'MONOPOLY CAPITALISM', UNIONS, and SOCIAL REFORM, 1896-1939
Shipbuilding workers, Parrsboro, Nova Scotia
© Dalhousie University Archives and Special Collections |
Men rolling a barrel, Ontario c. 1907
© Archives of Ontario, F1075-9-0-13, S 9544 |
The years after 1896 were marked by great industrial expansion, especially before the First World War, and by growing conflict between corporations and labour. Manufacturing grew, surpassing agriculture in economic value by 1914. While manufacturing was increasingly concentrated in a few large corporations based in the cities of central Canada, new staple industries, such as
pulp and paper production and metal mining, were developed in the outlying areas of Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia. The working class grew both in numbers and in diversity, with increasing proportions of
women and members of
ethnic groups other than British or French. These workers faced growing pressure from corporations to exercise control over the workplace. They fought back with new forms of union organization and, in some cases, by advocating sweeping changes to the existing economic system.
Corporations sought to lower labour costs by reorganizing the process of work. Besides replacing skilled workers with machines whenever possible, they rearranged the remaining tasks into a series of standardized procedures divided among less skilled employees working at lower wage rates. These employees were closely controlled by managers. Companies also sought to swell the number of persons looking for work and to keep labour costs low by encouraging the immigration of workers from overseas, especially before the First World War. The result was a much larger working class with representation from many parts of Europe.
Workers continued to defend their interests through unions. The Knights of Labor and the Provincial Workmen’s Assocation both disappeared in the early 1900s.
Road building, Toronto c. 1902-5
© City of Toronto Archives, Series 376, File 3, Item 69 |
Forced on the defensive by the ongoing assault of employers on their traditional privileges, skilled workers abandoned the more experimental industrial unions and relied mainly on craft unions formed specifically for their interests. Many of these unions were international in nature and based in the United States. They came to dominate the
Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, first established in 1883, which now emerged as the most influential national labour organization. Less skilled employees and other groups of workers, such as women and members of certain immigrant groups, remained largely unorganized.
The formation of modern industrial unions, representing both the skilled and unskilled, proceeded slowly. Such unions emerged in the first decade of the 20th century in the coal industries of Nova Scotia, Alberta and British Columbia,
Workmen standing beside rows of pig iron at the Canada Iron Furnace Factory, Midland, Ontario c. 1900
© Archives of Ontario, ACC#2375, S 5351, 10016541 |
where the class divisions between managers and workers were obvious. However, it was not until the late 1930s that a major offensive to establish industrial unions was mounted with the formation of the Committee of Industrial Organization (later the
Congress of Industrial Organizations or CIO) in the United States. This push to organize soon spread into Canada, leading to the Oshawa strike of 1937 and the emergence of an auto workers union at the General Motors plant. These steps were the forerunners of much greater development to emerge after the Second World War.
As labour conflict escalated, some workers argued for more substantial change. Noting the declining independence of workers at work, they urged reforms that would result in workers’ control of the workplace. Canada’s economic future,
Workers about to tear down the sign from the Board of Trade Building; Winnipeg General Strike, 1919
© Library and Archives Canada, C-51597 |
they argued, depended on the further development of industry: since workers, along with farmers, comprised the heart of the economy, producing the commodities and the wealth on which society depended, they should also be in charge of the factories and at the centre of political power. Drawing on ideas originating in Europe and the United States, these activists advocated a worker-controlled state to be accomplished by electoral means through the election of
socialist parties or by
syndicalism, in which workers staged massive work stoppages to force change; or, in some cases, by armed revolution.
The influence of the left-wing thinkers reached a peak during and after the First World War. During the war, owners’ profits and employees’ living expenses shot up faster than wages. Infuriated, many workers turned to revolutionary ideas gaining support in Europe. The influence of these ideas was strongest in western
Men pouring molten metal in casting room of Norwood Foundry Co. Ltd, July 1935
© Provincial Archives of Alberta, A.6238 |
Canada where workers formed the
‘One Big Union’ (OBU), an organization seeking to unite all workers in a syndicalist plan to achieve change through paralyzing strikes. At the same time, in 1919, the Winnipeg General Strike took place. Though the goals of its leaders were moderate – to gain better wage settlements and working conditions for Winnipeg’s workers – the strike brought the city to its knees and seemed to echo the revolutionary goals of the OBU. This caused the government to intervene. Police were sent to break up strikers’ marches, and strike leaders were arrested.
After the strike was defeated, the federal and provincial governments began an offensive against the left-wing elements of the labour movement, passing new legislation making it easier to arrest their leaders. In spite of these efforts, interest in comprehensive change did not die because it seemed to speak to
Crowd attempts to tip over a streetcar during the Winnipeg General Strike, 21 June 1919
© Library and Archives Canada, C-034024 |
the desires of many workers. In the 1920s and 1930s, it was expressed primarily through the
Communist Party, which exerted an influence far beyond its numbers because its members were skilful union leaders. Communists helped to establish the new industrial unions emerging in the 1930s and organized protests on behalf of the unemployed during the Great Depression. Although communist support declined greatly after the Second World War, proposals for major social change have continued to influence the labour movement until the present day.