Blog Series: The 1980s Struggle for Domestic Workers’ Rights - Part 2

On September 23, 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos announced that he had placed the Philippines under martial law. With the signing of Proclamation No. 1081, Marcos consolidated power and initiated a twenty-year period of one-man rule across the country, marked by brutal political repression including extrajudicial killings, torture, disappearances, electoral fraud, suppression of the press, incarceration of political dissidents, and other human rights abuses. Retaining support of the United States through his promise to stamp out Communism, Marcos’ rule eventually led to the worst economic recession in Philippine history between the years 1984 and 1985. Marcos’ declaration of martial law and the country’s subsequent recession were two fundamental reasons why thousands of Filipinos fled to North America between 1972 and 1986, when the non-violent People Power Revolution led to Marcos’ swift departure from the country in a U.S. Air Force rescue helicopter.¹  

Escaping the U.S.-backed dictator’s political and economic repression, many Filipino women immigrated to Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which granted limited visas on the condition that applicants retain their employment as domestic workers.²  During this period, progressive women in Toronto’s Filipino community continued to organize against the Marcos regime from abroad, joining anti-imperialist organizations such as the International Association of Filipino Patriots (IAFP) and The Coalition Against the Marcos Dictatorship (CAMD).³  These women also began to organize against repressive conditions created by Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Programs which paid less than the minimum wage, did not provide a pathway to permanent residency, and left workers isolated and unprotected from human rights abuses by their employers. The latter was especially true for foreign domestic workers, who were required to live with their employers for the duration of their time in Canada. Anti-imperialist organizers of the IAFP and the CAMD eventually formed the Ad Hoc Committee of Filipino Domestic Workers for Landed Status, working closely with the International Coalition to End Domestics’ Exploitation (INTERCEDE) to demand landed status for all domestic workers in Canada.⁴

In addition to the movement’s strong core membership of Filipino domestic workers, archival records indicate three key organizers in the campaign for landed status: Fely Velasin-Cusipag, coordinator of the Toronto IAFP and CAMD chapters; Zeny Dumlao of the Philippine Women’s Guild; and Columbia “Coco” Tarape-Diaz of the INTERCEDE Steering Committee.  These women also helped to establish the Ad Hoc Committee of Filipino Domestic Workers for Landed Status (henceforth called “The Ad Hoc Committee”).⁵  Through dedicated grassroots organizing and collective action, The Ad Hoc Committee obtained their most significant victory when Canada implemented the Foreign Domestic Movement Program (FDM) in 1981. Through the FDM, live-in domestics who had been working in Canada for two years were able to apply for permanent resident status.  ⁶**
 

 “We were well organized,” Velasin-Cusipag asserted in a 1982 interview with INTERCEDE co-founder Judith Ramirez, “We had five things we set out to do: organize a petition-writing campaign, a letter-writing campaign, raise funds, go to Ottawa to see Axworthy [then-Minister of Immigration] and go into militant mass actions, the rallies.” Despite having less than 100 active members, according to Velasin-Cusipag, the group regularly organized small, militant demonstrations to maintain their organization’s visibility and to apply continuous pressure on Lloyd Axworthy and his office. In August 1981, for example, the Ad Hoc Committee protested outside of Sai Woo restaurant in Toronto’s Chinatown, where Axworthy was attending a benefit dinner for Liberal candidate Jim Coutts. About thirty domestic workers picketed in front of the restaurant, and upon Axworthy’s arrival, handed him a petition containing 1,500 signatures.⁷

Though Axworthy had promised to make it easier for domestic workers to apply for landed status, his office’s planned reforms were racially discriminatory. According to INTERCEDE, “in order to apply for landed status a woman needs a certificate for a homemakers’ or nannies’ school... qualifications that West Indians and Filipinos, who make up the majority of temporary domestics, do not have.” Instead, Axworthy’s “improvements” meant that “a select group of nannies from the United Kingdom and Northern Europe will get landed status, while Black and Asian women continue to be exploited.” Thus, the Ad Hoc Committee sought to change this discriminatory “points system,” and pushed Axworthy to implement a fair pathway for obtaining landed status.⁸
 

The Ad Hoc Committee struggled to organize Filipino domestic workers due in part to the isolated nature of live-in caregiving and housework. Unlike traditional labour organizing, which can be conducted in the workplace, The Ad Hoc Committee had to approach domestic workers during the limited number of hours they were allowed free time outside their employers’ homes. According to fellow Filipina activist Martha Ocampo (INTERCEDE board member), who recorded an oral history interview with RiseUp! Feminist Digital Archive, Coco Tarape-Diaz was particularly adept at this kind of community organizing:

Coco was one of the domestic workers who was not afraid to talk about her work as a domestic worker. Like I said earlier, there weren’t that many who were proud of talking about domestic work, but Coco was fearless and was not at all ashamed to talk about it. And Coco did not have any – she couldn’t care less who you are. She would talk to you to make sure that you understood what she was trying to say...And she also had a very good presence in the Filipino community.

She knew how to outreach people and she was very, very, very friendly. She would just be sitting in the TTC [Toronto Transit Commission], on the bus, and she would know that someone is a domestic worker, she would already have started conversation. She was really good at it. So, she became a really great advocate for the rights of domestic workers... and she was a good storyteller. She was not afraid to talk, sometimes her English was not the best, but she was not at all ashamed.⁹

“To carry out our community education,” said Coco, “we went to every activity to talk about landed status...in the socials, picnics, etc. We used every occasion to get signatures for our petition, every occasion.”¹⁰  Additionally, the Filipino Canadian newspaper Balita and the Black community newspaper Contrast were crucial for reaching isolated domestic workers and disseminating information about the campaign.

The Ad Hoc Committee also had to struggle against pro-Marcos forces in the Filipino Canadian community, alongside threats of deportation from the Philippine consulate. Velasin-Cusipag, for example, reported that “there was a lot of anti-Communist labelling from the Filipino right-wing; there was a lot of provocation; a lot of rumour-mongering. Before each of our three rallies there were a lot of threatening phone calls: ‘You’re going to be deported,’ ‘You’re going to lose your job,’ ‘You’re going to be blacklisted.’” Similarly, although Zeny Dumlao helped to build The Filipino Homemaker’s Association (FHA), she was publicly ousted by fellow member Dr. Portugal in 1981: “I was expelled from the FHA on the grounds of undermining it by joining the ‘radicals’ of the IAFP and the Ad Hoc Committee for Landed Status... In front of all the officers of the FHA he told me that all we would get from Axworthy was S.H.I.T. I replied that we were going, and we would not come away with just shit.” Dumlao went on to form the Philippine Women’s Guild, where she was joined by many domestic workers who had previously been involved with the FHA.¹¹

“Whisper campaigns” enacted by supporters of the Marcos dictatorship were widespread within the Filipino Canadian community. Some would phone domestic workers directly and “warn” them about attending rallies while employed on temporary visas; others phoned employers to tip them off about their housekeepers’ free time activities.¹²  In Summer 1981, Canada Asia Currents reported that the Marcos regime benefitted from Canada's exploitation of Filipino domestics on temporary work permits: “Forced to register with the Manila-based Overseas Employment Development Board (OEDB),” the workers were required to “remit 30 per cent of their dollar earnings back to the Philippines.” According to the publication, the Philippines’ authoritarian government began to send skilled and semi-skilled workers abroad in the early 1970s “as a device to ‘export the social discontent’ which sharpened with the imposition of martial law... But when the dollars began to come in, the government saw that this could be a good source of paying the huge bills for the oil imports which totaled about $2 billion last year.” ¹³ 

The fact that Filipino women on temporary work permits did not acquiesce to pressure from an authoritarian dictatorship is a testament to their strength, determination, and unity. Alongside other domestic workers’ organizations, the Ad Hoc Committee’s public pressure would lead Axworthy’s office to implement the Foreign Domestic Movement Program (FDM) at the end of 1981, which eventually became the Live-in Caregiver Program in 1992. Even under this program, however, domestic workers continued to face discrimination and abuse from their employers; unlike other workers who arrive in Canada with landed status, domestic workers are required to work as live-in caregivers for two years before they will even be considered for permanent residency. These requirements position domestic workers in an exploitative situation that is not entirely dissimilar to indentured servitude. Although nowadays the “live-in” requirement has been eliminated, and care workers are frequently referred to as “essential workers,” immigration policies continue to devalue the work of domestic employment.¹⁴
 

This year, the Women’s Archives at the University of Ottawa wishes to celebrate immigrant women and their contribution to obtaining human rights in Canada. This is part one of a series of blog posts on the 1980s struggle for domestic workers rights, leading up to the celebration of International Domestic Workers’ Day on June 16th, 2024. Visit https://migrantrights.ca/ to read more about the ongoing struggle for migrant workers’ rights and demand #StatusforAll.

** Note on naming conventions: In archival records, some women appear under multiple surnames due to changes in marital status. The author of this blog post has employed hyphenated surnames to facilitate searchability; however, this does not indicate that the women themselves used hyphenated names

Notes

1. Official Gazette of the Philippines, “The Fall of the Dictatorship,” https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/featured/the-fall-of-the-dictatorship/ 
2. Marilyn Barber, “Domestic Service (Caregiving) in Canada” (7 February 2006) https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/domestic-service 
3. Judith Ramirez, interviewer. “Expelled ‘radical’ domestics fight the Filipino right,” The Toronto Clarion (12 March 1982) Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa, 10-094-S2-SS2-F17 
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid. 
6. Barber, “Domestic Service (Caregiving) in Canada.”
7. “INTERCEDE launches campaign with 1,400 letters,” Contrast (21 August 1981) Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa, 10-094-S2-SS3-F14 
8. Ibid.
9. Franca Iacovetta, interviewer. “Filipina Activists/Organizing Domestic Workers: Intercede.” Oral history interview with Martha Ocampo, Cenen Bagon, Anita Fortuno, and Genie Policarpio. RiseUp! Feminist Digital Archive, https://riseupfeministarchive.ca/collection-women-unite/filipina-activists-organizing-domestic-workers-intercede/
10. Ramirez, interviewer. “Expelled ‘radical’ domestics fight the Filipino right.”
11. Ibid. 
12. Ruben J. Cusipag, “Well-covered by Canadian media, rally helps push meet with Axworthy,” Balita (1 June 1981) Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa, 10-094-S2-SS3-F14
13. “Filipino domestics wage massive drive for landed status,” Canada Asia Currents (Summer-Autumn 1981) Archives and Special Collections, University of Ottawa, 10-094-S2-SS2-F17
14. Barber, “Domestic Service (Caregiving) in Canada”; Franca Iacovetta, interviewer. “Filipina Activists/Organizing Domestic Workers: Intercede.”