PROFILE: Coco Diaz, Counsellor
Coco Diaz is one of CCESO’s volunteer counsellors. She has 25 years of experience working with Domestic Workers, Caregivers and Newcomers to Canada.
Her work began in the 1980s when the Live-in Caregiver Program was known as the Foreign Domestic Movement (FDM). During the FDM program, domestic workers had to renew their contacts yearly and could not apply for Permanent Residence.
Coco Diaz, together with the late Fely Villasin (former Executive Director of Intercede) and other caregivers and activists, rallied for caregivers’ rights and worked to improve their working conditions.
The group’s motto was “Good Enough to Work - Good Enough to Stay” and they made connections with similar groups in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver. This coalition worked hard to be heard by the law makers in Parliament. As a result of this joint effort, domestic workers and caregivers were given the right to apply for Permanent Residence upon completion of the 24/36 month requirement.
In 2006, OMNI Television broadcast the world television premiere of Foreign Domestics: The Right to Stay, a 60-minute documentary by Anthony Domingo. The film tells the story of six courageous Filipina domestic workers that helped change the labour and immigration laws of Canada forever.
“Finding themselves working and living in unfair conditions, these women - Zeny Dumlao, Linda Lising, Coco Tarape-Diaz, Tessie Rayo, Lohrie Rosas and Ving Domingo, along with activist Fely Villasin and Ging Hernandez – found the strength to fight a system they believed was prejudiced towards domestic workers from all over the world.
The result of their efforts was one of the first organized movements to fight for Landed Immigrant Status for Domestic Workers, Inclusion in the Employment Standards Act and Ontario Human Rights Code, Full Coverage under the Workers Compensation Act, and the Right To Organize under the Labor Relations Act.”
Foreign Domestics: The Right to Stay has also aired on on CBC Television. Click here for more information.
