The Struggle for Employment Equity by Blacks On American and Canadian Railroads

Abstract

The history of Blacks on Canadian railroads has been partly influenced by the history of its counterparts on American railroads. Among the reasons for the similar work experiences, two stand out. First, Canadian railroad companies and unions followed the American practice of instituting a submerged split labor market (Bonacich, 1972) which Whites monopolized the higher paid positions and locked in Blacks into menial, low-paying, and low-status jobs. However, the racially submerged split labor market policies of Canadian railroads were more rigid than those of American companies. Canadian railroad companies employed Blacks almost exclusively as sleeping car porters until the amalgamation of the porters' and dining car locals of the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Transport and General Workers (CBRT) 1964. In the northern and western United States, Blacks worked both the sleeping and dining cars except as sleeping car conductors and dining car stewards (Northrup, Risher, Leone, & Jeffress, 1971). These employment policy variations could be attributed to labor needs, institutional racism, and local custom. The second similarity between American and Canadian Black railroaders is that they continuously resisted inequality practiced