Publications

TWLH-Mar-2

Working conditions on today’s construction sites and factory floors, in schools, office buildings, warehouses, restaurants – any workplace, really – are often taken for granted. We see fire extinguishers and sprinklers, first aid stations and emergency exits. We see the safety barriers, the hard hats, and the labels that warn of explosives, poisons and burns. We know they are there…

TWLH-Mar-1

Celebrated on March 8 every year, International Women’s Day (IWD) is fundamentally a political protest about conditions in the workplace and society. The day has moved around over the past century finally settling on March 8th in 1975. Its roots go back to a 1909 protest organized by the Socialist Party of America in New York in honour of the…

TWLH-Feb-4

In the early days of colonial settlement into “the Canadas”, some of the largest construction projects were the building of canals to secure safe routes for the movement of people and the trade of goods. The 1820s saw major undertakings across the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River regions including the Lachine Canal at Montréal, the Welland Canal to connect…

TWLH-Feb-3

Workers in the federal public service were organizing themselves into unions for over 75 years before finally winning the same labour rights enjoyed by other Canadians. The first union, formed in 1891, was the Federated Association of Letter Carriers. In 1918, FALC lead postal workers in the very first countrywide strike of federal government employees, which, while illegal, won fairer…

TWLH-Feb-2

“What I found [at Asbestos]… was a Quebec I did not know, that of workers exploited by management, denounced by government, clubbed by police, and yet burning with a fervent militancy. I was later to describe the strike . . . as a “turning point in the entire religious, political, social and economic history of the province of Quebec.” P.…

The Canada-U.S. Auto Pact created the modern Canadian auto industry

The Auto Pact is credited for invigorating the domestic Canadian auto industry. It established new rules for the manufacture of cars in both the U.S. and Canada. By imposing a content requirement for cars manufactured and sold in Canada, the Auto Pact represented an important compromise between the principles of free trade and market fairness. It stands as an important…

Ralph Chaplin finishes writing Solidarity Forever, perhaps the most famous labour anthem of all

Chaplin’s poem, sung to the same tune as “John Brown’s Body”, which was also adopted as the tune for “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, is perhaps the most recognizable and best-known union song. Written as a song for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and first used as a marching song at a hunger demonstration in Chicago, on…

TWLH-Aug-1

More than 75 years later, the program has been expanded and adapted to changing times – even renamed for political reasons – but today it is badly frayed by successive cuts. A few key changes would restore EI and its ability to meet the needs of employers, workers and the economy as a whole. This brief history shows the rise…

TWLH-Aug-2

It’s not listed among the top tourist destinations in Ottawa, but if you are visiting the National Capital Region this summer (as many Canadians do), you may wish to pay your respects to the nine workers who went to work that day and never got to go home, and the other 55 whose lives were forever changed. [[{“fid”:”1457″,”view_mode”:”default”,”fields”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:”Photo of men…

TWLH-Aug-3

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