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The paper examines the experience of C.B. Wade (1906–1982), a chartered accountant and university instructor who was recruited to work for organized labour during the period of transition from wartime mobilization to postwar reconstruction at the end of the Second World War. In hiring Wade in 1944, District 26 of the United Mine Workers of America became one of the first Canadian unions to employ a research director to help address the challenges of the new age of industrial legality and advance their social democratic agenda. The paper discusses Wade's background, including his involvement in the Workers' Educational Association, and documents his contributions to the work of the coal miners' union, including the efforts to promote public ownership of the industry. In addition, the paper discusses Wade's unpublished history of the union, a manuscript that has had a long life as an underground classic. While the negotiation of the postwar compromises between labour, capital and the state gave union staff such as Wade an increasingly central role in labour relations, this was not a stable context, and the paper also considers the deepening Cold War conditions that led to the end of his employment in 1950. In the context of labour and working-class history, Wade can be associated with a relatively small cohort of politically engaged intellectuals who made lasting contributions to the research capacity of unions and to the field of labour studies.

When Professor Murray Young was teaching his pioneering courses on New Brunswick history up to what was then the recent past of the 1960s, colleagues would ask him what text he was using for the contemporary period. His answer was the Byrne Report. Students in that class learned how to read tables of data and lists of recommendations, and they came to appreciate the Report of the Royal Commission on Finance and Municipal Taxation as one of the most significant documents in the historical evolution of the province. --Introduction

Discusses a biographical questionnaire that J.B. McLachlan completed for the Communist International during a visit to the Soviet Union in 1931. In it, the Nova Scotia labour leader briefly responded on his background, education, work and labour activism, political status (including his recruitment to the "Canadian section" of the Communist Party in 1922), and imprisonment in 1923-24. The questionnaire and other related materials came to light as a result of a request made by the author to the Russian State Archives in October 2020.

Tribute to the life and work of the union activist and social historian, Raymond Léger, who was also a member of Labour/Le Travail's editorial board.

The resignation of J.B. McClachlan from the Communist Party of Canada in 1936 is one of the more controversial episodes in the biography of a well-known Canadian labour radical. He was one of the few party leaders to enjoy wide recognition and popular support. His resignation was a difficult personal decision as well as a significant episode in the history of the party. In previous accounts his resignation has been presented ultimately as a repudiation of labour radicalism generally and the Communist Party in particular, as a protest against the adoption of the united front in 1935, or as a form of local and personal political exceptionalism. McLachlan himself made no formal public announcement of his resignation and, except for an impromptu speech at a public meeting in September 1936, he remained largely silent. In response to a letter from party general secretary Tim Buck he prepared a personal explanation of his withdrawal from the party in June 1936. This document, which is reproduced at the end of this article, remains the most important single piece of evidence concerning his resignation. An analysis of the circumstances leading to McLachlan's resignation shows that he did not regard his resignation as a repudiation of basic principles. He had supported the move towards the united front both internationally and domestically but disagreed with the implementation of the policy by the party leadership, especially sa demonstrated in the case of the Amalgamated Mine Workers of Nova Scotia. McLachlan's view of the united front, which he considered to be consistent with the position of the Communist International, stressed the principles of internal democracy and local autonomy in the construction of the united front. In McLachlan's view there were already enough indications to show that leaders such as John L. Lewis had not been fundamentally transformed and that in the long run the decision to endorse an alliance of convenience with the established labour bureaucracy was an ambiguous legacy for the class struggle. In 1936 McLachlan was overtaken by events, but given his own history he was in a position to perceive the difficulties ahead more clearly than most of his contemporaries.

In the years after 1899 a small but vigorous socialist movement emerged in Canada's Maritime Provinces. This article describes the origins, activities, ideas and personalities of the early socialist movement in the region. The socialists gained support in the region's industrial centres and coal-mining districts and contributed a proportionate share of the national support enjoyed by the Socialist Party of Canada and the newspaper Cotton's Weekly. The article concludes that early Canadian socialism found an important following outside western Canada and that "conservatism" is not an adequate explanation of the history of the Maritimes.

La Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Nouveau-Brunswick, fondée en 1913, est la deuxième plus ancienne fédération provinciale du travail au Canada. Son histoire remonte aux premières campagnes en faveur de l’indemnisation des accidents du travail et de la reconnaissance syndicale, et elle se poursuit dans les plus récentes luttes visant à défendre les normes sociales et à protéger les emplois et les droits syndicaux. La Fédération a vu le jour dans la ville portuaire de Saint John et le centre ferroviaire de Moncton, puis elle s’est étendue aux travailleurs des mines et des usines du nord de la province, soutenant la cause des employés du secteur public et des travailleuses, reflétant les réalités de la vie et du travail dans une société bilingue. Puisant dans les archives, les journaux et les expériences des travailleurs et des travailleuses, voici l’histoire inédite de solidarités syndicales provinciales qui ont surmonté les divisions et les revers afin de rehausser le statut des travailleurs et des travailleuses dans la société néo-brunswickoise. Par cette étude pionnière rédigée dans un style clair et puissant, Frank apporte une contribution originale à la compréhension de l’évolution politique, économique et sociale de la province, et il aide à combler le besoin d’éclairer la connaissance que le public a de l’histoire des travailleurs et des syndicats de toutes les régions du Canada. --Publisher's description

This collection of essays provides a generous introduction to the vibrant field of labour and working-class history in Canada's eastern provinces. Organized in four sections covering pre-industrial labour, the industrial revolution, labour's wars of the early twentieth century, and the rise of industrial legality, the book should prove useful in university classrooms and for all readers interested in the history of the region's ordinary people. Concluding chapters address topics of current interest such as public sector unionism, the role of women in the fishery, and the horrors of the Westray mine disaster. The editors provide an introduction, section heads, and suggestions for further reading. The volume is edited by David Frank, Department of History, University of New Brunswick, the former editor of Acadiensis, and Gregory S. Kealey, Department of History, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Dean of Graduate Studies. Authors include T. W. Acheson, Rusty Bittermann, Sean Cadigan, Jessie Chisholm, Patricia M. Connelly, Peter DeLottinville, E. R. Forbes, Eugene Forsey, Harry Glasbeek, Linda Little, Martha MacDonald, Robert McIntosh, Ian McKay, D. A. Muise, Nolan Reilly, Eric W. Sager, Anthony Thomson, and Eric Tucker. --Publisher's description

In October 1976 one million Canadian workers walked off the job to protest the wage controls imposed by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. In a memorable personal account of this historic general strike, Saint John labour activist George Vair recalls how workers in one New Brunswick city mobilized to defend themselves and their unions and defeat the unpopular program. --Publisher's description

An original adventure in public history — a tour of 50 sites where families, workers, unions and communities have recognized the place of workers in 20th-century New Brunswick history. Ten short chapters, with explanatory notes, illustrations and a map. // Une aventure originale en histoire publique — une tournée de 50 lieux où des familles, des travailleuses et des travailleurs, des syndicats et des communautés ont reconnu la place des travailleuses et des travailleurs dans l’histoire du Nouveau-Brunswick du 20e siècle. Dix courts chapitres, des notes explicatives, des illustrations et une carte. --Publisher's description

Working-class history is the story of the changing conditions and actions of all working people. Most adult Canadians today earn their living in the form of wages and salaries and thus share the conditions of dependent employment associated with the definition of "working class." -- Introduction

Historien reconnu à l'échelle internationale, Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson a été un précurseur par sa réinterpretation de l'histoire des peuples de Canada. Ses ouvrages se tiennent une place tout à fait singulièredans l'historiographie canadienne. Intelluelle d'envergure, il a su allier l'excellence scientifique à la responsibilité sociale ; tout au longue une carrière de plus de soixante années, il a conservé ce profil de militant et d'historien engagé. Sa recherche, toujours inspirée des problèmes de société, a été animée par des valeurs de justice, de solidarité et de liberté. Cet ouvrage auquel participent quatorze collaborateurs qui veut faire connaître le plus important historien Marxiste du Canada. Il vise égalment rétracer la trajectoire militante et le cheminement intellectuel progressiste qui a laissé derrière lui une œuvre fort imposante. --Description de l'éditeur

Every day millions of Canadians go out to work. They labour in factories, offices, restaurants, and retail stores, on ships, and deep in mines. And every day millions of other Canadians, mostly women, begin work in their homes, performing the many tasks that ensure the well-being of their families and ultimately, the reproduction of the paid labour force. Yet, for all its undoubted importance, there has been remarkably little systematic research into the past and present dynamics of the world of work in Canada. The essays in this volume enhance our understanding of Canadians on the job. Focusing on specific industries and kinds of work, from logging and longshoring to restaurant work and the needle trades, the contributors consider such issues as job skill, mass production, and the transformation of resource industries. They raise questions about how particular jobs are structured and changed over time, the role of workers' resistance and trade unions in shaping the lives of workers, and the impact of technology. Together these essays clarify a fundamental characteristic shared by all labour processes: they are shaped and conditioned by the social, economic, and political struggles of labour and capital both inside and outside the workplace. They argue that technological change, as well as all the transformations in the workplace, must become a social process that we all control. --Publisher's description. Contents: On the job in Canada / Craig Heron and Robert Storey (pages 3-46) -- Dimensions of paternalism: Discipline and culture in Canadian railway operations in the 1850s / Paul Craven and Tom Traves (pages 47-74) -- Work control, the labour process, and nineteen-century Canadian printers / Gregory S. Kealey (pages 75-101) -- Contested terrain: workers' control in the Cape Breton coal mines in the 1920s / David Frank (pages 102-123) -- Keeping house in God's country: Canadian women at work in the home  / Veronica Strong-Boag (pages 124-151) -- Skill and gender in the Canadian clothing industry, 1890-1940 / Mercedes Steedman (pages 152-176) -- Mechanization, feminization, and managerial control in the early twentieth-century Canadian office / Graham S. Lowe (pages 177-209) -- Work and struggle in the Canadian steel industry, 1900-1950 / Craig Heron and Robert Storey (pages 210-244) -- Logging pulpwood in Northern Ontario / Ian Radforth (pages 245-280) -- On the waterfront: longshoring in Canada / John Bellamy Foster (pages 281-308) -- Life in a fast-food factory / Ester Reiter (pages 309-326) -- Autoworkers on the firing line / Don Wells (pages 327-352).