In 1883, members of the Toronto Trades and Labour Council and the Knights of Labour came together to form Canada's first national labour body, the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada. The first convention attracted mostly delegates from Toronto unions, and none from outside of Ontario. But the organization grew steadily until by 1900 the Trades and Labour Congress was well established as the first truly national labour body.
The Trades and Labour Congress was a organization of craft based unions. Most Trades and Labour Congress unions were branches of international unions based in the United States; others became affiliated with their American counterparts, especially after the formation of the American Federation of Labour in 1886. Both the AF of L and the TLC were committed to the model of one union per craft: neither the AF of L nor the Trades and Labour Congress had any interest in organizing unskilled workers on an industry-wide basis.
By the turn of the 20th Century the Trades and Labour Congress had emerged as Canada's most influential labour body. Indeed at the TLC's 1902 Convention, the leadership of the AFL combined with a group of younger Canadian members to expel all independent unions from the Trades and Labour Congress. Only the Canadian Union of Railway Employees, which had refused to merge with its American counterpart, remained.
The ousted unions (shoemakers, cigar makers, painters, carpenters and the Knights of Labor) formed their own central body, the Canadian Federation of Labour, but the CFL remained a marginal player on the Canadian labour scene. In 1937 the CFL became a founding member of the All-Canadian Congress of Labour, a precursor to today's Canadian Labour Congress.
Workers who believed that a fundamental transformation of society was necessary to bring justice to working people found a home in the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies), founded in 1905 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The IWW contended that all workers should be united as a class in one union. Workers should unite in solidarity to overthrow the employer class and abolish the wage system in favour of grassroots workplace democracy and worker ownership of the means of production. The IWW was very active in Western Canada, especially in the mining and forestry industries.
Disillusionment with the old line political parties also gave rise to independent labour parties which pressed for a "square deal" for workers with respect to working conditions and living standards, universal suffrage, abolition of the Senate, and proportional representation. Some, like the Socialist Party of Canada, were labelled "impossibilists" because they felt that capitalism could not be reformed; others, like the breakaway Social Democratic Party of Canada (estab. 1911) were more flexible but were still rooted in the class struggle perspective.
In Saskatoon, local activists formed a Labour Party in the fall of 1908. Like their brothers and sisters elsewhere in Canada, workers in Saskatoon quickly began to organize to better their conditions and resist exploitation by employers. A store clerk's letter to the Saskatoon Phoenix outlines the conditions prevailing at the time: store open at 7.45 am , one hour for lunch, work until 6.10 pm, 1 hour for supper, close at 9.00 pm or later, 6 days per week but open one hour later on Saturday because the store is closed on Sunday. In return store clerks were paid an average of $10 per week ($15 per week was exceptional) while room and board cost $5 - $6 per week. A 1903 bylaw requiring stores to close at 6.00 pm on weekdays was rescinded the next year when merchants complained. Needless to say, only employers were represented on City Council.[Kerr & Hanson p. 65-66]
Saskatoon's first strike took place as early as 1906, when men laying sewers in the new city struck to demand safer conditions and a wage increase to $2.50 from $2.00 per day. The strike was settled when the City of Saskatoon took over the contract from the private employers, supplied shovels to the workers and improved safety measures on the job. Wages, however, remained at $2.00 per day.
In that same year, J. D. Wallace of the International Typographical Union, in a brief to the Royal Commission on Industrial Relations established by the Laurier government, advocated legislation to "make it legal for a man to have the protection to form a union". The Typographers' union established a local in Saskatoon in 1906, and won the first eight-hour day in its contract with the Saskatoon Phoenix newspaper the next year.[Kerr & Hanson p.100]
The Saskatoon Trades and Labour Council, affiliated with the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, was founded in February 1909. The first public meeting of the Council was held in June of that year.
The hostility seen elsewhere between employers and unions seems to have been absent in Saskatoon. On the platform at the inaugural June meeting were Mayor Hopkins, Member of Parliament A.P. McNab, the editors of both Saskatoon newspapers and representatives of the local clergy. Alex Chesser, member of the Typographers Union and President of the new Council, asserted that "organized labour did not stand for defiance but for defense". J.A. Aiken, publisher of the Saskatoon |Phoenix, praised the Typographers Union as one "which is in control of men who are prudent and reasonable". He went on to declare that labour had the same right as business, farm, religious, financial, and railroad or trade interests to participate in governing society.[Kerr & Hanson p. 100]
Capital Newspaper report on the same meeting
But labour peace was not universal in Saskatoon. The same summer of 1909 saw a strike by the Saskatoon Federal Labour Union, representing 150 sewer workers. As in 1906 the issues were safety and work conditions, and a demand for a wage increase from 20 to 25 cents per hour. The union applied for the appointment of a conciliation board under the new federal Industrial Disputes Investigation Act. Saskatoon was the first municipality brought to conciliation under the Act. Each side appointed one person to the three member board, which was chaired by E.J. Meilicke, a farmer and land speculator who had arrived in the Saskatoon area in 1901. Appearing for the union was Honore J. Jaxon, former secretary to Louis Riel, then on a lecture tour of western Canada and in Saskatoon to address the newly-formed Producers Local and Economic Discussion Circle [Kerr & Hanson p. 100]
After four days of hearings the Board issued its report, which was not signed by the union representative. The Board recommended better safety and sanitation regulations, and provided that as a safety precaution the men could work in language groups to ensure that everyone understood the instructions given. The issue of wages remained outstanding, as did that of union recognition, which Mayor Hopkins denounced as "against the laws of God and Man".[Kerr & Hanson p.102]
The years between 1910 and 1912 were boom years for Saskatoon. In those years the population almost tripled, from about 10,000 in 1909 to 28,000 in 1912. A frenzy of building, development and speculation ensued. Housing in particular became a serious problem for working people. At a time when unskilled labourers were paid $10 per week or less, rents in the centre of the city could range from $75 to $100 per month. Housing on the outskirts rented for $25 to $40 per month, while a shack on the edges of the city, with no sewer or water, could rent for $10 to $25 per month. By 1913 rents were among the highest in Canada, more than twice those in Winnipeg or Hamilton for similar accommodation.[Kerr & Hanson p. 125]
Critics blamed the greed of developers who built 15 to 25 per cent profit into their developments, charging what the market would bear rather than a reasonable rate of return. The Trades and Labour Council thought $20 per month a fair rent for trades people, and pressed the City of Saskatoon to use its sinking fund to advance loans on houses. But even these more moderate rates would leave many working people without a decent place to live.
The trades people represented by the TLC were relatively well paid compared to their less skilled and unorganized counterparts. In 1913, bricklayers and masons were paid an average of $37.80 for a 50 hour seek. Plumbers made $32.40 on average, carpenters $27.00, and painters $24.30 per week. By contrast, unskilled City of Saskatoon workers made a maximum of $15.00 per week, while a common labourer made only $12.00.[Kerr & Hanson p.127]
Typical was Arthur Adams, a teamster who was paid $13.25 for a 6-day week of 12 - 14 hour days.
"I'd make as much Saturday night as the rest of the week, taking fellows to those four houses [the red light district] by the Grand Trunk. I'd get a lemonade or a ginger beer. I'd never had those. They'd be singing away. I'd wait and take them home in their buggies. Drive them home to Idylwyld ... They'd be singing out loud all the way home, two or three in the morning".[Kerr & Hanson p.128]
Adams once figured out how to save $10,000 on his $13.25 per week. After paying $6.00 a week for board, he had $7.25 left. The plan: don't smoke, don't drink, don't get married, don't go to movies, don't get sick - and in 40 years you'll have $10,000.
Women's wages, as might be expected, were lower than those paid to men. Teachers were the highest paid female workers at a maximum of $21 per week based on a 52 week year. The Board of Health nurse made $25.00 per week, and stenographers between $14.00 and $21.00 per week. Garment workers received $1.07 per dozen overalls sewn, which translated to about $3.00 per day for the fastest workers, but $2.00 was more common. Female clerks at Woolworth's were paid $5.00 per week, at a time when $9.00 per week was considered a minimum living wage. A survey by the Province of Saskatchewan of female workers, mostly store clerks, waitresses and laundry workers, found that those 16 years of age or less were paid an average of $7.19 per week, those 16 - 21 years old an average of $8.54 per week, and those 21 or older an average of 10.56 per week.[Kerr & Hanson p.128]
Close to the bottom of the heap were common labourers, especially those who were new immigrants and spoke no English. They commonly made about $2.00 a day, and often lived 20 to 30 a room, each paying about $2.00 per month to landlords who raked in $200 to $300 per month for unserviced shacks from which the occupants walked an hour to get to work and another hour to get home at the end of a 14-hour day. The Trades and Labour Council, which had a very mixed attitude to foreign workers, wrote in a letter to City Council:
"Today foreign labourers in this city are forced by economic conditions to herd in ill ventilated shacks. We hope for better things for our English speaking labourer than a dog kennel at night and a dinner of dry bread and raw turnip (which is all some foreigners [sic] in this city are getting today)"[Kerr & Hanson p.129]
Labour fought back against these conditions. 1912 was the most militant year in Saskatoon before the upheavals of 1918 - 1919. There were seven strikes between May and November: over 640 workers were on strike and more than 100 employers effected. On strike were carpenters, plumbers, painters, lathers, plasterers, sheet metal workers, general labourers and telephone linemen; a total of 3,075 working days were lost. Most made gains, usually about 5 cents per hour. Painters also got a 9-hour day, while plasterers won a 50-hour week and Saturday afternoons off.
The boom ended abruptly in 1913. In 1914 - 1915 unemployment, unemployment relief and outmigration became serious issues in the city. New construction effectively ceased, tax arrears skyrocketed, and by 1915 the City payroll had been cut by more than half. Rent began to fall as workers left the city until by 1915 they had returned to levels lower than those in Regina, Winnipeg and Edmonton.
The bust in Saskatoon reflected a general economic downturn across Canada. By 1915, after the declaration of war in August 1914, the economy began to recover, but wages generally failed to keep pace with the cost of living. Owners, with the support of government, began to fight back against the gains made by unions in previous years. The craft unions represented by the Trades and Labour Congress were particularly threatened as corporate employers began reorganize the production process and adopt radical cost-cutting measures. Prominent among these measures were Taylorist efficiency schemes which fragmented and deskilled the production process and undermined craft autonomy.
By 1917 unemployment had virtually disappeared in Saskatoon. Wages were generally higher than they had been previously, but the cost of living was increasing even faster. The Saskatoon Star noted a 65 per cent increase in the cost of living between 1914 and 1917 (excluding rents), while wages remained at 1914 levels. By 1920, food and clothing costs in Saskatoon had doubled, but wages had not kept pace. This sharp and growing disparity between wages and prices would lead to major labour upheavals as the war ended.
The response of the Saskatoon Trades and Labour Council to these challenges reflected the cautious approach taken by the national Congress elsewhere in Canada. During the war years Saskatoon's TLC preferred to lobby senior governments; discontent would not reach the boiling point until the war ended. Surviving records show the Saskatoon TLC petitioning council on such matters as streetcar tickets for workers going to and from their jobs, heating of streetcar vestibules for motormen, and payment of medical costs for an injured plumbing inspector. The TLC was particularly concerned that a fair wage clause be included in all City of Saskatoon construction contracts, and that all contracts for construction of the new City Hospital be governed by the City's Fair Wage Bylaw, and that no "Orientals" be employed at the hospital while Caucasians were available. [link to text of letter from city archives?]
[Link to this?]
Some Issues dealt with by Saskatoon TLC, as reflected in letters to Saskatoon City Council. No records of the TLC's deliberations could be located.
Saskatoon Trades and Labour Council. 4th Avenue and Spadina Crescent Saskatoon Saskatchewan Telephone: 2599 Meets 2nd and 4th Wednesday in the Temple Club Room President: Alex Chesser Secretary: C. E. Hulett (September) Wm Snelgrove (October) J. F. Down (November)
Letters to Saskatoon City Council:
November 1913:
o Request for streetcar tickets for workmen be provided for the afternoons as well as the mornings. (Refused by Mayor Harrison and City Council) o Street car vestibules where motormen are located should be heated. o Thanks for City Council support of $200.00 for Labour Day sports event. o Request that City cover some or all of the medical bills of the City's Assistant Plumbing Inspector who had been injured on the job. (Refused by Mayor Harrison and Council.)
July 1913:
o Letter protesting employment of Chinese cooks at City Hospital (The national TLC supported the federal Chinese Immigration acts of 1885 and 1923) o "Such action is ... uncalled for, unwarranted and unjust to the Caucasian citizens of Saskatoon and we hereby strongly protest against the employment of Orientals by the City in any capacity whatsoever." (City Council claimed no jurisdiction) August 1913:
o Protest to City Council of omission of a fair wage clause in contracts for construction of buildings at the Exhibition Grounds. Secretary Hulett notes that 1st class carpenters are paid 50 cents per hour, while helpers receive 35 - 40 cents per hour. o "No mechanic union or non-union who has any respect for himself or his trade will use tools for the beggardly wages offered unless driven by starvation... We are not asking for 'charity', we desire just that small portion which rightfully belongs to us, that we fought for and may be forced to fight for again - a pittance of what we produce." o Demand that City Hospital construction comes under the City's fair wage Bylaw No. 571, which regulates wages and hours of labour on Municipal public works.
1914
o Letter to City Police Commission on behalf of Saskatoon police constables who are complaining about their schedule of hours worked.(Commission advises the TLC to contact the Chief of Police)
1915
o Letter from J. D. Wallace, TLC Recording Secretary and Chair of the Committee on Unemployment urging City Council to proceed on specific infrastructure projects awaiting completion, such as:
o Force Water Main between 8th and 11th Streets o Sedimentation Basin at the Pumping Station o Sewer and water service to Mayfair, 3rd Avenue North, Ward3 o Flooring on the 25th Street Bridge o Connect an additional 700 houses to sewer and water o Extensions of electric street lighting o Letter from J. D. Wallace, TLC Recording Secretary,to Walter Scott, Premier of Saskatchewan, urging the Government to establish a free employment bureau in Saskatoon. The TLC suggests that the bureau would bring together employers and workers to do those small jobs which might be done by the unemployed. The objective would be to "see that everyone got a fair share of what work might be in progress." Scott's reply indicated that the Government would consider the suggestion.
1916
o Letter to City Council on the condition of certain sidewalks
o Letter to City Council advocating the erection of "Comfort Stations".
1917
o Letter from City Council to the TLC forwarding a request from the Province of Saskatchewan to City Council to assist in providing men to help with seeding. The Province notes that the war effort needs grain, and hopes that men could be released from jobs in the cities, boarded with farmers for 4 - 6 weeks, and references a similar plan in Manitoba whereby regulations provided for continued wages from the City plus $50 and room and board from the farmer
o A letter to the Mayor from Wm Snelgrove, TLC Secretary, assures City Council that there is no shortage of building trades in Saskatoon, and guarantees enough to finish any building contemplated by the City.
1918
o Letter from L. J. Walsh, TLC Secretary, advising Council of a TLC resolution favouring "a weekly holiday for retail clerks all the year round"
o A letter noting that boxes of matches known as "500's" are short up to 200 matches, and insisting that the City enforce the law. City Clerk replies that "500's" doesn't necessarily mean that there are 500 matches in the box - it's just a label.
o Letter to provincial government urging the establishment of a Juvenile Court to deal with rising crime and enforcement of the curfew. Minister McNabb, apparently misunderstanding the letter, replies advising of a new Juvenile Hall in Regina.
Meeting at the new Labour Temple at 4th Avenue and Spadina Crescent, the Saskatoon TLC was also engaged with social issues raised by the war and its aftermath. The morality of war and of Canada's participation in it was vigorously debated by the progressive community. The Temperance movement, tariff and tax policy, female suffrage and the problem of accommodating returning veterans policy issues of concern to the Council, as they were to labour councils across Canada.
As war production took hold and unemployment declined, worker expectations began to rise everywhere in Canada. After 1916 there was a burst of organizing among both craft and industrial workers. Coal miners, longshore workers, teamsters, freight handlers, retail clerks, waiters and waitresses, laundry workers, telephone operators, police and firefighters, letter carriers, steel workers, meat packers, pulp and paper worker and many others all began to form unions and to assert their rights against both employers and government.
As part of the fight for worker rights, the national Trades and Labour Congress called for political action. Inspired by the revolution in Russia and in the face of rising expectations as unemployment declined and employer intransigence increased, the national TLC encouraged workers set up local labour parties. The TLC hoped that these local parties would combine into a national movement demanding inclusion of workers in wartime economic planning, conscription of wealth as well as of men, fair wage clauses at the municipal level, and an end to the erosion of democracy in Canada's political institutions.
In Saskatoon the Trades and Labour Council response was low key at first. In 1912 it had supported F. E. Harrison for mayor because he endorsed a fair wage clause in civic contracts. The TLC also ran its first aldermanic in the Caswell ward in 1913. That candidate lost, but in 1914 labour succeeded in Riversdale ward, electing its first councillor, H. J. Baille, president of the machinists union local. Baille also ran for mayor in 1915 and came within 50 votes of winning. Both Riversdale and Caswell came to be regarded as labour wards.
Labour lost two aldermanic races in 1917, but elected R. J. Moore, secretary of the Typographers Union, in 1918. A. M. Eddy was labour's candidate in the 1917 provincial election, running on a 20 point TLC platform mostly related to education and industrial reform. Eddy advocated for compulsory education in English, a minimum wage and an 8 hour day, equal pay for equal work for men and women, public ownership of utilities, and proportional representation. Eddy managed to run only a distant third, defeated by the leader of the opposition Conservatives. In the federal election of that same year labour ran James Casey as a candidate. Casey, a railway worker, campaigned unsuccessfully, mainly on the issue of nationalization of railways.
Across Canada workers were caught in the squeeze between rising prices and wages held stagnant by employers. Unskilled workers began to form their own unions to fight for better wages and conditions; the AFL began to organize "federal labour unions" for workers without a specific craft, while some craft unions began to expand their membership to less skilled industrial workers. [Heron p.48] The national TLC and its unions began to set up joint bargaining councils across craft lines, and established Federations of Labour at the provincial level. By 1918 strikes were breaking out across the country: letter carriers struck in several cities; police struck in Montreal and Toronto.
The wave of strikes reached Saskatoon in July 1918. It began with postal workers, but soon spread to railway workers as well. To meet the rising cost of living, postal workers workers had been voted a wage bonus by Parliament. After three months it had not been paid. The workers applied for conciliation under the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, but the Government decided that the Act did not apply to its own employees. On July 22 the letter carriers walked off the job across the country.
In Saskatoon and many other western cities they were joined by postal clerks. When the post office began to hire scabs, mostly bank and store clerks sent to the post office by their bosses, the Saskatoon Trades and Labour Council declared that one union member would be called out for every scab hired.
On July 25 the postal workers were joined by railway mail clerks, followed within days by CNR and CPR freight and express handlers. On July 30 striking workers staged a parade ending at the Labour Temple where speakers explained their grievances to supporters and declared that, as they were all fighting the same employer, they were fighting each other's battles as well as their own.
There was almost universal support for the workers in Saskatoon. [Kerr & Hanson p.193] The striking workers were demanding an effective way to negotiate rather than specific contract items. Strikers received unanimous support in a meeting between union leaders and Saskatoon City Council and the Board of Trade; the Saskatoon Star editorialized in their favour as well.
By July 30 fears of a general strike loomed. At a public meeting on July 30 called by Mayor A.M. Young and chaired by MLA Donald McLean, Sydney Foster of the postal workers and TLC Secretary L.J. Walshe explained their issues to supporters. City Commissioner C. J. Yorath called for a motion to declare that either the scabs must come out of the Post Office or there would be a general strike in Saskatoon. The crowd maintained their spirits with impromptu songs while a committee met in a funeral parlour across the street to draft a motion to that effect. The motion giving full support to the strikers passed by a large majority.[Kerr & Hanson p. 194]
Fears of a utility shut down grew as outside electrical workers walked out on July 31. Street car workers scheduled to go the next day when word came from Winnipeg that the national strike had been settled. A civil service commission would be appointed to deal with grievances and the postal workers bonuses would be paid quickly. That night a victory parade marched passed the Post Office led by a band and singing a parody of the popular song "We're Going To Work In The Morning". Strike leaders at the rally thanked the citizens of Saskatoon for their support, and made special mention of Mayor Young, Commissioner Yorath and the Board of Trade for trying to prevent scab labour.
As the strength of unions grew, so too did the resistance of employers and of the governments which represented them. Industrialists were determined to return to pre-war working conditions. They began to adopt draconian cost-cutting measures, refuse union recognition, roll back wages and enlist the power of the state to resist any limits on their power in the workplace.
The national TLC leadership maintained a cautious approach which reflected the essential conservatism of the craft union. In their national meetings in 1917 and 1918, calls for a more militant approach involving industrial unionism and worker solidarity were soundly defeated. Sentiment in Western Canada, however, demanded more aggressive tactics in pursuit of gains for workers in the face of employer resistance. Dissidents from the national TLC met in Calgary in March 1919 to found a new organization, the One Big Union (OBU). The OBU embraced industrial unionism and a socialist philosophy, taking in unions of all sizes, including craft unions. It quickly gained support across the West and in northern Ontario, but had only limited success among the more traditional locals in central and eastern Canada.
The Saskatoon Trades and Labour Council sent two delegates to the OBU founding convention, but came away feeling its approach was too radical. The Calgary delegates had approved a resolution declaring support for the the new Soviet Union and for the dictatorship of the proletariat, an action which was repeatedly used later against workers participating in the Winnipeg General Strike. TLC President Walter Mill supported the ideal of the OBU, but felt its opposition to engagement in electoral politics was an error. He nevertheless became an OBU organizer after the collapse of the Winnipeg Strike.[Kerr & Hanson p.195]
An incident in February 1919 paved the way for a clash between labour and the authorities Railway clerk J. H. Lewis was arrested under the War Measures Act for possession of two publications: "The Melting Pot", and "War, What For?". Within 24 hours Lewis had been arrested by the RCMP, tried in secret, fined $2000.00, given a sentence of 3 years imprisonment and incarcerated in Prince Albert jail. The labour movement was furious. The Trades and Labour Council immediately circulated a petition, gathering over 2,300 signatures within two days. The TLC also hired lawyer T.A. Lynd to appeal the case, but by then Lewis had been freed because of the intense public furor. Lynd succeeded in having the charges quashed. The affair had cost the TLC $1,100, but labour in Saskatoon had won an important victory for democracy.[Kerr & Hanson p. 195]
On May 15, 1919, public sector strikes in Winnipeg escalated into a general strike by nearly the entire working population. Solidarity strikes quickly spread to cities across Canada. During May, June and July of that year, 115,000 workers were off the job in 210 strikes across Canada. [Heron p.53] One week after the Winnipeg strike began, Saskatoon trade unionists had formed a central strike committee which included H.J. Baille, president of the machinists' union, TLC President Walter Mill and future TLC President A.M. Eddy. The committee determined that Tuesday, May 22 would be the date for a sympathetic strike.
Seventeen of Saskatoon's twenty-three unions had voted on the Monday to strike. By Tuesday noon eleven unions had walked off the job: plumbers, carpenters, four of the railway unions, Canadian Express employees, painters, musicians and teamsters.[Kerr & Hanson p.196] The strike committee asked cooks and waiters, motion picture operators and water delivery men to stay on the job for the time being. City Hall employees and the Typographical Union had voted against strike action; the Typographers felt they could not break the mandate they had with the International.
Local issues were not the focus of the strike; demands for union recognition and wage increases had been settled reasonably in the city. The strike was seen as an expression of working class solidarity. Workers were standing up to the federal and provincial governments and to the City of Winnipeg, demanding recognition in law of the rights of collective bargaining.
City Council voted to send a delegation to Winnipeg to report on the strike. The delegation included three representatives of the civic union. The Saskatoon TLC was offered a spot on the delegation but refused. Instead it sent H. J. Baille as a delegate to the Winnipeg Strike Committee.
Frustration on the business-dominated City Council grew as more unions left the job. On Wednesday the letter carriers, postal clerks and railway clerks went out; on Thursday they were joined by the street railway workers. Business people began to talk of forming a citizens' committee to fight the strike. Teamsters and postal workers were threatened with wholesale firing.
City Council's delegation to Winnipeg reported at the beginning of the second week. Not surprisingly, it had concluded that the Winnipeg strikers were entirely in the wrong, and that their leadership's real aim was to establish the One Big Union principle and overthrow constitutional authority. The Saskatoon Central Strike Committee's response was to call out all remaining union members.
By the middle of the second week the strike had reached its apex. Since there were no local issues of significance, it was hard for union members to stay off the job in the face of threats of dismissal. The strike seemed to be having little effect on the federal government: Prime Minister Borden professed labour relations to be a provincial responsibility, and Premier Martin equivocated. Forty-six postal workers returned to work along with twenty-four returned veterans hired to replace those still on strike. Sixteen railway clerks returned to work and thirty were replaced.
By the third week the strike was losing momentum. Teamsters working for the City went back to work, though no reprisals were taken against them after their return. Nevertheless, 1,000 workers remained off the job until after the Winnipeg strike leaders were arrested on June 26. In total, an average of 1,200 union members had remained off the job for a month. On a per capita basis, Saskatoon's action was the strongest sympathy of any city in Canada.
The long term effect of the strike on Saskatoon politics was minimal. The population had not been seriously effected: essential services were always maintained, the strike committee has ensured that street cars carried returned vets to vocational classes at the University, and they had provided help to rebuild the Quaker Oats plant which had been damaged by fire in early June.[Kerr & Hanson p.199] No citizens' anti-strike committee was formed, and most on City Council were inclined to let the matter drop once the strike ended. Mayor McMillan had set the tone when he declared: "I am prepared to recognize union labour. Union labour is here to stay, and the man who is prepared to defy union labour is forty years behind the times".[Kerr & Hanson p.197]
The strike had a greater effect on the politics of the Trades and Labour Congress. Both Mills and Baille resigned from the TLC and joined the OBU as organizers. The gap between East and West in Canada was revealed when TLC Secretary Wallace went to the national Trades and Labour Congress in the Fall of 1919. He came home angry at eastern dominance of the Convention, which had passed a resolution expelling all unions which had joined the OBU. At the local level in Saskatoon the TLC remained largely craft based; only the railway brotherhood and the machinists joined the OBU.
In 1920 a severe economic depression set in across Canada. Employers used the hard times to push back against workers' aspirations. Both industrial and craft unions in the 1920's were faced with Taylorism, deskilling and tyrannical cost cutting. Strikes were scabbed and strikers blacklisted. Some employers conceded limited changes: introducing basic pension plans, improved safety conditions, company recreation programs, lunch rooms and the like mollified some workers and split their loyalties.[Heron p. 53] Others set up company unions to give the appearance of consultation, but there was no real sharing of power. Worker militancy declined as the depression deepened, a condition which would last until well into 1925.
In addition, the conservative approach of the national Trades and Labour Congress undermined the OBU leadership and prevented national coordination of labour's efforts. The Borden Government set up a Royal Commission on Industrial Relations after the 1919 strike but it resulted in little action. It however did succeed in drawing off the national TLC into endless consultations which went nowhere.
By 1921 the period of worker radicalism had passed. The combined effects of the economic depression, employer intransigence, government action in support of employer interests, and conservative craft unionism took the wind out of the sails of the worker revolt. Although the industrial union model lived on in the United Mine Workers and in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, unions now accepted the "industrial legality" of collective bargaining rather than aiming for social transformation through the OBU or IWW idea.
In Saskatoon, anger at the federal Union Government of Robert Borden which had jailed Saskatoon railway clerk J. H. Lewis and the Winnipeg General Strike leaders still burned in the summer of 1920. The Trades and Labour Congress, the Great War Veterans' Association and the Progressives joined together to organize a rally at Cairns Field attended by 1,800 people. The meeting unanimously endorsed a resolution condemning the Union Government and calling on it to resign.
But the labour movement in Saskatoon followed the national pattern. Walter Mill was replaced as TLC President by James MacRorie Hill, President of the Saskatchewan Civil Servants Union which had not joined the 1919 strike. Mill was in turn replaced by A. M. Eddy, labour's candidate in the 1917 federal election. Eddy declared himself absolutely opposed to general strikes and to any role for the OBU in the Saskatoon TLC. The TLC did not send a delegate to the 1920 national TLC Convention, but in 1921 Saskatoon's delegate supported expulsion of all OBU unions from the Trades and Labour Congress.
Labour across Canada and in Saskatoon made few gains during the 1920's. High unemployment and under-employment through most of the decade left employers in charge and workers with few options. Working class resistance to capitalism centred after 1921 in the Communist Party of Canada. The Communists supplied many organizers for unions seeking to organize the unorganized by industry rather than by craft.
The Communists ran candidates against the national TLC leadership, and collaborated with unions excluded from the TLC. In 1927, Communists within the labour movement collaborated with the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees to found the All-Canadian Congress of Labour, a new labour central committed to industrial unionism. Communists worked diligently to organize workers in longshore, fishing, furniture building, as well as in logging and mining. In 1930 the Communists organized their own labour central, the Workers Unity League, dedicated to industrial unionism and socialist revolution. None of these organizations had a lasting effect, however, and the Workers Unity League itself was disbanded in 1935 on orders from Moscow. After that date Communists were directed to work within the mainstream labour movement.[Heron p.62-63]
Through the 1920's in Saskatoon the Trades and Labour Council continued to work in the community. The TLC worked with the Great War Veterans Association to organize mass meetings of the unemployed where the government was castigated for not providing public works to employ those out of work. The TLC also supported the kind of housing programs for workers and veterans which had been adopted in other provinces but not in Saskatchewan.
The TLC also lobbied hard to replace Saskatoon municipal's first-past-the-post ward system with a system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable ballot. This system was adopted by the City, and the first proportional representation civic election was held in 1921. Labour representative R. J. Moore led the polls, and labour increased its representation on Council from one to two seats. The proportional representation system lasted in Saskatoon until 1926, when it was finally rejected as too complicated.[Kerr & Hanson p.282]
Relations with the City and its business-dominated Council remained good enough for the Saskatoon TLC's Float Committee Chairman, A. Warmington, to request that the City put a float in the annual Labour Day parade in 1923. Fair wage clauses in City contracts also remained an issue for the TLC; this issue also illustrated the importance of maintaining a historical memory within the Saskatoon's central labour body. In 1928 the TLC mounted a lobby to the City to include such a clause in all City of Saskatoon contracts, apparently unaware that this battle had been won years before. The City replied to a letter from TLC Secretary Gerald Dealtry that this policy had been in place for many years. The TLC accepted the reply and recommended posting the policy in all workplaces, following the practice of the Provincial Government. The City agreed to this request.[link to below]
In 1928 the TLC spelled out its expectations of a fair wage policy. Contracts between the City of Saskatoon and contractors doing work for the City should stipulate:
Clause 1: Contractor to post the schedule of wages or the fair wage clause included in their contracts;
Clause 2: Contractor to keep a record of all wages paid and books to be available for inspection;
Clause 3: Contractor to employ only skilled workers and apprentices as far as possible, and only Canadian workers;
Clause 4: Wage rates to be equal to the standard rate for all trades in the district where work is being done;
Clause 5: If the contractor fails to pay for wages or materials delivered, the City will pay and deduct the amount from the payment to the contractor.
The Great Depression of the 1930's hit especially hard in Saskatchewan. Saskatoon was not exempt. In December 1929 the City's relief expenditures totalled less than $5,000.00. By 1935 they had reached $278,000.00; if provincial and federal expenditures were included, that figure rose to $750,000.00.[Kerr & Hanson p. 294] By January 1932 there were 2,153 people on relief and 400 single men unemployed - an unemployment rate of 20 per cent. The 19th Street subway, funded as a relief project by all three levels of government, employed married men only; single men got no help whatever. The men worked in rotation: 1 week per month if they had one child; 2 weeks per month if supporting 2 - 4 children; 3 weeks per month if 4 or more children. The Broadway Bridge, built during the winter of 1932, was designed by faculty at the University of Saskatchewan and built by married men working in 7-hour shifts. The men worked in one month rotations, using hand tools as much as possible in order to employ as many men as possible.[O'Brien 2006]. The Broadway Bridge was the last federally-funded relief project undertaken in Saskatoon before 1939.
By the spring of 1932, the City of Saskatoon had cut off relief work all men with fewer than two children. In June of 1932 the City, which had hitherto issued vouchers redeemable at any store to those on relief, opened its own relief store as a cost saving measure. Many found this measure both demeaning and an extra hardship, since they might have to walk miles to get to the store. Then in the autumn of that year City Council, concerned that applications for relief were taking too much of the City Administration's time, established the Civic Relief Board. Henceforth, the Relief Board was to assume all responsibility for the administration of relief in Saskatoon.
The unemployed began to organize. In November 1, 1932 the federal and provincial governments announced plans to open a "camp" for the single unemployed at the exhibition grounds, to be run under strict military discipline. The unemployed, fearing the loss of the little freedom they had, labelled these "concentration camps". That afternoon they staged a march to City Hall under a red banner and sang the Internationale. Three men were arrested for marching without a permit and without a Union Jack.
That evening Mayor Joseph E. Underwood banned all marches by the unemployed. On November 7, the day the camp was to open, the unemployed marched again to the relief office at 19th and 1st Avenue. There they were met by local police, augmented by newly recruited "specials", and by the RCMP, all armed with truncheons, riding crops and tear gas. The police charged the demonstrators, some of whom responded with stones picked up from the street. The Star Phoenix described the resulting melee:
Wielding blood-soaked batons and sticks, police and the unemployed clashed in a fierce pitched battle at 2 o'clock this afternoon. Charging a yelling mob of workers, nearly 90 officers accounted for a dozen or more casualties and a half dozen arrests. [Kerr & Hanson p. 300]
After a further confrontation the next day, the single unemployed began to drift into the camp at the exhibition grounds.
During the winter the grievances of the men in the overcrowded camp festered. By the spring the number of men in the camp had swelled to 630. The province, which administered the camp, felt that the camp was becoming more of a problem than it could handle. Plans were made to move the men to a new federally-administered camp at Borden. There the men would live under strict military discipline, administered by the Department of Defence They would not be allowed to negotiate with camp administrators or lodge complaints as a group. Anyone objecting was likely to be expelled from camp and blacklisted at all other camps, which left the choice of starvation or crime and jail.
Organizers from the Workers' Unity League were active within the Saskatoon camp, and the men grew resistant to the authorities. The first fifty men were to be shipped out of the camp on May 8, 1933. The men refused to go. Camp authorities called the RCMP for assistance, and they provoked a riot when they arrived. Several RCMP and camp inmates were injured, twenty-six people were arrested, and one RCMP officer was killed when he fell or was dragged off his horse during a mounted charge. The incident foreshadowed the even more serious events which would take place in Regina the following summer.
Meanwhile things were heating up for unemployed families as well. The City of Saskatoon's Relief Board was composed of "six members of the taxpaying public", and Mayor Underwood as an ex-officio member; these characters were later described by the City's Relief Officer as "the toughest men in Saskatoon" and "unhuman beasts".[O'Brien 2006] Other than approving the budget, City Council allowed the Relief Board to operate without oversight, and its decisions were final with no right of appeal. The Board immediately announced that anyone receiving relief would be required to sign a commitment to repay any monies received, allow inspectors to enter the family home at any time, repay any or all relief monies on demand, mortgage the family home for repayment of relief money on demand, and appropriate any or all money possessed by anyone receiving relief. Immigrants who had been in Canada for less than five years were forced to sign deportation orders as a condition of receiving relief. The Board's decisions were made in secret, there was no published schedule of meetings, and neither City Council nor the Relief Board would receive delegations from citizens.
Councillors A. M. Eddy and W. B. O' Regan opposed the decisions of Council, holding that Council had been elected to represent the people and that the Relief Board was merely a way of passing the buck. Applications by the Women's Labour League and the Saskatoon Local Unemployed Association to appoint members to the Board were turned down by both the City and the Board, each claiming that only the other had the authority to appoint new members.[O'Brien 2006]. This arrangement left those most effected by the Board's decisions - the unemployed and their families - without any effective voice anywhere in the system.
Many families refused to bend their knees and sign the relief agreement. The Relief Board remained intransigent. Finally things came to a head on November 19. A group of 30 women and children, supported by the Trades and Labour Council and other groups acting together as the United Front, invaded Council Chambers, declaring, "We are going to stay here until we get something to eat, we are starving". [Kerr & Hanson p. 301] They stayed all day and through the night. Local restaurants sent them food, but police turned back donations of blankets and mattresses.
This led to a march on City Hall by 150 angry demonstrators. Finally the Relief Board agreed to meet with a committee of the Trades and Labour Council. The next evening City Council agreed to make some minor revisions to the relief agreement respecting repayment of relief monies, and the women and children left Council Chambers and went home.
The Relief Board retained its hard line, announcing that in future that it would refuse to receive delegations from groups or organizations, and that it would consider only requests for review submitted by individuals through City Council. Saskatoon's electors expressed their opinion of the relief system in the civic election of the following year, when candidates opposing the Relief Board led the polls. Underwood was replaced as mayor in 1933. The Relief Board itself was scrapped in June 1934. The Relief Store was closed in October of that year, and Saskatoon went to a system of bi-weekly cash payments supplemented by milk and bread tickets.
The Trades and Labour Congress clashed again with the City in 1936. For several years the Board of City Hospital, then operated by the municipality, had been refusing to accept indigent patients from rural districts unless their municipalities guaranteed in advance to pay for their treatment. A female relief recipient, age 31, was admitted to City Hospital for a serious surgical procedure. The woman suffered from epilepsy. As soon as she was able to be moved, Hospital officials loaded her on to the baggage car of a train headed for Wadena, which they claimed was her home municipality. She arrived in Wadena greatly weakened, was taken to the hospital there, but died the next day.
Gerald Dealtry, Secretary of the Trades and Labour Council, took up the cause. His investigations revealed that this woman had not lived in Wadena since 1927, that she had been deserted by her husband in 1930 and had lived in Saskatoon since May 1934. In spite of her history, City Relief Officer G. W. Parker, contacted by administrators at City Hospital, had decided that the woman was a resident of Wadena and therefore a charge on that municipality. City Hospital officials had put her on the train, allegedly strapped to a cot, and shipped her to Wadena, not even bothering to advise officials in that town of their actions. Further, she had been sent to Wadena without the knowledge of her mother, who lived in Saskatoon and who claimed to have arranged accommodation for her daughter in the city.
Secretary Dealtry and the TLC forced an enquiry into the affair by the City Hospital Board of Governors. The Labour Council accused hospital officials of acting without authorization or humanity. After a lengthy process the Board not surprisingly found that its officials could be completely vindicated, and Saskatoon City Council decided not to pursue the matter. By the beginning of 1937 the matter had been dropped, but Dealtry and the TLC had succeeded in making sure that in future the cases of indigent persons would be handled with more sensitivity.
Events in Saskatoon took place against a turbulent labour scene elsewhere in Saskatchewan and in Canada. In the summer of 1931 coal miners in the Estevan - Bienfait area revolted against pay cuts and horrendous conditions in the coal mines. Led by organizers from the Workers' Unity League and the Mine Workers Union of Canada, 600 miners and their families faced the intransigence of the owners, the oppression of the federal Conservative government and the guns of the RCMP. During a peaceful march the police opened fire on the crowd, killing three of their unarmed number and wounding nine more. Despite the killings, the raids on homes and a reign of terror by the RCMP which went on for months, the miners held out until the owners conceded an 8 - hour day, a minimum $4 per day wage, a reduction in rent on company houses and the price of blasting powder, the appointment of checkmen and an end to the company store monopoly. [Dishaw 2005]
In 1933 the Regina Manifesto, adopted by a new national party, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, proclaimed a new deal for working people, including a new national labour code and recognition of the right to form unions. The United Farmers of Canada, Saskatchewan Section and the Saskatchewan Independent Labour Party met in that same year in Regina to form the Farmer-Labour Party, which became the Saskatchewan Cooperative Commonwealth Federation the following year, led by M.J. Coldwell. The CCF elected five Farmer-Labour MP's to the federal parliament in the 1935 election. Coldwell, a veteran spokesman for labour within the Saskatchewan Teachers' Alliance and the Canadian Teachers' Federation, was himself elected in Rosetown-Biggar in 1940 and served as federal MP and CCF leader until 1958.
In April of 1935 hundreds of unemployed single men, fed up with pointless labour under military discipline, walked out of Conservative Prime Minister R. B. Bennett's labour camps and descended on Vancouver demanding meaningful employment. Bennett blamed it all on the Communists and refused to deal with them. In June the unemployed decided to take their protest directly to Ottawa. By their thousands they climbed aboard freight trains headed east. By the time they reached Regina they were 2,000 strong. In Regina Bennett unleashed the police against the trekkers, precipitating a street fight when they charged a peaceful demonstration of trekkers and their supporters in Regina's market square. Two people, a police detective and a trekker, were killed in the resulting melee.
The cautious approach of the Trades and Labour Congress and its emphasis on craft unionism was not meeting the challenge of the times. In the United States, John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers organized a Committee for Industrial Organization within the American Federation of Labour. The CIO immediately began to organize in the traditional open-shop bastions in auto, steel, rubber and other mass production industries. Canadians, when informed that the American CIO had no funds to help them organize in this country, simply adopted the CIO label and went to work.
The first breakthrough for the Canadians came in 1937 at the CIO- led strike at General Motors in Oshawa, where the United Auto Workers, a CIO affiliate, won improvements in wages and working conditions as well as union recognition. Victories followed at Dofasco in Sidney, Nova Scotia and in the women's garment industry in Montreal.
The aggressive approach of the CIO unions was too much for the more cautious leadership of the AFL and the TLC. In 1937 the AFL expelled the CIO (which became the Congress of Industrial Organizations) and the new industrial unions which had sprung up under its banner. The Trades and Labour Congress of Canada followed suit in 1939. The Canadian CIO had no financial support from the USA, and so remained scattered in isolated pockets.
There was no FDR - style New Deal in Canada. The USA's 1935 Wagner Act, which guaranteed the right to form a union and to bargain collectively, had no federal counterpart in Canada until after World War II. The American example, however, resulted in pressure from the Trades and Labour Congress and its Councils to pass similar legislation here. In March, 1938, the Freedom of Trade Union Association Act was passed by the Saskatchewan government. The Act made it lawful to form a union and bargain collectively, but did not compel employers to bargain with the union. Civil servants were also excluded from its provisions.[Makahonuk p. 12]
Without a strong central body, CIO unions in Canada had to struggle hard in the face of continued government hostility from employers and from the Liberal Government of MacKenzie King. Finally in 1940 these unions joined with the remnants of the old All-Canadian Congress of Labour to form a new central body, the Canadian Congress of Labour.
Governments which had no funds to support the millions of unemployed and their families during the Great Depression found them in plenty when it came to prosecuting a war in Europe. The demands of the military and of wartime production ended the unemployment problem, but it did nothing to moderate the intransigence of Canadian employers or governments. As a consequence, union membership soared.
The Canadian Government refused to require recognition of unions by employers, as had governments in both the United States and in the United Kingdom. As a consequence, Canadian union leaders felt no compunction to take the "no strike pledge" that US and British leaders announced early in the war. [Heron p. 70] By 1943, one out of every three unionists was on strike for wage increases beyond those allowed by wartime wage controls. The CCF was gaining ground on the governing Liberals, and was close to winning in British Columbia and Ontario. In 1944 the CCF swept to power in Saskatchewan, winning 47 out of 52 seats. The Canadian Congress of Labour declared the CCF to be its political arm, as many CCF candidates were union activists.
Under pressure from the left, the King Government began to sound more progressive, promising such social security measures as health insurance, family allowances and pensions. The Government responded to rising union militancy by passing Order-in-Council PC1003 in February 1944. PC 1003 incorporated some of the principles of the US Wagner Act: compulsory recognition of unions and requirement of employers to bargain collectively; penalties for unfair labour practices, enforcement of the regulations by a new labour relations board, and compulsory conciliation before a strike or lockout.
The CCF Government of Tommy Douglas quickly followed with the Trade Union Act of 1944, which established a Labour Relations Board, provided for compulsory union recognition, good faith bargaining, outlawed unfair labour practices especially during certification drives, and provided for compulsory dues check-off. Company - dominated unions were given no protection under the Act. Protected from unfair oppression, union membership in Saskatchewan jumped 119 per cent between 1943 and 1947. By 1952, union membership in Saskatchewan had doubled.[Makahonuk p. 18 - 20]
At the national level the split continued between industrial unionists in the Canadian Congress of Labour and the craft-based Trades and Labour Congress. The TLC leadership included many who were close to the Liberal Party; in the CCL there was a battle for control between Social Democrats/CCF adherents and the Communists. Although the Communists had very often been on the front lines of the struggle for workers' rights during the 1920's and 1930's, they remained too closely tied to Moscow to maintain credibility in Canada. After the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, the Communists decried the entry of Canada into the war. Then when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Canadian Communists abruptly reversed course and began to accuse the Canadian labour movement of disrupting the war effort. As a result the Communists had been isolated and forced out of the CCL by the early 1940's.
Governments across Canada had moved a little to accommodate the demands of workers during wartime, but they were not about to abandon their business backers. Even the Federal Government's PC 1003 was only a wartime measure, due to expire at the end of hostilities. In 1945 the King Government extended its terms for two years while the politicians waited to see how the tug-of-war between labour and capital would work out.
As the war ended, many predicted a return to the unemployment and bread lines of the 1930's. Neither wartime workers nor returning vets were volunteering. In the 1945 - 1950 period a massive wave of strikes broke out across the country. Workers through their unions took a tough approach to bargaining, determined to get their fair share of the productivity gains made during the war.
Among the first to clash were the United Auto Workers and Ford Motor Company when workers walked off the job in Windsor Ontario. When the police on government orders attempted to force scabs through the picket lines, UAW members responded with a novel non-violent tactic: in their thousands they drove their cars into the streets surrounding the plant, turned off the engines, locked the doors, and left. The massive traffic jam prevented all access to the plant. Ford soon agreed to binding arbitration presided over by Mister Justice Ivan Rand, which resulted in the famous Rand Decision providing for compulsory dues checkoff (though it denied the closed shop) in 1946.
During 1946 their were strikes in the B.C. logging industry, in the Ontario rubber industry, in central Canadian ports, in steel and in Southham newspapers. In 1947 the United Packinghouse Workers won a national strike in a traditionally anti-union poorly paid industry, helped significantly by the refusal of Saskatchewan's new CCF government to form a common front with other provincial governments against the union. In 1949 asbestos mines in Quebec engaged in a bitter five-month strike characterized by extreme brutality by Quebec police acting for the Duplessis government. In 1950, a national strike of railway workers hit both the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways.
The largest common issues in these disputes were union recognition, a living wage, and the 8-hour day. These strikes were endorsed and led by the central leadership of the labour movement and its unions; they were not isolated by community or led by local labour councils as had been many of the disputes in the early part of the century. By 1948, the King Government was ready to concede that it was not possible to roll back wages and working conditions to pre-war levels. It made PC1003 permanent by passing it into law as the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act; by 1950 most provinces had followed suit with similar legislation.
The titanic battles in Canada's industrial centres produced fainter echoes in Saskatoon. Although the Saskatoon and District Labour Council and the Trades and Labour Council supported their brothers and sisters in their struggles, the labour scene in Saskatoon was quieter. Both the SDLC and the TLC were able to concentrate on issues of more local interest. The sharp conflict between workers and business or local authorities was absent, perhaps because the political environment which had given rise to the CCF and elected the Douglas Government in 1944 denied employers the support of the kind of business-backed government which supported aggressive employer tactics elsewhere in the country.
Nevertheless, surviving minutes of the SDLC reveal that labour peace was not universal in Saskatoon. The SDLC declared its active support for striking workers at Brick and Clay Products Ltd by the Clay Products Workers Union in February 1945. The SDLC also supported the Farmers' Strike of 1946, demanding that the Federal Government restore the milk subsidy previously paid to farmers. In September the SDLC also passed a resolution declaring support for Steelworkers at Stelco who were striking for living wages and a 40-hour week; the October minutes report a win by the USWA. The SDLC minutes also report involvement in a local strike against Bill Taxi in 1948 and support for RWDSU workers in their dispute with Marshall-Wells in 1951.
The Labour Council also supported organizing drives at Aidelman's and Lehrer's department stores in the city, where firing of workers sympathetic to the union had taken place. The minutes also note successful organizing drives at Palm Dairies and Southam newspapers in 1945, and at Safeway Stores in 1948.
Organizing at the University of Saskatchewan presented more difficulties. President J. A. Thompson persisted in interfering with the desire of workers there to form a union. In February 1945 the SDLC decided to ask for a meeting with the President to secure a commitment that he would take no action against employees attempting to organize. In April an entity called the University of Saskatchewan Employees Association attempted to gain certification. The Labour Council condemned the Association as an employer-dominated association, noting that the arrangement lacked even a basic grievance procedure. By September, workers at the University had managed to get a U of S Employees Union certified, and their bargaining committee had reached an agreement with the University's Business Manager. President Thompson earned the ire of the workers and of the SDLC when he took it upon himself to redraft the agreement to conform with his personal opinion of what it should contain.
The University employees recertified as CCL Local 54, and bargaining began again in October. It was not until April 1946 that U of S workers, bargaining as CCL Local 54, reached a first collective agreement with the University.
Minutes from this period reveal that the Saskatoon and District Labour Council was closely in touch with civic life in Saskatoon. Labour Council committees dealt with everything from the system of street car routing and transfers to speeders on 8th Street. The SDLC struck special committees to look into electrical power rates in Saskatoon and compare them to other cities, studied the placement and administration of parking meters in the city, and formed joint action committees with the Trades and Labour Congress to look into ways to look after the needs of transient and unemployed workers and people on relief which persisted after the war.
Issues with implications beyond the city also occupied the Council. To ensure solidarity within the local Labour Movement and to form a common progressive front on issues effecting working people, the SDLC in 1946 formed an "Occupational Group Council" with the Trades and Labour Council, United Farmers of Canada, the Canadian Congress of Labour, the Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation and the American Federation of Labour. The Council produced a stream of briefs and presentations to the Workman's Compensation Board, the Minimum Wage Board, the Unemployment Insurance Commission, and to the federal and provincial ministers of labour, especially on the issue of the national labour code.
The SDLC also provided delegates and advisors to a host of local organizations. SDLC delegates served on the Unemployment Insurance Commission Advisory Committee. They served as advisors on the Wartime Prices and Trade Board. They arranged meetings for CCL National Secretary Pat Conroy and Regional CCL Director C. E. Palmer with local leaders at such diverse institutions as the University of Saskatchewan, the Saskatoon Cooperative Association, the Saskatoon Sanitorium. The Council provided, at the City's request, three delegates to sit on an advisory committee concerning the construction of a new City Hall.
The SDLC also responded to the many requests for representation on local, provincial and national organizations which clearly valued their input. Surviving minutes show that the SDLC provided a liaison to the Saskatoon Collegiate Board's Vocational Education Committee, to the Community Chest, the John Howard Society, the Saskatoon Film Board and the Canadian Red Cross, as well as responding to requests for input from the usual provincial and federal agencies directly concerned with labour law and standards.
This community activism included direct involvement in Saskatoon's political life. As early as December 1945 the SDLC had elected H. L. Brown, UPWA 248 and SDLC Treasurer to Saskatoon City Council. Other victories followed. The SDLC worked closely with the Saskatoon Trades and Labour Council to form a Civic Elections Committee.
By September 1948 this committee was working on a slate of labour candidates for the next civic election. It took two years to put the slate together, but when the list was complete it had multi-union support from within the ranks of both the SDLC and the TLC. The final slate included SDLC Executive members T. Elliot and F. McFarland and SDLC President Burt Sears, as well as Wes Robbins (future NDP cabinet minister) for the High School Board and D. McIntosh for the Public School Board. Of the three council candidates, only Burt Sears was successful. Sears went on to serve on Council from 1951 to 1958 and again from 1964 to 1971. In 1972 Sears was elected Mayor of Saskatoon and served until 1976. Other SDLC executive members, including Walter Smishek and Wes Robbins, went on to become influential cabinet ministers in the Blakeney Government of the 1970's.
As the Second World War came to a close, the SDLC was able to turn its attention to peacetime issues once again. An immediate project was the passage into law of the provisions of Privy Council orders 1003 and 9384. The SDLC engaged in an intensive lobby to the King Government, along with councils and federations of labour across Canada. Their efforts resulted in the Industrial Relations Disputes Act of 1947.
Council members were also energetic in responding to Eugene Forsey's white paper on post-war unemployment, and at the request of the U of S Economics Department hosted a dinner for Dr. Forsey when he visited the city in February of 1951. Under the leadership of Burt Sears, Chair of the SDLC Political Action Committee, the Council took on a wide range of issues. One of the Committee's first acts was to order and distribute 1000 "Combat Racial Intolerance" leaflets from the Winnipeg Labour Committee. Under its auspices the Council sponsored a visit by famed American labour organizer and head of the UAW Education Department Victor Reuther. The Council was active in supporting the State Hospital and Medical League, founded in Prince Albert in 1936 with the aim of providing health care without regard to ability to pay.
By the 1950's the Council was active in the Price and Rental Control campaign of the national CCL in its efforts to deal with affordable housing for working people. The Council established a special committee consisting of Council executive members and one member from each SDLC affiliated local, voting also to form a joint committee with the Saskatoon Trades and Labour Council. The Council also supported trade unionists around the world through its contributions to the CCL's South East Asia Leadership Fund.
The SDLC seems to have had a successful strategy for getting its message to the public. The recorded minutes note the frequent presence of the local press at meetings of the Labour Council. In addition, the Council in early 1947 established a "Reply Committee" of three (later five) executive members as a quick response unit to letters to the editor attacking labour. The Council also worked with the CCL to get airtime for three radio broadcasts of recordings supplied by the national CCL.
To accomplish all these goals the SDLC had a very active education program. The Education Committee, along with Organizing, Legislation, and the Hall Committee, was one of the four key executive committees established by the Council. Before the war ended the Council was already participating in an innovation of the Douglas Government: classes in labour education offered by the Provincial Director of Adult Education. The Council sponsored its own classes or participated in CCL Institutes offering such courses as Public Speaking, Job of the Steward, Making Unions Effective, Collective Bargaining, Coops and Trade Unions, Understanding Our Economy, and The Machinery of Government. By 1951 the Education Committee could report an attendance of 100 students at a Labour Council training institute. The prominence of these institutes in the community is implied by the list of guests at the closing banquet: among the 36 guests in attendance were the Minister of Labour, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Saskatoon, the President of the University of Saskatchewan, the President of the Trades and Labour Council, the Mayor of Saskatoon, and several MP's, MLA's and city counsellors.
In these early years the SDLC lacked a permanent home in the community. Meetings were held in various hotels, usually the King George on Second Avenue. In September 1948, after an extensive search, the Council decided to join with the United Farmers of Canada to purchase a former Mess Hut located at No. 4 Flying Training School at the Saskatoon airport. Eventually a site for the new home was purchased, and after extensive renovations and outfitting the new Coop Farmer-Labour Hall was opened in mid-1949 at 202 Avenue B North. In addition to the SDLC, other tenants included the Saskatoon Cooperative Association, the Farmer-Labour Party, the Canadian Congress of Labour, the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union, and the United Packinghouse Worker of America.
Surviving minutes give some indication of the level of activism within the SDLC in the post-war period. Below is a list of officers and executive elected at the Annual General Meeting of January 21, 1949, and the committees they established at the next executive meeting. The minutes indicate that this AGM was attended by 13 locals and 27 members. Union affiliations are not indicated; they rarely appear in the minutes.
President: Br. Sears
Vice President: Br. Hooper
Secretary-Treasurer: Sr. Phillips
Recording Secretary: Br. Ruemper
Executive Members: T. Elliot, W. F. Lake, W. Smishek, B. Henderson, H. E. Bradwell
At the February meeting, an additional 13 activists had put their names forward to participate in the following committees:
Organizing - 3 members
Audit - 3 members
Legislative and Education - 5 members
Hall Committee - 3 members
Social Committee - 3 members
Attendance - 2 members
Press and Radio - 3 members
Labour-Coop Coordinating Committee - 3 members
Labour Education - 3 members
Vocational Board Representation - 1 member
Unemployment Insurance Advisory Board - 1 member
John Howard Society - 1 member
Citizens Health Committee (inactive)
State Hospital and Medical League (TBA)
Community Chest - 2 members
Social Planning Committee Panels:
Health - 1 member
Child & Welfare - 1 member
Senior Citizens - 1 member
Recreation and Youth - TBA
Ad Hoc Strike Committee - to be appointed as required.
Political Action Committee - executive committee of the whole
Active locals included the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees (CBRE) 94, CBRE 144, Western Packinghouse Workers (WPWA)248, WPWA 213 (Palm Dairies), United Farm Workers of Canada No 2, University of Saskatchewan Employees No. 1, and United Steelworkers 3493. Regular meetings seem to have drawn 15 - 30 delegates, about the same turnout as the SDLC experiences today.
The post war growth in membership encouraged Canadian unions to expand their capacities in research, communications, health and safety and education. As they expanded, they ceded less authority to central labour bodies. Aggressive organizing drives sometimes put unions into competition with each other. Competition could sometimes turn into conflict, particularly where the differing philosophies of industrial versus craft unionism clashed. In both the U.S. and Canada, craft and industrial unions engaged in raiding. The Steelworkers drove Mine-Mill from Ontario, but suffered set backs in the West. In the U.S., the compulsory checkoff provided by the Wagner Act gave the Carpenters the resources to try to organize anywhere in the lumber industry, the Boilermakers took a run at shipyards, and the Machinists battled with the Auto Workers in the aircraft factories.
The Canadian situation was further complicated by the growing militancy of workers in Quebec, where they were fighting both the Catholic hierarchy and the Duplessis Government. The Asbestos Strike of 1949 had signalled the approaching end of control of unions by the Catholic Church. During the early 1950's, the Quebec central labour body, the Canadian and Catholic Confederation of Labour (CCCL) engaged in a number of dramatic and violent strikes in that province. The CCCL found itself drawn increasingly toward the more militant Canadian Congress of Labour, while in retaliation the Duplessis Government backed the more conservative TLC unions. When Newfoundland entered Confederation in 1949 the TLC and the CCL came into conflict again over the relatively small number of waged workers in the new province.
In both the U.S. and Canada, cooler heads began to prevail. A rising generation of leadership in the central bodies of both countries recognized that for the good of all concerned the rivalry had to end. As early as 1944 the TLC had called for serious study of reunification.[Morton p.221] Yet it took another 12 years before the political differences and the personal animosities among the leadership in both countries could be reconciled.
Since the Canadian central labour bodies were each affiliates of their larger American partners, the first moves to unity had to come from south of the border. Finally in February 9, 1955 the AFL-CIO Unity Committee announced agreement; the TLC-CCL committee made its announcement exactly one month later. Later that year the agreement was ratified by the TLC and CCL conventions. The new Canadian Labour Congress held its first convention in April of 1956, where 1620 delegates represented just over one million Canadian members.[Morton p.224]
As the national bodies merged, so too did their respective local councils and federations. In Saskatoon, cooperation and joint action between the TLC and the SDLC had long been the order of the day. From the beginning the two councils had cooperated in organizing the annual Labour Day Parade. They had supported each other's educational events, and had often operated joint institutes. Through the Joint Civic Election Committee they worked together on civic election campaigns and supported common labour slates for council and school boards. Each contributed delegates to the boards of local organizations such as the YMCA, the St. John's Ambulance Association, and the John Howard Society. Each council supported the other's projects, such as the TLC Playground Committee's work on the new Lathey Pool, to be named after long time trade unionist John Lathey.
By 1951 the two Canadian central labour organizations had divided the unionized workforce between them: the Trades and Labour Congress claimed 522,000 members and the Canadian Congress of Labour 350,000.[Morton p. 220] Membership in the Saskatoon Trades and Labour Council was not exclusive to craft unions; the 25 locals registered at the 1954 AGM were:
Railroad Machinists Local 534
Railroad Carmen Local 1447
Firefighters Local 80
Civic Employees Local 59
School Maintenance Employees Local 34
Building Services Employees Local 293
Carpenters and Joiners Local 1805
Motion Picture Employees Local 300
Brewery Workers Local 334
Teamsters Local 139
Printing Pressmen Local 206
City Hospital Employees Local 293
Painters and Decorators Local 1600
Typographical Union Local 663
Brewery Workers Local 246
Boilermakers Local 600
Pumping Station Employees Local 47
Machinists Local 1057
Richardson Road Machinists Local 1507
Purity Dairy Workers Local 592
Federation of Postal Employees Local 35
Plumbers Local 264
Transit Employees Local 615
Electrical Workers Local 529
The TLC was also continuing to receive new applications even as the merger with the CCL approached; in 1954 the Council received applications from the administrative employee branch of the Federation of Letter Carriers and from the Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks.
In the same period minutes from the Saskatoon and District Labour Council note the election of Ray Sedgwick as SDLC President in January 1952; Sedgwick two years later was recruited as a staff rep for the CCL Prairie Region, and stayed on as CLC staff rep for the region, based in Saskatoon, until his retirement in 1979. The TLC and the SDLC cooperated on labour day parades and supplied delegates to the City of Saskatoon's 70th Anniversary preparation committee. The SDLC also pressed the province for legislation on the 8 hour day and raises in the minimum wage to $0.85 for full time and $0.95 for part time workers. The SDLC also contributed actively to the the debate on issues as diverse as water rates, taxes on vehicles, citizen of the year nominations, electrical rates and bus fairs, fair prices for farm produce, and depreciation deductions for cars and trucks owned by workers.
By 1955 the TLC and the SDLC had been in merger discussions for some time. The TLC dissolved its Labour Temple Company (the TLC had been meeting in the King Edward Hotel) and joined the planning discussion for a new Farmer-Labour Hall on a 2nd Avenue property. On September 26, 1956 the Saskatoon Trades and Labour Council held its final meeting, ending an illustrious 47 - year history in Saskatoon. Presiding over the final meeting were President Dan Horton, Vice President Harry Morrell, Secretary Jack Candline, Treasurer E. W. Grafham, Registrar Ravis Reeves, and Executive Members L. Hopkins, L. E. Ball, A. Guilmette, and C. T. Fitzpatrick.
The final CCL/SDLC meeting was held two weeks later on October 12, 1956, presided over by President Fred McClelland, and preceded by a joint TLC-SDLC meeting. That evening the new executive of the Saskatoon Labour Council was installed by Br. Harry Rhodes, Director of Organization for the new Canadian Labour Congress: President Fred McClelland, Vice Presidents Don Horton and John Poth, Treasurer Edward Grafham, Recording Secretary Don Arnold, and Registrar Anne Klassen.
[link to picture from Star Phoenix]