Calgary & Southern Alberta

Early Union Organisation

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Early depiction of labour conflict. In this case One Big Union battles the coal mine owners. Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection

Prior to 1900, the entire province of Alberta contained no more than four unions. Brotherhoods constituted the "aristocracy" of the labour movement; they acted as bargaining agents and mutual aid societies for their members and they established rigid jurisdictional lines and strong apprenticeship rules. In Calgary, the Knights of Labour, an industrial union, established an assembly in 1886. In 1902, however, the American Federation of Labour absorbed the organisation in Canada. Early strikes and organisation by Calgary CPR workers were ineffective. In 1901 track maintenance workers organised a national strike. Although Calgary workers were slow to organise, the strike lasted for two months, but ended in defeat. While the CPR promised to give workers back their jobs, it provided them with only partial recognition of their union – the Brotherhood of Railway Trackmen.

A number of factors influenced the CPR’s hold over its empoyees. On the one hand, the company had politicians, the police, and money on their side. On the other, CPR employees were not unified: the company employed skilled-, semi-, and un-skilled workers who sought recognition from diverse unions. The diverse numbers of railways in the province also fostered disunity with labour’s ranks. In 1902, the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees (UBRE) sought to unify all railway workers by striking along the CPR from Vancouver across Canada. The UBRE, however, posed a threat to those skilled workers who belonged to brotherhoods and unions affiliated with the conservative American Federation of Labour (AFL). The AFL, like most craft unions, opposed labour organisation along industrial lines.

The building trades in Calgary were likewise divided. Reflecting the growth of Calgary’s construction industry, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners (UBCJ) chartered Local 75 in Calgary in early 1892. The union agitated for a nine-hour workday, but dissolved within a year. Active again in 1903, labourers went on strike to protest their employers use of non-union labour. Stonemasons who belonged to their own union, however, refused to support the strike. In July, William Lyon MacKenzie King, Deputy Minister of Labour, arrived and inserted a non-discrimination clause so contractors could hire whomever they wanted.

From the beginning of the labour movement in southern Alberta it became evident that miners, who preferred industrial unions, shared little in common with urban craft unions such as the Brotherhoods. Miners first turned to the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) to represent their interests. The union came from Montana to the Galt mines in Lethbridge in 1897 and led the province’s first coal miners’ strike to oppose wage cuts. When the union came under pressure from the Canadian government and the North-West Mounted Police, they withdrew to focus on American miners.

Immigrant miners in Drumheller during the 1919
One Big Union strike.
Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection

In 1903 the more moderate United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) replaced the WFM. In 1906 Lethbridge workers threatened to strike unless the Galt mine interest recognised the UMWA. When the miners went on strike on March 9, the company fired employees affiliated with the union and hired non-union workers to replace them. By the fall of 1906 the Canadian government became involved in the dispute when it sent Mackenzie King to mediate. The workers won a wage increase and recognition of limited union rights. As a result of the conflict, King drafted the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, which forbade strikes or lock-outs in coal mines or public utilities until a board had investigated the dispute. Politically, coal miners and their unions tended to lean to the left and supported the Socialist Party of Canada. Urban unions, however, were less radical. In 1912 Donald McNabb chaired a meeting in Lethbridge which created the Alberta Federation of Labour.