Making Reform Happen: The Passage of Canada's Collective-Bargaining Policy, 1943-1944

Patrick Conroy, the secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL) from 1941 to 1951, was not someone who gave up easily. As a friend observed, the Scottish-born coal miner was a committed trade unionist whose "moral certitude was admirable and . . . one of his great strengths." ¹ In late 1942, however, Conroy seemed ready to call it quits on the CCL's campaign to win a national collective-bargaining policy in Canada. Since its inception in September 1940, the Congress, which represented most of the industrial unions in the country, had pushed hard for a comprehensive labor policy like the National Labor Relations or Wagner Act in the United States, which protected and advanced the rights of workers. But the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mackenzie King repeatedly refused to move beyond a turn-of-the-century conciliatory framework that emphasized moral suasion and compromise. In late 1942, when a regional organizer asked Conroy whether a collective-bargaining policy appeared likely in the future, the CCL leader replied: "We do not feel it worthwhile to raise people's hopes when the record of the federal government is as it has been." ²

Yet, just over a year later, in February 1944, the King cabinet passed Order-in-Council PC 1003 or the Wartime Labour Relations Regulations. For the first time in Canadian history, a federal law compelled employers to recognize and bargain with the representatives of their employees' choosing. It also established the administrative machinery to determine bargaining units and issue certification orders. Unlike the Wagner Act, PC 1003 did not overtly promote the rights of workers. Building on the legacy of earlier legislation, it imposed rigid strike restrictions and outlawed unfair labor practices for both employers and unions. Indeed, Canadian policymakers insisted that PC 1003 favored neither labor nor business but the public interest. By curbing the arbitrary powers of management, however, PC 1003 did make it easier for workers to win union recognition and secure contracts. Between March 1944 and July 1946, new labor relations boards granted 76 percent of the certification applications submitted and the failure rate for contract negotiations was a low 3.5 percent. Not surprisingly, with the Order covering all war production or most industries in the country, there was also a 15 percent jump in total union membership. ³ Although only a temporary wartime measure, which eventually expired in 1948, PC 1003 marked the beginning of a new era in Canadian industrial relations. As one newspaper reported: "Canadian labor has stepped out of its short pants for good." ⁴

What explains the King Cabinet's change of course? In contrast to the plethora of studies on the passage of the Wagner Act, there are few comprehensive, not to mention published, investigations of PC 1003. ⁵ Although Canadian political historians have expanded their definition of politics to include nontraditional sources of power, they have yet to focus their attention on the making of labor policy. Moreover, despite the growing awareness in social history that examinations of the modern state can reveal a great deal about the activities of ordinary people, most labor historians in Canada still prefer to study the more immediate experiences of working-class culture and shop-floor protest. Their work, while valuable and necessary, usually fails to consider the broader political world of workers and their unions. But the paucity of research has not prevented (indeed, it has probably contributed to) the hardening of a consensus on PC 1003's origins. Aware that labor disputes and left-wing politics proliferated during the wartime period, most scholars agree with older studies of the compulsory collective-bargaining policy that the King cabinet bowed to mounting social pressures. As a 1977 booklet published by the Canadian Historical Association describes it: "Labour was enraged at its treatment at the hands of the King administration and its business allies. Militance and violence...