A message from the Toronto Airport Workers Council: Declaration of Solidarity

A message from the Toronto Airport Workers Council: Declaration of Solidarity

September 28, 2017 at 11:00 AM

  

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The Organizing Committee and delegates from over 20 countries of the Sixth International Gathering of the Workers’ Economy
  

We send our full solidarity and support to Teamsters 419 workers in their struggle against:

  • Swissport’s unfair labour and work scheduling practices;

  • the deterioration of working conditions;

  • the use of scab workers;

  • Swissport’s illegitimate contract offer of late August; and

  • the increasing privatization of Canada's largest airport — Pearson International Airport.

  

We offer our solidarity in this historic and difficult moment where the state has been taken over by a ruthlessly brutal neoliberalism that presumes the productive contribution of workers is replaceable.

While global capital appears impenetrable, without reason and places labels on us with the vile intention of confusing us, we the workers are still standing in a collective embrace that crosses the continents.

The organizations represented at this Sixth Encuentro — from all parts of Latin America and around the world — are united in the struggle of our Teamsters 419 comrades and the Toronto Airport Workers’ Council (TAWC) against neoliberal austerity and the continued privatization of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.

We acknowledge the solidarity and transnational support that TAWC has extended to the worker-recuperated enterprises movement of Argentina and to workers’ struggles for a fairer and more dignified economy throughout the Americas and the world. We also recognize the participation of TAWC over the years in their sponsorship and co-organization of the International and Regional North American Workers’ Economy gatherings.

In this time of need, we return the solidarity to Teamsters 419 workers and TAWC. We demand that Swissport immediately cease using non-unionized substitute workers; end their strategy of pitting worker against worker in their use of scab labour; and stop the unfair treatment of these workers, many of whom are from Canada’s most marginalized communities.

We also call on Swissport to immediately negotiate a new collective agreement with the Teamsters 419 workers in good faith.

In solidarity,

  

The Sixth International Gathering of the Workers’ Economy at the worker-recuperated Hotel BAUEN Cooperative in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the worker-recuperated Textiles Pigüé Cooperative in Pigüé, province of Buenos Aires, Argentina (August 30–September 2, 2017)

(translated from the original Spanish)

  

  

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