Immigrants, Communists, and Solidarity Unionism in Niagara, c.1930-1960

Focusing on the Niagara region, this study explains the continued adherence of thousands of Canadian workers to communist-led unions during the Cold War era.It argues that co-operation between communist-led unions and communist-led ethnic clubs and other political and social activists in the pursuit of human rights, social justice, and environmental goals explains why thousands of workers continued to adhere to such unions despite intense redbaiting in the 1940s and 1950s.Reaching out to allies beyond the workplace in solidarity unionism was especially important because of the marginalization of communist-led unions within the Canadian labour movement.The study's findings reinforce the view that local economic and political conditions played a significant role in shaping communist-led unions in Canada.The study also highlights the contribution of interethnic collaboration among immigrant workers to the development of the Canadian labour movement.Immigrants, Communists, and Solidarity Unionism in Niagara, c.1930-1960 Carmela Patrias C. S. Jackson, head of the Canadian division of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union (ue), visited Welland, Ontario, during an organizing drive in 1942.Thirty-eight years later he recalled, There were so many people outside the building I had to fight my way into the hall.When I got to the front of the hall I could see there was no point wasting time.I gave a five-minute speech and started handing out the membership cards.The demands for the cards were coming from outside as well as inside the hall.Cards were going across this way and coming back with two dollars attached to them.We had $50 in the treasury of the union at the time and I took about 700 or 800 dollars out of there that night because it was $2 initiation. 1 Welland became one of the ue's success stories."In many ways," writes Jackson's biographer Doug Smith, "the ue became the union in that community.By 1960, the union had contracts covering 13 local industries and ue members and their families accounted for 10,000 of the 33,000 people who lived in the community."2 Although Welland and its industrial suburb, Crowland, formed the ue's nucleus in Niagara, the communist-led union's influence extended to other communities on the peninsula.It represented the workers of American Cyanamid, the largest employer in Niagara Falls, as well as those of Yale and Towne in St. Catharines.These Niagara workers remained loyal to the ue at the height of the Cold War.Two other communist-led unions, the United Textile Workers of America (utwa, later the Canadian Textile Council, or ctc) and 1. C. S. Jackson, interview by James Turk, 29 November 1980, cited in Doug Smith, Cold Warrior: C. S. Jackson and the United Electrical Workers (St.John's: Canadian Committee for Labour History, 1997), 118.2. Smith, Cold Warrior, 119-120.See also Peter Hunter, Which Side Are You On Boys: Canadian Life on the Left (Toronto: Lugus, 1988).

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