Lorenzo Fiorito
for The Awaj
May 15-June 15, 2008

One of Montreal’s last garment factories, Golden Brand, will be closing its doors this July - putting 540 workers, largely immigrants and women, onto the unemployment rolls. In response, UNITE-HERE, the garment workers’ union, called a public demonstration on April 19, 2008, to pressure the employer to save their jobs.

I joined as a participant, not an observer. For two and a half years after I first came to Montreal, I worked in the garment industry as a presser. Shortly after I quit, the company closed down and left everyone jobless.

The beginning of the end for Montreal’s clothing and textile industry came in November 2003, when the Charest government lifted the 60-year-long protection of the industry - opening the floodgates to competition with China. Five years after Charest’s legislation, the industry, once a mainstay of Montreal’s economic life, is breathing its dying gasp.

Golden Brand manufactures for such labels as the Moore’s brand. The factory is still profitable, a fact that rankles workers facing unemployment. Union members hold aloft a mock coffin, symbolizing the death of 540 jobs and Montreal’s garment industry generally. “We have a family to feed!” read one placard.

Beginning at the Golden Brand location, across from Metro Rosemont, the march wound its way toward the Plaza St-Hubert Moore’s outlet. “We’re trying to help the people at Golden Brand to save their jobs,” said Bina Rani, an employee at the Samuelsohn factory, over noisy chants, whistles, and loud music.

“We think it’s our duty [to be here],” Amir Khadir, co-spokesperson for Québec solidaire, told The Awaj. “It’s a question of solidarity with workers, as the party of the workers, who produce wealth but earn less.”

During the march, union leaders rubbed shoulders with high-ranking politicians, each pledging their support and promising action. “We support the workers,” federal Bloc Québecois leader, Gilles Duceppe, told The Awaj. He added that thanks to the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement, employers are able to exploit “child labour, forced labour, and lack of union liberties” in countries of the third world. He later repeated the same message to the 400-strong crowd, pointing out the irony that “a sovereigntist party advocates a Buy Canada Act” to save Canadian manufacturing jobs.

From the platform, FTQ President Michel Arsenault repeated Duceppe’s condemnations, reserving special fire for a “federal government who doesn’t have the courage to defend the jobs of workers” by passing protective legislation. He told the crowd that he would “incite all Quebecers to stop shopping at Moore’s” if the employer, Men’s Wearhouse, did not reconsider its decision.

A bystander at Plaza St-Hubert, identifying himself as Fethe, commented that “a ‘Made in China’ t-shirt costs three dollars, the same shirt made in Canada might cost fifteen dollars. [Many] Quebecers are poor, they have to shop at Wal-Mart. That’s part of the globalization of Canada….But,” he concluded, “I support [the demonstration].”

Flanked by police at the entrance, workers entered the Moore’s outlet where the suits they made are sold - at prices amounting to several weeks’ worth of their pay. Outside, Golden Brand employee Anna Oliveira told The Awaj, “It’s sad. We don’t know [if we’ll succeed]. We are working for that, we continue to work for that, and we hope for results.”

It’s a messy contradiction. Workers are told that it takes protective legislation to save their jobs. Still, Canadians would need decent salaries in order to “buy Canadian.” Instead, North American employers are cutting jobs and wages to stay competitive: a move that impoverishes their own consumer base. Protective legislation would also invite retaliation from Canada’s trading partners. Then, too, what of the sweatshop workers? Are North American unions organizing them under conditions of illegality, fighting to increase their living standards, thus reducing competition between North American and Asian workers? A globalized problem requires global solutions.

“We need to get out of the trap of this economy,” said Amir Khadir during the march. “We need an economy made for the needs of society and workers, not for the profit rate….We believe that the workers can become the owners…to create a pact of work, not profit.” Khadir referenced investment funds held by unions in this context.

What will happen to the 540 Golden Brand employees? “This isn’t an end, it is just the beginning!” UNITE-HERE Quebec Council Director Lina Aristeo told the assembled workers. “The union is behind you until the end.”

In the street in front of the Moore’s store, demonstrators solemnly set the mock coffin ablaze. The flames shot skyward, billowing smoke into the crowd. Union leaders let it burn, then shoveled dirt onto the embers. The police finished the job with their fire extinguishers. And the crowd slowly dispersed.