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The Local Labour Council Throughout The Years

Tommy Tooms, a labour representative, was elected to represent West Peterborough in the Ontario Legislature in the United Farmers of Ontario Government of Mr. E. C. Drury.

This government, made up of 43 farmers and 11 labour representatives, provided a great deal of the basic social legislation that is on the statute books today.

Mr. Murray resigned later in the year because of ill health to return to Scotland. He later came back to Peterborough and was active in labour affairs.

In 1920 civic elections were not too successful for organized labour as none of the four labour nominees were seated. Organized labour, however, was represented by Mr. Harry Gainey, Robert Morrison and Joseph Crowe. Robert Garside, who had been elected previously for one year as a labour candidate and then dropped from the state, was also elected.

The following year Mayor McIntyre was elected without opposition. A slate put forward by a group known as the citizens committee were elected. These gentlemen were elected: Joseph Crowe, Harry Gainey, Robert Morrison, J. J. Turner and James Hamilton. It is to be noted that there were names that had been espoused by the labour movement on the citizens committee slate. Organized labour again proposed a slate of candidates but only Mr. Gainey, the perennial labour candidate, was elected. Mr. Morrison had been dropped from the labour slate.

The years following World War 1 had been hard years for organized labour just as they were for many Canadians. The war to save the world may have done so momentarily but it was a very different kind of world, not the same kind of contented, satisfied-with-your-lot kind of world that generations of Canadians had grown up in. The world had started on the toboggan slide that was the twentieth century. People, labour-management relationships, family relationships or community relationships would never be the same again.

This was the period that generated the Winnipeg General Strike and other exhibitions of public and ordinary people dissatisfaction with the status quo.

However, be that as it may, organized labour in Peterborough was still just awakening. Government, under public pressure, was being forced to take a look at hours of work, at minimum standards of wages, safety provisions and other matters affecting the worker in the work place.

The awakening of the worker to his rights and the dignity of his calling as a producer eventually ebbed into Peterborough.

In the Auburn Woollen Mill, wages for skilled workers were as low as $12.50 a week - $18.00 a week was about tops. It must be noted that these wages were for fifty and sixty-hour weeks.

There had been considerable dissatisfaction at the Dominion Woollens and Worsteds Auburn Woollen Mills plants for some time, also at the Bonner-Worth Mills owned by the same company.

The employees of the Auburn Woollen Mills went out on strike for a wage increase of 25% on June 29th, 1937. A representative of U.T.W.A.- C.I.0. came to town to assist them and signed them up the next day.

Women workers early displayed their desire to be a part of the trade union picture in Peterborough. Three hundred employees (mostly women) of the Bonner-Worth plant of Dominion Woollens, now the site of the Daniel Campus of Sir Sandford Fleming College, went out on strike in sympathy with their fellow Dominion Woollen and Worsted employees at the Auburn plant. There was a skirmish with local police under Inspector Reid that day.

It is significant that there does not seem to have been an active militant Labour Council in Peterborough at that time.

Peterborough was a centre of labour activity at last. The General Motors plant had just been organized. One of the speakers at the many labour rallies that were held was Charlie Millard, later to become the Canadian Director of the United Steelworkers Union and later again the General Secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Mass meetings were held either in the old Market Square soon to be the "Peterborough Centre" or Nicholls Oval. Alderman Fred Tuggey organized a Strike Relief Fund. Later this park was to see a more peaceful labour use. For quite a number of years the Peterborough Labour Day festivities were held here.

Negotiations opened a little more than two weeks after the strike started. The Company would not negotiate with Union Staff Representatives present; they finally withdrew. The Company made no offer on wages, some concessions on hours and conditions. The Union voted to stay out and the Company threatened that they would close the plant. No idle threat because they later did.

The Department of Labour for Ontario was asked to intervene in the strike by the Mayor. The Chief Conciliator for the Department of Labour, Louis Fine, was appointed.

An indication of public and political labour management attitudes is the fact that Mr. Fine also would not meet with the Union Representatives but did meet with a Committee of the Strikers and Mr. Harry Barrett, General Manager of Dominion Woollens and Worsteds.

The only thing that the Company would agree to with respect to the negotiations was a guarantee of a minimum wage of 32 cents an hour. It should be noted that this was something of an improvement because wages ranged as low as 22-1/2 cents an hour prior to the strike. The negotiations terminated.

Police escorted 20 non-strikers into the plant and they were well equipped with tear gas and night sticks. The result was violence.

The Provincial Police came into the picture on August 9th when the Company announced they would open the plant.

A riot took place. The mayor attempted to read a letter that he had received from the Premier of the Province, Mitchell Hepburn, promising an investigation of working conditions and minimum wage legislation.