Your search
Results 3 resources
-
The article reviews the book, "Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class," by Jefferson Cowie.
-
Through late 1973, the Artistic Woodwork strike captivated not only the left-wing milieux of Toronto - from young New Leftists, to rank-and-file union members, to activists from a plethora of political groups - but also the entire city. Artistic was a first contract strike by immigrant workers organized by the Canadian Textile and Chemical Union (CTCU). The narrative of the strike came to be dominated by supporters after many of the workers picketing left due to both fear and the availability of alternative employment. By November, mass pickets of four hundred people added to political pressure and helped secure a first contract settlement. Coming at the end of a period of intense political debate and discussion concerning the agent of social change and the role of the working-class, Artistic assumed special significance in the personal trajectories of many supporters. On these violent picket lines, supporters had an opportunity to act out the prevailing Marxist sociology of the time. Artistic demonstrates the confluence of a variety of forces at the end of the long sixties: the widespread turn towards Marxism and the working-class as a necessary component of social and political change; the importance of nationalism as a unifying feature between some New Leftists and unions such as the CTCU; and the continuing social responsibility of the student and the intellectual. While Artistic was decertified in 1975, we can take valuable lessons from the strike concerning the impact of allowing strikebreakers as well as the power and importance of a social network in garnering widespread strike support.
-
During the "long sixties" - between 1964 and 1973 - baby boomers raised on democratic postwar ideals demanded a more egalitarian society for all. While a few became vocal leaders at universities across Canada, nearly 90% of Canada's young people went straight to work after high school. There, they brought the anti-authoritarian spirit of the youth revolt to the labour movement. While university-based activists combined youth culture with a new brand of radicalism to form the New Left, young workers were pressing for wildcat strikes and defying their aging union leaders in a wave of renewed militancy that swept the country. In Rebel Youth, Ian Milligan looks at these converging currents, demonstrating convincingly how they were part of a single youth phenomenon. With just short of seventy interviews complementing the extensive use of archival records, this book reveals a youth current that, despite regional differences, spanned an intellectual network from Halifax to Victoria that read the same publications, consulted the same thinkers, and found inspiration in the same shared ideas. Rebel Youth draws important connections between the stories of young workers and the youth movement in Canada, claiming a central place for labour and class in the legacy of this formative decade. --Publisher's description
Explore
Resource type
- Book (1)
- Journal Article (2)