International Migrants Day — December 18, 2010
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- Category: DIRECTIONS 10.50
In 2010, UFCW Canada, our community partners and allies continued to fight for dignity and respect for the over 250,000 migrant workers that enter Canada annually. For instance, in British Columbia, migrant farm workers at Abbotsford’s Sidhu and Sons Nursery (and see) became members of UFCW Canada Local 1518 and successfully negotiated a first collective bargaining agreement with their employer. What makes this victory so important is that, for the first time in Canadian labour legal history, migrant workers were organized as a separate bargaining unit from domestic workers. Similar successes occurred in Quebec as well.
UFCW Canada recently joined over 1,500 activists from around the world in Quito, Ecuador, to participate in the 4th World Social Forum on Migration (WSFM). The WSFM – which took place despite an attempted coup against the government of Rafael Correa – is an extension of the long running World Social Forum and is dedicated to advocating for migrant worker rights.
An agency of the United Nations has ruled a ban on farm unions violates the human rights of Ontario’s 100,000 migrant and domestic farm workers 
More than 130 migrant agriculture workers from Mexico and the Caribbean have gone home cheated of thousands of dollars, after the Ontario farm they worked at filed an intent to get creditor protection. Workers had not been paid since early November, after the owner departed for California. He has yet to return.
Over the past decade the Cesar E.