United in Struggle

My name is Emily, and I am a member of United in Struggle, a working class organisation based in territories occupied by East Vancouver. Thanks to speakers from Gabriela, Samidoun and the Worker Solidarity Network for the inspiring call for women to fight for land, labour, and liberation!! From Palestine, to the Philippines and on Turtle Island – Workers of the world, unite against imperialism! 

We stand united as working women in struggle on IWWD. Today we remember the historic uprisings of women workers who marched in the thousands demanding bread and roses. We continue their fight to take back our labour power from the capitalist’s exploitative claws. Today, imperialism creates a gendered division of labour that breaks work into skilled and deskilled components, segregating women into cheap, low-skilled, supposedly “unproductive” work. In Canada, only 29% of the GDP is attributable to women compared to 49% for men. Capitalists want us to believe that women belong in low wage industries, such as domestic work and the service sector, so they can increase their profits and lower production costs with ease. 

But we know that the world would fall apart without the contributions of working class women! 85% of women between 24 and 54 are employed, according to the 2022 employment rate. We’ve talked to women workers outside their workplaces at production warehouses, sewing factories, grocery and convenience shops and at our monthly East Vancouver Workers’ Assemblies. We’ve spoken to countless women working low wage jobs and struggling under exhausting conditions for the benefit of their bosses. The East Vancouver Workers Assembly’s Economic Survey found further glaring examples of our exploitation as women workers: 44.3% of respondents earn less than $40 000 a year, 27% are working more than 40 hours a week and only 8% feel they will be able to retire. It is shameful that it is only the bourgeoisie who are reaping the rewards from the immense contributions women make to the current economy. 

Corporate feminism tells us that things are fine but talking to women workers we hear otherwise. Sheraton Hotel workers, many women and migrant workers, have been picketing for higher wages. The billionaire owner, the Lalji family, won an award for being a “women’s health champion” while refusing to pay their workers a living wage! The temporary foreign workers program ensures the bourgeoisie have access to cheap labour, locking women migrant workers  into exploitative relationships with their employers as nannies, cleaners, care workers, other domestic labourers and piecemeal below minimum wage agricultural workers. 70% of respondents on the East Van Worker Assembly’s Economic Survey stated they need to cut back on activities they enjoy and 64% are unable to accumulate savings. We have no other option than building working women class power!

Capitalist logic says women’s labour is only worth $0.89 to a man’s dollar. This drives down the cost of women’s labour to reap more profits. It’s not because we’re weak, or because we are raising kids! It’s because the capitalists need to maintain low-wage sectors, and attribute these to women’s work, so they can profit more. Imperialism feeds off of the exploitation of women. Globally, women’s exploitation is a foundation of the Anglo-American Imperialist Alliance (AAIA), its dirty warfare, political suppression and economic domination. Canada is a key player in the AAIA and relatedly so, the ongoing Israili genocide in Gaza, where we have lost far too many women workers and fighters. United in Struggle supports Palestinian resistance and the resistance of freedom fighters everywhere by targeting the ruling elite on these lands, scum in a global profit-motivated system of imperial crimes. Our offensive needs to happen by building working class power right here.

It is only if we as workers have control of the economy that we can design and implement it for the better of everyone, women included. When workers have control of the economy, we will be included as equals into all industries and areas of economic life. This revolutionary fight is a fight for workers far and wide, a fight for the labour power of women to generate resources for all, rather than resources for a select few billionaires. Democratic worker control can only happen if we fight for a multinational socialist confederacy: setting fire to Canada as it currently stands so we can forge ahead, building a new future, a future of cooperative relations where nations coexist on these lands under the control of the people.

All power to the working class!

All power to women workers!