Canada: Trades Union Materials
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- Creator
- Institute of Commonwealth Studies
TitleCanada: Trades Union Materials
Reference codeTU.CN
Date1957-
Scope and ContentLeaflets, letters, newsletters, journals, posters and pamphlets at federal and state level issued by the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Confederation of Canadian Unions, and the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec, and the Ontario Federation of Labour.
NotesThe 1950s and 1960s saw an expansion in union power and membership as the high demand for labour in a growing economy strengthened its representatives' bargaining power. At the same time the merger of the Canadian Congress of Labour and the Trades and Labor Congress, which formed the Canadian Labor Congress, both allowed labour to present a more united front and facilitated the setting up in 1961 of the New Democratic Party, a political party intended at least in part to represent union interests. Yet by the 1970s and 1980s the movement found itself on the back foot, as the Trudeau wage controls and later demands for a more flexible workforce and the loss of manufacturing jobs contributed to the erosion of hard-won rights. The materials here, mainly from union confederations, deal with their internal and external responses to the changing conditions described above.
Conditions governing accessAccess to this collection is unrestricted for the purpose of private study and personal research within the supervised environment of the library.
Extent4 boxes
System of ArrangementAlphabetically by union, and then in rough chronological order.
Finding aidsItem-level descriptions are available on the library catalogue: http://catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/search~S17/
Related files
See also Canada: Pressure Groups Material (PG.CN) and Canada: Political Party Material (PP.CN), as well as Political Party, Trades Unions and Pressure Group Materials for other Commonwealth countries and material in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies library's main classified sequence.
Level of descriptionfonds