Unions were the first means of defence developed by the working class in its struggle against capitalist exploitation. They were the result of concerted efforts by workers to organize and fight collectively for better working conditions, wage increases and a shorter working day.
The establishment and organization of unions is no gift from the capitalist class, but the result of the workers’ struggles against their exploiters.
Lenin, one of the founders of scientific socialism, held that the creation of unions “was a tremendous step forward for the working class in the early days of capitalist development, inasmuch as they marked a transition from the workers’ disunity and helplessness to the rudiments of class organisation.”
A glance at the miserable life imposed by capitalists on the unorganized workers in the early 1800s and the struggle to set up the first unions best illustrates this “tremendous step forward.” It also shows how the first unions developed in open conflict with capitalist legality.
This formative period in the history of unions contains many valuable lessons for us today.
Capitalism developed in Canada in the last part of the 18th century, with the establishment by the nascent Canadian capitalist class of foundries, print shops and newspapers, shipyards and other industries.
Working conditions were intolerable before unions were organized. The working day in factories had no limit other than the physical exhaustion of the workers, and would often exceed 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Children under the age of 12 were frequently employed in the mines and textile mills. Deprived of any education, they did the same job as adults, but for barely one-half or one-quarter of the pay. Women fared no better, overworked and underpaid in the sweatshops of the time.
There were no fixed weekly salaries; employers could pay workers when they pleased and cut wages whenever they wanted to. The capitalists imposed fines on the workers, sometimes taking away the whole of their salary. Foremen could beat up the workers who had no recourse against such mistreatment.
For many years workers fought back in an unorganized way.
Some attacked and destroyed the machines, holding them, and not their capitalist owners, responsible for their misery. Others ran away from their jobs and sought better conditions elsewhere, only to find the same, if not a worse situation with another employer.
Some even went on strike, but in the absence of unions to unite them and organize their efforts, they did not win their demands.
This was the first workers’ resistance to capitalist exploitation, but division within the ranks of the workers prevented any real victories. It was only after many such actions proved futile that workers began to organize collectively.
It was in 1827 that the first union was founded in Canada, by the typographical workers of Quebec City. During the next two decades, other unions were established by construction workers, tailors, shoemakers and ship builders. By the 1860s, the first railway brotherhoods had been formed.
With the development of unions, the working class in Canada took a major step forward. The isolated conflicts between individual workers and capitalists now took on the character of collisions between two classes. Now, not only were the capitalists organized with their industrial associations and the governments at their service, but the workers also had their own collective organizations – the trade unions.
All during the first period of the history of unions in Canada, from 1827 to 1872, unions were illegal. They were banned under the criminal code because they dared demand higher wages and a reduction in the work day. Since this cut into the capitalists’ profits and management rights, these latter were quick to pressure the governments of the time to prohibit the unions.
As early as 1816, before any recorded unions existed at all, the Nova Scotia legislature, basing itself on British jurisprudence, had already passed such a law!
Nevertheless, the unions developed and struggled against the employers. Strikes broke out and many were successful. The working day was reduced through such actions to 10 hours, and by the 1870s, the fight was on for the 9-hour day.
This campaign, which was crucial to the development of unions, reached its peak with the strike of the Toronto Globe typographical workers in 1872. Their fight for the 9-hour day was supported by the Toronto Trades Assembly, and when 24 workers were arrested for illegal union activity, a demonstration of more then 2000 workers was held.
The 9-hour-day movement led to the removal of the most odious anti-union legislation and a major victory for the workers’ demands. It was the beginning of the unified struggle of the workers and their independent political action.
Thus, the establishment of unions, a major step forward in uniting workers into a class, was the result of struggle against the capitalists, particularly political action against their state and its reactionary laws.
The need to link up local unions was keenly felt by the militant workers. After all, the capitalists were represented on the municipal, provincial and national levels through the governments they controlled.
The workers needed regional union organizations to wage united struggles, develop labour solidarity, and present a common front in political struggles against the government.
The establishment of city-wide and national union centres occurred during the 1870s and 1880s. This came about under the influence of the 9-hour-day movement, the beginning of Canadian workers’ awakening as a class.
Trades and Labour Councils were formed in Toronto, Montreal and other industrial centres. In 1883, the Trades and Labour Congress was founded, predecessor of the present-day Canadian Labour Congress (CLC).
The first political action of these new centres were demands for legislative reforms – such as the legalization of picketing during strikes. But as the union movement matured, its most advanced spokesmen began to denounce capitalism and support socialism as the fundamental solution to labours’ woes.
The Ontario Workman, which was supported by the labour movement in that province in the 1870s, quoted from the works of Karl Marx to denounce the barbarism and atrocities of capitalist exploitation. In the 1890s, newspapers of the Trades and Labour Councils of Winnipeg, Manitoba; Toronto and London, Ontario were all in favour of socialism.
Revolutionary political education and socialist thought have been part and parcel of the union movement from the beginning. It was through such education and political struggle that the unions developed.
But the development of unions did not occur without opposition from within the unions themselves. The main obstacle was leaders who accepted the capitalist system and tried only to get a “bigger piece of the pie” for themselves and a very small minority of privileged workers. These reformist leaders diverted trade unions from the path of determined struggle against capitalism.
Already by 1919, pro-capitalist elements of the trade union leadership were sufficiently strong to sabotage the historic Winnipeg General Strike. They opposed it because it had developed into a class-wide political action against the capitalists.
The same union misleaders were influenced by the backward conception of unions advocated by Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labour. He considered that unions were to be reserved for the “cream of the crop” of workers, the most highly skilled and best paid, to the exclusion of the unskilled.
As a result, the leaders of the international unions at the turn of the century refused to organize the mass production industries such as steel, auto, meat packing and many others, even though they employed the majority of workers.
These union bureaucrats were not interested in the development of the union movement, but preferred to sit back and reap some of the profits of the capitalist system for themselves. The capitalists were more than happy to pay them off for valuable services rendered in weakening the unions and sabotaging labour struggles.
Throughout the history of the union movement, the collaborators have been doing their dirty work. But they have not gone unopposed. Militant and revolutionary workers have fought them. This is still a key struggle today for the development of the union movement.