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Immigrant women
most vulnerable,
most exploited

By KERRY McCUAIG

Maria, M, 40, is a sewing
machine operator who used to
work for a Montreal sportswear
contractor on piece-work rates.
During her first week, she was
asked to work from 7 a.m. to 7
p.m. to fill rush orders. She
should have earned about $220.
($3.27, Quebec minimum wage
for the first 45 hours and time and
a half for the rest). However, her
employer gave her $125 and told
her she should be grateful be-
cause .of high unemployment.
Two months later she was still
working the same hours for the
same pay. When the foreman dis-
covered she was thinking of com-
plaining, she was fired with no
cheque for her final week’s work.

Maria’s situation is not iso-
lated. Stories like hers could be
told by any of the immigrant
women who are located in the
poorly paid labor market sectors
where they work as domestics,
chambermaids, building clean-
ers, dish washers, waitresses and
sewing machine operators.

The problems of immigrant
women have been outlined by
Sheila McLeod Armopoiulos in a
paper for the Canadian Advisory
Council on the Status of Women
which she presented to a wo-
men’s seminar in Ottawa last Ap-
ril.

In Montreal, Toronto and Win-
nipeg, about half of textile and
almost all clothing industry work-
ers are immigrant women. De-
spite labor cutbacks in the indus-
try since 1974, immigration had to
shore up the industry. by.import-
ing over 4,000 women. The main
reason for the chronic shortages

‘and high turn-over is that workers

will tolerate the low wages, un-
even hours and poor working
condjtions that characterize most
textile and garment industry
“sweatshops” only for as long as
they have to, the study reveals.

Many however do not have the
choice to work elsewhere. Most
have only a few years of schooling
and a third speak neither English
nor French

Language Training

Under Employment and Im-
migration’s language training
programs, language training with
living allowances are offered to
immigrants who show they need
knowledge of English or French
to get a job. However, because
unskilled immigrants can only
find work in factories and other
establishments where knowledge
of either language is not essential,
they are often excluded from
these programs.

The government argues, the
paper says, that these women will
pick up the language on the job, or
that they can take language
courses after work. However sur-
rounded by fellow immigrants
and frequently supervised by
foremen who speak their native
language, the factory is not the
place to learn a second language.
As for night courses, after work-
ing a 10- or 12-hour day and with a
family to care for, the majority of
women do not have the energy to
tackle night classes as well.

Now a new planned govern-
ment policy will effectively re-
move all low-skilled immigrant
women from any access to lan-
guage training with allowances.

This training will be restricted to
the ‘‘independent’’ class of im-
migrant and in some cases re-
fugees. ‘‘Assisted relatives’ and
‘family class’ immigrants, which
includes the majority of immig-
rant women, will not be eligible.

Pilot projects in Vancouver and
Toronto have shown that the
most successful language training
for women is on the job. Particip-
ants in these projects were given
time off work to attend daily lan-
guage classes for six weeks and
were paid the minimum hourly
wage. Costs were shared by the
company and government. The
classes were so popular that far
more women than could be ac-
commodated asked to partici-
pate.

Following this experiment no
further projects occurred. How-
ever women’s groups and immig-
rant organizations are pressuring
the government to continue with
this type of language training
program.

Garment Industry Ghetto —

Without this training these
women will find themselves stuck
in the garment industry ghetto.
With an immobile and unin-

formed workforce the employers .

in such industries are having a
field day flaunting even the mini-
mal wage and labor standards
laws that exist.

Minimum wages, overtime,
holiday, vacation provisions and
maternity leaves vary from pro-
vince to province. The policing of
these standards in all provinces
are very lax and double standards
regarding enforcement of various
pieces of labor legislation abound.
Unions are most frequently
brought to heel for their infrac-
tions while a blind eye is turned to
illegal actions by companies.

For example, in May 1978, Ar-
nopoulos relates, four Montreal
transit union officials started serv-
ing two to three month jail sen-
tences for rejecting back-to-work
injunctions during a strike. Atlan-
tic Hosiery at the samie time has
been found guilty of not paying
minimum wage to a large number
of its workers, some of whom
were receiving as little as 60 cents
an hour. Yet no fine, let alone jail
term, was levied against the own-

. er. Instead, he suffered no penalty

and was forced to pay his workers
only six months of the batk pay
they had lost.

Only 40% of both textile and
garment workers are unionized.
Strong and well-enforced provin-
cial labor standards legislation is
required to protect the rest of the
industry’s workers.

Because the majority of work-
ers are under provincial jurisdic-
tion, it is clear that the provinces
could do a great deal to reduce
exploitation of immigrant women
in the labor market.

Regular independent inspec-
tions and steep fines and impris-
onment for delinquent employers
is the alternative to workers hav-
ing to rely almost solely upon red-
ress through complaint, the study
recommends.

Because of weak inspection
systems, the absence of fines, and
the limitation in the legislation on
the number of months employees
can be reimbursed for back lost
pay, it is now in the interest of

TRIBUNE PHOTO — KERRY McCUAIG

companies not to honor minimum
standards legislation.
Domestic Servants

General domestic work is
another largely female immigrant
work domain. Poor pay and work-
ing conditions are prevalent in
this sector. because it is not in-
cluded in provincial labor stan-
dards legislation. Working condi-
tions and benefits are at the

‘employer’s discretion. As a result

the current rates of pay for live-in
domestics average about $50 a
week plus room and board for a 70
to 80 hour week, with no medical,
sick ileave, holiday or vacation
benefits.

To solve the demands for
domestics, the Canadian gov-
ernment has resorted to a work
permit policy. Women are re-
stricted to a two or three year
stay, are not eligible for perma-
nent residence and are not al-
lowed to change employment.

Senior immigration officials say
the study states that this policy
was introduced because women
will work as domestics only if
they have no choice. They point
out that Canadian women will go
on unemployment insurance or
even welfare before they will take
domestic jobs. They add that al-
lowing domestics to enter Canada
as landed immigrants will only
compound the domestic shortage
problem. On arrival, they soon

discover that factory work pays

better.

This work permit policy is rela-
tively new. Until 1975, under
another government arrange-
ment, women were allowed into
the country if they were prepared
to spend at least one year as
domestic servants before going
onto other work. However, they
were required to be “‘single,
widowed, divorced, without
minor children or the encumbr-
ance of common-law relation-
Ships...

In 1975 as this program was re-
placed with the other, there was a
number of deportation of women
who entered as landed immig-
rants under that program.. The
immigration department said the
women were. deported because
they had lied about not having

Labor Rights for Domestic Servants has been formed in Ontario to try
to pressure the government to give domestic workers rights under the
provincial labor code. Photo shows Toronto demonstration last April.

children on their entrance appli-
cations, a practice which had not
bothered the authorities for the
past 20 years.

Domestic workers must be
given the right to organize and be
covered under provincial labor
laws so that they have at-least the
same protection as most other
Canadian workers. Laws which
restrict the job mobility of any
worker are archaic and must be
abolished.

New Immigration act

The above crackdown on im-
migrant women was followed
with the new immigration act pas-
sed in August 1977. It stipulates
al] landed immigrants, no matter
how long they have been in Cana-
da, are subject to deportation if
authorities feel they might engage
in subversive, criminal or anti-
social acts.

Subversion in the act is not
itemized, Amopoulos points out.
As a result, immigrants fear that if
they complain about an
employer, he may in revenge tell
damaging stories about them to
the immigration department. En-
gaging in union activities could
quite possibly be classified as
subversive activity.

The power this act gives to the
authorities leaves the immigrant
almost totally vulnerable to arbit-
rary government actions or to
anyone who wishes to complain
about them.

The law is a blatant violation of
the immigrant’s civil liberties.
There is no reason why an immig-
rant should not have the same
rights as citizens on arrival except
the right to vote.

* * *

Immigration built Canada. To-
day, as in history, they have al-
ways been the most exploited sec-
tion of the workforce and immig-
rant women clearly emerge as the
most disadvantaged. The
strength .of democracy and the
strength of the labor movement in
this country is dependent upon
their being able to take their equal
place in Canadian society, un-
hampered by. restrictive legisla-

tion and assisted by the same

governments which offered them

_a home.
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 15, 1979—Page 7