a blog by ryan hayes

No More Deaths

Poster I designed for upcoming event:

NO MORE DEATHS:
PEOPLE’S RESISTANCE TO UNDOCUMENTED & PRECARIOUS WORK
please participate in a Community-Labour discussion hosted by No One Is Illegal – Toronto

November 4, 2010
6:00pm – 8:00pm
OPSEU Union Hall, 31 Wellesley Street
(across from Wellesley Subway Station)

supported by: Justicia for Migrant Workers, Industrial Accident Victims Group of Ontario, OPSEU Workers of Color, Caregiver Action Centre, Labor Education Centre, Workers Action Centre, Health for All

 

speakers:

FRANCA IACOVETTA is Professor of History and author of “Such Hardworking People: Italian Immigrants in Postwar Toronto” that focused on the Hoggs Hollow disaster.

TZAZNA MIRANDA is an organizer with Justicia for Migrant Workers

MOHAN MISHRA is an organizer with No One Is Illegal – Toronto

also remarks by Cosmo Mannella (Director of The Labourers International Union of  North America (LIUNA) Canadian Tri-Fund); Elizabeth Ha (OPSEU Workers of Colour & OFL VP Workers of Colour); Jessica Ponting (Community legal worker with Industrial Accident Victims Group of Ontario); Pura Velasco (Caregiver Action Centre); Jojo Geronimo (Executive Director, Labor Education Centre) and members of the Workers Action Centre

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On September 10, 2010 two migrant workers Ralston White and Paul Roach died after inhaling toxic fumes at Filsinger’s Organic Foods appleorchard and processing facility near Owen Sound, Ontario. On December 24, 2009, Alexander  Bondorev, Aleksey Blumberg, Fayzullo Fazilov, Vladimir Korostin, migrant workers without full status, fell to their deaths when the scaffolding they were working on collapsed in half. Though these deaths made the mainstream news, migrant workers and undocumented workers continue to be hurt, to get ill and to die both in Canada or upon being deported to countries they have citizenship in. This injustice must end.

50 years ago, five Italian construction workers, Pasquale Allegrezza, Giovanni Correglio, Giovanni Fusillo, and Alessandro and Guido Mantella, died while working in a dangerous tunnel near Yonge Street in Toronto, remembered as the Hoggs Hollow disaster. Knowing that workers without full status were facing flagrant workplace violations, negligent employers and little legislative protection from occupational hazards, workers across the city rose up, and carried out a series of actions and strikes in a fight to organize the building trades.

Today as migrant workers continue to die, labour activists and community groups must gather together, to reignite a new fight.  A fight that creates far-reaching changes and challenges the very root of people’s inability to  access real safety – immigration status and racism.

Join community groups and labour activist to discuss and demand:

** Moratorium on deportations for all workers with WSIB claims and MOL complaints

** Access to Health and Safety without Fear

** Status for injured workers and their families

** Status for All!

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