Resuscitating the Working Class

When it comes to inspiring Canadian trade unionists, the 1930s stand apart. Few narratives match the era’s dramatic sit-down strikes, the on-to-Ottawa trek and the triumph of modern unionism. Moreover, the 1930s are not just an inspirational marker. It was then that capitalism last faced a degree of economic uncertainty comparable to the present and it was also at the beginning of that decade that labour last experienced an identity crisis akin to what unions now face. (A third parallel is the extent of class inequality; measured by various indices, the end of the 1920s was the last time inequality was as grotesque as today.)

Might we hope for a current replay of the 1930s regeneration of the labour movement? If ways could be found then to surmount fear and unionize in the face of 25 percent unemployment and in the absence of the slightest legal protections, and if workers could build solidarity when they were so divided by ethnicity and language and confronted a...