Canadian Immigrants / From dream to mirage

On the fifth of anniversary of Progressive Moulded Products closing, Winnie Ng, who spearheaded the union effort to get the workers back on their feet, has written a comprehensive report about the lessons learned and the challenges that lie ahead as more “racialized workers” face outsourcing, downsizing and restructuring.

The longtime labour activist and educator, who currently holds the CAW-Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice at Ryerson University, calls her 87-page post-mortem “a tribute to the resilience and resistance of the former PMP (Progressive Moulded Products) workers who were robbed of their jobs, severance compensation and sense of security and pride as contributing members of the community.”

The study’s principal finding: People who have lived in this country for half of their lives — and are assumed by policy-makers to be fully integrated immigrants — are “worse than when they came” if they lose their job. That is why Ng called the report Immigrant All Over Again?

When the victims of the PMP shutdown re-entered the employment market, they faced racial discrimination, gender discrimination and age discrimination. Even with retraining, most of them failed to secure full-time jobs. Many ended up in temporary, casual or intermittent work. Some are still unemployed. Seventy-seven per cent now earn less than they did when the plant closed. Half are in worse health.

Unlike newcomers to Canada, they had no access to immigrant settlement programs (which include language upgrading, help finding affordable housing, setting up a business and seeking work). Unlike the graduates pouring out of Ontario’s colleges and universities, they were neither young nor Canadian-educated (although half the PMP workers did have post-secondary training).

Compared to other immigrants who lost their jobs in the recession, the PMP workers were lucky. They were eligible for employment insurance benefits. They had Canadian work experience. And they had a Workers Action Centre to connect them to retraining programs and social services and help them make the transition to new employment. But none of these advantages was enough to compensate for their skin colour, their age or their accented English.

“There is a strong narrative that poverty is simply a newcomer phenomenon. This discourse holds that we were all immigrants once and that, over time, we will catch up,” said Salmaan Khan, a member of the research team. “From what we have recorded throughout this project, many workers living here for more than 20-25 years still find themselves living in precarity on the margins of society. For these workers there never was a ‘Canadian dream.’ ”

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor

via Canadian dream a mirage for immigrants: Goar | Toronto Star.