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Most Canadian prisoners work, yet very little attention has been paid to them as workers by either labour scholars or unions. However, in 1977 the Canadian Food and Allied Workers union (CFAW) organized both incarcerated and non-incarcerated meat cutters into the country's first and only legally recognized union representing primarily prisoners, CFAW Local 240. The union drive came in response to the Ontario government's push to increase prisoners' participation in the workforce, including the introduction of a number of "outside managed industrial programs", which involved private firms operating within provincial correctional facilities. These privately managed industries rekindled some older debates around the potential for prison labour to undermine the wages of free labour, but in the case of the experimental abattoir program at Guelph, they also resulted in something new: unionized prisoners. The union not only made important gains for the workers, but also made modest gains for prisoners' rights. While CFAW Local 240 would eventually be merged into subsequent unions, it continues to serve as a model for working prisoners and represents a rare moment in Canadian history - one where a union organized prison labour instead of opposing it.
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The early 1930s were marked by considerable labour unrest in Canada. Over this period, workers developed new, more expansive forms of trade unionism, as well as new tactics such as sit-down strikes and flying pickets. In the context of the great depression, this unrest was not only evident in the country’s factories, mines, and ports; workers and their unions also began organizing outside of these traditional workplaces. Perhaps most famously, this organizing included unemployed workers and those toiling in Canada’s relief camps. Less well known, however, are the ways in which Canadian prisoners participated in this labour upsurge, adopting trade union tactics to suit their particular situations, and demanding improved conditions, political representation, and wages. --Introduction
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This dissertation examines prisoner-worker organizing in Canada by considering three case studies in detail: first, the successful unionization of an experimental privately managed abattoir at the Guelph Correctional Centre, a provincial jail in Ontario, in 1977; second, efforts by federal prisoners to unionize, with a particular focus on the efforts by the Prisoners Union Committee in 1975 and the Canadian Prisoners Labour Confederation, between 2010-2015, and; third, the nation-wide federal prison strike in response to prisoner wage cuts in 2013. Through these cases, this study examines the similarities and differences between prisoner-workers and their non-incarcerated counterparts, and considers the methods and motivations of prisoner organizers, as well as the substantial legal and organizational barriers that Canadian prisoners face in their organizing efforts. Working prisoners are one of many groups who labour on the margins of society and the economy, and who have been largely overlooked or dismissed by both scholars of work and labour and the labour movement. This study seeks to expand conventional definitions of who is a workerand what constitutes the working classby demonstrating ways that prisoners have asserted their rights as workers and the legitimacy of their organizations and struggles. Through these struggles, which have been conceptualized not only as economic, but also as political struggles, prisoners have contested their state of privation and laid claim to new sets of rights. At their most successful, the organizing efforts of working prisoners have resulted in not only improvements to their working lives, but also expanded rights and freedoms in relation to their incarceration.
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Prisons don’t work, but prisoners do. Prisons are often critiqued as unjust, but we hear little about the daily labour of incarcerated workers — what they do, how they do it, who they do it for and under which conditions. Unions protect workers fighting for better pay and against discrimination and occupational health and safety concerns, but prisoners are denied this protection despite being the lowest paid workers with the least choice in what they do — the most vulnerable among the working class. Starting from the perspective that work during imprisonment is not “rehabilitative,” this book examines the reasons why people should care about prison labour and how prisoners have struggled to organize for labour power in the past. Unionizing incarcerated workers is critical for both the labour movement and struggles for prison justice, this book argues, to negotiate changes to working conditions as well as the power dynamics within prisons themselves. --Publisher's description
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Among the 40,000 workers in Canada’s largest workplace, Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto, a small but significant group of worker-organizers has created the Toronto Airport Workers’ Council (TAWC), a nonunion organization open to all Pearson workers. In this paper, we discuss the capitalist context of Canadian labor relations and the neoliberal restructuring that has attacked working conditions and workers’ solidarity across the airline industry. Then, after examining the insufficient responses by the twelve Pearson unions, we explain how workers formed the TAWC, whose participatory structures, direct action strategy, and broader class focus have achieved considerable successes, despite tensions with union leaders wary of potential “dual unionism.” We also discuss how the TAWC provides a space for socialist-led workplace organizing training and political education by the Toronto Labour Committee. Finally, we explore the possible roles of this council model in labor movement renewal and labor education in socialist movement renewal.
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