National Statement
April 26, 2012

SIKLAB Canada, a progressive Filipino Canadian workers organization, announces its new national council for the year 2012. The council members include Cora Cadiz, National Chairperson; Yolyn Valenzuela, National Vice-Chairperson (East); Arlene Oropel, National Vice-Chairperson (West); and Bryan Taguba, Secretary General. Since October 2005, SIKLAB Canada has been steadfast in advancing and upholding the struggles of Filipino Canadian workers through their program of educating, organizing and mobilizing the community towards their just and genuine settlement and integration in Canadian society.

In recognition of the need to build a genuine movement for social change achieved through nothing less than class struggle as workers, women and youth, the new composition of the National Council are taking SIKLAB Canada into greater heights with its involvement in the organizing for the upcoming conference titled “Workers’ Struggles Amidst Neoliberal Globalization,” to be held in 11th until the 12th of August in Toronto. This national conference aims to put forth a vital and critical discussion amongst progressive organizations, groups and individuals about our struggles and conditions as workers under the present crisis of capitalism.

Since its establishment as a national organization, SIKLAB Canada has been at the forefront in exposing and opposing the systemic violence perpetuated against Filipino Canadian workers, particularly those who are under Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) and the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP). The current downward shift in the Canadian economy has all but intensified Canada’s dependence on cheap and disposable labour, which has both exacerbated our marginalization as temporary workers and has normalized the casualization and racialization of labour overall.

At the unseated heart of the continued competitiveness of the Canadian economy is the devaluation of our labour, manifested in the expansion of temporary migration schemes such as the LCP. “We have long witnessed the impacts of the LCP as a program that has legislated both the poverty of the Filipino Canadian community and the oppression of the thousands of Filipino Canadian women who enter through the program, while it has erstwhile been touted as a ‘model program’ by CIC and has facilitated the expansion of the TFWP,” says Cadiz, current National Chairperson and founding member of SIKLAB BC and the Philippine Women Centre of BC. “As such, we refuse this continued cycle of poverty and temporariness by heightening our struggle against all measures imposed by neoliberal globalization against all workers’ lives.”

“The fight to scrap the LCP and the call for universal childcare has long been a political campaign of SIKLAB. It is at the very core of our struggle as progressive women, and as a community,” states Cadiz. “With every move to silence and quell our growing movement, SIKLAB, along with the women and youth, will all the more be vigilant in our struggle against the rottenness and hypocrisy of Canada’s neoliberal agenda of globalization,” she adds.

The new SIKLAB national council vows to continue to lead the Filipino Canadian community’s struggle for a just and genuine settlement and integration, genuine development and empowerment through the implementation of its national program and campaigns. The council looks forward to making definitive leaps and bounds in reaffirming its commitment in helping advance the struggle of the working class in Canada.

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For more information, contact:
Bryan Taguba, Secretary General
(416) 519-2553
siklab-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
Facebook: Siklab Ontario
Twitter: siklabontario