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[This book] focuses on six important - but largely unknown - strikes where Canadian workers fought the combined forces of capital and government for basic union rights and for decent wages and working conditions. The strikes described - the Winnipeg 1919 general strike, Estevan 1931, Stratford 1933, Oshawa 1937, the Ford Windsor strike of 1945, and Asbestos 1949 - were all major events in Canadian labour and political history. They demonstrate the strength of the labour movement, and they show the willingness of governments to use police, troops, intimidation and violence in attempts to break strikes and crush unions. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction. The Winnipeg General Strike / David Bercuson -- Estevan, 1931 / S.D. Hanson -- Aid to the civil power: the Stratford strike of 1933 / Desmond Morton -- Oshawa 1937 / Irving M. Abella -- Ford, Windsor, 1945 / David Moulton -- Asbestos 1949 / Fraser Isbester.

Samuel Gompers, the charismatic chief of the American Federation of Labor at the turn of the century, claimed to represent the interests of all workers in North America, but it was not until American corporations began to export jobs to Canada via branch plants that he became concerned with representing Canadian workers. Within a very short time the Canadian labour movement was rationalized into a segment of the American craft-union empire. In order to secure the loyalty of these new recruits, the AFI reduced the national trade-union centre of Canada, the Trades and Labor Congress, to the level of an American state federation of labour. But Gombers failed to perceive the different political, historical, and cultural climates north of the forty-ninth parallel, and his policies inevitably generated friction. Although some Canadian workers felt sympathy for labour politicians inspired by left-wing doctrines and the social gospel movement, Gompers strove to keep Canadian socialists at bay. And although Canadian workers expressed considerable interest in governmental investigation of industrial disputes, Gompers remained inimical to such moves. Canadian labour groups desired a seat on international labour bodies, but Gompers would not allow them to speak through their own delegate. Canadian unions deemed rivals to AFL affiliates were banished. Dues were siphoned off into union treasuries in the US, and American labour leaders kept firm control over organizing efforts in Canada. Perhaps most importance, the AFLs actions at the TLC convention of 1902 its opposition to dual unionism helped spawn a separate labour movement in Quebec. Yet by 1914, following nearly two decades of effort by Gompers, many Canadian workers had become his willing subjects. Though others struggled to loosen Gompers' grip on the Canadian labour movement, Canadian trade unions appeared firmly wedded to the AFLs continentalism. The story of Gompers in Canada has never been properly treated: this book is a significant addition to Canadian and American labour history and to the study of American expansion. Based upon exhaustive research in the Gompers papers, the AFL-CIO archives, and in various Canadian manuscript and newspaper sources, it clearly reveals an important aspect of the growth of American s informal empire at the turn of the century. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction -- First encounter --The rise of branch plants -- Organizing boom -- Labour politics in Canada -- Dual unions -- Berlin victory -- A ‘state’ federation -- External enemies -- Jurisdictional disputes and secessions -- Political action -- Master and servant -- Labour continentalism -- Appendixes -- Notes -- Bibliography.

This collection of documents gives a picture of the life of the workingman in the nineteenth century - his conditions of work, his housing, diet, health, and recreations, the way he viewed his problems, and was viewed as a problem by the upper classes, and his gradually developing an interest in unionism. The sources are mostly contemporary accounts, drawn from books, newspapers, and evidence supplied to the Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital. The documents are livelly, often amusing, always very revealing of the life of the ordinary people. -- Publisher's description

Women's work has been fundamental to Canada's development - whether that work has involved serving the wealthy, struggling to maintain her own family, tending the ill, teaching, or producing profits for the owner of a garment factor through sweated labour. ...Women at Work attempts to explore the reality of Canadian women's experiences, and proposes the framework which begins to answer why the double exploitation of women as mothers and workers has persisted to the present day. --Publisher's description

A life history of a working class woman from the socialist milieu of WWI Berlin, accounts of that world and of emigration to and life in the resource frontier of western Canada from the 1930s to 1970. An underground classic of Canadian and immigrant history which ran through four printings in original. --Author's description

A complete history of painting in Canada, from the art of the native peoples right up to the 1970's. This outstanding work explodes many myths about Canadian and Quebecois art. In easy to understand language, it explains the effect on Canadian painting of the French, British , and U.S. imperialist regimes that have ruled Canada. This book shows how art has been part of the fight against that domination. --Publisher's description

In 1967 the United Fisherman and Allied Workers Union established a history project to collect historical materials with a view to preparing a comprehensive history of trade union organization in the British Columbia fishing industry. This outline story, the joint work of staff members of The Fisherman, past and present, is the first publication.

Author Jack Scott has spent a lifetime of active involvement in many of the same kinds of working-class struggles he describes in this, his first book.... --Publisher's description

On February 18, 1949 the asbestos industry went on strike at Asbestos, Quebec. During four and a half months, 5,000 miners faced the united forces of the mining companies and the Duplessis government in what turned out to be a bitter, hard-fought confrontation. The strikers received widespread support and sympathy in Quebec. In a dramatic break from tradition, the Catholic church came out strongly their side. The Duplessis government, however, put on a massive show of police power and used mass arrests and widespread beatings to intimidate the workers. Many Quebec intellectuals were active on the strikers' side. Their involvement led to the writing of this book, originally published in 1956. Contributors, including Fernand Dumont, Gérard Pelletier, Gérard Dion, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, trace the history of the strike and analyze its causes and consequences. Like the strike itself, this book is a landmark. It marks the beginning of a new, critical traditioin of writing on Quebec history and society, and it is a major contribution to the history of the Quebec labour movement. This translation of the original 1956 edition makes the complet text of this important book available to English-speaking readers for the first time. --Publisher's description. Contents: Foreword / Frank R. Scott -- Preface / Jean-Charles Falardeau -- The province of Quebec at the time of the strike / Pierre Elliott Trudeau (pages 1-82) -- Financial history of the asbestos industry / Jean Gérin-Lajoie (pages 83-106) -- History of the trade union movement in the asbestos industry / Fernand Dumont (pages 107-142 )-- History of the strike at Asbestos / Gilles Beausoleil (pages 143-182) -- History of the negotiations (pages 183-204) -- The church and the conflict in the asbestos industry / Gérard Dion (pages 205-226) -- The strike and our judicial system / Charles A. Lussier (pages 227-238) -- The strike and the press / Gérard Pelletier (pages 239-274) -- Six years later / Maurice Sauvé (pages 275-298) -- The strike and the labour movement / Réginald Boisvert (pages 299-332) -- Epilogue / Pierre Elliott Trudeau (pages 333-352) -- Appendix 1: Bibliographical notice (pages 353-354) -- Appendix 2: The Custos report (pages 355-356) -- Appendix 3: Opinions on the police brutalities and extracts from a judgment of the superior court (pages 367-370) -- Appendix 4: The Rocque trial: A case of judicial oversimplification / J.P. Geoffroy (pages 371-376) -- Appendix 5: A reader's guide to The Asbestos Strike / James Boake (pages 377-382).

Illustrated history of the Steelworkers that celebrates the principles of union organizing, service, and the volunteer. Preface by Lynn R. Williams, International President.