DEVELOPMENT OF UNIONS IN CANADA
(Part 1)
Introduction
Contemporary unions and the industrial relations processes and structures in
Canada are a response to the difficulties confronting workers throughout the
Industrial Revolution. It is noted that Marx, Durkheim, and Weber advanced
different explanations of the social and economic difficulties facing workers
since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. The different explanations of
the causes of conflict are important because they imply different solutions.
The Marxist perspective sees the conflict to be inherent in capitalism thus
requiring fundamental changes in the system of ownership and control of the
means of production. Many Marxists see unions as simply a method of
propping up the capitalist system without resolving the conflict created by
workers’ alienation. Class conflict remains and the lowest classes, e.g.
immigrant workers, minors, unskilled workers at home and abroad continue
to be exploited and are beyond the reach of laws and collective bargaining.
The industrialism thesis views the conflict of the industrial revolution as
transitional and capable of resolution by public policy, including collective
bargaining. What is required by the proponent of this thesis is effective
public policy. Our visiting speaker Tom Fuller advocated public policy to
facilitate, not obstruct, collective bargaining. Essentially, he is rejecting
Marx’s view of the cause of conflict by putting his faith in the system of
collective bargaining and legislation as a means of protecting workers
(the vast majority of the population) and other groups in society from
excessive concentration of power. That is, consensus is manufactured by
such means as collective bargaining, democratic government, social
programs such as health care, public education, social security, and other
law and social policy.
Weber’s diagnosis of the problem and resulting conflict is that bureaucracy
produces a high level of rationalization and bureaucratic domination.
Weber’s prognosis is high levels of economic progress but cultural
disenchantment. Weber does not predict levels of class exploitation and
alienation predicted by Marx. He sees work as likely specialized and
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unchallenging rather than skilled and fulfilling but not deskilled and
alienating as Marx predicted.
As many unions are themselves bureaucratic, it is difficult to determine how
a union might be able to resolve the cultural disenchantment predicted by
Weber. Furthermore, recent polls in Canada seem to find that a significant
majority of workers find their work reasonably fulfilling, though they do not
trust their employers to provide security of employment. That said, there are
higher levels of workplace stress than in past decades.
The appropriate role for unions depends on the perception of the world one
adopts as illustrated by the three theses discussed above. For our purposes,
this requires an understanding of contemporary unions in Canada, which in
turn requires knowledge of their history and the system in which they
operate.
The Formative Years of Unions
Early associations of workers in British North America that were to become
the Dominion of Canada in 1867 were typically communal associations,
formed to assist members to find work, and to deal with illness and
bereavement. The St. George’s Society and the Orange Lodge are examples
of such mutual help societies.
Workers in the same trade collected funds to meet the cost of sickness,
bereavement, and unemployment. The Quebec Ship-Labourers Benevolent
Society boasted “We Bury Our Dead”. Knowledge of early unions comes
from accounts of picnics, banquets, and processions organized to promote
members’ sense of self-esteem, pleasure, and group solidarity.
As Scottish economist Adam Smith observed, gatherings of members of
trades in a local area rarely occurred without discussion of job rates. The
common law, and the colonial statutes of the late 18th Century, and much of
the 19th Century, agreed with Adam Smith’s view that the setting of job rates
by crafts or unions was conspiracy in restraint of trade. This was common
practice among Saint John ship-labourers, Toronto printers, and carpenters.
Other trades such as coopers, moulders, and glassblowers set the pace at
which they worked. Glassblowers, for example, insisted on a “Blue
Monday” to recover from the weekend. This appears to be a continuance of
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the 18th Century practice in England whereby workers honoured, weekly, the
unofficial “religious” holiday, “St. Monday”.
The anti-conspiracy laws were rarely enforced in the early 19th Century
Canada, probably because early Canadian unions were tiny, local, and scant.
Apart from isolated incidents of provocation, Canadians were law-abiding,
and the anti-conspiracy laws were generally obeyed.
“New Model Unionism” emerged in Canada in the 1850s, in response to
changing economic, and social times. The USA-based Moulders Union
emerged in the 1850s with high membership dues, and a strong central
organization dedicated to organizing the entire craft. In 1863, William Sylvis
toured Canada to add Canadian locals to the Moulders Union.
Skilled tradesmen working on the Grand Trunk Railway brought with them
from Britain connections with the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.
USA-based unions of typographers; carpenters; shoemakers of St. Crispin;
painters; coopers, and others, had Canadian affiliates by 1870.
The “new model” unions were craft based, established for the purpose of
protecting the members of the craft from the ongoing fear of loss of earnings
due to dilution of the craft by the onset of new technology, the use of lessskilled, lower paid workers, and by technological obsolescence. For
example, for three decades, the Moulders Union fought employers for the
right to hire their own helpers, to control access of workers into the trade.
The goals of respectability and dignity in the new social order replaced the
earlier “collective bargaining by riot”. Craig Heron contrasts the temperate
respectability of craft workers with the angry crowds of canal labourers in
Montreal who fought strikebreakers in 1877, or Quebec City construction
workers who marched on the Legislature in 1878, looted a flour factory, and
fought troops sent to restore order.
While the craft unions had elements of an “aristocracy of labour” with no
sense of ‘class solidarity’ with unskilled workers, they did embody
principles of dignity of labour and commitment to liberal democracy and the
general betterment of “workingmen”, beyond purely narrow craft interests.
Upheaval in the 1880s
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The High Tariff policies of the 1880s in Canada promoted internal industrial
development at the expense of imports of manufactured and processed
goods. Factory production and coalmining expanded. New industrialists
emerged atop large enterprises in their communities as production soared.
Accompanying economic growth was the roller coaster of booms and
recessions. Better economic times in the early to mid 1880s encouraged
activism by craft unions to deal with economic insecurity and deskilling of
their work. A need was seen for affiliation of locals and more locals joined
the international unions of their crafts. Local trades councils were formed in
many communities and, in 1883, the Trades and Labour Council of Canada
was formed in Toronto. It met annually for the next 70 years.
In the Maritimes, the independent Provincial Workingmen’s Association
was formed under the leadership of Robert Drummond. “Working-class
respectability was the name of the game and Drummond’s connections with
the Provincial Liberals in Nova Scotia helped produce a greatly improved
system of mine inspection, arbitration services for disputes and an extension
of the franchise (including miners living in rented cottages). This was
confined to the Maritimes.
The Knights of Labor
Hamilton, Ontario in 1881, was home to the first Canadian local assembly of
“The Holy and Noble Order of the Knights of Labor”. The order had started
in 1869 in Philadelphia but its fame spread in 1885 when it successfully
struck for recognition by railway baron Jay Gould. By 1886 there were more
than 200 local assemblies in Canada. World wide membership was over a
million at its peak.
The power of the Knights of Labour rested on:
(a) their legitimacy; this caused politicians and government to listen to
them and to respond to some concerns; relative lack of militancy;
(b) organization and expertise to assist local action;
(c) combination of skilled and unskilled workers; alliance of groups;
also affected legitimacy;
(d) education of workers; power of knowledge.
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The Knights organized mixed craft/non-craft unions. There were no barriers
to female membership, unskilled workers or non-white workers. Often such
workers were in their own assemblies but they had full membership rights.
All those categories were routinely excluded by the crafts. The inclusive
policy meant that female garment workers, shoe factory, and cotton mill
workers were in local assemblies of the Knights. The power of the Knights
was spread unevenly across different locals and regions.
Ideologically, the Knights viewed the dignity and nobility of labour as
paramount. Those who lived off labour or blocked productive labour were
unworthy of respect. The enemies of the Knights included monopolists, land
speculators, and capitalists. The accumulation of wealth was denounced as
causing the pauperization of workers, and forcing women and children into
the labour force. Such capitalism was also denounced as bringing in
"uncivilized" Chinese labour, and corrupting politics.
The Knights' model was to provide greater rewards to labour, and to include
democracy and cooperation in society's organizing principles. Socialistic as
this may sound, the Knights did not advocate the abolition of private capital
or public ownership of the means of production. Only lawyers, bankers,
gamblers, and saloon-keepers were barred from membership. The honest,
upright, sober worker was viewed as the ideal.
Education of members about economics, politics etc. was crucial to the
Knights. Candidates for office were supported, with only a few successes
beyond municipal politics. Strikes were generally avoided, arbitration being
preferred. Employers rarely supported such processes, preferring to fire and
blacklist ringleaders. Largely unsuccessful attempts were made to establish
consumer and producer co-operatives. The Knights' work had some impact
on health and safety legislation.
The 1886 economic downturn began the demise of the Knights. Other
factors contributed. The Catholic Church in Quebec denounced the Knights
as revolutionaries. Also the Knights tended to be contemptuous of industrial
militancy.
Another weakness of the Knights was that the broad political vision tended
to detract from "now" issues in the workplace. On several occasions the
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Knights called on members to avoid strikes. This weak leadership was
augmented by the impact of hostility shown toward them by craft unions.
For example, see the impact of signing scab cigar makers in Hamilton and
letting them compete with members of the cigar makers union.
The Knights' legitimacy in USA ended in Haymarket bombing in Chicago,
1886 when four activists were hanged for death of seven policemen. The
Knights continued a bit longer in Canada but their demise came with the
conflict with the international craft unions.
Another factor in the demise of the Knights was the economic downturn of
the 1880s. This reduced worker solidarity as individuals and families sought
to survive.
So economic weakness, weak leadership, particularly in addressing local
workplace issues, lack of allies among the craft unions and in government,
and reduced legitimacy with the public, all combined to wipe the Knights off
the landscape by the end of the 19th Century.
Knights v. Crafts
Samuel Gompers, long-time President of the American federation of
Labour opposed two of the strategies of the Knights: (i) partisan politics; and
(ii) multiple organizing of one craft or industry.
The Knights were part of the Trades and Labour Council and advocated their
brand of mixed unions – skilled/unskilled, inclusion of women, immigrants
etc. They ran afoul of the craft unions who saw their task as protecting their
territory, their skills etc. As a result of the conflict, the Knights were
expelled in 1902 Berlin Convention. The result was, as indicated by
Palmer, that women and the unskilled “slipped back into a state of
unorganized dependence on capital’s mercy and the politician’s
benevolence”. The Knights were never again a force in North American
unionism.
Rise of Capitalism and Corporate Mergers
Late 19th century saw rise of mergers and Taylorist production techniques,
resisted by the crafts. In response to Canada’s high tariff policy, US firms set
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up branch plants in Canada to circumvent the tariffs. Technique and
technology exported from US to Canada and in full swing by World War I.
Techniques had to be found to encourage capital investment and to stimulate
consumer demand. The new rationalization of workplaces produced new
types of resistance from the low-skilled workers.
The Wobblies
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or the Wobblies) was
formed in Chicago 1905 to emancipate working class from capitalism. There
had been in the late 1900s a big influx of immigrants to meet demand for
unskilled and semi-skilled labour.
Power seen as action in the workplace. So economic action – the general
strike – had primacy over political action. With the need for proletarian
solidarity, the IWW was opposed to exclusivity of the crafts. The members
came from loggers, harvesters, longshoremen, construction workers. The
logging and railway construction camps provided the conditions for IWW
radicalism in the West. Marxist propaganda/education was distributed in up
to 10 different languages. Dues were low, cards transferable across jobs and
low-skilled workers felt pride and acceptance. Labour songs such as
"Solidarity Forever" were Wobblies songs. Western Canada was the base of
IWW support. The political philosophy was rather vague but resembled
European syndicalism, with worker-owned enterprises.
Their most spectacular strike was in 1912 in Canadian Northern Railway
construction camps. 7000 workers of multi-ethnic backgrounds participated.
The strike was lost.
The Wobblies' demise coincided with the end of the railway building boom
and the pre-war recession. Membership was falling rapidly and many locals
disintegrating by World War I. The IWW remains in existence even today,
with little or no influence.
Wobblies power rested on organization, affiliation among its diversity of
members, strength on the picket line. It lacked legitimacy with governments
and with employers. Local authorities often banned their street-corner
meetings. Also employers used armies of scab labour and police invariably
sided with employers. Leaders were arrested. The Wobblies did give birth to
new labour ideas and tactics that had influence in the post WW I era.
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Mineworkers
Coalminers remained within the craft union umbrella though with industrial
union forms of organization. High levels of solidarity were key elements of
union power. The United Mine Workers of America became the main
organizer in Nova Scotia, Alberta and BC.
The Lethbridge Coal Strike of 1906 produced regular bargaining though a
strike of 7000 workers occurred in 1911. The impact of the 1906 strike
included federal legislation – the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, 1907.
Worker strength was solidarity across ethnic lines (contrast Vancouver
Island) but police, strike breakers and economic downturns were the main
factors limiting workers' success.
Garment workers and others
The 1912 T. Eaton strike in Toronto and a six-week garment workers' strike
in Montreal had some success due to ethnic cohesion. Socialist ideas became
more prominent and influenced the Trades and Labour Council, long
dominated by craft unions.
The One Big Union and the Winnipeg General Strike
Workers in the West were radicalized by the Russian Revolution.
Federations of labour advocated worker control of industry. Still conflict
with the Eastern craft unions and there occurred a split in the TLC and the
formation of the One Big Union. Goal was worker control, means was the
general strike. Support in BC. Miners and loggers.
Winnipeg General strike 1919 – immediate issues were union recognition
and an eight-hour day. Started by building and metal trades workers. There
were many other strikes across Canada around that time, as workers’
expectations had been fueled by political promises of better living and
working conditions after World War I. Such expectations were not met by
the Canadian Government.
For further reference see Craig Heron, “The Canadian Labour Movement – a
Short History (Lorimer, Toronto, 1989).
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