Your search

In authors or contributors
Publication year
  • The Eaton Drive is the story of one of the most intensive and sustained organizing campaigns in Canadian labour history. With 30,000 employees, post-war Eaton's was the country's third largest employer, surpassed only by railways and the federal government. Because its stores and mail order operations extended across Canada, Eaton's influenced retail wages nationwide. Eaton's Toronto operations, dispersed over a dozen work location and embracing 16,000 employees at peak season, presented a formidable challenge to Local 1000 of the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union and the Canadian Congress of Labour. When it applied for certification in October 1950, the Ontario Labour Relations Board was faced with the largest and most complex bargaining unit ever to come before it. The labour movement considered the success of the Eaton Drive central to removing the threat of a large, lower-paid, constantly shifting work force to their wage standards and supported it with unprecedented generosity. Eileen Tallman Sufrin, who was one of the organizers, describes the campaign from the union viewpoint in the hope that the insight it provides will assist retail workers in organizing in the future. --Publisher's description

Last update from database: 9/13/25, 4:10 AM (UTC)

Explore

Resource type