Article Review – 1919: A Canadian Labour Revolt

Gregory S. Kealey, a well-respected labour professor and researcher, wrote an article entitled,
1919: A Canadian Labour Revolt, which appeared in the publication, Labour/le Travail in 1984.
The article examines industrial relations as well as the continuing struggle for the shift of power
from the employers to the workers in the pre-war and post-war period. Kealey focuses
specifically on the year 1919 since the year saw an unprecedented number of strikes and
workdays lost as a result of worker demonstrations (Kealey 16). He asserts that the years 1912
and 1913 were the preludes to the push for a reconstitution of the working class that was to come
in the years 1917 to 1920, with 1919 being the culmination of that struggle. The year marked the
peak of a period of the greatest unrest in the history of industrial relations in Canada.
Kealey’s article recounts the travails in the labor relations at the time. Worker grievances were
the same as they had been for a decade. They were agitating their rights in the face of
unemployment, low wages, high prices for essential commodities, long hours, unsafe and
unsanitary working conditions, abysmal housing, employer blacklists, the super-exploitation of
women workers, the non-recognition of unions, and the refusal of collective bargaining (Kealey
11). However, the most persistent complaint was the lack of access to the goods they produced.
In the words of one such worker, machinist E.J Thompson, “We are the producers and we are not
getting what we produce” (Kealey 12). While worker grievances were the same, Kealey is quick

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to point out that workers were considerably more vocal and well-informed about their rights.
Contrasting the names of the Industrial Relations Commission and its predecessor the Royal
Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital, the author notes that it denotes a change in
attitude by the bourgeois and the state to worker rights (Kealey 13).
From the evidence presented at the Industrial Relations Commission, it becomes apparent that
the workers were interested in getting ownership of the factories at which they worked (Kealey
13). In their view, this was the only way through which differences in the classes could be
addressed, and meaningful change achieved. Kealey also points to the national appeal of the
worker’s movement. By presenting provincial figures for the strikes, he makes note of the
continuity of the struggle throughout the country (Kealey 17). Moreover, he makes it clear that
while machinists were the principal persons who gave evidence at the commission proceedings,
they were by no means the only workers involved in the push. The geographic and industrial
range seen in the strikes are to him a clear indication that while the strikes were mostly regional,
worker sentiment was the same throughout the country.
The strikes in 1919 had three waves. The first was local and contested the standard range of
issues that concerned every worker. The second spate of strikes was in support of the local
strikes and was based mainly in Winnipeg, Amherst, and Toronto. Of these, the most well-
known was the Winnipeg strike. The third wave was a series of sympathy strikes that served to
support the Winnipeg general strike or protest its repression (Kealey 21). Kealey also points to
the reasons for the failure of the strike. In his view, the defection of the AFL, the TLC, and much
of the international union leadership had left the labour movement fragmented (MacDowell,
Sefton and Radforth 86). Therefore, efforts by the remaining workers proved to be ineffective
and unsuccessful.

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Works Cited

Kealey, Gregory S. “1919: The Canadian Labour Revolt.” Labour/Le Travail (Kealey1984): 11-
44.
MacDowell, Laurel Sefton, and Ian Walter Radforth. Canadian Working-Class History: Selected
Readings. Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2006.