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The Strike as Political
Protest
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The strike is often regarded today exclusively as a means used by workers to achieve economic ends in collective bargaining with employers. This is, however, a fairly recent view that is largely the result of the particular industrial relations system introduced in 1944 by Privy Council Order 1003 and expanded by subsequent legislation. In fact, the strike has been used throughout Canada’s history as a way to register political protest against injustices far removed from the shop floor. Therefore it is much more accurate and useful to understand the strike as a means that has been used for different ends. These range from collective bargaining with employers to political protest against government policy. Between these two poles fall a large number of strikes that have both economic and political ends and a smaller number of strikes that have important political and legislative consequences regardless of their original intent.We may identify political strikes by three criteria. The first is the aim of the strike, that is, whether it is undertaken to influence, change, or protest against state policy or to secure demands that are recognized as part of collective bargaining. The second is who is being asked to supply the remedy, employers or the state. The third is whether political consequences, such as new legislation, result from the strike. Thus the strike of Montréal carpenters in 1845, in
which the chief demand was "freedom from oppression," may be
categorized as political protest, for the demand could not be granted by
employers and because it far exceeded the economic issues that make up
collective bargaining. The first recorded strike in British Columbia was
simultaneously an economic and political strike, for the employer, the
Hudson's Bay Company, was both employer and the constituted political
authority. In 1850, British miners at Fort Rupert withdrew their labour
in protest against the Hudson's Bay Company. While Vancouver Island
became a British colony in 1849, the governor, Richard Blanshard, had no
authority over the company and in all matters under its jurisdiction,
including employment, the company continued to perform the functions of
government, including the use of coercive power. In other jurisdictions in this period, the strike was often purely political. Through 1850-53, railway workers in New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario struck repeatedly to protest rising inflation. These strikes were not called to pressure employers to increase wages but to seek the political intervention of the state to control inflation. Two years later, Pelee Island members of the Journeymen Stonecutters went on strike not against a particular employer but against the "system of tyranny" of capitalism. The nine-hour movement of 1872 used the same tool—the strike—to secure both political and economic ends. Thousands of workers in Hamilton, Toronto, Brantford, Stratford, London, Oshawa, St. Catherines, Sarnia, Guelph, Kingston, Montréal, and Halifax went on strike to secure the nine-hour day. It included Toronto members of the International Typographical Union employed by George Brown, publisher of the Globe newspaper, and Liberal party stalwart. When his employees joined the strike, Brown did not consider this part of collective bargaining; instead, he had them charged with a political offence, that is, seditious conspiracy, and had them arrested. In response, 4,000 workers demonstrated, not to win the economic demand of the nine-hour day but to protest the arrests of the ITU members. Unlike the strike of BC miners in 1850, there was a clear separation of state and employer, but in both cases, the strike was a vehicle of political protest as well as a means of pursuing economic demands.The nine-hour movement illustrates in two other ways that strikes have historically been political tools. Until 1872, unions were illegal in Canada. Yet workers formed unions and went on strike regardless. This deliberate flouting of the law meant that virtually every strike was in principle a contest not only with employers but also with the state. That the state rarely picked up the challenge is immaterial. What is important is that strikes prior to 1872 by definition were acts of civil disobedience aimed at the government, for they were carried out in defiance of the law and the state. These illegal strikes directly challenged the authority of the state and in this way may be defined as political. Furthermore, the strikes of the nine-hour movement led directly to political change. In response to the strikes and the politically charged protests, the Conservative government of John A. Macdonald passed the Trade Union Act of 1872, which formally acknowledged and made trade unions legal entities. Thus the nine-hour movement is a clear, if complicated, example of the strike as political weapon. The passage of the Trade Union Act gave unions some legal standing. It did not, however, put an end to political strikes. Canadian telegraphers joined a continent-wide strike in 1883 to protest the monopoly held by telegraph companies and the unequal distribution of wealth under capitalism as well as equal pay for men and women, the eight-hour day, and a wage increase. Canadian Pacific Railway workers in the Rocky Mountains struck in protest over the government's refusal to legislate safe and healthy conditions and timely pay that same year. Strikes were also called to protest the government's use of force during industrial strikes. When the militia was called out to suppress a strike of 200 Québec cotton mill workers in 1900, 3,000 other workers walked off the job not to win higher wages but in protest against the government's action. During a lengthy strike against the CPR in 1903 by the United Brotherhood of Railroad Employees, workers walked out to protest violence against pickets and union organizers and the murder of union organizer Frank Rogers by company police. Garment workers in Toronto and Montréal struck in 1910 and 1912 in solidarity with other garment workers and held large demonstrations against the legal harassment of strike supporters. Between 1907 and 1916, freight handlers in Fort William and Port Arthur struck several times over wages and what they deemed the "high-handed" actions of managers. However, when the militia was ordered out, further strikes were used to register disapproval of government policy. Thus we see that strikes over economic issues could lead to much broader political protests far removed from collective bargaining, aimed not at the employer but at the state. The First World War saw a rise in militancy and strike action for both economic and political aims. Strikes to protest the rampant inflation created by the wartime boom in industry were common. These strikes were often not about increasing wages; often they were called to back up demands for government intervention in the economy. At the same time, several provincial and federal labour federations moved general strike resolutions to protest the war and conscription in a clear attempt to influence government policy. Miners in Drumheller mines launched a general strike in 1918, not over industrial bargaining but to protest the emplacement of a machine gun battery by police. Hundreds of Vancouver workers, ranging from longshoremen, street railwaymen, metal trades and construction workers, to service workers, walked out en masse in August 1918 to protest the murder of union organizer Albert "Ginger" Goodwin. Goodwin had refused to be conscripted and was shot and killed by a special constable sent out to arrest draft dodgers in the Cumberland, Vancouver Island area. The one-day strike was a reaction to conscription as well as a protest over the suspicious circumstances surrounding Goodwin's death. It was followed some days later by a walk-out of Cumberland workers who left their jobs to attend Goodwin's funeral. While Winnipeg would become famous for its general
strike of 1919, the city’s first general strike took place a year
earlier to support a strike of civic workers. The general strike was
held to protest the "autocracy" of the municipal government.
In May 1919, a dispute between Winnipeg metal trades workers and their
employers quickly expanded into a general strike of over 30,000 workers
who walked out in sympathy. To the demands of the metal trades workers,
other strikers added protests directed at the municipal, provincial, and
federal governments. Workers in other cities downed tools in sympathy
with Winnipeg. Victoria, Vancouver, New Westminster, Prince Rupert,
Calgary, Edmonton, Medicine Hat, Prince Albert, Regina, Saskatoon,
Brandon, Port Arthur, Toronto, Montreal, and Amherst, Nova Scotia, all
saw general strikes called to support the workers in Winnipeg and to
protest the arrests of strike leaders. Often workers in these cities
added other political demands to the strike. All strike activity declined after 1919-20, but workers still used the strike for political purposes. Glace Bay miners withdrew their labour in 1922 to protest the arrest and sentences of twelve workers who took part in a food riot when the company store was closed and the company refused to accept the recommendations of the federal inquiry into working conditions. The following year saw Cape Breton miners strike to protest the use of military and provincial police in a Sydney strike, and Glace Bay miners held a one-day protest against the impending execution of the Italian-American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in conjunction with workers around the world. On the other side of the country, Vancouver Chinese seamen went on strike in sympathy with striking seamen in China in 1925. The Great Depression of 1929-1939 threw many workers into the ranks of the unemployed. As a result, union membership and strike activity fell precipitously. Nonetheless, significant political strikes to protest unemployment took place. The unemployed themselves, organized into the Relief Camp Workers' Union, left the camps to protest the conditions and to demand federal relief. Culminating in the On to Ottawa Trek, the actions of the relief camp workers were supported by a short strike by Vancouver waterfront workers on 25 April 1935. A week later, on 1 May, Vancouver longshoremen staged a 24-hour "holiday" to march in the May Day parade in solidarity with 15,000 workers and relief camp protestors. The preceding is a brief outline of some of the significant political protests taken by Canadian workers before the creation of the industrial relations regime laid out first in Privy Council Order 1003 issued in 1944 and elaborated and expanded by subsequent federal and provincial legislation. Workers have always engaged in strikes to press for political aims. At the same time, the state has often attempted to limit and curtail the use of the strike as a political tool. Thus much labour legislation has sought to restrict the definition of the strike to the realm of industrial relations. While this may be politically expedient, it is not historically accurate, and reflects political needs rather than historical accuracy. This is apparent in Canada's first important industrial relations legislation, the Industrial Disputes Investigations Act, or the Lemieux Act, of 1907. Largely drafted by then Deputy Minister of Labour William Lyon Mackenzie King, the act was careful to delineate between what he considered "legitimate" and "illegitimate" unions. “Legitimate” unions were those that drew up very narrow demands concerning wages and conditions of work. These unions would be encouraged and protected by the state. “Illegitimate” unions were those that took up larger concerns of social justice, equality, and control of the work process and used the strike for these political purposes. They would be denied the protection of the state. Mackenzie King well understood that strikes could well be a form of political protest and thus one of the aims of his legislation was to limit the political strike. Mackenzie King, now prime minister, returned to the question of industrial relations in the war years of the 1940s. 1943 was the second most turbulent year in Canadian labour history; only 1919, with its wave of general strikes that culminated in the Winnipeg General Strike, saw more workers take strike action and more days lost to strikes. One-third of the union members in Canada engaged in some sort of strike action in that year even as union membership doubled from 362,000 to 724,000 between 1940 and 1944; the percentage of the workforce in unions rose from about 17 per cent to over 24 per cent in the same period. Privy Council Order 1003, together with the subsequent federal and provincial legislation that extended the principles of the order to most jurisdictions by 1949, was the direct result of this greatly expanded trade union activity and was aimed at limiting and channeling strike activity to avoid disruption and to provide labour peace. The intent of this legislation was to limit strike activity. It did so in two ways. First, it removed one of the most common causes of strikes: union recognition. Until PC 1003 and the subsequent legislation, employers had no legal requirement to recognize unions as the bargaining agent for employees. As a result, union recognition was a key demand in many strikes and a critical factor in some of the longest and violent strikes. It was, for example, the primary aim in the strike against the Dunsmuir coal mining company in 1877; the 1903 strike against the Canadian Pacific Railway that led to the murder of union organizer Frank Rogers; the Vancouver Island coal strikes of 1912-1914; the Winnipeg General Strike; the 1931 Bienfait, Saskatchewan strike in which three union miners were killed; and the three-month Windsor strike in 1945 that led to the Rand formula. The industrial relations legislation of the 1940s created a legal process for union certification, recognition, and bargaining that reduced strikes by eliminating a chief cause of strikes. It may be noted that the demand for union recognition was essentially a political demand, for it sought to limit the rights of the employer, albeit through putting pressure on the employer rather than the government. Second, the legislation sought to reduce strikes by preserving and strengthening the government's narrow version of trade union activity. Drawing on Mackenzie King's earlier notion of "legitimate" and "illegitimate" unions and strikes, the legislation made a legal distinction between strikes taken in pursuit of collective bargaining for wages and conditions of work and those taken in pursuit of wider aims ranging from political protest to control over the work process to expressions of discontent and alienation. The distinction between so-called legitimate and illegitimate unions was enforced by extending the protection of the state—certification and bargaining rights, access to arbitration, mediation, and conciliation, and union security measures such as the dues check-off and variations of the union shop—only to those deemed legitimate. Those deemed illegitimate were denied legal protection and found the repressive measures of the state, including state-sanctioned violence by police and even gangsters, arrayed against them. Strikes were forbidden during the life of collective agreements; the issues that could be bargained for were tightly circumscribed; residual rights, powers, and privileges were lumped together and ceded to employers under the rubric of "management rights," and so on. The legislation of the 1940s, and the subsequent laws and policies that elaborated, extended, and enabled it, set out to divide strikes into two categories: narrow economic strikes that would be channeled and controlled and wider political strikes that would be outlawed. While sixty-five years of practice have reinforced the idea that the strike is a tool to be used only in industrial matters, the reality is that it is a tool that may be put to different purposes. The state has always recognized this; the fact that it has worked to suppress or limit one purpose, that of political protest, is in itself recognition that it is used for that purpose. It continued to be used as a form of political protest in the post-war period. The sympathy strike, one of the defining characteristics of the strike wave of 1919, was taken up by 8,500 workers in the auto, aircraft, and agricultural implement industries in 1945, not to press the demands of the strikers themselves but to aid other workers. Similarly ITU and other newspaper trade unions engaged in sympathy strikes in Vancouver, Ottawa, Hamilton, and Calgary in 1946. 1957 saw 65,000 CPR workers walk out in sympathy with firemen who were scheduled to lose their jobs, while in 1971, 14,000 Montreal workers struck to support strikers at La Presse.Political strikes aimed at changing or protesting government policy continued as well. Several strikes in 1946-7 involving unions such as the International Woodworkers of America, the United Electrical Workers, and others, were called to protest wage freezes imposed by the federal government. 1949 saw the Asbestos strike in Quebec. Often portrayed as the harbinger of the Quiet Revolution, the strike was in large part a protest of foreign business in Quebec and war profiteering. Toronto workers in 1960 and again in 1961 struck illegally to protest the lack of provincial regulation in the construction industry. Just as the 1919 strike wave was fueled by political concerns, so too was the wildcat strike wave of the 1960s. Alienation, injustice, and the demand for respect cannot be strike issues under the post-war industrial relations regime. Yet workers used the strike in the 1960s to demonstrate anger at and frustration with many aspects of contemporary society far removed from wages and hours of work. Often these were more important than pure and simple economic demands, and to the degree they were couched in the language of justice and rights and ethics, they may be more usefully considered political issues and the resulting strikes better categorized as political protest. At the same time, illegal strikes by postal workers and civil servants in this decade were aimed more precisely at changing legislation to provide these workers with the right to strike. In 1973, 108,000 Ontario teachers walked out to protest provincial legislation that made compulsory arbitration the sole means of dispute resolution. Three years later, over one million workers left their jobs to join a Day of Protest against federal wage and price controls. BC workers in several industries participated in a series of work stoppages in 1983 as part of Operation Solidarity, launched to oppose legislation that limited collective bargaining and drastically altered or eliminated government services and agencies. On the other side of the country, thousands of Newfoundland workers walked off the job to protest legislation that limited their right to strike in 1986; the following year, BC workers registered their protest against new provincial labour legislation with a one-day general strike. Despite the attempts of governments to eliminate the strike as a method of political protest, it continues to this day. The aims and targets of the strike are two ways to determine if it is a political tool. A third way is to examine the consequences of the strike. The Trade Union Act of 1872 was the direct consequence of the strikes of the nine-hour movement in 1872. The 1903 strikes of miners and unskilled railway workers led to a royal commission and the Industrial Disputes Investigations Act of 1907. In 1934, the Criminal Code was amended to allow informational picketing in response to the reality of such strikes. As noted above, PC 1003 and subsequent labour legislation was drafted in response to the strikes and sit-ins of the 1930s and 1940s, while legislative changes enabled federal and provincial government workers to bargain collectively and strike in the 1960s and 1970s after a long campaign of illegal strikes and organizing. Strikes often have profound political consequences whatever the initial intentions of the strikers may be. That legislation often results from allegedly narrow strikes indicates that governments understand this implicitly even as they try to codify the distinction for pragmatic reasons.The strike is a tool used by workers and like most tools it can and has been set to more than one purpose. In addition to collective bargaining, it has been used explicitly to register political protest and to create changes in public policy. While governments may find it expedient to hold that strikes ought to be called only to resolve narrow economic disputes with employers, the reality is they have been used much more broadly throughout our history. They have always been crucial in the struggle to expand the meaning and practice of democracy in Canada and continue to be so today.
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Political Strikes 1833 to 1980
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