OP/ED: Century-old Winnipeg civic strike plays key role in labour history
May 02, 2018 at 3:55 PM
The following opinion piece appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press on May 1 by Paul Moist, former CUPE National President and current research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – Manitoba.
One hundred years ago this month, Winnipeg civic employees went on strike for three weeks over wages and the right of public employees to legally strike.
The dispute escalated to include members of over three dozen local unions not associated with the city, which struck in support of civic employees.
It was, in many respects, a dress rehearsal for the 1919 Winnipeg general strike, and it spoke to rising tensions between labour and business in Winnipeg.
The backdrop to the 1918 dispute was multi-faceted.
Winnipeg was a growing community; the population had nearly quadrupled from 42,000 in 1900 to more than 150,000 by 1913.
Government was dominated by British-born business interests, and when it came to labour relations, Winnipeg was known as "injunction city" because of its many acrimonious disputes over the fundamental question of union recognition.
The challenges labour faced in striking a single employer fuelled widespread discussion of the general-strike weapon, whereby all workers would strike to back one another up.
"Strength in unity" was the rallying cry of the day.
The First World War had seen wages suppressed and the cost of living rise and by 1917, Winnipeg had more days lost to strike action than the total in the four previous years.
All of the ingredients for industrial conflict were present in Winnipeg in 1918.
Civic employees, represented by a variety of unions, had tabled bargaining demands with the city in late 1917, but negotiations went nowhere.
Civic workers sought a wage hike of 12 per cent; the city offered a temporary war bonus of $2 per week, which would not be folded into regular wages.
Employees suspected it would be rescinded at the end of the war.
On May 2, employees of the city’s light and power department went on strike, followed the next day by city electricians and waterworks employees. Sanitation workers struck on May 7, followed a week later by city firefighters.
The civic response was to reject a tentative agreement which had been reached on May 10, and to threaten dismissal of all striking workers.
By a vote of 9-8, city council adopted a motion introduced by Alderman Frank Fowler, which compelled all civic workers to pledge to never strike and declared that all disputes would be settled by arbitration.
The council edict that no civic workers would have the right to strike provoked an escalation of the dispute.
On May 16, provincial telephone operators went on strike in support of civic employees, followed by 4,000 railway workers, streetcar workers and others. Historians differ on the number of workers who struck in sympathy, with estimates ranging from 6,800 to 17,000. Without question, there was substantial labour support for striking civic workers.
In mid-May, civic business interests met and formed the Committee of 100. They passed resolutions denouncing the strike and called on the federal government to ban all strikes for the duration of the war.
The Committee of 100 commenced recruiting volunteers to provide civic services, including fire protection.
Pressure mounted on the federal government to intervene. Rumours circulated that workers in five other large Canadian cities were poised to strike in support of Winnipeg civic employees.
Prime Minister Robert Borden dispatched senator Gideon Robertson, a former vice-president of the Order of Railway Telegraphers, to Winnipeg with instructions to achieve a negotiated settlement.
As Robertson arrived in Winnipeg, representatives of the Committee of 100 and strikers, who had commenced talks, were close to the framework of a settlement based upon the May 10 deal city council had rejected.
Robertson prevailed upon city council to withdraw the controversial Fowler amendment, and to reinstate all striking civic workers. A wage increase replaced the proposed war bonus, and the dispute ended on May 25.
The Western Labor News offered up its view of the trade-union movement, stating, "We in Winnipeg… had the honour of pulling off the first general strike on this continent…"
The three-week civic workers’ strike in Winnipeg was an important chapter in the city’s labour history. The use of the general-strike weapon had unquestionably contributed to the achievement of a settlement.
One year later, the most significant chapter in Canadian labour history would occur in Winnipeg, and it would play out on a much wider stage with a very different result.
