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Canadian Labor in the Continental Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Robert W. Cox  and
Stuart M. Jamieson
Robert W. Cox
Affiliation:
Professor in the Department of Political Science and the School of International Affairs at Columbia University
Stuart M. Jamieson
Affiliation:
Professor of economics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
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Extract

The concept of a transnational system applies well to a study of labor in North America. For one thing, the chief characteristics of the labor market and of the institutions, procedures, and practices of labor relations are broadly similar in Canada and the United States as compared with other parts of the world. Although such similarities are not alone sufficient to suggest a system, there is also a persistent structure of relationships and interactions in labor matters extending across the boundary between the two countries. American investment in Canada and the so-called international unions are at the heart of this structure of relationships. Other segments of labor, whether organized in trade unions or unorganized, are connected with the heart of this transnational system through the continental flow of economic transactions.

Type
Part III. Issue Areas
Information
International Organization , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1974 , pp. 803 - 826
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1974

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References

1 Ross, Arthur M. and Hartman, Paul T., Changing Patterns of Industrial Conflict (New York: Wiley, 1960), p.5,Google Scholar considered that the industrial relations of the two countries constitute a single system.

2 International unions (a concept peculiar to the North American continent) are trade unions with branches in both Canada and the United States. The membership and chief executives of these unions are overwhelmingly American, and their headquarters are entirely in the United States. Most are affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Well over half of all union locals and almost two-thirds of all union members in Canada belong to international organizations.

3 Recent attempts to apply incomes policies represent a departure from this practice in the direction of tripartism. Unions in both countries continue to be suspicious of incomes policies.

4 Logan, Harold A., Ware, Norman P., and Innis, Harold A., Labour in Canadian-American Relations (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1937).Google Scholar

5 Reactions against this dependency have occurred amongst workers, as in other population groups, through efforts to organize purely Canadian labor movements and numerous breakaways of Canadian local or regional branches demanding greater autonomy or independence from their American parent bodies. Both phenomena have been confined for the most part to particular regions or provinces, most notably Quebec and the west, especially British Columbia.

6 There is a considerable literature on foreign investment in Canada referred to in other articles in this volume. On labor, see especially Crispo, John, International Unionism—A Study in Canadian-American Relations (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1967);Google Scholar and Logan, Ware, and Innis, Labour in Canadian-American Relations.

7 Among applications of the model to economics, see Perroux, Francois, “Esquisse d'une théorie de l'économie dominante,” Economie appliquée, no. 1 (jan-mars 1948);Google ScholarMyrdal, Gunnar, Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions (New York: Harper and Row, 1957);Google ScholarEmmanuel, Arghiri, Unequal Exchange, A Study of the Imperialism of Trade (New York: Monthly Review, 1972;Google Scholar originally published in French, Paris: Maspero, 1969); Amin, Samir, L'accumulation â l'échelle mondiale (Paris: Ifan-Anthropos, 1970).Google Scholar As regards Canada, see Watkins, Melville H., “A Staple Theory of Economic Growth,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 29 (May 1963): 144–58;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Levitt, Kari, Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1970).Google Scholar Broader applications of the center-periphery approach to political and cultural linkages include Galtung, Johan, “A Structural Theory of Imperialism,” Journal of Peace Research 8, no.2 (1971);CrossRefGoogle ScholarCardoso, F.H. and Faletto, Enzo, Dependencia y desarollo en America Latina (Mexico: Siglo veintiuno, 1969).Google Scholar Of special interest in connection with our study, since it deals with dependency relationships in the trade union field, is Harrod, Jeffrey, Trade Union Foreign Policy: The Case of British and American Unions in Jamaica (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 See Doeringer, Peter B. and Piore, Michael J., Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Health, 1971);Google Scholar and Doeringer, Peter B., “Low Pay, Labor Market Dualism, and Industrial Relations Systems,” Discussion Paper No. 271 of the Harvard Institute of Economic Research, 1973.Google Scholar (Mimeographed.)

9 See Cox, Robert W., Harrod, Jeffrey, et al., Future Industrial Relations: An Interim Report (Geneva: International Institute for Labour Studies, 1972).Google Scholar The concepts used in this report which is global in its scope were applied in more detail to North America by Mark Thompson in a publication by the Institute in the same series.

10 The remaining 9 percent are self-employed workers. Some, like consultants and professionals, exist in dependent relationship with the big organizations of the primary labor market. Others, such as small shopkeepers and small farmers, work in conditions more analogous to those of the secondary labor market.

These estimates, derived from the application of the classification by modes to available labor force and other relevant data, express the aggregates for North America. The proportions do not differ markedly between Canada and the United States, except that the tripartite mode is more important in Canada (6.2 percent compared with 2.9 percent in the US), the bipartite mode correspondingly less (reflecting a tradition of greater government involvement in industrial disputes), and the enterprise labor market is also larger (40 percent in Canada compared with 36.6 percent in the US).

11 While the steel industry is largely Canadian owned and controlled, a large if not a major part of its output is sold directly to American-owned or controlled firms in Canada.

12 The proportions for the 1972 federal election were as follows: union workers—Liberal, 34 percent; Conservative, 29 percent; NDP, 29 percent; and nonunion workers—Liberal, 44 percent; Conservative, 32 percent; NDP, 17 percent. The concept workers here excludes professional and white-collar workers. The source is figures released by the Gallup Poll of Canada in its survey of 20–21 October 1972 and reproduced in Warnock, John W., “A Socialist Alternative for Canada,” Saskatchewan Waffle Movement, Regina, Saskatchewan, June 1973, p.20.Google Scholar (Pamphlet.)

13 John Crispo, International Unionism, p. 67.

14 Ibid., p. 224.

15 Canada, Prime Minister's Task Force on Labour Relations, Report on “Canadian Industrial Relations,” 1968; Canada, Standing Committee on Defence and External Affairs Respecting Canada-U.S. Relations, Eleventh Annual Report, 1970, pp. 33, 104–33, 107, 116, reproduced, in part, in “American-based Unions—the Wahn Report,” in Rotstein, Abraham and Lax, Gary, Independence—the Canadian Challenge (Toronto: Committee for an Independent Canada, 1972), pp. 40–48.Google Scholar

16 The only legislation that may be viewed as indicative to any degree is the Corporations and Labour Unions Returns Act (CALURA) which the Canadian Parliament passed in 1962. It requires foreign-based corporations and trade unions operating in Canada to furnish fairly detailed reports accounting for major receipts and expenditures in this country. The annual reports of CALURA disclosed for the first time a fact thatcritics of international unions had been alleging for many years and that their supporters had denied, namely, that these organizations in the aggregate have been receiving each year millions of dollars more in revenue from dues and other sources from their branches in Canada than they have expended in Canada. Donald McDonald, president of the CLC, and numerous Canadian representatives of international unions have repeatedly criticized CALURA reports on the ground that they do not give a full picture. See, for example, a Canadian press report in the Sun (Vancouver), 24 April 1973.

17 See Report of Industrial Inquiry Commission on the Disruption of Shipping on the Great Lakes, vol. 1: Report (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1963).

18 This and the following case are described more fully in Jamieson, Stuart M., Times of Trouble: Labour Unrest and Industrial Conflict in Canada 1900–66, Task Force on Labour Relations, Study No. 22 (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1968).Google Scholar

19 See Jamieson, Times of Trouble; Report of Industrial Inquiry Commission; and Eaton, William J., “The Battle of the Great Lakes,” The Reporter (New York), 21 November 1963, pp. 38–40.Google Scholar The limitations of US government willingness to oppose American trade union interests in this case, and to support the Canadian position, were shown by the sequel. Banks was indicted in Canadian courts for various criminal offenses, and then let out on $25,000 bail while awaiting trial. He jumped bail and fled to the United States, where he was later discovered by a Toronto newspaper reporter to be residing on a yacht, owned by the International Longshoremen's Association, that was anchored in New York harbor. The US Department of State refused the Canadian government's request for extradition of Banks.

20 Canadian press report in Sun (Vancouver), 6 March 1973.

21 In English, the Confederation of National Trade Unions. The radical evolution in the CSN parallels what occurred in the Christian wing of the labor movement in France, where the Confédération Francais Démocratique du Travail (CFDT) emerged as a militant organization without religious affiliation pursuing goals of participative socialism. The CFDT and the CSN are both members of the World Labor Confederation, the transformed Christian international trade union organization. Marcel Pépin, president of the CSN, is now president of the WLC. Donald McDonald, president of the CLC, is at the same time president of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.

22 Le Devoir (Montreal), 7 December 1973.

23 Francoeur, Gilles, “Une victoire de la base sur lesyndicalisme d'affaire?,” Le Devoir (Montreal), 18 January 1974.Google Scholar

24 Le Devoir (Montreal), 3 December 1973.