Trades and Labor Congress of Canada

Principles

The TLC developed a ‘Platform of Principles’ comprising 16 points. Added to its first adopted policies were:

• free compulsory education,
• an eight-hour work day and a six-day work week,
• government inspection of industry,
• minimum living wage,
• public ownership of railways, telegraphs, waterworks, lighting,
• abolition of the Senate,
• use of union label,
• abolition of property qualifications to vote,
• arbitration,
• proportional representation and the use of referendums.

In 1913 the vote for women was added as a 17th principle.

1900–1929

By 1900 the TLC had become the country's first truly national body. As the Knights of Labor declined in number unions representing skilled trades workers came to dominate the TLC. By the 1890s Samuel Gompers in the U.S. was planning an international federation of labour, starting with the expansion of AFL affiliates in Canada, especially Ontario. He helped the Trades and Labour Congress with money and organizers, and by 1902. At the 1902 TLC conference in Berlin (Kitchener), Ontario, under the influence of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and its unions in Canada, the Knights along with the purely Canadian unions were banned from membership. The AFL came to dominate the Canadian union movement, although there were also radical unions in British Columbia and Catholic ones in Quebec.^[4]

Under President James Watters (1911–18), the TLC was initially opposed to the First World War but reversed its position as their members rushed to the patriotic call of the federal government and the British Empire.

While long-lived, the TLC underwent a number of splits and challenges as the labour movement developed. In the twentieth century the TLC faced rivals on the left in the form of syndicalist or socialist movements such as the Industrial Workers of the World and the One Big Union. In failing to respond to the demands of the mostly western workers who wanted more radical actions in the years following World War I, the TLC lost their confidence. They broke away from their AFL/TLC unions and formed the One Big Union following the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919.

1930–1956

The leadership of Canadian labour was challenged at the start of the Great Depression with the establishment of the Workers' Unity League (1929–1936). In 1935 unions that wanted to organize unskilled workers in the new mass industries of automobile, steel and rubber broke with the AFL and formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The latter's strategy of industrial unionism was a direct challenge to the TLC (and AFL's) craft unionism.

Interest in the CIO was sparked in Canada when in 1937 more than 4,000 workers at General Motors in Oshawa joined the United Automobile Workers, a CIO union, and fought a strike for union recognition. In 1939, CIO supporters were expelled from the TLC and joined with the national All-Canadian Congress of Labour to form the rival Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL) in 1940. The TLC continued to be the voice of skilled trades workers in the country.

Just as the Cold War and the rise of anti-Communism led to the purge of leftists from the union CIO in the United States and the creation of the AFL–CIO in 1955, the same phenomenon in Canada led to the merger of the TLC and the CCL in 1956 to create the modern Canadian Labour Congress.

Presidents

1886: Charles March

1888: John T. Carey

1890: Urbain Lafontaine

1892:

1896: David Carey

1898: Ralph Smith

1902: John A. Flett

1904: Alphonse Verville

1909: William Glockling

1911: James C. Watters

1918: Tom Moore

1935: Paddy Draper

1938: Tom Moore

1943: Percy Bengough

1954: Claude Jodoin^[5]

Secretary-Treasurers

1886: David Hastings

1888: George W. Dower

1900: Paddy Draper

1935: Robert J. Tallon

1940: Arthur D'Aoust

1943: Pat Sullivan

1947: John W. Buckley

1949: Gordon G. Cushing