Labour laws and protections
A not-so-illustrious history results in one question: how far have we come?
BY Lynn Cunningham
Photography by Lewis Hine/No Sweat
1872
As part of a widespread ninehour- workday movement, printers strike Toronto papers. To almost everyone’s surprise, it turns out that union activities are illegal, and union leaders are jailed for sedition. The Tory government quickly passes new laws, the printers are freed and the shorter workday instituted. Almost a century later, another strike by Toronto printers doesn’t go so well. In 1964 they go out to protest increasing automation. When they vote to return to work the following year, they are locked out. Their picket lines finally come down in 1972, long after their jobs have rolled off the presses.
1912
Saskatchewan passes An Act to Prevent the Employment of Female Labour in Certain Capacities. Were the MLAs thinking of banning women from dangerous mill work? No, the act forbids women from working in a “restaurant, laundry or other place of business or amusement owned, kept or managed by any Chinaman.” The law is upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, and a slightly revised version remains on the books until 1969.
1923
Free public schools are the norm and compulsory attendance is the law for children in most provinces until they are 12 to 14, depending on where they live. There’s some correlation between school-leaving age and restrictions on the age of minor miners. Nova Scotia, for instance, allows 12-years-olds to both leave school and work underground.
1935
In an attempt to offset the devastating effects of the Depression, Prime Minister R.B. Bennett proposes a New Deal that legislates such things as maximum work-week laws and unemployment insurance. Too late: Bennett is thrown out of work himself and most of his laws are successfully challenged.
1982
The Workmen’s Compensation Board, established by the Ontario government in 1914, is finally changed to the Workers’ Compensation Board in 1982. By this time, women make up 41 percent of the workforce.
1999
Minimum wages across the country range from $5.50 (New Brunswick, Newfoundland) to $7.15 (B.C.), usually with lower rates for those under 18 (but not, as was in the case in the 1920s, for “defectives”). While poverty advocates and social reformers link low incomes to “food banks, homelessness [and] loan sharks,” the Fraser Institute’s Marc Law produces “Minimum Wage Equals Minimum Opportunity”— doubtless for an hourly rate slightly higher than the cost of a latte.
2000
Naomi Klein’s No Logo is published, detailing all manner of social ills, including the widespread manufacture of many of the West’s fave consumer goods in third-world sweatshop conditions reminiscent of those in the early 20th century.
2007
The New York Times reports on the early 21st-century sweatshops: nail salons. Fierce competition among shops means lowball rates, and hence crummy tips. Workers are forced to work 60-hour weeks without overtime pay or lunch breaks, and suffer from skin and breathing problems from the polishes and other beauty products they use.
