Statement of the International Migrants Alliance for International Labor Day 2021
Migrants workers of the world, fight for our rights, strengthen our movement, and build solidarity with local workers and peoples for genuine change!
Statement of the International Migrants Alliance for International Labor Day 2021
The International Migrants Alliance (IMA) marks International Labor Day 2021 by calling on all migrants, immigrants, refugees and displaced peoples in the world to fight for our rights, strengthen our movement and build solidarity with local workers and peoples for genuine social change amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the severe economic crisis, and looming wars. The IMA stands for strengthening working-class unity, including solidarity between migrant workers and local workers, who are under increasing attacks by imperialism and fascism.
This year marks the 135th anniversary of the Haymarket Square massacre, where scores of workers were killed in the struggle for an eight-hour workday. This event is important to the origins of the global commemoration of International Workers’ Day. We pay tribute to the martyrs of Haymarket Square, and all martyrs of the migrant and local workers’ struggles all over the world who have fought for the rights we enjoy today and for the many rights we still have to enjoy. We pay tribute to them first and foremost by continuing their struggle, which means addressing the present-day challenges faced by the working people of the world given their present composition.
It has been more than a year since the Covid-19 pandemic reached crisis proportions. We salute the migrant and local workers at the health, economic and rights struggle frontlines who have persevered in their work, even risking their and their family members’ lives, and have helped many people survive. We also salute all migrant and local workers who have participated in, and contributed to, various mutual aid and solidarity initiatives to help others during the pandemic’s darkest periods.
Migration under monopoly capitalism is primarily about cheap and repressed labor. This goes hand-in-hand with migrant workers’ poor, even subhuman, working and living conditions. The pandemic has triggered one of the worst economic crises in the history of the world capitalist system, and migrants have suffered immensely. Their rights, lives, work and mental health have been placed at extreme risk.
Many workers suffered job loss, work reduction and wage cuts -- and migrant workers were some of the first to experience these. Many migrant workers were denied financial assistance in receiving countries, while their families were denied the same in their origin countries. They were excluded from health services, from mass testing to provision of vaccines. The pandemic and the economic crisis have worsened racism and xenophobia towards Asians and all migrants. Migrant workers also suffered from repressive measures that governments implemented in taking advantage of the pandemic.
In response to this situation, the IMA and the migrant workers of the world have put forward the following immediate demands in time for this year’s International Labor Day: (1) inclusion of all migrants, regardless of status, in vaccination roll-out, testing, health and social services, aid and relief, (2) addressing the worsening working and living vulnerabilities of migrants in terms of overwork, wage reduction, denial of rest days, stigmatisation, poor accommodation, among others, (3) junking of state exactions and illegal collection of fees by recruitment agencies, (4) opposing racism, discrimination, militarisation and forms of violence like Asian Hate, and (5) immediate access to justice and livelihood for repatriated migrants.
All these issues and demands are reflected in the ongoing campaign of the IMA to Fight C.O.V.I.D. (C-Coronavirus, O-Overwork and other inhumane working conditions, V-Vulnerability, I-Inequality, D-Discrimination)
While the rollout of vaccines will indeed provide much-needed protection to many migrant workers, local workers and peoples, and while having the pandemic under control will indeed mean much-needed relief for these populations, the economic crisis is bound to fester in the coming years.
Having failed to recover from the global financial and economic crisis of 2007-2009, the world capitalist system was already in crisis even before the Coronavirus pandemic. Global powers and most governments still cling to bankrupt neoliberal economic policies, and financial speculation continued unabated. These phenomena, it must be recalled, were the very ones that accelerated the explosion of the 2007-2009 crisis.
In this context, attacks on migrant workers’ rights are bound to persist. Worsening unemployment in sending countries will make sections of the population more desperate to leave their countries and enable foreign employers to bargain for cheaper pay. Crisis will mean that political and economic elites in receiving countries will heighten efforts to scapegoat migrants for supposedly stealing workers’ jobs and causing workers’ wages to fall. Their objective is to drive a wedge between local and migrant workers in order to weaken them politically by preventing their collective action and exploit them economically by pressing down their wages.
These tendencies will surely be reinforced by the rising trend of violence, repression, conflicts and wars in the world with authoritarian governments, neo-fascist and xenophobic movements and parties, demagogic politicians and dictators on the rise.
Migrant workers of the world need to intensify our collective resolve to fight and defend our rights at the workplace and in society. In receiving countries, let us assert our workers’ rights, demand inclusion and protection side by side local labor unions, workers’ organisations and peoples’ movements there. In sending countries, let us link our campaigns and movements to the struggles of our fellow citizens back home and collectively demand for the governments’ withdrawal from neoliberal policies and work for a people-centered economy.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed not only migrant and peoples’ vulnerabilities but also the bankruptcy of monopoly capitalism. Let us grab this opportunity to intensify our campaigns, organise and mobilise more migrant workers and our families, and forge the strongest unity and solidarity with fellow local working peoples against monopoly capitalism and for a brighter future.#
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