clearly the
) contradictions of free-market global-
ization than the hysterical and often
ugly reaction to the arrival of the
sat Chinese migrant ships on B.C.’s
ss coast.

Perhaps the recent Chinese arrivals are gen-
uine convention refugees (a definite possibility
given China’s human rights record), or perhaps
they are mainly economic refugees. Only due
process and a proper refugee board hearing will
tell. In either case, the nasty “send them back”
reaction is unwarranted and based on a troubling
lack of understanding about global migration
and the world economy.

It is interesting indeed that many of the same
people who push for the free movement of goods,
services, investment and business professionals,
react with outrage and xenophobia at the move-
ment of workers. This apablesstendard repre-
sents the height of hypocrisy.

It is entirely predictable and-understandable
that people follow money. They always have.
More than anything, this is the history of immi-
gration. It’s what brought most of us here.

Canada has now sent numerous Team Canada
missions to Asia. One of the goals of these mis-
sions is to help Canadian corporations set up
shop in the free trade export processing zones of
Asia — industrial parks and cities where work-
ers come cheap, taxes are virtually non-existent,
and labour and environmental regulations go
unenforced. It’s wild-west capitalism, where
national borders are already passe for all but the
workers.

This arrangement
serves First World com-
panies well, but it is
premised on_ the
exploitation of cheap
Asian labour. Human
rights groups estimate
that a living wage in
China would be 87 cents
per hour. Yet according
to a study last year by
the U.S.-based National
Labour Committee,
Walmart, Ralph Lau-
ren, Ann Taylor, Esprit,
Liz Claiborne, K-Mart, Nike, Adidas and others,
through their sub-contractors, pay a mere frac-
tion of this, some as low as 13 cents an hour. The
profits flow back to First World shareholders.
And now people are following the money.

The country with more export processing zones
than any other is China.

a target for many of the world’s st age This is
an absurd proposition. Our global economic
order, in which both corporate profits and debt
interest payments flow to rich industrialized
countries (far oT the meager level of
foreign aid going to Third World countries), keeps
billions impoverished and has resulted in mil-
lions upon millions of economic refugees. Yet the
vast majority of these global migrants are being
absorbed, not by wealthy countries, but by the
poorest countries least able to afford the costs
and with the bleakest economic prospects.

There are, according to UN sources, at least
100 million Reon on the move around the world.
Of these, Canada accepted fewer than 200 thou-
sand immigrants and about 25 thousand
refugees last year, and our acceptance rate has
been declining in recent years.

Thus far, the Chinese migrant boats have car-
ried to BC a mere 600 or so people — a fraction
of Canada’s meager immigration and refugee
ota, and a dropin the

By conservative esti-
mates, there are 18 mil-
lion people working in
124 export zones. One of
the first of these was
established in 1980 in
Xiamen in Fujian
Province, the source of
the recent migrant boats.
More recently China has
“opened” many of its
coastal cities, including
Fuzhou, the Fujian

Our global economic
order keeps billions
impoverished and has
resulted in millions
upon millions of
economic refugees.

global bucket. We can
afford to treat these
people with respect
and to grant them due
process.

Ultimately, the
migrant boats are the
inevitable social fall-
out of free market glob-
alization.

And until we have a

‘lobal economic order
ased on justice and a

provincial capital, to for-
eign investment with various export incentives.

We cannot, in good conscience, continue to
reap the rewards of this unjust system in the
form of cheap goods from China, and then react
with horror when the inevitable flow of people
follows. Desperate economic, social and political
circumstances lead people to take desperate
actions — and a month at sea on a rickety boat
is certainly that.

Some are spinning a line that Canada’s alleged
lax immigration laws make us a global sucker —

great deal more social
and economic equality, more boats (and planes)
will come.

We can either respond with higher gates, a
beefed-up military and other hypocritical mea-
sures, or we can push for a new international sys-
tem that stops sucking the Third World of its
resources and capital.

Seth Klein is the B.C. Director of the Canadian
Centre for Policy Alternatives (www.policyalter-
natives.ca)

Ear) Foxcroft passes on

The I.W.A. lost one of its best-
known former leaders in September
when former Port Alberni Local 1-85
president Earl Foxcroft suddenly
passed away. Earl was one of the
most respected union members ever
seen in the ranks of the I.W.A.

He served as president of the Port
Alberni Local for over 20 years until
he retired in early 1992. At that time
he moved north of Kamloops. B.C. to
build a retirement home with his
wife Claire and lived there until his
untimely death.

Earl joined the I.W.A. in Septem-
ber of 1951 when he hired on at the
Tahsis Company on the west coast of
Vancouver Island and remained a
dedicated union member for over 40
years.

“Earl was the essence of what
trade unionism is all about,” said
national union president Dave Hag-
gard, who was tutored in part by
Brother Foxcroft at the local union
level. “He was above all respected by
the rank and file and fought on their
behalf. He fought to negotiate and
enforce good collective agreements,
get apprenticeship programs into
place and fight for the rights of dis-
abled forest workers.”

Until his death, Foxcroft remained
an active member of the board of the
National Institute of Disability Man-
agement and Research in Port
Alberni. He was the founding Labour
Co-Chair of the Institute’s predeces-
sor, the Disabled Forest Workers
Foundation of Canada.

“Karl was passionate about the
issue of injured workers,” said Hag-
gard. “He’d seen a lot of deaths and
serious disabling injuries in just our
local union over the years and
wanted to do something positive so
the disabled could be reintegrated
back into meaningful jobs and have
a meaningful lives.”

Following his retirement, he was
appointed as the union’s National

Disabled Workers representative
which help champion the first joint
labour-management programs for
the disabled at MacMillan Bloedel
operations in Port Alberni.

Earl was a member of the I.W.A.’s
national executive board and a mem-
ber of the provincial negotiating com-
mittee for over two decades and
served as an executive officer of the
B.C. Federation of Labour.

He also served an alternate execu-
tive board member of the Interna-
tional Woodworkers of America and
sat at the table for the Canadian
membership on several occasions
until the international split up in
1987. A photo of the last interna-
tional board meeting, with Earl pre-
sent, hangs in the national union
office today.

He was either the chairman or
recording secretary of the union’s
constitutions committee from the
1960’s until his retirement and
played an important role in drafting
IWA-CANADA’s national constitu-
tion which was adopted in 1987.

Outside the I.W.A., Earl chaired
the Provincial Apprenticeship Board
in B.C. and sat on the Board of Gov-
ernors of the British Columbia Insti-
tute of Technology.

The soft spoken and deliberate
Foxcroft survived during tumultuous
times in Port Alberni and was a
strong leader — through times of
massive layoffs through technologi-
cal changes, battles with companies
over the export of logs, strikes, mill
closures and camp shutdowns and
fights against radical environmen-

ists.

At his final convention as a dele-
gate in Toronto in 1991, then
national I.W.A. president Jack
Munro put it simply: “He’s been the
president of Local 85 for a long, long
time and to survive in 85 as president
for a long, long time is an accom-
plishment.”

¢ Pictured here at a 1989 rally, Brother Foxcroft was an outspoken leader.

Earl did accomplish a great deal
for working people. At his final con-
vention he had a few words.

“I'm going to wish everybody a lot
of luck and I hope for the younger
people that are in this room, that
they look at the I.W.A. and they stay

Wee Al

5

involved and understand that noth-
ing worthwhile comes easy.”

“The things that I’ve done, I don’t
think there’s been a hell of a lot of it
that comes easy, but what I can look
back on, I can say I'm comfortable,
Tve done a good job.”

‘Scott Lunny, Director, Policy & Information Servic
500 - 1285 West Pender Street
Vancouver, BC V6E 482

BE A YOUTH ORGANIZER

The Industrial, Wood and Allied Workers of Canada Youth Organizer Program is designed
to get sons and daughters of I.W.A. members and other interested young people involved
in our union. A youth organizer candidate is preferably under 25 years old, is a recent or

current student and is motivated, motivated, motivated!

Be part of the I.W.A. Canada Youth Organizer Program:
* LEARNmore about unions and the I.W.A,
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40/LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1999