Labour and LawCanadian labor movement evolved from a family structured working people engaged in the basic industries like farming and fishing.
The need for skilled workers arose when industries became complex. For lack of available workforce that is ready to fill-up the needs of rising industries, engagement of immigrant workers came about.The shift from simple organizational structures to a more complex organization of skilled and technical workers brought about conflicts which were not readily resolved by employers. Government was not also responsive enough to lay down the basic laws and guidelines to ensure these workers’ rights are protected.
Thus, in the midst of conflicting interests, unionism came about. Early wins for union activities were elusive. Sacrificial lambs, as in most cases, were union leaders who were either deported to their countries of origin or booted out of work. While union movement was not at all that successful in bringing about immediate changes in the workplace, its notable success was achieved when government was forced to legislate and enact laws to protect workers’ rights.
In the 1800’s, immigration of skilled workers to Canada was encouraged by the Ministry of the Interior for the purpose of peopling the prairies. Immigration to the cities was discouraged. The preferred immigrants were those from the United States, Britain, or other parts of Europe. Immigrants to cities were discouraged.
This seemingly lax policy on entry of immigrants gave wide opportunities for different nationals to settle in Canada. These included Jews, Chinese, Russians, and others. During that time, there was no law which regulated and managed the plight of immigrants. Those who were found undesirable were deported even with the absence of an express law to that effect.
At the start of industrialization in Canada, there was an inevitable shift from family-oriented types of employment to more complex organizational structures. These new employer-employee relations gave rise to various conflicts which were not addressed by employers, the government, and by society in general.Hopeless of their seemingly unaddressed and oppressive plight, workers who were mostly immigrants from their countries of origins, created unions to protect themselves in these new impersonal labour markets. Although the first unions were small organizations, they attracted hostile reactions from governments and most employers.
In fact, governments declared unions illegal. Union members and sympathizers confronted constant harassment, firings, blacklisting, and arrests. Despite this very obvious need to uplift the plight of workers, poor wages, and dangerous working conditions were not abated. This led to an increasing number of strikes and protests.
A revolutionary industrial union was slowly getting mass support among low-status migrant workers in Canada. This idea was seriously influenced by American labour ideology in 1905. The Industrial Workers of the World, or the “Wobblies” was formed which was composed mostly of unskilled, low-status migrant workers like miners, loggers, navies and harvesters. They were recruited from the west and were exploited in the booming economy of Canada.
The ideology is based on an international doctrine which espoused the primacy of industrial unionism and the use of general strike in the settlement of class struggles. As written by Ross McCormack, “Wobbly syndicalism was essentially pragmatic; it advocated the organization of all workers into one body and supported direct action as the only form of protest open to immigrant workers, who were excluded from the electoral process.” (A. Ross McCormack, Reformers, Rebels, and Revolutionaries.
1977).Authorities banned street demonstrations in 1912. But the IWW took on free-speech fight. Though the Wobblies lost due to massive state repression, economic depression, and employer resistance, their ideology still lingered as it was adopted by the One Big Union after 1914.
In 1906, the Immigration Act was enacted. Its primary purpose was to establish control measures and manage the entry of immigrants while limiting and prohibiting the entry of undesirable immigrants. Deportation of immigrants within two years of entry in Canada was one feature of the Immigration Act which was implemented and enforced by the Department of Immigration. There were several grounds for deportation, namely, becoming a public charge, insanity, infirmity, disease, handicap, becoming an inmate of a jail or hospital and committing crimes of moral turpitude.
With the increasing entry of Asians like Japanese, Chinese, and Indians, the Canadian government saw it as a threat to social security as a whole. Some Canadians became hysterical and this led to the organization of an Asiatic Exclusion League which initiated an Anti-Asiatic Parade. This ended in a riot and resulted to damage to property in Chinatown and Japanese quarters. To put additional control and regulation in the entry of Asians to Canada, the government exacted higher head taxes for the Asians; thus, head taxes were not equitable.
Discrimination was obviously in the foreplay. Some Canadian authorities, however, saw a conflicting view to the expanded prohibition of entry to Canada of some undesirable citizens from other countries as against the need for Canada to expand and grow its businesses with the rest of the world like Asia. It was actually in this same vein of reasoning that Canadian authorities could not altogether ban the entry of Asians into their country; especially that Asian labour was cheaper than their other counterparts.Employer-employee relationship did not go any better during the early years of the industrial revolution.
Workers sought protection from low wages and deteriorating working conditions. Employers remain unresponsive to the voices of these low-status workers so that the latter had no better option but to organize as one potent force; thus the craft union movement was born. Craft unions won hard-fought battles like union recognition and improved wages. These small victories attracted thousands of new recruits to the movement.
Craft unions had victories as well as defeats. Employers who remained hostile to the union employed a variety of strategies to hinder the growth of the union movement. Threats of “firing” and “blacklisting” were very common. Union leaders were intimidated and harassed by private security agents hired by the employers.
The government, on the other hand, came to the rescue of employers. Police authorities arrested strikers and broke up picket lines. Employers also turned to the court system to further browbeat unions. Many courts willingly accepted the arrests of strikers, granted injunctions against picketing, and entertained lawsuits designed to financially cripple unions.
Governments and the courts rarely intervened on behalf of the workers. But it took the severe depression that began in 1913 to halt completely the advance of the craft union movement. It quickly threw thousands of workers out of work and left labour activists waiting for better economic times to revive their movement.Craft unions were for the skilled workers only.
So this left a good number of unskilled workers without an organization or a union. Thus, when industrial unionism became strong, unskilled and other workers across industries and organizations joined the industrial union.Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was a radical labor union that organized the miners and smelter workers of the Rocky Mountain States. Created in 1893 by the merger of several local miners’ unions, the WFM had a reputation for violent strikes and militant action from its beginning.
Its growth among workers in Canada was hindered as it failed to address the issues it was flagging before the employers. Government was not at all cooperative to their plight.As early as 1907, a Federal labour law known as Industrial Disputes Investigation Act was enacted and enforced among industrial societies. Workers and employers in various industries like transportation, resource, and utilities were required to submit their disputed to a tripartite board of conciliation.
A cooling off period was required to be observed before strikes and lockouts were held effective. However, there were notable flaws in the Act which made workers vulnerable to their employers. The law did not encourage unionism and it even deprived workers of their potent weapon – strikes. It also did not have measures to prevent employers from denying workers’ right to strikes.
Thus, the need to enact a new law to address the plight of workers in the growing economy of Canada was very evident.During World War I (1914-1918) many steel companies became very powerful by producing shells for the army. This gave Canadian steel companies the opportunity to gain strength and earn a more level playing field with their American counterparts.In 1913, the Depression, which hurt the craft unions, brought an end to most IWW activities in Canada.
Many construction camps closed and their workers were scattered across the continent, robbing the IWW of its main constituency. The union never regained its pre-war prominence.In 1914, the War Measures Act was passed. This gave the government wide powers to arrest, detain, and deport undesirable migrant workers.
The less desirable immigrants who were tagged as “Enemy aliens” were forced to register themselves and subjected to many restrictions.In 1918, the Canadian government issued a War Order giving workers the right to take part in collective bargaining. However, the government did not enforce this law and employers did not also face sanctions for failing to abide by said law. The purpose of the enactment was to curb activities for more radical unions which were starting to gain strength among immigrant workers.
On May 2, 1919, the famous Winnipeg General Strike took place in Winnipeg Manitoba when some 24,000 organized and unorganized workers went on strike to gain collective bargaining rights while fighting for better wages and a nine-hour day work. The strike was coordinated by the Central Strike Committee composed of delegates elected from each of the unions affiliated with the WTLC. The committee bargained with employers on behalf of the workers and coordinated the provision of essential services.To counter the workers’ plans during the Winnipeg strike, employers and government Citizens’ Committee of 1000.
Employers successfully convinced the locals of Canada that the Winnipeg Strike was led by a small group of alien scums working on a revolutionary conspiracy. The strike was stopped but this did not rob workers of the little victory of compelling the government to enact laws to ensure protection of workers’ rights. Leaders of the Winnipeg General Strike were even voted for in the government elections that followed. Thus, giving the unions seats in the government legislative bodies.
There were two conflicting views advanced during this period. The Socialists believed that a direct attack on capitalism was needed to create a better world for workers. On the other hand, the Labourists believed in a more gradual reform.In 1919, amendments to the Immigration Act were enacted.
New grounds for denying entry and deportation were enumerated such as constitutional psychopathic inferiority, chronic alcoholism, and illiteracy. Section 38 of the Act allowed Cabinet to prohibit any race, nationality, or class of immigrants for economic and social reasons that may destabilize Canada as a whole and compromise the welfare of its citizens. Immigrants were seen as a group of people who were unsuited to Canadian society because of their peculiar habits, modes of life and different methods of holding property. Unemployment was then high.
In a last minute extra amendment, in response to the Winnipeg General Strike, among whose leaders were British-born activists, the British-born were made subject to deportation on political grounds. This particular amendment was repealed in 1928, after five previous efforts at repeal failed, many blocked in the Senate. Debates on the role of international unions were longstanding in Canada. International unions had headquarters in the United States.
One school of thought maintained that these international unions weakened Canada’s union movement as the peculiarity of the plight and status of the workers were not taken into consideration. Another school of thought held that international and national unions acted in concert and increased the number of disputes; thus the likelihood of workers’ victory was also unclear.A second look on the aforementioned schools of thought would give a glimpse of a practical realization – the contributory role of International Unions in the democratization of Canadian labour laws. The entry of International Unions in Canada at the time when there was insecurity and unrest among workers gave a new and optimistic perspective to the situation.
On the one hand, workers realized that their plight was not an isolated one as workers all over the world also shared in the same conflicts that they had with their employers and governments. Additionally, workers realized that by acting in unity and within established rules, order and the much-sought after sensitivity to working conditions would be addressed. On the other hand, employers and governments realized that unless they addressed and alleviated the working conditions, their businesses and industries would not leap in bounds as productivity would suffer.Canadian craft workers increasingly looked southward to the AFL unions for organizing support.
The AFL’s expertise in union organizing and collective bargaining appealed to Canadian workers. Access to the centralized resources of the American unions, such as strike funds, also attracted the attention of Canada’s struggling craft workers. Finally, Canadian workers accepted the international ideal of these unions. After all, they were all craft workers who faced the same attitudes, if not in fact the same employers, whether they lived north or south of the border.
While immigration of workers – skilled, unskilled, and technical – was still growing in Canada, the ideology of nativism also slowly emerged among Canadian nationals. Nativism is an opposition to immigration. This originated in United States politics with roots in the country’s historic role as a melting pot. Anti-immigration sentiment was based on sound and realistic arguments like increasing government expenses, language barriers, unemployment and underemployment problems, patriotism issue, rising consumption versus scarcity of resources, heavy use of welfare systems, issue on overpopulation, and more importantly the danger of losing cultural identity as immigrants swamped the communities and diluted culture, traditions, beliefs, and norms.
“The claim that immigrants can “swamp” a local population is noted to be related to birth rate, relative to nationals. Historically this has actually happened, but with immigrants whose societies were more technologically advanced than native populations which constituted only small groups in sparsely populated areas…” (V. H. Jensen, Heritage of Conflict.
1950).Lessons learned the hard way are precious than those which are just dropped on our laps as we wake up in the morning. The history of labour development in Canada is uniquely its own which it can proudly present to the rest of the economies in the world. It is one of the very few which welcomed immigrant workers from all nations as it saw the need to develop its economies while local supply of labor was pretty much wanting.
The openness at which Canadian employers and the government welcomed other nationals to man the lines in productions, trusting them with their capabilities and productivities, is an early achievement that laid the foundations and catapulted Canada to what it is today. The struggles, conflicts, divergent interests, hard stance that workers, employers and the governments were confronted in the early years of labour history were inevitable lessons that must be learned and were bound to happen in a rising economy. What made the difference was the open-mindedness of all stakeholders in giving up some in order to win more.;;;;;;;References1.
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