Students and workers are mobilizing in Brampton against wage-theft by their bosses. The Naujawan (youth) Support Network (NSN)—a group of workers including those from trucking, construction, manufacturing, restaurants and grocery stores—is bringing workers together to use their collective strength to fight exploitative small business owners.
NSN not only organizes workers facing exploitation and abuse from their bosses and landlords, but also from immigration consultants and the government, due to the precarious immigration status of the international student and newcomer worker base of the group.
Newcomers to Canada need to secure immigration status and are vulnerable to bosses and landlords taking advantage of their situation. Whether workers require reference letters from employers for their Permanent Residence applications, or simply need to keep up with the rapidly rising cost of living in the GTA, they are forced to accept exploitative jobs that do not pay the minimum wage, let alone provide overtime, public holidays, or vacation pay. Many of these workers regularly worked 12 hour days at the peak of the pandemic, and suffered workplace injuries, only to ultimately have their hard-earned wages stolen by their employers.
One such instance of wage-theft was perpetrated by a local Brampton restaurant, Chat Hut. There, the employer stole $18,426 in wages from an employee who had to work 12 hour days for $8.33 per hour, cooking, cleaning and cashiering during the height of the pandemic. In another case, Flowboy Haulage, a trucking and towing company, did not pay a worker $5,553 that he was owed for 189 hours of work. There are countless other examples around the country.
The financial, emotional and psychological impact of their precarious situations has meant years of suffering for working-class immigrant communities in Brampton, and across Canada. There is widespread depression, as well as high rates of heart-attack and suicide as a result. The NSN organized as a group to prevent further suffering in their communities by uniting and building a collective power to face threats from the bosses.
The bosses have used every tactic to avoid paying the workers their earned wages, from blocking their phone numbers, to avoiding government payment notices by filing for bankruptcy, to suing workers for defamation to silence them. Three lawsuits have been filed against NSN members, claiming millions of dollars in damages.
The defamation lawsuits are a response to the creative methods used by the NSN to publicly shame the bosses for being wage-thieves. The NSN exposes wage-stealing employers on social media and protests in front of their homes and businesses to draw attention to their shady practices. These tactics are a last resort after the workers have attempted to directly ask the employer for their unpaid wages, and after they have sent the employer a letter with a deadline by which to pay. The letters to employers compiled by NSN often warn of the consequences of failing to pay well in advance of the protests.
The militant mass actions of the workers have resulted in the successful recovery of over $45K in stolen wages since July 2021. A gofundme launched by NSN has already raised $14,132 of its $20,000 goal to pay for legal fees to fight lawsuits filed against workers. The NSN continues to organize public rallies, like the upcoming rally on Dec. 4 at Country Court Park in Brampton, where workers share their stories, protest, and discuss next steps.
The group takes inspiration from the farmers’ and workers’ movement in India. They understand their struggle against wage theft to be inseparable from the struggle against corporate theft of Indian farmers’ land and livelihoods. In fact, the launch of NSN directly followed the protests in solidarity with Indian farmers that took place in Brampton. Many young workers came to these solidarity protests and had a chance to discuss their precarious working conditions and shared experiences of having wages stolen by employers. Activists and organizers in the community realized the urgent need to organize workers and struggle against capitalist exploitation right here at home. The majority of workers organized with NSN are Punjabi speakers from the Brampton region, but the precarious conditions of immigrant workers around Canada are very similar.
The NSN is committed in the long-term to the broader aims of ending the exploitation and abuse of workers in all forms. They recognize that international students are brought to Canada as a source of cheap labour, citing the fact that international student immigration has increased by 467 per cent over 20 years. They are fighting for dignity and self-respect, for their mental and physical well-being, and for greater collective power over shaping the conditions in which they work and live.
This militant, grassroots movement aimed at uniting workers and students to fight back against exploitation is the first of its kind in the Brampton region in recent memory. The significant successes in Brampton can serve as an inspiration to workers around the GTA and beyond, showing that they can use their collective strength to make the bosses pay. Fightback gives this movement our full support.
