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James Naylor traces the transformation of class relations in the industrial cities of southern Ontario, examining the character of the regional labour movement, the nature of employer and state response, and the reasons for the failure of labour's "new democracy." --Publisher's description. Inside front-cover summary: The period during and after the First World War was marked by tremendous labour unrest, not only in Winnipeg where the general strike of 1919 was a watershed, but across the country. James Naylor focuses on southern Ontario, in the industrial heartland of Canada, as a key to understanding the character of this phase of labour history. In the 1919 provincial election, the Independent Labor Party of Ontario swept most of the province's industrial constituencies outside Toronto and formed a coalition government with the organized farmer. Strike activity soared to unprecedented levels. The Toronto Trades Council organized a general strike, and new forms of industrial unionism began to emerge. If these events lacked some of the drama of those in the West, they reflect both an increasingly articulate working-class view of democracy and labour's determination not to be overlooked in the postwar reconstruction. Naylor examines a number of issues: the nature of working-class views of democracy and the state; the role of women in these movements; the logic participation in the electoral process; the dynamic between 'industrial' and 'political' activity in the context of a liberal-democratic system. He also considers the responses of employers and government with a view to undertanding the 'negotiated' character of postwar reconstruction in the context of social classes.

Presents a history of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 500.

Intended to be of interest to students of sociology, ethnic studies and history, this book assesses the political economy of migration. Labour shortages, the racialization of Caribbean migrant farm labour and alternatives to labour imports are discussed. --Publisher's description

Allen was raised in a Christian family, being the son of a United Church minister, and this no doubt influenced his academic interests, which took him to Duke University where he completed his doctoral studies. Out of this came his first major work, and one which still inspires scholars of Canadian socialism and Christianity to this day: The Social Passion: Religion and Social Reform in Canada, 1914-28. Published in 1971, it served as a defining work for how scholars understood the figures, events, motivations, ideologies, and theologies which shaped the social gospel movement in Canada. While of an age that many might deem ‘dated,’ this book was deeply influential on my own understanding of the Christian left in this country, which existed in rudimentary form given my interest in key CCF figures like J.S. Woodsworth and Tommy Douglas, but wasn’t developed in a meaningful way until graduate school. In Allen’s writing, I saw figures and movements that—however imperfectly—melded the ideas of secular social justice with a conviction that Christ was sent to earth not only to teach us about the afterlife, but about how to build a New Jerusalem in the here and now. --From "Remembering Richard Allen" by Christo Aivalis [blog posting, 2019-03-25]

The creation of the NDP out of the CCF in 1961 was intended to strengthen Canada's left-wing political party through a closer alliance with organized labour. This strength has failed to materialize. In Political Choices and Electoral Consequences, Keith Archer reveals why.The most important link between labour and the NDP is the direct party affiliation of union locals. While this sort of affiliation had existed with the CCF, the Canadian Labour Congress showed a greater commitment to encouraging union locals to affiliate with the NDP. Although, as Archer discusses in both theoretical and empirical terms, individuals who belong to union locals formally linked to the NDP are more likely to vote for that party than are other people with similar socio-demographic characteristics, this has had little positive effect on the NDP's fortunes. Archer reveals that although, in principle, each union local may favour high rates of affiliation, it is often not in a local's self-interest to affiliate. Archer suggests that the main reason for such a disappointing record of affiliation is structural rather than ideological or cultural. He compares the Canadian situation to that in Britain, where the Labour Party rules governing affiliation have supported high rates of affiliation. The rules of the NDP, Archer goes on to show, are not significantly different from those that were developed between labour and the CCF. However, the CCF was not a labour party as such but rather an amalgam of farmers, labourers, and members of constituency associations. Labour's role has consequently remained that of a junior partner with the constituency groups. Under these circumstances, Archer argues, one would expect rates of affiliation to remain low. --Publisher's description

Why was Winnipeg the scene of the longest and most complete general strike in North American history? Bercuson answers this question by examining the development of union labour and the impact of depression and war in the two decades preceding the strike. --Publisher's description

Have Mulroney, Reagan and Thatcher beaten labour into the ground? Are unions a spent force? Do ordinary people in Canada, the United States and Great Britain truly believe in the so-called free market? How are the Swedish social democrats handling challenges to their consensus society? Is there indeed a neo-conservative hegemony for the nineteen-nineties? These are some of the questions which the authors of this sixth Socialist Studies Annual try to answer. They present case studies from various countries, using the social and political insights of Gramsci and other progressive thinkers. --Publisher's description

"The heroic and principled struggle of the Industrial Workers of the World to become the organization representing the working class in its contest with capital has been celebrated in story and song for most of this century. That they eventually lost this struggle is well known; less well understood is why. It is this why that concerns Mark Leier in Where the Fraser River Flows. In recounting the IWW's glory days in British Columbia, particularly the famous Free Speech Fights of 1909 and 1912, Leier shows that they were pitted against not just the bosses and government, but also against conservative elements within labour and the left. To ask what happened to the IWW, says Leier, is to ask a larger question-why is there no socialism?"--Page 4 of cover

July 27, 1918. Heavy heat burned down on the small mining town of Cumberland on Vancouver Island. In the nearby wildernes of Comox Lake, a special police constable broke through the bush to come shockingly face to face with a stranger. A slight, red-haired man stood holding a rifle. This was the fugitive they sought, considered subversive and dangerous. With no time to aim, the constable shot as he raised his own weapon. This is the "official" version of the events of that day. The life of Albert "Ginger" Goodwin, one of British Columbia's most colourful figures, had come to a controversial end. [This book] is the story of a remarkable man, and a fascinating period in BC history. Arriving on Vancouver Island in 1910, Ginger Goodwin joined hundreds of others slaving in the hellholes of the Cumberland Mines. There he found blacklung, explosions, and deadly vapours; hazards which killed hundreds of miners in a short century of coal mining. What he saw made him one of the most effective labour leaders the province has ever seen, and led ultimately to his untimely end. Susan Mayse combines the skills of the historian and novelist in this gripping biography. From fragments of recorded history, official documents, and exhaustive interviews with the coal miners who knew Cumberland and knew Ginger Goodwin, she has pieced together an extraordinary tale. --Publisher's desscription

This is a story of two Ontario towns, Hanover and Paris, that grew in many parallel ways. They were about the same size, and both were primarily one-industry towns. But Hanover was a furniture-manufacturing centre; most of its workers were men, drawn from a community of ethnic German artisans and agriculturalists. In Paris the biggest employer was the textile industry; most of its wage earners were women, assisted in emigration from England by their Canadian employer. Joy Parr considers the impacy of these fundamental differences from a feminist perspective in her study of the towns' industrial, domestic, and community life. She combines interviews of women and men of the towns with analyses of a wide range of documents: records of the firms from which their families worked, newspapers, tax records, paintings, photographs, and government documents. Two surprising and contrasting narratives emerge. The effects of gender identities upon both women's and men's workplace experience and of economic roles upon familial relationships are starkly apparent. Extending through seventy crucial years, these closely textured case studies challenge conventional views about the distinctiveness of gender and class roles. They reconfigure the social and economic change accompanying the rise of industry. They insistently transcend the reflexive dichtomies drawn between womena dn men, public and privae, wage and non-wage work. They investigate industrial structure, technological change, domesticity, militance, and perceptions of personal power and worth, simultaneously as products of gender and class identities, recast through community sensibilities. --Publisher's description

A book about succeeding because you are Canadian - not in spite of it. About doing all those things we're not supposed to be very good at. Things like outmaneuvering monster corporations; like standing up to the Americans; like putting regional differences aside; like blowing the whistle on polluters; like rising above linguistic differrences. But, most of all, it's about cracking the Canadian formula--about learning how to win on our own terms, in our own time, in our own way. No fuss. No muss. Cracking the Canadian Formula is not just the story of Canadians building a unique union. The story of how we succeed in Canada when we have the courage to try it our own way. That makes it the story of far. It also makes it a story that might just hold the secret of Canadian yet to come." -- Publisher's description. "This is the encyclopedia of what unions can do to help build a made-in-Canada movement for personal, social and economic independence." -- Mel Hurtig.

The central argument of this book is that getting people to work and getting them to stay there is a significant political achievement in its own right. ...[W]e may assume that in any social situation in which labour is experienced as a coercive aspect of daily life, work, or more accurately obtaining work effort, becomes problematical. Often it entails state intervention in a well-developed system of industrial relations that includes an important element of public policy. This book is a study of that element in Canadian industrial relations. Proceeding from this starting point, two central questions are posed throughout the remainder of this text: 1) What does the state do when it practices industrial relations; and 2) What are the implications of such practices on work and those groups that are brought together in labouring processes? --From introduction

Max Swerdlow's life as labour organizer and educator began in Depression-era Winnipeg and carried him to national and international prominence in the Trades and Labour Congress, the Canadian Labour Congress, and the International Labour Organization. In this lively memoir, Swerdlow recaptures the persons and events of his life in the Labour movement. --Publisher's description

For Ontario workers during the industrial revolution the workplace was often an environment of terrible danger. Injuries and illness from unsafe working conditions were commonplace. Over time these conditions spurred efforts for reform from activists, legislators, and the courts. But change was slow in coming. To understand the impact of industrial revolution on the health and safety of workers generally, and on women and children in particular, tucker uses their testimony before various commissions, newspapers, and reported court cases. Initial efforts to effect change were made through the courts; they were largely unsuccessful. When the judiciary refused to regulate the risk-creating conduct of employers, through either the civil or the criminal law, workers and Victorian reformers found common ground in successfully promoting factory legislation. By prescribing and enforcing minimum standards, a measure of regulatory responsibility for the health of workers generally and women and children in particular was shifted from the market to the state. Class interest and gender ideology played a substantial role in this process. But the legislation's implementation belied its promise. The government was unwilling to provide adequate enforcement resources and inspectors accepted the conventional wisdom that workers had to adjust to the 'normal' hazards of industry, which were reasonable and, therefore, legal. Even when the accident rate began to soar as a result of the 'second industrial revolution, ' the authorities remained complacent. Tucker says that in industrial capitalist social formation, the nature and degree of hazards to which workers are exposed are determined largely by the employer-worker balance of power. Their respective power resources both shape and are shaped by the ideological, legal, political, and administrative environment in which they are deployed. Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century and up to the First World War, state regulation of occupational health and safety was substantially subordinated to market-driven forces; it still is today

The National Action Committee on the Status of Women marked the twentieth anniversary of its founding in 1992. Today, it is the umbrella organization for roughly six hundred women’s groups in Canada. The authors of this study argue that, if women’s movements are to achieve their equality goals, they must develop enduring institutions that allow women’s efforts to be organized over the course of several generations. The authors examine the process of institutionalization through an in-depth study of the National Action Committee. In the belief that women’s movements in Canada have become more or less permanent features of the political system, operating parallel to its official structures, the author argue the need for a feminist political science that can accommodate the study of both women’s politics in their autonomous movements and women’s conventional activities in official politics. Indeed, this book undertakes political analysis ‘as if women mattered’: it focuses on women’s interests and draws on feminist theory while remaining connected to the broad framework of political science. The book documents NAC’s evolution as a ‘parliament of women.’ It shows how the organization moved from a fairly narrow status-of-women focus in its policies to a broadly conceived policy framework that linked such apparently sex-neutral issues as free trade, federalism, and taxation to feminism. Although the more comprehensive feminist approach to public policy proved dangerous for NAC in a conservative era, it also solidified its role and reputation as a major play in equality-seeking politics in Canada. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction : NAC and women's politics in Quebec ; NAC and women's politics in the first nations ; NAC and the politics of the 'new force' ; NAC as the coordinating institution of the English-Canadian women's movement ; Highlights of NAC's development -- The intellectual and political context for the development of NAC : An overview of women's movements and the National Action Committee ; Canadian political culture and Canadian women's movements ; Radical influences on feminist political culture ; NAC's political-opportunity structure: the Canadian political system -- NAC in the shadow of the royal commission: the founding era, 1972-1978 : 'Social' movements and the political process ; The founding of NAC -- The struggle for NAC: the transitional era, 1979-1982 : The issues in conflict: grafting on a radical grass roots ; Two coalitions competing for the future of NAC -- A new Parliament of women: institutionalizing NAC, 1982-1988 : Getting NAC 'back on track' ; The great leap forward: the expansion examined ; Opposition on the right ; Organizational review -- Agency, leadership, representation, and democracy in NAC : A revolution of rising expectations: NAC member groups ; Leadership and accountability: is anyone here in charge? ; Representation: the heart of the matter ; Process and democracy in NAC -- The policy process: structures for a new Parliament of women : Changing conceptions of the policy process in NAC ; Evolving policy structures in NAC ; NAC's ability to deal with short-term policy issues ; NAC's approach to long-term policy issues -- Feminist ideology and policy making in NAC : In search of a framework: understanding the ideological trends in NAC ; The development of a feminist ideological spectrum in NAC: some benchmark issues ; From a status-of-women approach to a feminist politics -- Conclusion : What is success? ; Can NAC's role as a Parliament of women continue? ; Is radical liberalism outmoded as a cultural basis for NAC politics? ; Will NAC survive? -- Appendixes : A. Ideological forces among Anglophone NAC delegates, 984 AGM ; B. Groups affiliated with NAC by type, circa 1987-1988.