Timeline of labour issues and events in Canada

This is a timeline of labour issues and events in Canada.

1700s

 * 1799: After establishing furtrading post Greenwich House at Lac la Biche, workers refuse to proceed to Lesser Slave River because of lack of provisions. First known strike action in Alberta.

Early-mid 1800s

 * 1803 - Seven men working for Peter Fidler at Lake Athabasca would not stay unless wages increased.
 * ca. 1812 - dock workers in St. John (NB) and Halifax organized a union.

1870s

 * 1842 - In Quebec, T.M. Moore began to publish People's Magazine and Workingman's Guardian, the first labour-oriented reform newspaper.


 * 1872 - The Toronto Typographical Union goes on strike on March 25 over its demands for a nine-hour workday. Union activity then being a criminal offence, 24 members of the strike committee are jailed for conspiracy as a result of legal action taken by the editor of The Globe, Liberal Party leader George Brown. Parliament passed the Trade Unions Act on June 14, which legalizes trade unions.
 * 1873 – A first attempt at establishing a national trade union centre is made by the founding of the Canadian Labour Union. It dissolved in 1878.

1880s

 * 1880-1900 Knights of Labor, formed in 1869 in Philadelphia, active in Ontario.
 * 1883 – The Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC), a Canada-wide central federation of trade unions, is formed.

1890s

 * 1891 – Nova Scotia -Springhill mining disaster. 125 miners died, some of them child laborers aged 10-13 years.
 * 1894 – Labour Day is made a federal public holiday.
 * 1894 - Nationalist Party, BC's first labour party, founded. Its name arises from its pro-nationalization (public ownership) platform. It elected an MLA in the 1894 and 1898 provincial elections - Robert Macpherson. Also elected an MP in 1896 - George Ritchie Maxwell.
 * 1898 Canadian Socialist League (CSL) founded in Montreal. Found strong support in BC. Its views published in Lardeau Eagle, whose publisher, 23-year-old Richard Parmater Pettipiece, went on to be prominent BC socialist and labour official.

1900s

 * 1900 – Parliament passes the Conciliation Act and establishes the federal Department of Labour
 * 1900 (byelection) Arthur Puttee elected as the first Labour Member of Parliament (MP). Ran under the Winnipeg Labour Party label. Served as MP 1900-1904.
 * 1903 Consolidated Lake Superior riot
 * 1903 - Frank Rogers shot to death at picket line during strike at CPR, Vancouver
 * 1906 - Thomas Belanger and Francois Theriault shot to death during strike at Maclaren Company pulp mill at Buckingham, QU
 * 1906 - Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), formed in Chicago in 1905, came to BC. Founding convention of BC branch in 1906. Western Federation of Miners (WFM) instrumental in its early efforts.
 * 1906 - IWW Lumber Handlers Union No. 526, composed largely of Tsleil-Watuth First Nations people of Burrard, struck in opposition to demands of longer hours and lower pay. First IWW strike in western Canada. Strike unsuccessful; only success was getting jobs back and having scabs fired.
 * 1907 – Quebec Bridge, still under construction, collapsed, killing 75
 * 1907 - IWW achieved majority control of the AFL-CIO unions in Nelson. (Just a couple years later it was largest union in Nelson and led successful fight for the 8-hour day and higher wages for city workers.)
 * 1907 Aug 28 – At Cobalt (Ontario) an IWW member killed when scabs overloaded a charge at the mine.
 * 1907- Rise of industrial unionism pre-World War 1 involved the IWW and other workers as well. In 1907, in Quebec, workers in the textile sector, predominantly Francophone or Jews, organized industrial unions and conducted strikes.
 * 1909 - Alberta provincial election - Charles O'Brien, of the Socialist Party of Canada, elected by coal miners in the Rockies.
 * 1909 - Prince Rupert (BC) - 123 IWW men walked off sewer construction worksite.
 * 1909 - Victoria IWW branch signed up 300 men employed in street construction and led them out on strike. That same year Victoria IWW called for a general strike to demand release of McNamara brothers, arrested for the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building.
 * 1909 - Vancouver Free Speech Fight, wherein the IWW, supported by the Socialist Party of Canada, refused to give in to mayor's and police demands that labourites not hold open-air rallies and meetings. Prominent U.S. leftist speakers also assisted - Lucy Parsons and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (Vancouver Free Speech Fight re-fought in 1911 and 1912.)

1910s

 * 1911 - Vancouver Free Speech Fight re-fought in 1911 (and again in 1912). 1911 result: outdoor meetings allowed on certain streetcorners.
 * 1911 Dec. 23 - At Nelson, BC John LeTual and Caleb A. Barton murdered while organizing for IWW.
 * 1912 - Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), assisted by SPC, conducted successful fight for free speech in Vancouver. R.P. Pettipiece, former Alberta newspaperman and now prominent BC labour radical, arrested. IWW called for a general strike and threatened to unleash "the worker's weapon - sabotage."
 * 1912 -- Edmonton sewer ditch diggers, organized by IWW, went on strike for fair wages.
 * 1912–1914 – Great Coal Strike on Vancouver Island, aka Vancouver Island War, Miner Joseph Mairs sentenced to 18 months prison term, died in jail of internal illness, having received no medical attention. He was just 21 years of age. A memorial cairn stands in Ladysmith, British Columbia.
 * 1914 – S.S. Newfoundland sealing disaster - abandoned on ice floes for two nights, 78 sealers perished
 * June 19, 1914 -– Alberta -- Hillcrest mine disaster. 189 workers killed
 * 1914 St. John street railway strike
 * 1914 – The Workmen's Compensation Act, the first social insurance legislation in Canadian history, was adopted by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
 * 1914 Aug 20 -- At Vancouver, Clarke Wallace Connell (of the IWW) died from abscess on the brain from police beating
 * 1914 - July 1 -- Lac La Biche, Alberta -- Vocal socialist and Wobblie Hiram Johnson killed in brutal knife and axe attack. He had written that his neighbours abhorred his politics. His murder was pegged on James Rowan and W.E. Barrett, IWW organizers active in Edmonton, who discovered his body. Their legal defence emptied the Edmonton IWW of energy. The charges were eventually dropped, and the two men were instead sentenced to six months hard labour for the crime of vagrancy.] (James Rowan went on to write The IWW in the lumber industry.)
 * 1916 Hamilton machinists' strike
 * 1917 – The Canadian Labour Party is founded on the initiative of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada.
 * 1918 – The shooting death of Albert "Ginger" Goodwin sparks the Vancouver general strike, the first general strike in Canadian history.
 * 1918 – Protection Island (BC) mining disaster. 16 were killed when a miine shaft elevator fell.
 * 1918 – The Dominion Labor Party founded as successor to the moribund CLP.
 * 1919 – Western Labour Conference in Calgary leads to creation of One Big Union.
 * 1919 – Winnipeg general strike. Two shot dead by police.
 * 1919 – General strikes in Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Victoria, Brandon, Amherst (NS). The 1919 Vancouver strike in sympathy with Winnipeg is the longest general strike in Canadian history.
 * 1919 – Alberta Coal miners at Drumheller struck for OBU union recognition
 * 1919 – United Farmers of Ontario-Labour Party coalition government comes to power in Ontario. (not re-elected in 1923)

1920s

 * 1920 – Independent Labor Party formed in Manitoba. elected MP J.S. Woodsworth (1921) and Winnipeg MLAs and city councillors
 * 1920 - Five Labour MLAs elected in coalmining parts of Nova Scotia - Cumberland: Archibald Terris; Cape Breton: Joseph Steele, Arthur R. Richardson, Forman Waye and D.W. Morrison.
 * 1921 – United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) elected government in Alberta. The post of Minister of Labor given to Labor Party MLA Alex Ross, one of four Labor MLAs elected in Alberta in 1921.
 * 1921 – Canadian Labor Party revived under James Simpson. Labour MP William Irvine and Joseph Tweed Shaw (backed by both the UFA and the DLP) were elected in Calgary. J.S. Woodsworth elected in Winnipeg under the label Independent Labor Party. Woodsworth, Irvine and others participated in the Ginger Group, a leftist caucus in House of Commons.
 * 1922 - Raid on Dominion Coal Company's store at Sydney, NS. Thirteen men sentenced to two or three year prison sentences. (A company store was similarly pillaged in the 1995 flim Margaret's Museum.)
 * 1922-1925 – Cape Breton Labour Wars for recognition of the United Mine Workers of America as miners' bargaining agent
 * 1924 – An informal coalition of progressive MPs forms the Ginger Group in the House of Commons to fight for labour and social issues.
 * 1925 – Coal miner William Davis was killed by company police and many injured during a protest during a major strike at the British Empire Steel and Coal Company (BESCO) in New Waterford, Nova Scotia. Davis Day was established in the memory of Bill Davis. The labour dispute resulted in the deployment of 2000 soldiers, the largest peacetime deployment of the Canadian Militia for an internal conflict since the North-West Rebellion of 1885.
 * 1926 -– Alberta used proportional representation (STV) to elect MLAs in Edmonton and Calgary. CLP's Lionel Gibbs elected in Edmonton; DLP's Fred White and Independent-Labour candidate Robert Parkyn elected in Calgary. (Use of STV to elect Edmonton MLAs produced election of Labour/CCF MLA every election from 1926 to 1955, excepting 1935 and 1940. In Calgary under STV, Labour/CCF elected in 1921, 1926, 1930 and 1944. After change to First Past the Post in 1956, no CCF/NDP elected in Edmonton until 1982, in Calgary not until 1986.)
 * 1928 – Ontario - Hollinger gold mine mining disaster. 39 were killed.
 * 1929 – Death (suspected murder) of trade unionists Rosvall and Voutilainen

1930s

 * 1931 - S.S. Viking ship explosion killed 28 sealers and members of a film crew.
 * 1931 - Riot of unemployed in Calgary after seizure of a labour speaker by Calgary Police.
 * 1931 – Estevan riot. Four strikers shot to death by RCMP officers.
 * 1932 – "Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (Farmer-Labour-Socialist)" party founded in Calgary
 * 1933 - 1933 Stratford general strike
 * 1935 – On-to-Ottawa Trek, trek by unemployed from Vancouver eastward was stopped at Regina and dispersed on July 1, 1935 with mass arrests and loss of life (Nick Shaak, beaten to death by billyclub-wielding RCMP).
 * 1935 – Battle of Ballantyne Pier (1935 Vancouver dockers' strike)
 * 1936 - Corbin Mine strike, southern BC near Alberta-BC border. Several strikers sentenced to prison terms. One of them, David Lockhart, died of cellulitis while in prison.
 * 1938 – Bloody Sunday, culmination of the sit downer strike in Vancouver (unemployed workers' protests)
 * 1938 - Blubber Bay (Texada Island, BC) strike. Workers belonging to recently-founded International Woodworkers of America (IWA). Local union leader William Gardner died after receiving savage beating and kicking from BC provincial policeman.
 * 1939 – Canada declares war on Germany

1940s

 * 1940 – The Canadian Congress of Labour is founded following the expulsion of supporters of the Congress of Industrial Organizations from the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada in 1939 as a result of pressure from the American Federation of Labor.
 * August 1940 – The first compulsory national unemployment insurance system in Canada is introduced; it comes into operation in July 1941.
 * 1944 – Tommy Douglas's CCF elected government in Saskatchewan. The CCF/NDP would govern that province 1944-1964, 1971-1982, 1991-2007.
 * 1945 – Ford strike of 1945
 * 1946 – Introduction of the Rand formula
 * 1946 Montreal Cottons strike
 * 1949 – Aggregate union membership in Canada surpasses one million.
 * 1949 - Royal Canadian Navy mutinies/no-work protests
 * 1949 - Asbestos Strike (at Asbestos, QU. 5000 miners went on strike for three months against a foreign corporation at Asbestos and Thetford Mines. They were supported by the bishop of Montreal, the newspaper Le Devoir, and several intellectuals. Said to be one of the longest and most violent labour conflicts in Quebec history. Laid the base for Quebec's Quiet Revolution.
 * 1949 – Controversial U.S. labour unionist Hal C. Banks comes to Canada to assist in a labour dispute between rival shipping unions. The Canadian Seamen's Union was red-baited and attacked by Hal C. Banks and others, and replaced by the Seafarers' International Union. By 1950 the Canadian Merchant Navy had no more ships under its control.

1950s

 * 1952 – First Peace Arch concert by musician and labour activist Paul Robeson
 * 1956 – The Canadian Labour Congress is formed through the merger of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada and the Canadian Congress of Labour.
 * 1956 – Nova Scotia - Springhill mining disaster. 39 were killed.
 * 1956 – The Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers hold a national convention in Sudbury, Ontario, at which singer and activist Paul Robeson gives his first concert outside the United States since being placed under a travel ban by the United States government in 1950.
 * 1958 – Nova Scotia - Springhill mining disaster. 75 were killed.
 * 1958 – Vancouver - Second Narrows Bridge disaster - bridge still under construction, collapsed, killing 18. A diver searching for bodies drowned. Bridge later re-named Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Bridge.
 * 1958 - Newfoundland Loggers' Strike

1960s

 * 1961 – The New Democratic Party is founded as the successor to the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and establishes a formal relationship with the organized labour movement. In 2011, it became the Official Opposition in the House of Commons. By 2020, it has formed government at one time or another in six provinces and in the Yukon. (A non-union affiliate of the NDP, the Woodsworth-Irvine Socialist Fellowship, based in Edmonton, carried on socialist education from 1962 to about 2000. )
 * September 10, 1961 -– A Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers meeting at the Sudbury Arena, regarding the union's controversial proposal to merge with the United Steelworkers, erupts into a riot.
 * 1963 - Reesor Siding Strike. Three strikers shot to death by picketline-crossing log suppliers.
 * 1963 – The Canadian Union of Public Employees is formed through from the merger of the National Union of Public Employees and the National Union of Public Service Employees.
 * 1965 – Wildcat postal strike, leading to the extension of collective bargaining rights to the majority of the public service
 * 1967 – The international Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers merge with the United Steelworkers. Local 598 in Sudbury, Ontario, is the only Mine Mill local in the world to reject the merger, instead continuing operations as an unaffiliated union organization until 1993.
 * 1968 -– Air Canada agents in British Columbia begin work-to-rule over a dispute over the industrial relations department's bargaining methods.
 * 1969 – Murray-Hill riot, Montreal police force on strike. FLQ, taxi drivers and others took radical action
 * 1969 - New Democratic Party of Manitoba elected government. In power until 1977

1970s

 * 1971 – Introduction of paid maternity leave through unemployment insurance
 * 1971 - owner of La Presse (Montrel newspaper) locked out workers. solidarity rally of 15,000 met with tear gas and beatings. University student Michele Gauthier who suffered from asthma, died of suffocation.
 * 1972 Quebec general strike Theodore LeBlanc killed when car smashed into a pro-strike demonstration.
 * 1972 - BC New Democratic Party elected in 1972. in power until 1975
 * 1975 – Grace Hartman is elected as the second president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, becoming the first woman to lead a major labour union in North America.
 * 1976 – Day of Action (October 14) one-day general strike against Trudeau's anti-inflationary wages and price controls. More than one million workers stayed home.
 * September 15, 1978 - The Inco Strike of 1978 begins in Sudbury, Ontario. Workers are out on strike for almost nine months, until June 7, 1979.
 * June 1979 – The United Food and Commercial Workers is formed through the merger of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and the Retail Clerks International Union.

1980s

 * 1981 – Hibernia oilfield near Newfoundland - Ocean Ranger, an offshore oil rig, sank, killing all 84 on board
 * 1984, the Canadian Auto Workers Union (properly the National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada) founded. Bob White, an official of the United Auto Workers, encouraged the Canadian membership of the U.A.W. to split away and form a separate union. He later became first president of C.A.W. (split covered in NFB film Final Offer)
 * 1985 – The Canadian Auto Workers become independent of their former parent union, the United Auto Workers. This process is later documented in the film Final Offer.
 * 1986 -– Alberta NDP took 16 seats, a record until 2015, and became Official Opposition (Brian Mason elected as MLA - he would be a NDP cabinet minister in 2015)
 * 1986 -– Six-month-long strike at the Gainers meatpacking plant in Edmonton

1990s

 * 1992 – A bomb at the Giant Mine in the Northwest Territories kills nine replacement workers. Striking mine employee Roger Warren is eventually convicted on nine counts of second-degree murder.
 * 1993 – Local 598 in Sudbury, Ontario, which was the only Mine Mill local in the world not to join the United Steelworkers when the two unions merged in 1967, joins the Canadian Auto Workers.
 * 1997 Ontario teachers strike
 * 1998 – Teenagers Jennifer Wiebe and Tessa Lowinger successfully unionize a McDonald's franchise in Squamish, British Columbia. However, the union is decertified in July 1999.

2000s

 * November 22, 2000 - A McDonald's restaurant in Montreal is unionized. The location is closed down on August 31, 2001, with the owner claiming economic pressures due to a rent hike. This is later documented in the film Maxime, McDuff & McDo.
 * September 11, 2001 - The first day of a general PSAC strike when workers called off the strike to go back to work and help Canadians.
 * 2004 - CN Rail workers strike
 * 2004 - after 3 weeks of striking, PSAC members were mandated back to work by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
 * 2005 - Wal-Mart closes its Saguenay, Quebec store which became the first store of its brand in Canada being unionized.
 * May 29, 2006 - Toronto Transit Commission workers stage a one-day wildcat strike.
 * 2006 - Ontario province-wide strike of college staff. Ontario College Professor John Stammers fatally injured while trying to stop car from crossing picket line.
 * April 26, 2008 - 2008 Toronto Transit Commission strike
 * September 19, 2008 - A fire destroys the historic Sudbury Steelworkers Hall in Sudbury, Ontario.
 * December 10, 2008 - OC Transpo drivers and mechanics strike
 * 2009 - Nova Scotia New Democratic Party elected government. In power until 2013
 * June 22, 2009 - 2009 City of Toronto inside and outside workers strike
 * July 13, 2009 - Workers at Vale's operations in Sudbury embark on a yearlong strike over contract concessions.

2010s

 * July 5, 2010 - A tentative resolution of the Vale strike in Sudbury is announced.
 * September 11, 2012 - Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Liberal party pass Bill 115 'Putting Students First Act 2012', thereby eliminating the rights of all teachers in the province to go on strike for the next two years. Bill 115 also freezes wages, grants ten sick days per year (down from twenty) and eliminates banked sick days from previous years. Unions state that this bill is a violation of their members' rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that the bill violates the Ontario Labour Relations Act of 1995.
 * February 4, 2012 - in Halifax, Amalgamated Transit Union went on strike, crippling the city's public transportation until March 14, 2012. Transit workers were denied salary or compensation increases, due to a reported $3M deficit.
 * 2013 – Unifor is formed through the merger of the Canadian Auto Workers and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, becoming the largest private-sector union in the country.
 * 2015 – NDP elected government in Alberta, in power until 2019
 * 2019 – SMWIA ICI members Go on strike in Ontario for 8 weeks May - June first strike in 30 years for that organization.

2020s

 * 2023 Canadian federal workers strike