On January 7, UFCW Canada activists joined more than two hundred other labour and community allies for a candlelight vigil held at the base of a Toronto apartment building where a Christmas Eve construction accident had killed four migrant workers, and left a fifth migrant with critical injuries.  The vigil was organized by Justice for Migrant Workers and No One Is Illegal -Toronto.
 

December 24, after the suspended scaffold they were standing on collapsed. Dilshod Mamurov, who also fell from the scaffold, remains in a Toronto hospital with a broken spine and two fractured legs.

None of the men were wearing safety harnesses, and it is still not clear if the non-union company that had contracted them had supplied the workers with any safety training or equipment.


All five victims were working in Canada under the Federal government’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program.

“Those men who died falling from that building died solely because they were migrant workers,” said Naveen Mehta, UFCW Canada Director of Human Rights, Equity & Diversity, while attending the vigil and pointing to the high rise in question. “They had no status to be able to complain, go to the government, or go to their employer and say ‘Hey! This is unacceptable.”

According to Jim Wright, a National Health and Safety specialist with UFCW Canada, "foreign workers in non-union settings often aren't told about their Health and Safety rights, including the right to refuse dangerous work. Even if these workers were concerned that the scaffold was dangerous, migrant workers often work in such desperate conditions that they many are afraid to report it because they might get fired and repatriated to their home country."

"It doesn't have to be this way, and it shouldn't be this way," says Wayne Hanley, the National President of UFCW Canada. There are thousands of UFCW Canada members across this country who are migrant workers and who don't face such risks because this union would never allow it."

"A worker is a worker is a worker – regardless of where they come from.  Migrant workers need greater protections given the vulnerable nature of their status in Canada.” 

A photo gallery of the vigil available on the UFCW Canada Facebook page located at www.facebook.com/ufcwcanada.
 

 Also see:

 
Toronto's migrants: Working in the Dark
Globe and Mail - January 10, 2009