National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC)
Statement for International Women’s Day

Continue the militant struggle for women’s emancipation!

March 8, 2006

The National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada conveys our militant greetings of solidarity on this year’s International Women’s Day!

As Filipino women workers in Canada, we salute and pay tribute to those women before us who participated in the revolutionary struggle against Spanish colonialism and to those who continue today the unfinished revolution against US imperialism and local reaction in our beloved Motherland.

As women workers, we also commemorate the historic struggle when over 20,000 women garment workers staged a general strike in 1857 for 13 weeks in New York City calling for better pay and working conditions. Our struggle today for our rights and welfare as women workers in Canada is a continuation of the struggle against all forms of exploitation and oppression under imperialism.

The condition of Filipino women workers in Canada is worsening as more and more of us are being actively exported abroad by the fake, fascist and puppet Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Her anti-people economic policies have forced over eight million workers abroad to over 186 countries around the world. It is the remittances of these overseas workers – some $13 billion US yearly - which prop up Arroyo’s chronic ailing economy.

Since the 1980s, almost 100,000 women have come to Canada to work as live-in caregivers under Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program or LCP and its predecessor the Foreign Domestic Movement. Working for as low as $2 per hour, these women perform both productive and reproductive labour essential to capitalism for low wages and are vulnerable to all forms of abuse and exploitation. This program also sentences our women to a lifetime of live-in domestic, cleaning and other service sector work while not recognizing our former education or skills. Even after we finish the required 24 months of live-in work we are trapped as a segregated pool of cheap labour.

As live-in caregivers, we are also subject to arbitrary and unjust deportation for failure to complete the requirements of the LCP. In most cases, live-in caregivers are deported for not completing the 24 months of live-in work within three years.

One example is the case of Laila-Suan Elumbra who came to Canada to work as a live-in caregiver in Montreal in May 2003. She worked for 22 months before she became sick and was hospitalized for nearly nine months. For four of those months she was in a coma. Since then she struggled to recover, unable to move or talk.

Her working permit expired last Feb. 1, 2006 and because she is two months short of the required 24 months of live-in work she will likely be ordered deported from Canada. The hospital is also asking her to pay $2,000 a day in hospital bills since she had no medical coverage and has not been able to access services from the Philippine government through the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA).

Through Elumbra’s example we can see how Canada not only exploits our labour but also violates our basic human rights. Even after paying huge immigration fees, working for two years and contributing to the Canadian economy, if we become sick we are offered no health care coverage and ordered deported. After sending our remittances home and paying huge OWWA fees we are offered little or no protection from our own government.

Elumbra is only one of the 3000 workers (70% of whom are women) who leave the Philippines daily. Once abroad they face further exploitation and oppression in countries like Canada under imperialism's neo-liberal agenda.

The NAPWC also takes a critical look at the expansion of Canada’s recruitment and exploitation of migrant labour in the context of bilateral and multilateral agreements such as the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) General Agreement on Trade and Services or GATS, Mode 4. The GATS seeks to enhance the temporary movement of workers around the world in order to serve capital’s endless search for cheap labour and profit.

Despite the worsening conditions of women and other workers inside and outside of the Philippines, we are witnessing a growing militancy and resistance from the exploited peoples of the world. We continue to take inspiration and draw lessons from the militant women’s movement in the Philippines who connect the struggle for women’s liberation to the struggle for national and social liberation.

As Congresswoman Liza Maza, who is currently facing arrest with charges of rebellion has said, "If to rise in this Congress on behalf of womankind is a crime, so be it!" And as Cong. Crispin "Ka Bel" Beltran, a long time labour leader who is currently being detained and charged with sedition and rebellion has said, "If helping the poor is a crime, and fighting for freedom is rebellion, then I plead guilty as charged."

NAPWC also continues to unite with other working class women in our struggle against imperialism and for genuine human rights, equality and genuine development and for a just and lasting peace in our Motherland and abroad.

Scrap the anti-woman, racist Live-in Caregiver Program and other temporary worker programs!

Fight for our equality, human rights and genuine development!

Support and advance the Filipino people’s struggle for national democracy!

Imperyalismo, ibagsak! Down with imperialism!

Long live international solidarity!

Makibaka! Huwag matakot!
Issued by:
National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada
Philippine Women Centre of BC
Philippine Women Centre of Manitoba
Philippine Women Centre of Ontario
Philippine Women Centre of Quebec
PINAY (Montreal)