Blog

Articles on labour history, workers’ rights, collective bargaining and the labour movement in Canada.

Workers gathered outside a hotel and casino venue holding informational pamphlets

Casino Workers and Collective Bargaining: How Hospitality Staff Organized

The labour movement in Canada has organised workers in almost every sector of the economy, and the gaming and hospitality industry is no exception.

Hospital corridor in Canada with provincial health care signage visible

How Labour Unions Helped Build Canada's Universal Health Care

Canada’s publicly funded health care system is often described as a defining national institution. Less often acknowledged is how much of its existence is owed…

Clock on a factory wall showing the end of a work shift

The 40-Hour Work Week: How Unions Won the Fight for Time

The forty-hour work week is so deeply embedded in Canadian working life that it can seem like a natural feature of the economy rather…

Participants marching in an outdoor Labour Day parade with union banners

Labour Day in Canada: Why We Observe It and How It Began

Labour Day in Canada falls on the first Monday of September, a date that the country shares with the United States but arrives at through a distinct history.

Young workers at a community meeting raising their hands to vote

Young Workers and Union Membership in Ontario

For many years, union membership among workers under 35 was assumed to be in permanent decline. Young people, the narrative went, were individualistic, distrustful of institutions…

Women workers standing together outside a factory in mid-twentieth-century Canada

Women and the Labour Movement in Canada

Women have shaped Canada’s labour movement from its earliest years — not as a recent addition to a story originally told about men, but as organisers, strikers and leaders…

Construction workers in hard hats reviewing safety documents on a job site

Workplace Health and Safety Rights in Ontario

Every worker in Ontario has the right to a safe workplace. That right is not simply aspirational — it is backed by legislation, inspection powers…

Two people shaking hands across a negotiating table with documents in front of them

Collective Bargaining in Canada: How It Works and Why It Matters

Collective bargaining is the process through which a group of workers, represented by a union, negotiates with their employer over wages, benefits, working conditions and other terms of employment.

Workers holding signs at a minimum wage rally in Ontario

Ontario's Minimum Wage: A History of the Fight for Fair Pay

Ontario’s minimum wage has been one of the most contested pieces of labour policy in the province’s history. Each increase has been fought for by workers, unions…

Black and white photograph of early Canadian factory workers standing in rows

How the Canadian Labour Movement Was Built

Canada’s labour movement did not emerge fully formed. It was constructed over more than a century through strikes, legislation, defeats and hard-won victories by workers…