PROVINCIAL SOLIDARITIES

Working Canadians: Books from the CCLH

Series editors: Alvin Finkel and Greg Kealey

The Canadian Committee on Labour History is Canada’s organization of historians and other scholars interested in the study of the lives and struggles of working people throughout Canada’s past. Since 1976, the CCLH has published Labour / Le Travail, Canada’s pre-eminent scholarly journal of labour studies. It also publishes books, now in conjunction with AU Press, that focus on the history of Canada’s working people and their organizations. The emphasis in this series is on materials that are accessible to labour audiences as well as university audiences rather than simply on scholarly studies in the labour area. This includes documentary collections, oral histories, autobiographies, biographies, and provincial and local labour movement histories with a popular bent.

SERIES TITLES

Champagne and Meatballs: Adventures of a Canadian Communist

Bert Whyte, edited and with an introduction by Larry Hannant

Working People in Alberta: A History

Alvin Finkel, with contributions by Jason Foster, Winston Gereluk, Jennifer Kelly and Dan Cui, James Muir, Joan Schiebelbein, Jim Selby, and Eric Strikwerda

Union Power: Solidarity and Struggle in Niagara

Carmela Patrias and Larry Savage

The Wages of Relief: Cities and the Unemployed in Prairie Canada, 1929–39

Eric Strikwerda

Provincial Solidarities: A History of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour / Solidarités provinciales: Histoire de la Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Nouveau-Brunswick

David Frank

PROVINCIAL SOLIDARITIES

A History of the
New Brunswick Federation of Labour

DAVID FRANK

Copyright © 2013 David Frank

Published by AU Press, Athabasca University
1200, 10011 – 109 Street, Edmonton, AB T5J 3S8
ISBN 978-1-927356-23-4 (print) 978-1-927356-24-1 (PDF) 978-1-927356-25-8 (epub)
A volume in Working Canadians: Books from the CCLH
ISSN 1925-1831 (print) 1925-184X (digital)

Cover and interior design by Natalie Olsen, Kisscut Design.
Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis Book Printers.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Frank, David
Provincial solidarities : a history of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour / David Frank.

(Working Canadians, ISSN 1925-1831 ; 5)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued also in electronic formats.
Co-published by: Canadian Committee on Labour History.
ISBN 978-1-927356-23-4
1. New Brunswick Federation of Labour — History. 2. Labor unions — New Brunswick — History. 3. Labor movement — New Brunswick — History. I. Canadian Committee on Labour History II. Title. III. Series: Working Canadians (Edmonton, Alta.) ; 5

HD6529.N4F73 2013 331.88097151 C2012-905866-1

Publication of this book was supported by a Community-University Research Alliance grant provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.

Assistance provided by the Government of Alberta, Alberta Multimedia Development Fund.

Please contact AU Press, Athabasca University at aupress@athabascau.ca for permissions and copyright information.

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many individuals and institutions helped in the preparation of this book, which has been one of the major undertakings of the Labour History in New Brunswick Project, a Community-University Research Alliance supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The council’s generous support made it possible to undertake several initiatives in the field, including this book. For a project functioning in both official languages of the province and based on collaboration between researchers at the two provincial universities, the Université de Moncton and the University of New Brunswick provided essential support. Members of the project team have made their own research contributions in the field and have also assisted in the preparation of this book. At the University of New Brunswick, Linda Kealey, Greg Kealey, and Bill Parenteau were always ready to provide advice and assistance. Nelson Ouellet developed the project website (http://www.lhtnb.ca) and coordinated work in Moncton, with the assistance of Denise Paquette. At the Université de Moncton in Edmundston, Nicole Lang was a model of efficiency and cooperation at all times; in the production of this book, she provided expert editorial help in working with our excellent translator, Réjean Ouellette. Throughout the life of the project, our Fredericton project officer, Carol Ferguson, was indispensable in coordinating the work of the research team and our institutional partners. Student assistants participated in several phases of the work on this book, including the archival research and oral history. At the University of New Brunswick they included Christo Aivalis, Matt Baglole, Jazmine Belyea, Dana Brown, Kim Dunphy, Kelly Flinn, Steven Hansen, Courtney MacIsaac, Patrick Marsh, Mark McLaughlin, Don Nerbas, Lisa Pasolli, Amy Wallace, Leta Waugh, and Michael Wilcox; at the Université de Moncton they included Zoé Lessard-Couturier, Valerie McLaughlin, and Philippe Volpé. The responsibility for insisting that I undertake work in New Brunswick labour history belongs to Raymond Léger, who was already making notable contributions to the field as a researcher, educator, and activist long before this project was initiated; he has been a source of encouragement and advice for many years. Jean-Claude Basque, Education Representative for the Canadian Labour Congress in Moncton, was also an early advocate for this project. I am very grateful to George Vair, a former president of the Saint John and District Labour Council and a pioneer in Saint John labour history, who has always been ready to provide practical assistance. In the preparation of this book, the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, under the direction of Marion Beyea, made a home for the records of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour as well as for the oral history and administrative files produced by the project. When the idea of this history was discussed in the 1990s, Federation president Tim McCarthy provided support and encouragement, as did members of the Federation’s Education Committee. The late Blair Doucet, president of the Federation of Labour at the time the project was organized, understood the importance of sharing labour’s story with union members and the wider public. His successor, Michel Boudreau, has continued to provide cooperation and assistance. In the final stages of editorial work, the Busteed Fund at the University of New Brunswick assisted in securing illustrations. I am grateful to Athabasca University Press for undertaking to publish this book, in both English and French editions; a special thank-you is extended to Pamela MacFarland Holway, for supervising the editorial process, and to Natalie Olsen, for the handsome design.

PROVINCIAL SOLIDARITIES

THE BELL In 1929, delegates to the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada meetings in Saint John were reminded that labour had deep roots in New Brunswick history. In 1849, the Saint John longshoremen, organized as the Labourers’ Benevolent Association, petitioned the city to place a bell on the waterfront to enforce the ten-hour day. Eighty years later it was celebrated as “the bell which had first rung out the message of hope for the workers and marked the beginning of the struggle for the shorter work day.” Source: Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia.

INTRODUCTION

“Makers of History”

When you enter the crowded conference room, your credentials are examined by one of the sentinels at the door. Are you a delegate? A guest? An observer? Everyone is here with a mandate, and the men and women in attendance are seated at tables according to the constituencies they represent. The walls are decorated with banners, and the tables are covered with reports and resolutions. At the front, the president is addressing the meeting, speaking in both English and French, and translations are flowing from a booth at the back of the hall. There are some comments and questions from the floor microphones, followed by a vote. Then everyone is standing, and they are singing. Not everybody knows the verses, but they do know the chorus of this anthem that is almost as old as their own organization: “Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong.” When the chanting and clapping are over and everyone is again seated, the agenda continues, and for the next several days the big hotel ballroom is transformed into a chamber of discussion for what is in effect a provincial parliament of labour.

The meetings of this assembly have been taking place for a full century now, a longer record of continuity than in almost any other province in Canada. The New Brunswick Federation of Labour is far from the largest provincial federation in Canada, but it is one of the oldest and has shown the power of persistence — what the poet Fred Cogswell has called the “stubborn strength”— that is one of the features of the provincial identity. The affiliated membership has never exceeded 50,000 people, and not all labour organizations have been participants, but in a relatively small province whose total population is little more than 750,000 people, the Federation of Labour has had a long and influential presence. These kinds of “union centrals,” as they are called in industrial relations terminology, are labour organizations that have no direct control over their affiliates and do not represent them in matters such as collective bargaining. Instead, they speak for the more general interests that union members have in common with one another, and their power depends on their ability to inspire solidarity around these causes. When we look back over the past century, the history of this organization is filled with examples of working people taking up their responsibilities as members of their unions and as citizens of the province. The mission of the Federation of Labour has been to assist the unions in raising the status and strengthening the rights of all workers in the province. In addition to the ambitions and achievements, there have been disappointments and divisions, but the long history of the Federation reminds us that the search for a greater measure of social justice is a significant theme in the history of the province.

In beginning the story of the Federation of Labour in 1913, we also need to remember that organized labour has deep roots in New Brunswick history. Social inequalities and the exploitation of labour are as old as the earliest staple trades in the region, but the emergence of trade unions as a form of resistance can be traced back to the early nineteenth century. Unions existed for about a century before the founding of the Federation of Labour. They were established in towns and cities by small local groups of workers and often called themselves “benevolent associations”; they demanded better wages, hours, and conditions for members and provided benefits for their families in cases of illness, injury, and death. Eugene Forsey has pointed out that before Confederation, New Brunswick was one of the birthplaces of the union movement in British North America, and he often singled out the example of the Saint John longshoremen, whose history began in the struggle for the ten-hour day in 1849, making them today one of the oldest continuously existing unions in Canada. Local unions such as these also went on to link up with regional, national, or international organizations in the same trade or industry, as the longshoremen did when they joined the International Longshoremen’s Association in 1911; this helped them to achieve higher standards and, when necessary, receive assistance and support from the larger bodies. In the case of the Canadian Brotherhood of Railroad Employees, the organization was founded at Moncton in 1908 as a regional body before going on to expand across the country and become one of the most important unions in twentieth-century Canada; by the time of their centennial year, they had joined the Canadian Auto Workers. This pattern of accelerating solidarities was also visible at the community level when workers from varied occupations organized themselves into local trades and labour councils. By the 1890s, such bodies were marching in large numbers in Labour Day parades in Saint John and Moncton and making their presence felt within the social and political life of the province’s two largest cities. These workers in turn took the lead in establishing the Federation of Labour. In short, the construction of a provincial “house of labour” in 1913 was not the beginning of labour history in New Brunswick but the latest stage in a longer history of solidarities among workers of the province.¹

A historical perspective also reminds us of the importance of all workers in building the provincial economy. “True history is the record of the workers,” wrote the carpenter, poet, and socialist agitator Wilfrid Gribble in “Makers of History,” around the time he took up residence in Saint John and the Federation of Labour was coming into existence:

True history is the record
Of the workers. It was they
Who wrote its page in every age,
They’re writing it today.²

New Brunswick workers laboured in the woods, on the rivers, in the fisheries, and on the farms; they prepared fish, potatoes, apples, and other foods for market; they toiled in sawmills, shipyards, and pulp and paper mills; they worked hard rock and coal mines; they manufactured boots and shoes, boilers and machines, textiles and clothing, windows and furniture; they opened roads and trails, raised towers, and built dams and bridges; they loaded deals of lumber and shipped freight and cargo; they operated trains, buses, trucks, and taxis; they sweated in laundries and restaurants, hotels, and kitchens; they ran stores, offices, and telephone exchanges; they cleaned floors, served meals, and guided visitors; they fought fires, generated power, delivered mail, and cleared snow; they cared for the young, educated the students, assisted the seniors, and protected our health.

The list is as endless as the occupations in the province, but when we read about labour history, we also need to think about the economic relationships that define the world of work. In the eighteenth century, Adam Smith originally defined the working class as “those who live by wages,” setting this category aside from the unpaid labour of slaves and servants and the apparent independence of many artisans and small producers. Over the next two centuries, however, paid employment became the most common way of making a living. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century and the waves of economic transformation that followed drew large numbers of people out of independent production and household economies and brought them into the labour market as earners of wages and salaries. As such, they became dependent on the decisions of employers who were not necessarily or even primarily committed to the welfare of the individual worker or the community. Workers who depended for their lving on daily or weekly wages had much less bargaining power than their employers in determining how to distribute the risks and rewards of economic life. In 1898, a New Brunswick professor of political economy and moral philosophy, John Davidson, made a notable observation about the contemporary Labour Question, as it was called in the late nineteenth century: “Labor, in spite of sentimental objections is undoubtedly a commodity which is bought and sold,” he reasoned. However, he went on to explain, this was not an ordinary economic proposition because labour was a unique commodity and market conditions could never be a sufficient guide to its value: “Labor differs from most, if not all, other commodities in retaining, even under modern industrial conditions, its subjective value to the seller. We cannot separate the labor and the laborer. It is labor that is bought and sold but, with the labor, goes the laborer. Therefore instead of a great simplification we have a great complication.”³

Every chapter in history has its own complications. To take one example, in the 1880s a famous investigation documented some of the worst effects of industrial capitalism in Canada. The Royal Commission on the Relations of Labor and Capital held hearings in the four original provinces of the Confederation, including New Brunswick, and their findings documented the conditions of the time. Among other things, the commissioners recommended the payment of wages regularly, and in cash; they also called for an end to fines and beatings, the prohibition of convict labour and child labour, the inspection of workplaces for safety and sanitation, the payment of compensation for workplace injuries, and more attention to literacy and training. They even recommended a statutory Labour Day holiday, the only one of their recommendations that was actually implemented by the federal government at the time, enacted by Parliament in 1894. It is also important to note their comments on the value of labour organizations. The commissioners concluded that the unions were a positive force that promoted social progress and encouraged self-respect and good citizenship among their members. Most of all, they explained, the unions were there to correct the unequal power of workers and their employers within the existing economic system: “Labour organizations are necessary in order to enable workingmen to deal on equal terms with their employers.”⁴

When the claim is made that the working class today has disappeared and has been replaced by a universal middle class, it is worth remembering that most citizens continue to earn their living in the form of paid employment and are thus associated with the classic definition of the working class. There are great differences in incomes and security and bargaining power among workers, but those who are organized in unions are best able to defend their interests. The improved conditions they achieve in wages, hours, benefits, pensions, and other forms of security are often described as “the union advantage.” While their critics argue that unions have created a “two-tier” economic system that favours some workers to the detriment of others, the unions argue that all workers should be entitled to higher standards and that unions generally succeed in “levelling-up” the prevailing conditions in society. Certainly, the ability to overcome differences and to share the influence of their power with other citizens is one of the attractive legacies of the union movement in New Brunswick. To take another historical example, the long campaign against child labour was led by an alliance of labour unions, social reformers, and early feminists. None of these groups was strong enough to achieve this reform alone, but their success came from working together. Despite objections that their demands would make too many New Brunswick businesses unprofitable, the provincial government in 1905 finally enacted a law to limit the employment of children less than fourteen years of age. This reform was soon followed by the school attendance laws, another advance in the social progress in the province.⁵

Although much has changed in the structure and influence of the labour movement over the years, the place of unions within society has stood the test of time. As students of the nineteenth-century Labour Question understood, by strengthening the bargaining position of workers within society, the unions were taking on an ambition to achieve a more balanced, even a more just, distribution of the wealth produced in the economy by directing a larger share of it to the working class. Although union membership in Canada as a whole has rarely exceeded more than one-third of the work force — and the same is true in New Brunswick — the unions have helped to set standards that improve conditions and raise incomes for all workers. Through organizations such as the Federation of Labour, the unions have defended the rights of workers in their places of employment and have also helped to lead the struggle for a more equitable distribution of the “social wage” in the form of public services that benefit all citizens.

In the writing of Canadian labour history, provincial stories are generally overlooked, and there have been few general histories of provincial labour movements or federations.⁶ Nonetheless, labour history in Canada is very much a provincial experience, in part for the simple constitutional reason that most Canadian workers have lived and worked under labour and employment regimes enacted and administered by the provinces. As a result, the various local, occupational, national, and international affiliations of union members have been supplemented by bonds of solidarity based on the political and spatial realities of the provincial communities within Canada. From this perspective, the emergence of provincial federations of labour was an additional expression of emerging solidarities within the twentieth-century labour movement in Canada. When the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada in 1910 encouraged member unions to create provincial federations, British Columbia (in 1910) and Alberta (in 1912) were the first to do so, and New Brunswick was the only other province to join them prior to the First World War. Not all provinces are the same, however, and in the fractious labour climate of the times, British Columbia’s federation did not survive its first decade and was not reorganized until 1944. In working to achieve recognition as the provincial voice of labour, the New Brunswick Federation may well have benefited from a greater sense of provincial solidarity as well as the moderate goals of the founders.

It is also the case that the Federation has grown unevenly and has often fallen short of its goal of attracting the majority of unions and union members in the province. In part this has been due to its constitutional status as a subordinate body within the Trades and Labour Congress and later the Canadian Labour Congress, bodies that have discouraged or even precluded the affiliation of unions to which they objected. In the 1930s and 1940s, for instance, some rival unions, pursuing more nationalist and industrial forms of organization, even established a separate federation, known as the New Brunswick Council of Labour. The province’s workers have also been divided by the economic geography of New Brunswick — north against south, urban centres against rural regions, temporary workers against permanent employees. And the ideals of solidarity have been undermined by perceived hierarchies of status and stature based on differences of skill, language, ethnicity, and gender. Although the Federation elected an Acadian as president as early as 1919, fuller partnerships between French-speaking and English-speaking workers developed more slowly. There were similar challenges in the Federation’s ability to address the needs of women workers and of public employees, two major groups who entered the labour force in rapidly increasing numbers in the second half of the twentieth century. Moreover, in New Brunswick, as in other less powerful and less populous parts of Canada, the political economy of underdevelopment has cut deeply into the social, human, and environmental stability of the provincial economy. This has contributed to a constant concern about the ravaged resource base of the province, the unforgiving cycles of capitalist investment and disinvestment, the push and pull of labour markets from beyond the provincial borders, and the recurring fiscal crises of the provincial state. The unions on their own have not had the capacity to solve these questions, but the quest for social and economic democracy has nonetheless been a continual theme in the history of the Federation of Labour.

“Honour the Past. Build the Future.” Back in the hotel ballroom where the Federation of Labour is meeting, these are the announced watchwords for the convention. Looking around the tables, it is apparent that many delegates are wearing gold pins that celebrate the latest milestone in the Federation’s history. As the opening evening proceeds, there are tributes to veteran activists for their decades of work on behalf of the province’s workers, and two more names are added to the Federation’s Honour Roll. One speaker quotes the people’s historian Howard Zinn, saying that history can help us rediscover the times when working people have shown the ability to resist, to join together, to make a difference, and to win changes. Even if the history of work and workers is often overlooked in public discourse, the Federation has a long tradition of taking pride in the historical significance of their organization. It was there in the 1920s and 1930s when commemorative badges and souvenir booklets were being issued. It is there again today in resolutions calling for more attention to labour history within the union movement and within the schools.

We hear that message clearly when we listen to interviews that union members have recorded for the provincial archives. “The thing I find funny about labour is they don’t record their history,” says John Daly, who was a waterfront worker in Saint John for thirty-six years and held many local union offices. “They just take it for granted that this is the job they’re supposed to do.” Barb Fairley, who started at a shoe factory in Fredericton when she was a teenager and worked there for almost thirty years, including fifteen years as president of her local, says: “They teach History every day in school. I mean, why can’t they include some of the labour history of the province or even as a country?” Stella Cormier, who left school at thirteen and later worked in the fish plants, says that history can teach workers their rights: “Above all, it’s knowing your rights. You must know your rights. If you go to work and don’t know your rights, they can make you do anything they want.” Similarly, Béatrice Boudreau, who started work at the age of eighteen in an office in Moncton, putting in 54 hours a week for $20 in pay, reminds us that history is about change: “The most important thing to know is how things have improved, no doubt slowly but at certain times very suddenly. Sometimes it takes a shock. You have to understand the improvements that are due, almost entirely, to the union movement.” And Yvon Godin, a New Democratic Party MP for many years now, remembers how little he knew about unions when he went into the mines at nineteen years of age; he worries that young workers today know just as little about their history: “Look at where we are today, but how did we get here? It’s not their fault, but too often I see young people who come into the labour market and see all these things in place and think that all this is normal, that it was always there. They don’t know how it came to be.”⁷

This book cannot capture the full sweep of labour history in New Brunswick. There is much more to be done, and this book attempts to tell the history of only one working-class organization and its place in provincial history. Even then it is not a full chronicle but a narrative of the main stages in its development and of the events in provincial history that have been important to the Federation. There is attention to many episodes of workers in action in their own workplaces and communities, but there is also an inevitable focus on the life of the institution itself, including the tensions between leaders and members, and between moderates and militants. Social historians have studied many aspects of the working-class experience in Canada in recent years, and one of their findings has been that people experience their own history in ways that are shaped by the multiple rhythms of individual lives and social, cultural, and economic opportunity. As a result, there is never a single shared identity within the working-class population, however desirable that might seem to labour leaders. In showing us the daily lives of working-class families and their struggles for security and fulfillment, social historians have documented the complexities of household, workplace, and community and revealed the hidden sources of resilience and resistance that are often embedded in those sites of experience.⁸ At the same time, there is also much to be said for a critique articulated some years ago by Howard Kimeldorf in a debate on “Why we need a new old labor history.” The substance of that discussion was that the “new” labour history has not only deepened the portrayal of workers’ history but has also offered opportunities to strengthen explorations of classic questions, including issues of structure and mobilization, solidarities and exclusions, and representation and negotiation that determine the conditions of working-class effectiveness.⁹ As Geoff Eley and Keith Nield have noted more recently, labour organizations and other social movements have contributed enormously to public discourse and have interacted with the political system to shape public policy, understanding politics as “a space of possibility” conditioned as much by human activism as by the structural forces people encounter.¹⁰ Historical research and writing clearly have a part to play in this process. Readers may be reassured to know that this is not a book of social or historical theory, but these questions remain underlying concerns as we explore the history of a workers’ institution that is also part of a larger social movement.

This book had its origins in the requests of union organizations and activists for presentations, workshops, resources, and other assistance in introducing members to their own history. In 2004, the New Brunswick Federation of Labour, together with several other labour organizations and heritage institutions, agreed to participate in a Community-University Research Alliance organized by researchers from the two provincial universities, the Université de Moncton and the University of New Brunswick. This partnership between labour organizations and public institutions was successful in securing research funds from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a team project entitled “Re-Connecting with the History of Labour in New Brunswick: Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Issues.”¹¹ Several major tasks were undertaken in the years that followed, and one of these has been the preparation of this history. The Federation set an excellent example for unions in the province by depositing records at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, and the Federation and its affiliates have offered encouragement and cooperation in other ways as well, for which the research team and the author are very grateful. The book is, however, an independent work of academic research and public history that offers a sympathetic but not uncritical account of the Federation’s long history. Its purpose is to help establish a better understanding of the place of workers and their organizations in provincial society. In doing so, it also sheds light on the history of the province over the past century and the persistence of traditions of labour activism and social democracy that are too easily overlooked in New Brunswick history.¹²

LABOUR CENTRAL The first meetings of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour, in September 1913 and January 1914, took place at the old Oddfellows Hall in Saint John, at the corner of Union and Hazen Streets. Several local unions had their headquarters in this building, and the surrounding streets were used to marshal some of the early Labour Day parades. Source: New Brunswick Museum, X11314.

ONE

“An Accomplished Fact” 1913–1929

16 September 1913

They met at the old Oddfellows Hall on Union Street in Saint John on Tuesday, 16 September 1913. It was a small assembly, but the delegates represented a large constituency and an even larger body of expectations. They came from Sackville, Fredericton, Moncton, and Saint John, carrying credentials from local unions and labour councils, and from a range of occupations, including barbers, blacksmiths, bricklayers, carpenters, cigarmakers, electrical workers, iron moulders, longshoremen, painters, plumbers, printers, railway carmen, and stonecutters. There were, in all, only twenty delegates in attendance, all of them men and mainly from Saint John and Moncton, but the Eastern Labor News did not hesitate to describe the event as “a large and representative meeting.”¹

The day after that short meeting, local newspapers in Saint John underlined the significance of the event. “A movement of importance to the working men of the province was advanced a stage yesterday,” reported the Standard. “A Provincial Federation was formed and arrangements made for closer cooperation in promoting labor legislation and all matters in the interests of the working class.” The Daily Telegraph described the aims of the new organization in similar terms: “to bring all the unions of the different towns of the province into closer touch so that demands made by the new body may have greater weight than those of any separate existing organization.” Only a few items of business were transacted, but participants were pleased with the outcome. P. D. Ayer of the Moncton Trades and Labour Council, who presided at the event, predicted that, as more unions joined, “the federation will speedily become the legislative medium and the fighting machine for organized labor within the province.” And a correspondent in the Eastern Labor News observed with satisfaction that the New Brunswick Federation of Labour was now “an accomplished fact.”²

Plans for a federation of labour were underway at least as early as the spring of 1912, when the Saint John Trades and Labour Council invited their counterparts in Moncton to discuss the idea. In June that year, the veteran union leader J. J. Donovan, of the Saint John cigarmakers’ union, spoke at a meeting of the Moncton Trades and Labour Council. Donovan explained that the provincial government too easily turned a deaf ear to labour concerns from any one section of the province: “A Provincial Federation would accomplish the desired result and lead to united action by every union in New Brunswick which no government would care to ignore.” The proposal received ready endorsement, and on Labour Day that year delegates assembled at the Longshoremen’s Hall in Saint John, where they voted unanimously to form “an organization to be known as the New Brunswick Provincial Federation of Labour.” Also in attendance was Warren Franklin Hatheway, the Saint John reformer and former Member of the Legislative Assembly, whose efforts to advance the cause of labour had often been frustrated by the political leadership of the province. He congratulated the meeting and again underlined the logic of a federation: “A body representative of all the labor interests of the province would have a much greater influence than the individual union or the Trades and Labor Council of a particular section.” Provisional officers were elected, including Donovan as president, and it was agreed to meet as early as Thanksgiving Day or at another time “at the call of the executive.”³

Such a call was never issued, and over the course of the winter the movement for a federation came to a standstill. This did not sit well with two Saint John labour men, who used the pages of the Moncton-based Eastern Labor News to breathe new life into the idea. Longshoreman Fred Hyatt was an Old Country union man who had served in the British Army in India before immigrating to Canada. He was also a vocal proponent of socialist ideas, who underlined the idea that organizing workers was part of a larger effort to reform society: “The Provincial Federation of Labor could be made an actual fact and its influence felt if it was organized along the lines followed by British Columbia and Alberta, and adopted a platform which stood for the worker to receive the full product of his labor, which would be something worth fighting for.” In his view, capitalism had arrived in full force in New Brunswick, and workers would have to combine for their mutual protection: “The slogan should be ‘workers unite’ and wake up New Brunswick.” Hyatt was ably, if more moderately, seconded by James L. Sugrue, one of the younger generation of labour leaders coming to the fore in Saint John: “I think it time the matter of forming a Provincial Federation of Labor was resurrected. It would certainly be a pity to allow this matter to fall through as the time seems opportune for the formation of such an organization.” Sugrue gave a telling example of labour’s inability to secure meaningful reforms. After a year and a half of agitation by the unions for a fair wage clause in government contracts, the legislature had passed a Fair Wage Schedule Act that was barely two sentences long and notably lacking in standards or provisions for enforcement. “What a splendid piece of legislation,” scoffed Sugrue. “The workers should certainly be proud of the lawyers, doctors and business men who are representing them.” He concluded with a call to action: “Let’s quit acting comedy, brothers, and get down to business. We need a Federation of Labor in this Province and the time is ripe for its formation.”⁴

THE FOUNDER The Saint John carpenter James L. Sugrue (1883–1930) was elected the first president of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour in 1913 and served until 1918: “In the long run we hope to so improve conditions here that the people won’t leave for the west in search of better wages and shorter hours of labour.” Source: History of Saint John Labor Unions (1929).

A portrait of Sugrue shows a youthful, energetic face, hair brushed high, steady eyes, and the hint of a smile. Although Saint John had a long labour history and there were plenty of local labour veterans, Sugrue was still in his twenties when he came to prominence. Born in 1883, he had grown up in west-end Saint John, the son of an Irish immigrant who was an influential teacher in the city’s Catholic schools. His older brother John Sugrue became an officer of the bricklayers and masons union, and “Jimmie” Sugrue became a leader of Local 919, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, named as their financial secretary in 1910 and in 1913 as business agent. In 1912 Sugrue was elected president of the Saint John Trades and Labour Council. The emergence of Sugrue as a local leader coincided with an upsurge of labour activism. The Saint John carpenters, for instance, had won a $3 daily wage and an eight-hour day in their trade, and in the summer of 1913 more than 1,000 men at the local lumber mills were off work seeking wage increases and union recognition. On Labour Day that year, Saint John workers came out in large numbers, estimated at 2,000, to march in the biggest Labour Day parade in years. The unions were demonstrating their presence in the community, and leaders such as Sugrue were setting optimistic goals. As he explained in 1912, “In the long run we hope to so improve conditions here that the people won’t leave for the west in search of better wages and shorter hours of labor.”⁵

Sugrue’s part in the renewed effort was recognized when he was elected as the first president of the Federation of Labour in September 1913 and again at the first regular convention in Saint John in January 1914. On this occasion the thirty-five delegates represented fifteen union locals as well as the labour councils in Fredericton, Moncton, and Saint John. The largest group consisted of eight men from the Saint John longshoremen, the oldest union in the province. Sugrue must have been chagrined that fully twenty-eight of the official delegates were from Saint John. When they voted on a constitution and bylaws, one of the first amendments was to elect vice-presidents in order to strengthen support in other places. Vice-presidents were chosen for Moncton, Fredericton, Sackville, and Saint John, including three men who were not present at the meeting. In addition, P. D. Ayer of Moncton was elected as secretary-treasurer and Frank Lister of Fredericton as vice-president.

In setting their course, the Federation adopted resolutions on several matters to be presented to the government. Although the texts were not reported in the handwritten minutes, the list shows the scope of their agenda: scaffolding at construction sites, payments for jurors and witnesses, free school books and supplies for children, a Fair Wage Clause, a Bureau of Labour, Workmen’s Compensation, and an item headed simply “women workers.” Beyond this, the officers were instructed to procure a charter from the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, and the next meeting was set for July 1914 in Fredericton.⁶ It was a modest beginning, but the Federation of Labour was now visible on the province’s political landscape. When they met six months later at the Pythias Hall in Fredericton, the delegates were welcomed by the city’s mayor, and there was the same formal recognition when they met at the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Hall in Moncton the following year.

Before the War

Meanwhile, two notable events in 1914 kept the larger labour question in the public eye and did so in contrasting ways. The first of these, in Saint John in late July, was a large and violent strike that reminded workers of the weak position of unions seeking recognition, even in a city with a long history of unionism. In this case, the hundred or more men who worked on the city’s street railway line had organized themselves into a union. Like other workers, they were hoping to win improvements in wages and working conditions, but only three weeks after the local was formed, their president was fired for an alleged violation of company rules; it was claimed that Fred Ramsay had stopped his streetcar and gone into a saloon, a charge the union president vigorously denied. Meanwhile, the company also refused to negotiate with the union. Because they worked in the transportation sector, the street railway workers were in a position to make their case to a conciliation board appointed by the Dominion Minister of Labour. The board, to which they appointed Sugrue as the union representative, recommended a settlement. However, the company had no obligation to accept the recommendation — or even to negotiate with workers or recognize their union at all.

This was the kind of impasse that workers faced all across the country in this era, and in this situation it led directly to a test of strength on the streets. On 22 July, the workers marched through the streets in their uniforms carrying banners and calling on fellow citizens to support their strike. On every streetcorner, crowds cheered and shouted support for the strike slogan “Let Everybody Walk.” The company was already unpopular in the city for its overcrowded cars and its failure to build new lines, and public opinion was lining up on the side of the workers. When the company attempted to operate cars the next morning, with strikebreakers brought in by train from Montréal, there was trouble. The assembled crowds jeered the scabs, threw stones, broke windows, and stalled the cars on the tracks. From the point of view of municipal authorities, this was a deplorable breakdown in civil order. Standing on the curb of a fountain, the mayor read the Riot Act and called out a detachment of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, who charged down King Street into the crowds at the bottom of the hill at Market Square. The men on horseback wielded their flat-edged ceremonial swords, and the crowd fought back with sticks and stones. Two streetcars were overturned in the street. When crowds went on to attack the company’s barns, there were gunshots from a force of company detectives bunked inside. An attack on the company’s power plant plunged the city into darkness.

IN THE STREETS In the early twentieth century there were no laws protecting the right to collective bargaining, and the Labour Question was often decided in the streets. When Saint John street railway workers went on strike for union recognition in the summer of 1914, large crowds came out to support the workers and stop the use of strikebreakers. This was the scene at Market Square, Saint John, on the morning of 24 July 1914. Source: New Brunswick Museum, X12493 (2).

Order was eventually restored that night, but not before the mayor had called out the militia as well. Municipal leaders also intervened, and helped to broker a settlement. The union would be recognized, there would be gains for the workers — and union president Ramsay would take a job with the city. As in similar street railway strikes across North America, this one succeeded because there was animosity towards the company and support for the workers in the community. As historian Robert Babcock has written, “a deep-seated local tradition of crowd action reinforced the developing class-consciousness of Saint John workers.” The settlement was nonetheless an improvised solution, a form of “collective bargaining by riot.” It demonstrated the obstacles that workers faced in seeking the right to union recognition and pointed to the need for better recognition of the place of labour in provincial society.⁷

A few weeks after the strike, there appeared to be a higher level of acceptance for unions when delegates from across Canada arrived in Saint John for the annual convention of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada. The TLC had met annually since the 1880s, but only once in the Maritimes, in Halifax in 1908. When Sugrue attended the 1912 convention in Guelph, Ontario, he proposed that the next meeting be held in Saint John. Sugrue was determined to bring the TLC to New Brunswick, once arguing, for instance, that “Montreal is not the eastern extremity of Canada, despite the fact that some of our international executive officers seem to think so.”⁸ Once Saint John was chosen for the 1914 meetings, Sugrue served as chair of the Reception Committee, which published 2,000 copies of a souvenir booklet whose publication was supported by a grant of $500 from the provincial government.⁹ In welcoming the delegates, he hoped that the event “would tend to give an uplift to the organized workers of the Province of New Brunswick.”¹⁰¹¹