WORKING PEOPLE IN ALBERTA: A HISTORY
--edited by Alvin Finkel, with contributions by Jason
Foster, Winston Gereluk, et al, AU
Press, Edmonton, 2012, 345pp.
Working People in Alberta: A History was written in commemoration of the 100th
anniversary of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) in 2012. It was published with the assistance of the
Alberta Labour History Institute (ALHI) and received financial support from the
AFL, assistance which was provided with “no strings attached”.
Anniversary commemoratives—even
labour ones--sometimes fall victim to a certain sanitization of the history of
the organizations they are written to celebrate. The
published products of such efforts, while appropriate for the coffee table, are
lessened as works of significant historical value.
Fortunately,
this is most emphatically not the case with Working
People in Alberta. On the contrary, this book is an in-depth and invaluable
resource covering the history of working life as complex and diverse as the
physical geography of Alberta itself.
From far-flung communities in the Rockies, foothills, forests, badlands,
and plains emerge the stories of the women and men “who built Alberta” and who
did so despite the ravages of colonialism, capitalist exploitation, the gendered
division of labour, racism and the determination of governments and employers
to supress the labour movement and union struggles. These stories, it should be noted, put to rest
the notion that Alberta is a “placid province” where oil industry wealth has
eliminated all communitarian convictions in favour of individualist
conservative ones.
Not limited just
to the AFL’s 100 years, this beautifully illustrated book is really a “social
history of working people, including both unorganized workers and the trade
unions”. Significantly, it begins with
the history of work during the 13,000 years or more when First Nations people were
the sole inhabitants of what is now Alberta. Chapter 1, “Millennia of Native Work” looks at
the dynamic organization of work in their communities and the social relations
between individuals and the well-being of the collective—all “undergirded by
Native spirituality”.
This is
followed by an exploration of how traditional First Nations economies and
societies were affected by fur trade companies and their workforces, and the influx
of European goods and ideas, as well as the commercialization of the previously
“ceremonial and subsistence relationship” between First Nations and the
bison. The subsequent European
settlement period was marked by brutal attacks on and racist marginalization of
Native and Metis peoples, “unequal treatment of natives and whites with respect
to farming”, and as industries developed, “exploitation and class divisions as
well as resistance” among workers and minorities.
The bulk of Working People in Alberta consists of a
chronologically organized account of workers’ experiences and struggles and the
political events surrounding them and is accompanied by descriptions of the
political economy in which they were grounded.
In the late 19th century, when European settlement was
reflected in the development of farming, initial industrial projects to support
the needs of agriculture (railway construction and coal mining) saw the
emergence of an industrial working class. Barbaric working conditions imposed
by employers, the Master and Servant Act ,
the North West mounted Police and a total lack of medical facilities gave rise
to unrest and strikes, initially without union organization. Later, (such as in the Lethbridge coal
miners’ strike of 1906) strikes were led by the radical IWW and in other cases,
by more conservative craft-based unions.
Remaining
chapters involve interviews with the actors in events as well extensive use of
“the documentary record”. One explores
the founding of the AFL in 1912 and World War I and the inter-war period of
“relative economic stagnation”, the 1921 – 1935 period when the United Farmers
of Alberta took provincial power, the “growing class consciousness” among urban
Alberta Workers, the impact of the Depression years and the appearance of the
Communist movement and the CCF as political manifestations of the
“reinvigorated industrial union movement”.
Other
chapters assess changes to working-class life upon the discovery of huge gas
and oil deposits in the 1940s and 50s in the context of the anti-labour Social
Credit government; the impact of the “Boomer” generation as it entered the work
force and the coming to power of the equally anti-labour Progressive
Conservatives; the 1980s (described as possibly “the most radical period of
labour history in Alberta to date”) within the context of emerging
neo-liberalism but punctuated with such memorable events as the three general
strikes of the United Nurses of Alberta and the still-resonating six-month
Gainers’ strike of 1986; and finally the triumph of neo-liberalism in the 1990s
and beyond, the domination of the energy industry, collapse of province’s
manufacturing base and the struggle of the labour movement to resist this
onslaught.
The final
two chapters of Working People in Alberta
emphasize two important themes: how
women workers and care givers have been “disproportionately victimized” (all
too often manifested within the labour movement itself), and the racialization
of work in Alberta as reflected in the treatment of aboriginal workers and the
racist policies launched against non-white immigrants and workers of colour
over the years (including the somewhat spotty record of labour in addressing
this reality). While unions have made
major strides in recent years to take on both of these issues, it is the
honesty and insistence on presenting an unvarnished history of the victories
and set-backs of workers and the union movement in Alberta that makes this book
so compelling.
Special thanks to guest blogger and reviewer Evert Hoogers
