We always like to look for a Canadian angle to events, including national holidays. Who knew – well, probably lots of people, that Labour Day may very well have had its beginnings in troubled times in Toronto and Ottawa.
The Toronto Trades Assembly, one of the first labour bodies in Canada, organized a ‘workingman’s demonstration’ on April 15, 1872, to support leaders of the Toronto Typographical Union who were in jail. Their crime? Demanding a nine-hour work day.
And, keep in mind, it was still an actual crime to be a member of a union in Canada.
That same year, on Sept. 3, seven ‘unions’ in Ottawa organized a huge parade. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald – astutely realizing that he needed the support of labour – responded by promising to repeal the laws that decreed trade unions were criminal conspiracies in restraint of trade. Later that year, he did.
We don’t have huge Labour Day parades today as in the past (the 1894 Labour Day parade in Winnipeg was two miles long).
The battles for vacations, overtime and safety standards on job sites were won a long time ago – or were they?
The average non-union worker often forgoes vacation time off because he or she wants to impress the boss. Staying late at the office or being available on one’s cellphone 24/7 is standard working conditions for many people. And despite health and safety standards on the books, employers still try and get by with fast-track inadequate training for new employees and young employees. We still see tragic deaths and injuries on worksites that are simply avoidable.
And some new immigrant workers and young workers are working under conditions that shouldn’t exist today. A lawsuit is now proceeding to the courts after a man in a chicken processing plant died after working in unbearable heat for more than 12 hours at a time for days at a stretch. He felt he had no choice but to endure those conditions and was just trying to keep his family fed and sheltered.
This in 2015.
So before we pat ourselves on the back for how far we’ve come since 1872, it might be wise to remember that while many of us enjoy what union members walked the picket lines for and lost their jobs for – including this long weekend – there are still lots of workers who are struggling just to make a living and a life for their families.
The union mantra, “What we want for ourselves, we want for all” is no less relevant today than it was in 1872. The only difference is that today too many of us have got what we wanted for ourselves and prefer to look the other way when other workers are struggling.
