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The article reviews the book, "Technology on the Frontier: Mining in Old Ontario," by Dianne Newell.
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This article reviews the book, "Rebuilding the Pulp and Paper Worker's Union, 1933-1941," by Robert H. Zieger.
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Two linked Toronto strikes of street railway employees in 1886 are used to explore contrasting patterns of behaviour or “contentious performances” in Victorian city streets. Strikers led by the Knights of Labor exercised self-discipline when picketing so as to gain the support of the community and defeat the ironclad contract imposed by their anti-union employer. At a moment of working-class mobilization amid industrialization, these employees of a modern, mass-transportation firm deployed “emergent” union tactics. Positioning themselves as breadwinners and as citizens asserting their right to join a union, they deployed a choreographed masculinity encouraged by Knights leaders who strategized to win the disputes. By contrast, large crowds composed overwhelmingly of working-class men and boys demonstrated their disapproval of the street railway company and its anti-labour policy in unruly actions detailed in lively press accounts. The crowds’ transgressive actions point to a “residual” pattern of protest and spontaneous expressions of masculinity derived from boyhoods spent in the streets. Moreover, at times these crowds engaged in playful behaviour and brought into the streets more people drawn by the fun, thus adding momentum to the strikers’ campaign and helping to prompt the repressive measures taken by law enforcement.
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This paper traces the rise and fall in Ontario of the Workers Educational Association (WEA), a voluntary association whose main purpose was to organize inexpensive, non-credit night classes taught by university professors for the working class. The Association was an offshoot of the British WEA. ln Ontario the main impetus for establishing an Association in 1918 came from members of Toronto's intellectual elite. One of their aims was to teach labour people "responsible behaviour" at a time when the labour movement seemed to be gaining influence and becoming more radical. Working-class people within the WEA proved less malleable than the academics had hoped, and the Association soon became a workers' organization, largely controlled by some of its working-class members. It offered many liberal arts courses and, in the late 1930s and 1940s, developed innovative labour education and research programmes which proved of lasting benefit to the labour movement. Although continually threatened by the University of Toronto administration, the WEA failed in the 1950s because certain labour leaders, using Cold War tactics, opposed a labour educational institution that they could not control.
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No persuasive account of labour in Australia and Canada can ignore the impact that immigration has wrought on the composition of the working class and preoccupations of workers, unions, and the varied political parties they have sponsored. Highlighting both similarities and differences between countries, the paper explores the paradoxical relationship that immigration has had with the labour movements of Australia and Canada. Although immigrants have been a critical source of union recruits, new ideas, and leaders (this being especially true for British skilled men), their presence was also long a source of concern, chauvinism, and division within predominantly white, Anglo-Celtic, and male-dominated union movements that adopted exclusionary policies, particularly regarding Asian and continental European workers. A more recent shift towards non-racist and inclusive policies unfortunately has not obliterated labour segmentation along racial and ethnic lines, especially job ghettos for immigrant women. Meanwhile, global restructuring and the loss of hard-earned union protections have increased immigrant workers' historic vulnerability. In explaining differences in the two countries -for example, Australia's greater 'success' at restricting non-white immigration before 1945 and Canada's earlier experience with a racially diverse work force - the paper cautions against easy generalizations, pointing instead to a series of historically contingent factors (such as 'accidents' of geography and differing political developments) that on some occasions led to rather different outcomes.
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