The workers vs. temporary labour recruitment agencies: Contextualizing immigrant workers' struggles against temp agencies in Canada

In an era of neoliberal immigration and austerity, many new immigrants and temporary foreign workers in Canada encounter multiple levels of exploitation as employers further reduce costs of production.  This paper focuses on the building of agency/immigrant worker leadership and independent organizations of agency workers  in education and action campaigns against the practices of the thriving temporary recruitment agency industry in Quebec, often characterized by low wages, poor working conditions and workplace safety, and labour law violations.  Finally, it argues that these conditions and temporary labour recruitment agency workers' struggles for labour justice and respect must also be contextualized in relation to broader historical and contemporary trends in national and global labour, immigration and economic policymaking, as well as local/global networks of resistance driven largely by im/migrant workers themselves which have emerged in recent years.