Labour In Canada Research Articles

Labour and Politics in Canada and Australia: Towards a Comparative Approach to Developments to 1960

This chapter seeks to move the discussion of labour and politics beyond the contest of political ideologies in the movement and the constraints of the liberal democratic state. To explain the different political histories of the Australian and Canadian movements we use a model with three dimensions: the changing balance between labour and politics; the different social forces that labour seeks to represent; and the different conceptions of politics that labour holds. After a discussion of the literature on labour and politics in the two countries, the paper applies this model to distinguish two periods, a formative period up to the early 1920s, in which labour entered politics, and the period from the 1920s to the 1950s when parties or governments took politics into the labour movement. The model enables us to characterize the politics of the Australian Labor Party as a form of class-based labourism, with significant moments of working-class socialism. We characterize the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation/New Democratic Party as a form of populist socialism. The paper concludes with some insights gained from using a common model in a comparative exercise.

Women and Wage Labour in Australia and Canada, 1880-1980

A century of women's work history in Australia and Canada reveals both similarities and contrasts. Women workers in both countries have faced persistent occupational segregation and lower pay, justified by the family ideal of male breadwinner and the accompanying perception of women's paid labour as secondary, less skilled and transient. While Canada's female labour force has historically demonstrated significant proportion of immigrants from countries other than England, Australia's female labour force contained fewer immigrants but revealed visible minority of Aboriginals who have demonstrated labour militancy in several well-known disputes in this century. Perhaps the most striking differences between the two countries, however, relate to the extent of the Australian state's involvement in wage tribunals and in the compulsory arbitration system, both of which have given women improved wages and a floor of protection. By contrast, intervention in Canada was minimal until well into the 20th century when minimum wage laws were passed during and after World War I. Despite these differences there are areas of similarity, particularly in this century as women workers tended to mobilize at roughly the same time, not only in unions and work places but also in neighbourhoods, ethnic communities, rural areas and to some extent in labour and left wing political groups. Modern feminist movements in both countries have waged some successful campaigns to change not only government views and agendas, but also those of trade unions. Thus, while Australian women have perhaps been more successful at playing the state depending on the government in power, both groups of women are increasingly faced with the challenge of government retreat from egalitarian policies under the onslaught of right-wing, corporatist agenda.

Bringing the Partners Together in Workplace Literacy: A Canadian Perspective

With the growing gap between workplace demands and workforce skills, there is a need to ensure that employees with basic skills deficiencies have education and training opportunities. Much has been said about the role of partnerships as the stimulant for innovation in the workplace, however, the forging of such partnerships has been slow in coming. In an effort to learn more about the North American experience in workplace literacy, a panel discussion was held last year at an adult education conference. Practitioners from business, labour and education in both Canada and the United States provided a perspective on the current status of this evolving field. The following essay is drawn from the viewpoints of the Canadian representatives after dialogue, interaction, and discussion during the conference session. The three perspectives are diverse in terms of position and concerns but offer practical suggestions for improving practice and increasing co‐operation among the stakeholders.

Back to Work? [:] Labour, State, and Industrial Relations in Canada

Back to Work? [:] Labour, State, and Industrial Relations in Canada

Cynical and Deliberate Manipulation? Child Care and the Reserve Army of Female Labour in Canada

This paper examines the evolution of Canadian child-care policy, particularly in the Ontario context. It aims to assess the adequacy of recent theories about the position of women in the capitalist workforce, most of which portray them as members of a “reserve army” of labour. Variants of this view are presented. and then tested using the state’s stance towards child care as an indicator of its intent to draw women into the labour force, or to restrict this movement, or to encourage female labour only when economic fluctuations make it functional for capital. We conclude that females have constituted a “latent" reserve army of labour, which has been steadily drawn into wage work, and which is now central to the function ing of Canadian capital ism. The installation by the stale of an appropriate child-care system to facilitate this work, however, is not inevitable.

Immigrant Labour in Canada: The Cost and Benefit of Ethnic Origin in the Job Market

Immigrant Labour in Canada: The Cost and Benefit of Ethnic Origin in the Job Market

Labour Protest and Organization in Nineteenth-Century Canada, 1820-1890

RECENTLY-PUBLISHED STUDIES of labour in nineteenth-century Cana da have expanded our understanding of the forms and extent of working class protest and organization.1 But we still lack an accessible concise depic tion of the general contours of conflict and union formation. Earlier region al tabulations of strike activity, moreover, are now clearly dated and their partial findings inadequate.2 The following data, drawn from a range of nineteenth-century sources and the findings of the scholarship of the last de cade, are presented as an attempt to begin to overcome these deficiencies and fill this void in our knowledge. Accumulated for Volume II of the Histor ical Atlas of Canada, they are presented here with caution and considerable qualification. Unlike the twentieth century, where statistics on strikes and unions were generated through the efforts of the Department of Labour, often with the interests of capital and the state in mind, the nineteenth century provides us with no formal source to consult on the numbers of strikes, lock

PENTLAND, H. Clare, Labour and Capital in Canada 1650-1860. Edited and with an Introduction by Paul Phillips (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1981).

PENTLAND, H. Clare, Labour and Capital in Canada 1650-1860. Edited and with an Introduction by Paul Phillips (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1981).

Capital and Labour in Canada 1650-1860

Capital and Labour in Canada 1650-1860

Labour in Atlantic Canada

Labour in Atlantic Canada

Labour and Capital in Canada, 1650–1860H. Clare Pentland, ed. and intro. by Paul Phillips Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 1981, pp. xiii, 270

Labour and Capital in Canada, 1650–1860H. Clare Pentland, ed. and intro. by Paul Phillips Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 1981, pp. xiii, 270

Labour and Capital in Canada, 1650-1860

Labour and Capital in Canada, 1650-1860

Pressure Group Demands and the Struggle for Organizational Status: The Case of Organized Labour in Canada

Dans l'étude du comportement des groupes d'intérêts, il est courant d'analyser les processus par lesquels les demandes de ces groupes atteignent ceux qui détiennent le pouvoir de décision politique; on tient aussi compte de la formulation de ces demandes et de leur influence sur les actions gouvernementales. Cette perspective d'approche se fonde implicitement sur le postulat suivant: pour tel groupe donné, les demandes les plus importantes expriment les besoins et les aspirations des membres de ce groupe. En d'autres termes, plus telle demande répond essentiellement aux besoins du « membership » d'un groupe, plus on suppose qu'elle constitue une variable importante de l'analyse du comportement de ce groupe d'intérêt.La présente étude se propose d'examiner si, dans le cas des groupes considérables et bureaucratisés, les pressions qu'ils exercent, en réponse aux besoins de leurs membres, ne sont pas subordonnées aux demandes que font leurs dirigeants relativement à leur organisation. Du moins, aux yeux de ces derniers, les demandes de reconnaissance organisationnelle sont-elles les plus importantes qu'ils tentent d'imposer au gouvernement. Le manque d'unité de la structure du travail organisé au Canada, de même que la compétition active entre les différentes centrales syndicales, nous ont permis de vérifier cette hypothèse.Les résultats de cette analyse sont les suivants: (1) toute forme de reconnaissance susceptible d'être accordée par le gouvernement suscite une vive compétition entre les centrales établies; (2) celles-ci cherchent à susciter, pour elles-mêmes, de nouvelles occasions où elles seront reconnues par le gouvernement; (3) les plus amères disputes éclatent entre ces groupes et le gouvernement lorsque ce dernier leur refuse la reconnaissance à laquelle, aux yeux de leurs dirigeants, ces groupes auraient droit. Par exemple, le gouvernement Diefenbaker ayant posé un tel geste vis-à-vis du Congrès du travail du Canada, leurs relations se gâtèrent au point d'être décrites, par les dirigeants du CTC, comme « les plus mauvaises qui se puissent trouver entre une centrale nationale et un gouvernement, parmi les nations occidentales hautement industrialisées ».

The Role of Capital in Canadian Economic Development Before 1875

This discussion of capital grows out of investigation of the history of labour in Canada. Four major systems of organizing labour for the production of goods may be distinguished in the course of Canadian history. Each of these involved its peculiar methods of production, of organizing the labour market, and its characteristic attitudes of employers and employees. The change from one system to another is what is meant by economic development in this paper. The questions inevitably arise, why a period features one type of labour organization rather than another and why one system is displaced by another. These questions have led to concern with capital accumulation, importation, and investment, for it would appear that the availability and uses of capital are crucial to the answers. The role of capital is important, no doubt, to other fields of study as well. Many useful things about capital have been said by Canadian scholars, but no broad and coherent review of the whole subject appears to exist. The present is an exploratory paper, covering approximately two of the stages of development remarked above, and the change from one to the other.About the middle of the nineteenth century, the Province of Canada was transformed from a raw, staple-producing area to a rounded, integrated economy that might be called metropolitan. Signs of the change were visible in 1830, unmistakable in 1840. By 1850 change had gone too far to be turned back, and 1860 and 1870 can denote only the filling out of the home-market exchange economy already implicit. Purely extractive industry was overlaid with a secondary development involving an elaborate transportation system, a capitalistic agriculture, an extensive list of manufactures that appear to have been efficient in their day, and a creditable financial structure. Probably the most telling evidence of the transformation was the fact that this colony, so recently at the mercy of the fluctuations of imperial markets for one or two commodities, could undertake successfully to swallow an empire of its own in the years after 1867.