Fifty-three years ago, the English Canadian labour movement achieved an unprecedented structural unity with the creation of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) in 1956. Before that, the union movement had been fragmented with the mostly American-based craft unions gathered within the Trades and Labour Congress (TLC) and various other union formations organized in competing central labour organizations.

Today, as the CLC undertakes a serious re-evaluation of its structure, role, mandate and governance, an examination of the historic context of its creation may be helpful.

In 1956, the Trades and Labour Congress had long been the largest and most influential labour central in English Canada. However, the political conservatism of the TLC and its refusal to accept industrially based unions (unions whose members contained more than one craft or skill) were the main reasons for the continued health and presence of other labour centrals in English Canada.

In politics, the TLC tended to follow the model adopted by the American Federation of Labour (to which most of the TLC's members were also affiliated), supporting individual candidates from either the Liberal or Conservative parties when those candidates were perceived as friendly to labour. Most industrial unions, on the other hand, saw little value in supporting either of the oldline parties, which they saw as being anti-labour (except, of course, at election time).

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, various alternative labour centrals arose to compete with the TLC, including the early industrially-organized Knights of Labour, the politically radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the One Big Union (OBU), affiliated with the Socialist Party of Canada, followed in the 1930s by the communist Workers Unity League. The All Canadian Congress of Labour (ACCL), founded in 1927, was led by the fiercely nationalistic Aaron Mosher's industrially based Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employee. Finally, in 1940, the ACCL merged with the industrially organized unions affiliated to the American Congress of Industrial Organizations to form the Canadian Congress of Labour.

With competing central organizations, came the predicable problems of raiding between affiliates of the various centrals, competing organizing drives, divergent political campaigns, and a general lack of solidarity and mutual support for union struggles.

It was clear in the immediate post-World War II period that disunity was a major impediment to advancing workers' rights in Canada, but resolving the various political and structural differences appeared unlikely. In this respect, the formation of the Canadian Labour Congress has to be viewed as a major accomplishment.

The Canadian labour movement in 1956

By the mid-fifties, there were three significant labour centrals in Canada: the American craft-union dominated Trades and Labour Congress with a total membership of 640,000 workers, the American industrial-union dominated Canadian Congress of Labour with 377,000 workers and the Quebec-based Canadian and Catholic Congress of Labour (CCCL - transformed in 1960 into the sovereigntist, progressive Confederation of National Trade Unions) with 100,000 workers.

When the CLC was founded through the amalgamation of the Trades and Labour Congress and the Canadian Congress of Labour, it represented 75.6% of all union members in the country. (Although the CCCL in Quebec had considered joining the new central, it ultimately decided to remain independent.)

Seventeen of the largest 20 unions in Canada were American based (see sidebar). Eighteen were private sector unions. Six were in the manufacturing sector, five were in transportation, four in resource extraction, three in the construction trades and two in the public sector. All but one were members of the newly formed CLC.

The top 20 unions accounted for 45.5 % of all union members, with 613,969 of the total 1,350,000 union members (representing 33% of the paid workforce) in Canada. Among the top 20 unions, only 42,435 belonged to public sector unions, the remaining 571,534 were members of private sector unions.

The makeup of the workforce

Although the overall unionization rate was 33%, the newly formed Canadian Labour Congress was very much a male organization, reflecting the gender-based segregation of the labour market. The nearest census data (from 1951) show for men (4,121,832) for every woman (1,164,321) employed in the workforce.

Further: women were underrepresented in the most highly unionized sectors (construction, manufacturing, resource extraction and transportation). For example, census data from 1951 show 6,000 women construction workers compared to 345,000 men and 8,000 women railway workers compared to 163,000 men.

There was very little part-time work in 1956. The year the CLC was founded, there were 5,342,000 full-time workers and only 243,000 part-time workers.

Manufacturing was the largest employer, with 1,364,000 Canadians employed in that industry, followed by the service sector with 1,007,000 workers. There were 401,000 employees in transportation and 348,000 in construction.

The national unemployment rate was just 3.4%, with 171,000 men and 26,000 women officially unemployed (actively seeking work). Despite the growing economy, inflation remained low. The Consumer Price Index (base year 1971) rose from 67.5 to 68.5 producing an inflation rate of only 1.5%.

The political context

The cold war was in full force in 1956. The Soviet Union sent Red Army units into Hungary. Eisenhower beat the liberal candidate Adlai Stevenson in the U.S. presidential elections. The Americans exploded a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific and began the first U-2 spy flight over Soviet air space. Fidel Castro began his guerilla war in the Cuban mountains. The Egyptians, under President Gamel Abdel Nasser, seized the Suez canal, and the ensuing crisis cemented the decline of Britain as a colonial power.

Closer to home, the Louis St. Laurent Liberal government was proving susceptible to the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era south of the border. The government allowed American unions in Canada to purge socialists from their ranks and to expel and raid legitimate unions (the raid on the Canadian Seaman's Union during a strike is a good example) which were thought to be communist dominated.

Within the labour movement itself, a major political struggle between the Communist Party and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in the new, rapidly growing industrial unions was ultimately resolved in favour of the CCF through tactics and actions that brought no credit to either side.

The rapid expansion of Canadian union membership was partially due to new federal Canadian labour laws (PC 1003) that granted legitimacy to unions during the war. In the post-war period, the War Measures Act was repealed and jurisdiction over most labour matters reverted to the provinces. The provinces, in turn, passed labour legislation that more-or-less (depending on the politics of the government in question) mirrored the provisions of the federal legislation.

These new labour codes promised a better deal for labour -forcing reluctant employers to recognize unions chosen by their employees, compelling good-faith bargaining, granting collective agreements legal status and setting up various forms of adjudication for enforcing these agreements. There was a widespread expectation that a new era of industrial democracy was at hand with workers gaining, through their unions, an equal say in the operations of the workplace.

This expectation, enshrined in a theory of "shared rights" ultimately failed to materialize, and was subsequently supplanted by the more restrictive residual theory of labour rights that basically guaranteed management all of their traditional workplace powers. However, the sense of optimism and the idea of a massive shift in workers' rights, political influence and entitlements has to be considered a factor in the founding of the CLC.

Conclusion

In 1956, the Canadian Labour Congress was created through a negotiated agreement between the Canadian branches of American industrial unions and American craft unions - with a small component of independent Canadian industrial and public sector unions. The CLC would largely put an end to raiding, and increase solidarity and mutual support between unions. A political compromise was reached through the careful transformation of the socialist CCF into a more moderate New Democratic Party that the more conservative TLC unions (and the influential Washington-based head offices) could agree to support.

This new solidarity was in many ways based upon an expectation of continued economic growth and industrial expansion. It was also based upon an expectation of tangible political results from the newly formed NDP and the continued growth of union density and membership numbers.

Those expectations were both deflated and altered by a multiple series of events. The technological and then microtechnological revolutions made hundreds of thousands of workers jobs obsolete in the resource extraction, manufacturing and transportation industries. The rise of free trade and other forms globalization has resulted in a steadily declining manufacturing sector and an increase in part-time, term and other insecure forms of employment. The majority of CLC members are now represented by Canadian public sector unions. Women are now equally represented the workforce and in the union movement. The union movement is no longer growing, and competition for existing members is threatening labour unity as unions merge and compete to survive.

The limited but genuine popular sense of class solidarity that once served as the foundation of the labour movement has eroded. There are many reasons for this, including the lack of success of the NDP as a political project, the demise of other worker-based and socialist voices, and the rise of other alternative political visions born of the struggles of equity-seeking groups.

The question before the CLC today is whether or not it can renew itself by re-establishing the required consensus and mutual support necessary for social, economic and political progress for working Canadians.

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