Monday, January 18, 2021

Remember/Resist/Redraw #19: Revisiting the Workers’ Revolt in Winnipeg

April 19, 2019

2019 marks the centenary of the Winnipeg General Strike, which took place between 15 May and 26 June 1919. In anticipation of the centenary, the Graphic History Collective released RRR poster #19 this week by David Lester and the GHC. The poster critically examines the strike’s important lessons and legacy.

We hope that Remember | Resist | Redraw encourages people to critically examine history in ways that can fuel our radical imaginations and support struggles for social change. Learn more about how you can support the project on our website, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Revisiting the Workers’ Revolt in Winnipeg

Poster by David Lester
Essay by the Graphic History Collective

In 1919, 35,000 workers in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation, staged a six-week general strike between 15 May and 26 June. Workers from various backgrounds withdrew their labour power—they went on strike—to demand higher wages, collective bargaining rights, and more power for working people. One hundred years later, the Winnipeg General Strike remains one of the largest and most important strikes in Canadian history.

The Winnipeg General Strike is part of the longer history of colonial conflict, capitalist development, and class polarization in Western Canada. By the early 1900s, a number of aggressive businessmen—including some who participated in the Government of Canada’s violent efforts to dispossess Indigenous communities of their land in 1869–1870 and 1885—had come west to pursue industrialization. Over time, they shaped the development of Winnipeg for their benefit. The city became increasingly divided along class lines, with capitalists pitted against workers.

The situation worsened during and after World War I. Many working-class men went off to fight in the fields of Europe while capitalists stayed home and profited from wartime production. Soldiers hoped to enjoy a more equal and democratic society when they returned home. Instead, they faced high rates of unemployment and inflation. Employer indifference to these issues and refusal to recognize unions and bargain with workers further fanned the flames of discontent. When Winnipeg’s building and metal trades workers went on strike on 1 May, other unions in the city decided to join them in a general sympathetic strike.

The Winnipeg General Strike began with 11,000 unionized workers, but the number of strikers soon swelled to 35,000 as thousands of non-unionized workers also walked off the job. Many of them were women and recent immigrants living in the city’s North End. As the city ground to a halt, as the phones went silent, the streetcars stopped, and the lights turned off, workers demonstrated the power and potential of labour solidarity.

But divisions still existed. Some strikers reinforced notions of white supremacy by advancing their demands as the rights of white, Anglo-Saxon, and loyal British subjects. Strikers also failed to make connections with the struggles of other dispossessed and exploited groups, such as the Anishinaabe community of Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, who were experiencing a major land loss due to the construction of the Winnipeg Aqueduct at the same time. This was a missed opportunity to build strong relations of solidarity amongst different groups to fight, win, and leave no one behind.

The Winnipeg General Strike lasted for six weeks but ultimately ended in defeat. Employers and state officials worked to contain the strike, undercut the strike leaders, and pit working people against each other. They labeled the strikers “enemy aliens” and “foreign radicals” and even arrested many of them on dubious charges and tried to have them deported. Finally, on June 21—a day that has come to be known as “Bloody Saturday”—state officials authorized violence. Special constables and the Royal North-West Mounted Police attacked strikers and their supporters during a peaceful demonstration. The strike was called off a few days later, ending officially on June 26. The events of Bloody Saturday are a stark reminder that to crush resistance to capitalist development and colonial expansion, the state is not afraid to bloody its hands. Indeed, less than 35 years separated the state’s attack on strikers in Winnipeg and its violent suppression of Métis, Cree, Assiniboine, and Saulteaux communities in the North-West in 1885.

On the 100th anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike, it is useful to revisit the workers’ revolt to introduce new generations to the many lessons it holds for today. Although the Winnipeg General Strike ended in defeat, it was not a failure. In the years afterwards, new leaders and political groups tried to build on the strike’s momentum and carry on the struggle for a better world for workers in Winnipeg and elsewhere. Understanding the power of working people and the strike and building new relationships of solidarity can help reenergize our efforts to build a better world.

[Image Description: The top of this poster says The Winnipeg General Strike in large letters over a red and yellow painted background. Below this is a black line drawing of police on horses. A large fist rises up on the right. On the bottom a black and white line drawing of a crowd from 1919 watching a women speaking.

The poster says: In May and June 1919, 35,000 workers in Winnipeg, Manitoba staged a six-week general strike. Workers from various backgrounds struck for higher wages and collective bargaining rights and to demand more power for working people. Ultimately, the strike was violently crushed by police acting on the orders of politicians and the city’s capitalists. Although the strike ended in defeat, it was not a failure. It demonstrated the power of working people and inspired new generations of workers to carry on the struggle to build a better world.]

David Lester is the guitarist in the underground rock duo Mecca Normal. He is author/illustrator of The Gruesome Acts of Capitalism and the graphic novel The Listener. He has contributed to several GHC projects, including Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working-Class Struggle, Direct Action Gets the Goods: A Graphic History of the Strike in Canada, and 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike. He is currently working on a graphic biography of Emma Goldman.

The Graphic History Collective is a group of artists and writers interested in comics, history, and social change. We produce accessible projects to educate people about the historical roots of contemporary social issues. Our comics show that you don’t need a cape and a pair of tights to change the world.

Further Reading

Bumsted, J.M. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919: An Illustrated History. Winnipeg, MB: Watson & Dwyer, 1994.

Graphic History Collective, and David Lester. 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2019.

Heron, Craig, ed. The Workers’ Revolt in Canada, 1917–1925. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

Horodyski, Mary. “Women and the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.” Manitoba History, no. 11 (Spring 1986): 28–37.

Penner, Norman, ed. Winnipeg 1919: The Strikers’ Own History of the Winnipeg General Strike. 2nd ed. Toronto: James Lorimer, 1975.

Perry, Adele. Aqueduct: Colonialism: Resources, and the Histories We Remember. Winnipeg, MB: ARP Books, 2016.

Remember/Resist/Redraw #26: 1995 Calgary Workers Laundry Strike

November 20, 2020 No Comments

Earlier this month, the Graphic History Collective released RRR #26 to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1995 Calgary Laundry Workers Strike.

The poster by Mary Joyce and Alvin Finkel outlines the importance of rank-and-file militancy, much of it by immigrant women of colour, in the fight against austerity and privatization in places like Alberta. This poster is particularly pertinent because the Provincial Government of Alberta is today, 25 years later, launching new attacks on health care workers in the midst of a global pandemic.

1995 Calgary Laundry Workers Strike

Poster by Mary Joyce
Essay by Alvin Finkel

In 1993 and 1994, the Alberta Progressive Conservative government of Ralph Klein eliminated tens of thousands of public sector jobs and cut wages and benefits of remaining workers. Within two years, Klein had chopped Alberta program spending by over 21 per cent, and he began a massive contracting out of public services. The trade union movement seemed paralyzed by the government’s recklessness. In 2019 and 2020, a similar scenario appeared as Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party (UCP) announced plans to cut public services and wages while privatizing public services whenever possible. But the earlier Klein cuts had put the union movement on alert and the workers’ response was far more militant.

In 1995, when the Calgary Health Authority furthered the privatization agenda by announcing a contracting out of hospital laundry workers’ jobs, it expected compliance from the affected workers. Their jobs would go to K-Bro Linens in Edmonton. Most were Caribbean and Asian immigrant women. They had taken a 28 per cent cut in the previous round of bargaining to preserve their jobs: strenuous, dangerous jobs handling blood, body parts, and contagion in the linens they laundered. They were furious when they learned that they would be fired despite their earlier sacrifices.

The first to respond were 60 laundry workers at the Calgary General Hospital, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Their union representatives warned that a wildcat strike would be illegal and could result in them being fined and the union being decertified. But, as Barbadian-born worker Yvette Lynch, an 11-year veteran of the laundry, said: “People were prepared … they just can’t ask us to take cutbacks and then decide to take away our jobs from us just like that.” They called in sick on 14 November 1995. The next day the same scenario occurred at the Foothills Hospital where laundry workers were members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.

Within ten days about 2,500 workers in six hospitals and nine nursing homes were wildcatting and hundreds of other healthcare workers were working to rule. Trade unionists and non-unionists alike inside and outside the health sector demonstrated solidarity with the strikers on their picket line and in public rallies. Growing calls for a general strike scared Premier Klein. He offered the unions a delay in contracting out of 18 months, long enough for most of the workers to find other jobs, plus paid retraining and severance payments. The striking workers were divided on an offer that would not make their jobs permanent. But faced with threats of legal action by the government, which had banned strikes in the health sector, a majority accepted the 18-month offer. “Tough guy” Ralph Klein had blinked, and it was a group of mainly immigrant women workers who had provoked that. The courage displayed by the laundry workers inspired a wave of strikes and job actions by other healthcare workers; licensed practical nurses and general support service workers repeatedly took part in some of the largest walk-outs in Alberta’s history during the closing years of that decade.

While the laundry workers’ victory was a partial one, the events it set in motion marked a victory for all Alberta working people. The Klein government put back a portion of funds they had cut from medical care and other public services, responding to accusations during the wildcat that they had cut too much, and that it was workers whom they had hurt in the process. Privatizations slowed though the government shuttered the Calgary General Hospital in 1998. The Klein years overall were a wasteland for Alberta working people but they would have been much worse if the laundry workers had not inspired a large section of the Alberta working class to demonstrate that they would not accept further cuts and privatizations. Yvette Lynch put it this way: “It made us feel good, it made us feel strong, like we did something that we were supposed to do, that they can’t walk over the little people.”

Long-time executive secretary of the Calgary and District Labour Council Gord Christie said of the laundry workers: “in times of struggles, the real natural leaders came forward … Some of the people within the laundry workers had never been to a union meeting, never held positions within the union. They were the strongest leaders … It was fabulous how those people came forward and said, ‘we’re going to do it and we’re so proud and we’re going to make it happen.’” Similarly, in 2020, rank-and-file militancy across the public sector persuaded union leaders that the fight against the UCP had to be in the streets and immediate rather than a lot of talk while waiting for another election in which the UCP might be defeated.

[Image Description:“The poster depicts a Black woman in front of mountains and a blue sky. She is wearing red and green, holding a white sheet in one hand and a sign in the other that says: “On Strike! Laundry Workers of CGH! To Stop Cuts and Privatizing. For Right of all to Universal Healthcare.” She is behind a orange and white building and a large crowd of people. In front of the crowd are four different women with their arms up in the air.”]

Mary Joyce lives and works in Edmonton, Alberta, producing art for exhibition, sale, and commission. Thirty-five years a studio artist, she makes work that celebrates our ongoing upsurge of political mobilization and citizen engagement with vigour, immediacy, depth, and sensuality. Active in the collection of McMaster University’s German expressionist art collection while a young student, her philosophical and aesthetic foundation is serving her community well. As an award-winning printmaker and painter, she transposes techniques from one medium to another, discovering in the interplay meaningful juxtapositions. Her oeuvre includes paintings, prints, and installations with large fabric or paper elements. She has shown work throughout Canada and Europe. She is university-educated in Art History, Literature, Studio. Her work and publications are in public and private collections. http://www.maryjoyceart.com.

Alvin Finkel is a founding member and current president of the Alberta Labour History Institute. He is professor emeritus of history at Athabasca University. A prolific historian, he has published textbooks on Canadian history and many works on Canadian labour and social policy history. He is the editor of Working People in Alberta: A History and the author of Social Policy and Practice in Canada: A History. His latest book and his magnum opus is Compassion: A Global History of Social Policy. https://twitter.com/alvinfinkel.

https://www.facebook.com/Alberta-Labour-History-Institute-234873849869503/
https://www.facebook.com/changealberta/

The Workers’ Revolt in Edmonton

June 19, 2019 No Comments

Mikhail Bjorge

With rail construction largely completed and mechanization lessening the need for iterate agricultural labour, mass unemployment had become the norm in Edmonton, Alberta by 1914. At this time, Carl Berg, a former member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), relocated to the city. Here he started working with Sarah Knight in the Federal Labourers Union and in the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC). Edmonton SPC member and leader of the Carpenters Union Joseph Knight worked tirelessly to promote a national general strike in the event of war. This was a hopeful but fruitless endeavour; and later Edmonton saw few strikes in the early war years.

By 1918, the labour situation had become explosive. High inflation, war profiteering, a growing cognizance of the realities of war, and intense domestic repression all merged to make Canada a particularly strike-bound place. In Edmonton, this manifested most clearly in the firefighters’ strike of 1918, which successfully demanded an inside hire for chief. Later that year, the Edmonton Trades and Labour Council (ETLC) voted to approve a general strike in support of both the postal workers and the running-trades actions in Calgary. Activists learned that even the threat of a general strike was effective.

It is important to note that the ETLC was hardly a den of radicals. But even they were dismayed by the conservatism of the mainstream labour movement. As such, the ETLC supported the organization of a regional conference in March 1919 to address the unique concerns of western workers and to plan a way forward in the postwar period.

Edmonton’s union members were well represented at the conference and were partially responsible for expanding its original and limited mandate. After calling for a turn towards revolutionary socialism, they voted to withdraw their members from international and craft unions in order to form the One Big Union (OBU). While virtually every western Canadian miner was in favour of the OBU, the rest of the labour movement was almost exactly split. Those who had voted to join the OBU nevertheless carried on, planning to organize a regional general strike for 1 June with the six-hour-day as their core demand.

Some on the ETLC perceived the OBU as an existential threat. At an April meeting, they voted 20 to 19 to expel OBU sympathizers from their ranks. Berg, the Knights, and other militants were ejected but remained in control of their unions. At the same time, red-baiting was on the rise in Edmonton. Both the labour and popular press printed anti-communist screeds, a student sympathetic to the SPC was attacked at the University of Alberta, a talk by Sarah Knight was violently broken up, a meeting of Ukrainian socialists advocating for their interned comrades was deemed treasonous, and the Royal North-West Mounted Police (RNWMP) raided and sacked the SPC headquarters.

The SPC newspaper, The Soviet, 6 March 1919.

OBU plans for a western general strike were superseded by the Winnipeg General Strike. The ETLC immediately pledged their support of the Winnipeg strikers and voted to hold a city-wide labour meeting on 21 May. Worried about credibility with their membership, all expelled unions were extended invitations. Taking the floor at the Labor Hall, Berg moved that all unions hold an open vote to join the general strike. The vote was 1,676 for and 506 against. Some non-unionized workers, including Chinese launderers, joined later.

The Edmonton General Strike began on 26 May at 11:00. The strikers quickly organized sub-committees to handle urgent matters, which included everything from staying in contact with Winnipeg to propaganda and health and safety. The RNWMP mustered, accustomed their horses to the sound of gunfire, and ensured that their machine guns were in working order. Meanwhile, in a 74-4 vote, the police force declared that it was “ready to act at the call of the strike committee.” The defection of the police was a galvanizing factor in the local elite organizing a Citizens’ Committee. While they engaged in minor strikebreaking, their major role was in failing to convince the mayor to break the strike through force. The Edmonton Free Press, which was affiliated with the ETLC, advocated for its readers to return to work. Other newspapers said far worse.

The General Strike Committee controlled power and electricity, the telegraph system, and the trains. Berg, who had been elected to the executive, ensured that the theatres remained open with permission of the strike committee. Though restaurants were closed, milk remained available. City Hall, however, was shuttered. Water pressure was lowered so that only the hospital and the first story of any given building had water. By late May, the teamsters, taxi drivers, carpenters, bricklayers and masons, boilermakers, plumbers, painters, railway carmen, yardmen, freight handlers, machinists, express messengers, steam shovel operators, metal workers, rail maintenance workers, railway clerks, and blacksmiths were all still on strike. To add to the tally, nearly every miner and rail worker in the province of Alberta was out as well.

Even though 36 out of 49 unions were still officially on strike, by the middle of June there was a sense of near normalcy in Edmonton. The strike committee still met, but the influence and potential of the general strike had waned. By 28 June, all sympathetic strike action had come to an end. After Bloody Saturday in Winnipeg, on 21 June, the strike committee met only to hear reports from delegates sent to personally ascertain the situation. After learning of what had transpired in the streets of Winnipeg, the Edmonton strike was called off.

Mikhail Bjorge is an historian who teaches labour studies and history in Toronto.

Remember/Resist/Redraw #27: The 1918-1919 Flu Pandemic in Western Canada

December 17, 2020

Earlier this month, as COVID-19 infections spiked across Western Canada during the second wave of a global pandemic, the Graphic History Collective released RRR #27 by Karen Mills and Esyllt Jones. The poster looks at the 1918-1919 flu pandemic as it was experienced in Western Canada.

The poster’s design is based on a public health poster from 1918 and includes illustrations and photographs from time. Jones’s essay asks us – in the midst of another global crisis – to reflect on the costs of past pandemics and to also see their ability to encourage solidarity and spark struggles for transformational change.

Poster issued by the Provincial Board of Health about the influenza epidemic, Alberta, 1918. Glenbow Museum NA-4548-5

Recollecting Influenza: Pandemic Disease, Health Inequity, and Social Change

Poster by Karen Mills
Essay by Esyllt Jones

Although long referred to by historians as the “forgotten pandemic,” countless families and communities have memories of the 1918–1920 flu: stories of their people, how they persisted, and how their lives were changed by a disease outbreak that killed over 50,000 Canadians and at least 50 million globally. For much of the 20th century, history did not much care about these stories of their lives. Rather, pandemic histories were suppressed and elided.

Without societal remembrance of influenza as a health catastrophe, it was possible to forget the main lesson of the pandemic: how inequality shaped who lived, who died, and the future lives of survivors. Poorer urban neighbourhoods, including those with recent immigrant families, had higher mortality rates. Deaths among Indigenous peoples were of an order of magnitude higher than among the non-Indigenous: 6.2 out of every thousand non-Indigenous Canadians died of influenza, while on-reserve Indigenous death rates ranged from 10.3 per 1,000 in Prince Edward Island, to 61 per 1,000 in Alberta.

Many of these deaths were preventable. The health impact of poor housing, for example, was well known before the pandemic, but public investment was lacking. Health advice for hygiene and self-isolation was impossible to follow in an overcrowded, poorly ventilated house with no hot running water. Without medicare, most Canadians (even those with modest secure incomes) had limited access to medical and nursing care. The poor, racialized, and colonized contended with a health system steeped in the attitudes of Victorian poor law and overt racism and segregation. These conditions before, during, and after influenza eroded public trust in the state and institutions and fueled demands for social change, reflected in a national wave of labour struggles in 1919.

People relied upon community and kin to survive influenza, demonstrating a deep resilience. However, the economic and mental health consequences for children and families could be long lasting. The majority of influenza deaths in Canada were of adults between the ages of 20 and 50. When a male breadwinner died, families experienced downward economic mobility, exacerbated by gender inequality in the labour market, in which women had few employment options and faced unequal pay. In some cases, female single parents whose husbands died from flu could qualify for mothers’ allowances, but not all provinces had these programs. Benefits were miserly and were accompanied by ongoing scrutiny and surveillance of poor women’s behaviour, parenting skills, and housekeeping. Thus, influenza undermined opportunity for a generation of children while government policies failed to lift them out of poverty.

Yet, as Rebecca Solnit has argued about the possibility for solidarity arising from disasters, pandemic histories are potentially hopeful ones. They are narratives about human agency and choice as much as they are about microbes. As the failures of government responses to the pandemic were exposed in 1918–1919, a heightened awareness of bodily inequality, together with mutual reliance, formed the basis of demands for something better: for social justice and for a health system that was not built on inequality. In the 1920s, and intensifying through the economic and ecological disasters of the 1930s, voices for socialized medicine became more and more persuasive. The first socialized health programs in Canada, enacted by the Saskatchewan CCF in 1944–1945, arose from the agency of a generation that experienced two world wars, economic collapse, and a global pandemic. Living through these world historical events they yet imagined themselves not at the end of the world, but living in a more equitable future.

[Image Description:“1918-1919 Flu Pandemic (In Western Canada)

Mystery! Where did the “Spanish Flu”* come from?
The origins of the 1918 flu pandemic are largely unknown, even today. Three possible “ground zeroes” have emerged from research: Haskell County, Kansas, near a U.S. Army base; E?taples, France, a wartime staging ground; and China, where the flu might have existed in a milder form years earlier. The Haskell County cases were first observed in January 1918.
* Spain was the 1st country to report the flu in its full severity, without censorship

SPREADING LIKE PRAIRIE GRASSFIRE
After the flu became prevalent on the battlefields of Europe during the final year of World War I in 1918, soldiers returning from the war brought the virus to many countries. In Canada, the flu was carried by soldiers and workers, as well as upper-class Canadians who tended to travel more. The worst month for infections and deaths was October 1918.
Approximately 55,000 Canadians died during the pandemic, and the Prairies were particularly hard hit. For instance, in Alberta – population appx. 500,000 – around 38,000 people were infected and 4,000 died.
This flu persisted until 1920, with between 50 and 100 million deaths globally.

DO YOU HAVE THE FLU?
SYMPTOMS
1918 flu = Influenza virus subtype H1N1
Typical symptoms:
– fever
– nausea
– aches
– diarrhea
Occasionally:
– severe pneumonia attack
– dark spots on the cheeks
* The group most affected by influenza was adult males between 20 and 40

There is no “democratic” virus
Are we “all in this together”? Then as now, the 1918 flu virus was said to be democratic,affecting everyone equally. In reality, poor people, people of colour, and Indigenous peoples suffered in the greatest numbers.

MUTUAL AID AND SETTING THE STAGE FOR STRIKES
Marginalized communities had to band together to help one another survive the disease, drawing upon existing mutual aid networks and creating new ones.
This was one of the factors that prepared Western Canadian cities for the 1919 Great Labour Revolt: demonstrations of working-class power, the best-known of which was the Winnipeg General Strike.

PUBLIC HEALTH- CARE, FUTURE CAPACITY
Canada’s fragmented response to the 1918 flu outbreak led to the development and strengthening of the Federal Department of Health, established in 1919. Healthcare in Canada remained a mix of private and public delivery from the 1920s to 1966, when national Medicare was brought in based on Saskatchewan’s 1946 hospitalization plan.

“Plagues such as the 1918 influenza pandemic act as mysteries and eventually tests of human subjectivity in its full range of hopelessness and potential. As we anticipate what new pandemics might soon emerge, we can only predict they will be filled with both apocalyptic loss and unthinkable possibilities when we find the courage to look.”

-Jane Elizabeth Fisher, Envisioning Disease, Gender, and War: Women’s Narratives of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic (2012)”]

Karen Jeane Mills is an illustrator and designer. A graduate of NSCAD University in Halifax, NS and NSCC in Middleton, NS, she grew up in Canada’s Maritime provinces and now hangs her hat in Calgary, Alberta. She is a community volunteer inspired by working people in the past and present. More of her work can be seen on Instagram: @prairieflaneur.

Esyllt Jones is an historian of infectious disease and health care, and Professor of History at the University of Manitoba. She is the author of Influenza 1918: Disease, Death and Struggle in Winnipeg, and Radical Medicine: The International Origins of Socialized Health Care in Canada.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment