AUDIO about Direct ActionFoodLabourMigrationPovertySolidarity posted on November 26, 2010 by pdriftmier
+100 Migrant Workers Deported Following Wildcat Strike
Simcoe, Ontario Farm Owes + $1000 Per Worker In Wages
» Download file 'migrant workers podcast.mp3' (18MB)
Justicia For Migrant Workers has been working with the 100 workers
Over 100 temporary migrant workers were denied wages and rights on the Ghesquire Plants Ltd, in Simcoe Ontario. After staging an unauthorized ("wildcat") strike, most of the workers have been deported. Chris Ramsaroop is an organizer with Justicia for Migrant Workers. He is based in Toronto.
Check out Justicia online at www. justicia4migrantworkers.org.
This interview was first broadcast on Worm's-Eye View: Grassroots News, on CJSF 90.1 FM. Worm's-Eye View brings alternative, community-oriented social justice programming to the Lower Mainland of BC. We broadcast live Fridays from 10-11am PST.
The site for the Vancouver local of The Media Co-op has been archived and will no longer be updated. Please visit the main Media Co-op website to learn more about the organization.
Comments
Justicia for Migrant Workers
We're driving to Simcoe County Tuesday for a follow-up protest.
Smokey Dymny, of the Vancouver Island I.W.W. Branch is in Toronto this month visiting his children who attend school here. He is going with Justicia tomorrow to play songs for the deported and remaining workers.
Smokey (who's 63) arrived in Canada 60 years ago as a displaced Polish person,(D.P.) from a refugee camp in Germany. He has played musical support since the 1970s for: strikes, anti-nuclear-missile protests (he was a key organizer with ACT for Disarmament in the 80s), environmentalists, Coal Watch on Vancouver Island, the Quadra Island Sierra Club, animal Liberation groups, OCAP, the IWW, Earth First!, ant-Globalization fighters (he helped plan the anti-G-7 events in 1988 and was arrested 3x during the event when he &130 protesters leaped across double police barricades with Arrest Warrants for: Margaret Thatcher, Brian Mulroney, Ronald Reagan and the others) May Day and Mayworks events (Mayworks uses his "May Day" song at the opening of its meetings), and on parade floats in 3 years of Toronto Labour Day parades.
He has recorded two CD's (available from the IWW's main web site). and has another 100 original songs still to record (no money, alas) He is usually not paid more than bare expenses for these protests. Sometimes payment consisted of a bumper sticker, or a cup of coffee. He carries very colourful guitar cases covered in political bumper stickers.
He continues to write and to perform for anti-poverty, pro-union and anti-government events, mostly on Vancouver Island, in Cumberland and around Toronto. He has to advertise his CDs for sale as he is living on a reduced pension because his whole job category (13 Streetworkers in the Toronto Board of Education) was fired by the Mike Harris government in the 90s.
He can be reached for just about any kind political event (to perform or to write a song) at smokeydymny@rogers.com or 250-285-2447 after Jan 8th.