I recently went to the Indigenous Graduate Student Symposium at UBC Okanagan. I had a great experience there. I particularly appreciated how the conference highlighted the voices of scholars who are Indigenous to the place where the conference was taking place. I have so much appreciation for the contribution of Syilx scholars to academia.
I also went to Quebec City for a little bit. Among other things, I visited Musée huron-wendat. Highly recommend.
Now that my PhD is over, I am just reading whatever I want with no real direction. It's total chaos. I have several books on the go right now including Rueben George's book and a book on resurgence and reconciliation. I also read a book on anarchy which tries to say that certain Indigenous scholars are anarchists... and I have a little Venn diagram in my head which I might try to put on "paper" at some point. I'm also reading the Ontario Human Rights Commission's Dreams Delayed: Addressing Systemic Anti-Black Racism and Discrimination in Ontario’s Public Education System, although, it is taking a long time because it's online and I have a hard time reading online. I prefer books. I've skimmed most of it and I think that it's relevance extends beyond Ontario.
Anyhow, today's book, Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour, is an older book. It was published in 2007 by University of Toronto Press. It is a collection of essays with an introduction by the editors followed by eight chapters written by a number of scholars and an afterword.
There are not a lot of books out there which focus on equity and diversity specifically in the Canadian labour movement. I think probably in part because the people who are most committed to this topic are union members doing the work of equity and diversity within their union and through their union. And also because compared to say, Socrates, this topic is relatively new in the academy.
I found this book interesting on a number of levels. It definitely highlights the complex dynamics between legislation, society, and unions. I found the discussion on federal pay equity legislation interesting (Haiven, 2007, p.79). I liked the way that the book looked at collective bargaining gains, and also highlighted that not all gains are in the collective agreement (Hunt, 2007, p.22), as in some cases unions are directly involved in shaping legislation to promote workers' rights, such as when unions in Ontario helped with the drafting of their employment equity legislation (Das Gupta, 2007, p.192).
The chapter that I really focused on was the chapter on racism. The chapter starts by looking at the ways that there was significant racism in the union movement in early Canadian history, specifically from the 1880s-1920s (Das Gupta, 2007, p. 183-185). In spite of this, Asian and Black workers organized their own unions (Das Gupta, 2007, p.184). During this period, some radical leftists unions rejected racism and exclusion and supported diverse workers who wanted to organize, and in these radical left unions, white workers acted in solidarity with non-white workers (Das Gupta, 2007, p. 185). Then the focus of the chapter shifts to the 1930s. According to the author "racism in the labour movement began to be less overt in the 1920s" and in the 1930s unions started to organize more broadly and the labour movement generally became more progressive. However, some groups, such as Jewish women in the clothing industry, continued to be excluded. The author describes the 1950s and 1960s a the human rights decades, in which "the labour movement can be characterized as non-racist." (Das Gupta, 2007, p. 187). The authors note that workers inside of the labour movement were activists within the labour movement, and as an example, points out the Jewish Labour Committee who were active inside of the Canadian Labour Congress, and that "a new awareness of human rights arose because of the racism, anti-Semitism, and genocide of Hitler's regime, as well as the suspension of civil rights within Canada, particularly in the case of Japanese Canadians who were interned in labour camps as 'enemy aliens.'" (Das Gupta, 2007, p. 187). The author describes the 1970s as "The Feminism Challenge" in which feminism was challenged to address the needs of women of colour and immigrant women (Das Gupta, 2007, p. 188). The author doesn't use the term intersectional, but people familiar with the term would likely understand the author's approach as consistent with an intersectional analysis. The author notes that there were a variety of ways that the labour movement responded to this challenge, including the development of "Combating Racism in the Workplace: A Course for Workers" which was regularly offered through the Humber College Labour Studies Centre (Das Gupta, 2007, p. 189).
Sidebar - I looked up the Humber College Labour Studies Centre. If it's still a thing, its online presence is buried. I found this poster on their archive page:
According to the poster, there was a three credit university course that students could take, which was taught by trade unionists at various union halls. Is that a thing that still exists? If so, sign me up. I also noticed that one of their course outlines is at library archives Canada, but sadly not available electronically. The chapter also mentioned and organization called Cross Cultural Communication Centre as integral to worker education. Similarly, it's difficult to find information on them now, but small pieces of their work endure, such as publications available through this archive site (login required, account is free). Having completed that side quest, let's return to the text.
The author describes 1981 to today (today being 2007) as "Towards Anti-racism" (Das Gupta, 2007, p. 190). And within this section the author touches on specific work occurring during this period of time, including the participation of unions in the drafting of Ontario's Employment Equity Act (Das Gupta, 2007, p. 192).
Having done a significant review of Canadian history, the author then goes on to identify work that still needs to be done, and various themes including self-organizing (p. 194), policy development and education of members (p. 196), representation in leadership (p. 198), barriers to leadership positions (p. 201), tokenism and lack of support (p. 202), harassment of women of colour (p. 203), employment equity (p. 203), and issues particular to organizing Aboriginal workers (p. 205). Overall, I found the chapter an interesting overview. I might see if I can find more work by Tania Das Gupta.
As a whole, I think it would be interesting to read an updated version of this book. However, if I were to re-imagine a revised version, I think it would be interesting to see something done using participatory action research or to see some pieces written by or in collaboration with workers' collectives.
Das Gupta, T. (2007). Racism and the Canadian labour movement. G. Hunt & D. Rayside (Eds.), Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour (pp.181-207). Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press.
Haiven, J. (2007). Union response to pay equity: A cautionary tale. In G. Hunt & D. Rayside (Eds.), Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour (pp. 75-100). Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press.
Hunt, G. (2007). Introduction. In G. Hunt & D. Rayside (Eds.), Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour (pp.3-24). Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press.
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