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This dissertation provides the first historical overview of the Confederation of Canadian Unions (CCU) and its affiliates from 1969 to 1992. Formed at the end of the 1960s as a foil to the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the CCU sought to nationalize the Canadian labour movement by fomenting the formation of Canadian unions. As a left-nationalist labour body, the CCU charged the CLC with conservatism, complacency, and collaboration in its approach to organizing and collective bargaining. Chief among the CCU’s concerns was the domination of American international unions in the CLC. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the CCU organized workplaces in unorganized industries, bringing a host of immigrant women into the ranks of the Canadian labour movement, while establishing large bargaining units in industries primarily organized by American unions. At the same time, the CCU forwarded a left-nationalist politics inspired by the New Canadian Political Economy (NCPE) that criticized Canada’s economic, political, and cultural dependence on the United States, and used this politics to mobilize its members against continental free trade and towards a nationalized, socialized home economy. The CCU and its affiliates also formed important linkages with the New Left and the women’s movement during these decades and proved itself a militant actor in confrontations with the state and industrial law. Several CCU affiliates eventually merged with the Canadian Autoworkers (CAW) in the 1990s in the wake of extensive economic restructuring and corresponding changes in the Canadian labour movement. The dissertation contributes to the scholarship on industrial relations, industrial legality, and nationalism by providing a historical case study of a left-nationalist labour institution that simultaneously challenged and was shaped by federal and provincial law. It provides a critical institutionalist perspective on union federations that accounts for the law as a contested terrain, and nationalism as a historically contingent politics.
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This thesis examines three Ontario strikes during the 1970s: the Dare Foods, Ltd. strike in Kitchener, Ontario, 1972-1973; the Puretex Knitting Company strike in Toronto, 1978-1979; and the Inco strike in Sudbury, 1978-1979. These strikes highlight gender issues in the Canadian food production, textile, and mining industries in the 1970s, industries that were all markedly different in size and purpose, yet equally oppressive towards working women for different reasons, largely based on the regional character of each city the strikes took place in. In Kitchener, the women's movement worked closely with the Dare union local and the left to mobilize against the company and grappled with the difficulties of framing women's inequality within the labour movement. At Puretex, immigrant women workers were subject to electronic surveillance as a form of worker control, and a left-wing nationalist union needed to look outside of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) for allies in strike action. At Inco, an autonomous women's group formed separate from the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) but struggled to overcome a negative perception of women's labour activism in Sudbury. Ultimately, these strikes garnered a wide variety of support from working women and feminist groups, who often built or had pre-existing relationships with Canadian and American trade unions as well as the left-wing milieu of the 1970s. This thesis uses these strikes as case studies to argue that despite the complicated and at times uneven relationship between feminism, labour, and the left in the 1970s, feminist and left-wing strike support was crucial in sustaining rank-and-file militancy throughout the decade and stimulating activist careers for women in the feminist movement, in unions, and on the left.
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In 1978, over 200 textile workers affiliated with Local 560 of the Canadian Textile and Chemical Union went on strike at Puretex Knitting Company, a small garment factory in Toronto, Ontario. Of the strikers, 190 were immigrant women who opposed management’s installation of nine security cameras on the premises, one of which was trained on the entrance to the women’s washroom. To have the cameras removed and win the strike, Local 560 used a combination of traditional strike tactics and legal mobilization. This article makes a case for the significance of the Puretex strike by arguing that workplace surveillance acted as a flashpoint around which feminist and legal allies could mobilize in support of exploited immigrant women in the textile industry during the 1970s. By the strike’s end, the Puretex women had not only gained invaluable and transformative strike experience but engaged with industrial legality and the state in a way that brought about meaningful change in their workplace. The Puretex strike is therefore a significant case of immigrant women’s militant organizing in the labour and feminist movements during the 1970s and an important reminder that engagement with industrial law and the state, in certain historical contexts, can provide avenues for successful worker resistances.
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- Journal Article (1)
- Thesis (2)
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Between 2000 and 2025
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Between 2010 and 2019
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Between 2010 and 2019
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