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Application Form for Funding Courses: CUPE Pro-D funding

All CUPE 389 Stewards who have not taken Introduction to Stewarding are asked to attend training that has been arranged for you on Oct 19 and 20th at the CUPE National regional office in Burnaby.

You will receive a book off from your regular job and this training is mandatory if you wish to continue as a steward.

Due to COVID, we have not been able to hold training for the past two years. It takes a lot of logistics to organize this training and arrange for the book-offs with the Employers. Office staff have tried to reach several stewards and have received no reply.  Please contact the office as soon as possible if you have not already registered, and if you do not wish to take the training and therefore continue as a steward, we would love to have you stay on as a Communicator, but we need you to let us know so we can keep an accurate list. Unfortunately, if we have anyone not responding, your name will be taken off our list of Shop Stewards.

Thank you,

CUPE 389 Education Committee

This year, 2022, marks the 150th year anniversary of the Trade Union Act of Canada, when trade unions finally became legal, though trade union leaders would still be subject to arrest and persecution for many years after

by Dan Todd

While a commonly held mistaken view holds modern trade unionism to be a product of Marxism, the earliest modern trade unions predate Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848) by almost a century, with the first recorded labour strike in the United States by the Philadelphia printers in 1786.

The origins of modern trade unions can be traced back to 18th century Britain, where the rapid expansion of industrial society then taking place drew masses of people, including women, children, peasants and immigrants, into cities. Britain had ended the practice of serfdom in 1574, but vast majority of people remained as tenant-farmers on estates owned by landed aristocracy. This transition was not merely one of relocation from rural to urban environs; rather, the nature of industrial work created a new class: “worker”.

A farmer worked the land, raised animals and grew crop, and either owned the land or paid rent, but ultimately sold a product and had control over his life and work. As industrial workers, however, the workers sold themselves as labour, and took directions from employers, giving up their freedom and self-agency in the service of a master. The critics of the new arrangement would call this “wage slavery,” and the greatest criticism in the U.S.A. came from the Republican party, which called this arrangement “Unchristian.” The term that persisted was a new form of human relations: employment. Unlike farmers, workers were completely dependent on their employers, without job security or a promise of an on-going relationship with their employers, lacking control over the work they performed or how it impacted their health and life. It is in this context, then, that modern trade unions emerged.

Whether it is workers’ rights, working conditions, human rights or social justice, laws get changed if people stand together in solidarity. But laws cannot get changed if one cannot even vote – so the expansion of the franchise was one of the first campaigns the Unions took on.

In April of 1872, unionized printers striking for a 9-hour day were arrested in Toronto and jailed. Their demand was a decrease in their work days to nine hours at a time when some workers were expected to work for as long as 12 hours. The printers paraded with union supporters to Queen’s Park where a crowd of 10,000 strong rallied on their side. The following day, employers, led by Liberal George Brown of the “Globe” Newspaper, had twenty-four strike leaders arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy. Capitalizing on the political folly of Brown’s actions, and the growing public outrage, Conservative Prime Minister Sir John A. MacDonald introduced and enacted the Trade Unions Act, effectively making union membership legal. He further undermined Brown by removing union members from “criminal conspiracy” for taking strike action. This won Macdonald the key support heading into a federal election.

In Ottawa, union members marched to the Prime Minister’s home in celebration of the move and paraded him through the streets by torch light. It is worth noting that as it gave workers the right to join a union, Macdonald’s government simultaneously passed another act that made picketing illegal. In the years following this “first”, unions came to realize that governments could take away rights as easily as they could be bestowed. Legal strikes, even the freedom to hold union meetings, were declared criminal acts as governments saw fit. Today, the right to belong to a union as well as the right to strike are protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as fundamental rights, following the Supreme Court of Canada’s Decisions in 2014.

Canada’s unions won these rights after years of struggle, political battles and even physical violence. The federal Conservative government of Sir John Sparrow Thompson implemented the first Labour Day as a national holiday in response to pressure from working people to celebrate a day acknowledging workers’ rights. However, working people still had a long way to go in gaining what most of us would consider fundamental rights – OHS, 8hr work-day, the Weekend, etc. Historian Joanna Dawson writes in an August 31, 2011 article in Canada’s History entitled “The First Labour Day”: “The workers still did not obtain their immediate goals of a shorter work week. In fact, many still lost their job. They did, however, discover how to regain the power they lost in the industrialized economy. Their strike proved that workers could gain the attention of their employers, the public, and most importantly, their political leaders, if they worked together. The “Nine-Hour Movement,” as it became known, spread to other Canadian cities and a shorter work week became the primary demand of union workers in the years following the Toronto strike.”

The 1872 workers’ parade in Toronto was a catalyst for similar parades in different cities across Canada that championed the rights and issues of workers. Unions marched in those parades identified by their colourful banners. By the time that 1894 rolled around, the Canadian government got the message that such official acknowledgement was needed and passed legislation on July 23, 1894 that made Labour Day a national holiday in September. According to the Elections Canada website, even the expansion of the right to vote to include non-property owning men (1897), and then women (1916), was a result of direct activism and work of the Canadian Trade Unions.

From the right to vote, to the recently expanded Canada Pensions Plan Act improvements, Canadian trade unions have made Canada better for everyone. Let us then mark the 150 year anniversary by showing gratitude for all we have achieved, on every side of the political divide, and regardless of what we do, and committing ourselves to an even better next 150 years for Canada, and for the world.

(Portions of Article were taken directly from: Canadian Labour Congress Website and from the Toronto Public Library Blog post titled “Remembering the First Labour Day in Toronto: September 3: Snapshots in History” by John P.)