On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, organizer Mostafa Henaway talks about his years of work with the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal.
Though it is not yet as intense as in the United States, and there have been important victories as well, in the last few decades the membership and strength of trade unions in Canada has been gradually declining. As well, the ways in which work and employment are organized have shifted drastically towards things like greater precarity for more and more workers, and an increasing role for forms of work mediated by things like placement agencies and programs for temporary foreign workers. One of the ways that organizers have been responding to these changes is through increasing use of organizational forms outside of mainstream unions, including workers centres. Heneway talks about what the IWC does, the strengths and challenges of the worker centre model, and the importance of centering the experiences of precarious workers and workers who are immigrants to Canada.
[audio:http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/309443645-scott-neigh-talking-radical-trr-ep-16-jun-122013-towards-a-new-model-of-worker-organizing.mp3]To learn more about Montreal’s Immigrant Workers Center, click here.
Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada through in-depth interviews that concentrate not on current events or the crisis of the moment, but on giving people involved in a broad range of social change work a chance to take a longer view as they talk about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. To learn more about the show in general, click here.
You can also learn more about ways to listen or go to the show’s page on rabble.ca. To learn more about suggesting grassroots groups and organizations for future shows, click here. For details on the show’s theme music, click here.
Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Sudbury, Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.
