This is the full footage from the workshop given at CLAC's anti-capitalist teach-in on Saturday, November 24th.
Understanding and fighting austerity and crisis in Montréal
presented by Mostafa Henaway, Immigrant Workers’ Centre
A discussion on the changing nature of capitalism and the impacts of the economic crisis here in Montreal, including the increasing use over the past 3 decades of precarious labour, mainly in the form of migrant workers. These measures have perfected the “neo-liberal worker” in the race to the bottom, undermining gains made by past workers’ struggles, and contributing to the crisis we face today. This workshop will draw on the experience of the Immigrant Workers’ Centre which has been organizing with Temporary Agency workers, Temporary Foreign Workers, and undocumented workers from Montreal’s textile industry, food processing, and other vital service sectors. The workshop will present the view that it is necessary to see austerity and the crisis beyond the attacks on public education and services and as part of a much broader struggle, including the struggle for migrant justice and against Plan nord. Capital’s only way to get out of this worsening crisis is to revert to strategies integral to the beginning of the Canadian state: land theft with cheap migrant labour. Mostafa Henaway is a community organizer at the Immigrant Workers’ Centre in Montreal.
An excerpt from this audio was aired on CKUT's Off the Hour on Wednesday, December 5th, 17h-18h.
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