Institute of Commonwealth Studies

The 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.