Labour and loss

Laid off textile workers, many of them
immigrants, wonder if the province will
help them out too

UNEMPLOYMENT MADE IN CANADA:
Mostafa Henaway (r) with former garment worker Isabello

by HEATHER ROBB

Laid off garment workers from Montreal’s once bustling textile industry say they are feeling the pinch in this economic recession, while their former employers—companies such as Lamour, Peerless, Golden Brand, Tricots Main and Gildan—have thrived in spite of it. According to the Immigrant Workers’ Centre of Montreal, these companies, whose head offices remain in Montreal, have managed to remain profitable by moving much of their manufacturing work to countries like Haiti, Bangladesh, India and China, where labour is cheap.

On June 12, the IWC, along with a group of about 40 laid off textile workers—many of them older immigrants who put in many years in the textile industry—held a rally at the National Assembly in Quebec to voice their demands. They are asking for better retraining programs and retirement packages for workers 55 or older—benefits akin to those accorded to laid off workers in sectors such as the forestry industry.

Gurvinder Kaur, who emigrated from India in 1999, worked at Lamour for six years before she was laid off in April 2007. Her Employment Insurance has long run out, and she hasn’t yet found a job.

“I would like to be retrained,” she says. “I have gone to many places looking for work, but I can’t find a job. When they see your age, they take your application, but then nobody calls. They need young people, not someone who is 45.” She added that she plans on taking French courses since language has been another barrier to employment for her.

On the subject of retraining, Mostafa Henaway, a community organizer for IWC, states that these people, who often have families, need financial assistance while they retrain.

Good times, bad times

According to the IWC, Kaur’s former employer, Lamour Hosiery, laid off 500 people in Montreal between 2004 and 2008. But it nevertheless continues to call itself an industry leader, and holds around 50 per cent of the market on socks in Canada. In 2007, it bought Terramar Sports, a company based in Tarrytown, New York—a sign that times are not so tough.

Henaway explains that the regulations that do exist to protect laid off workers are insufficient. The assistance program for collective dismissals in the textile industry operates like welfare, factoring in family income, unlike EI, which only considers the income of the individual worker. Kaur, who has two children living at home, said she receives $197 per month with this program.

Transforming the assistance program is also among the group’s list of demands.

At the June 12 rally, the workers were met by Quebec’s Minister of Employment, Sam Hamad, who took down everyone’s name and promised to find them each a job. “We are waiting for our jobs. He said he’d find us jobs. Well, one week is over and nobody has called us for a job yet,” says Kaur.

In response to the question of what the government would do for older workers, Hamad’s press secretary Alexandre Boucher states that, “We have some programs exclusively for older workers and we are going to meet each worker individually to find solutions for them.”

Henaway says he thought that by individualizing the issue, the minister overlooked the systemic nature of the problem.

Made where?

While the textile industry in Quebec has been in gradual decline over the years as quotas on garment imports have been lifted, the most recent hit came in 2004, when Canadian companies successfully pressured the federal government to change the country of origin rules in Canadian trade law. Before that time, a shirt that was labelled “Made in Canada” meant that 60 per cent of production was done in Canada; now, it is only 20.

“Twenty per cent means you can design, package and distribute it here—as opposed to manufacturing it, which is the bulk of the work,” says Henaway. So they were able to export the bulk of the work yet maintain some kind of standard to say that it was made in Canada.”

This change encouraged many companies to close their factories in Quebec, and opt to relocate in developing countries where not only are wages generally lower, but labour standards are far less regulated.

But while workers are losing their jobs, the largely abandoned Chabanel District, the eight or so blocks of Chabanel west of St-Laurent, once the place of employment for thousands of textile workers, is now being promoted by the city as a market centre for garment distributors. According to Henaway, the city has invested $15-million into transforming “the big, old, dusty factories” into a design shop and boutique district.