page_title: Trades and Labor Congress of Canada
section_title: 1930–1956
hierarchical_section_title: Trades and Labor Congress of Canada / History / 1930–1956
caption_attribution_description: English: 35th Annual Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (probably in Hamilton) Trivia: Photos like this were taken by making a slow pan of the scene. This process would allow someone at the far side of the photo to run around the back and be taken twice. This happens here with the man in the hat, at each extreme end of the picture.
context_page_description: The Trades and Labor Congress of Canada was a Canada-wide central federation of trade unions from 1886 to 1956. It was founded at the initiative of the Toronto Trades and Labour Council and the Knights of Labor. It was the third attempt at a national labour federation to be formed in Canada: it succeeded the Canadian Labour Union which existed from 1873 to 1877 and the Canadian Labour Congress which held only one conference in 1881.
  The first meeting was called by the Toronto Trades Council and the Knights of Labor. It attracted mainly Toronto unionists with no one attending from outside of Ontario. It adopted policies which denounced government supported immigration, the Salvation Army for its alleged efforts to bring London’s poor to Canada; it opposed any Asian immigration, called for female factory inspectors to protect women workers, a single tax system, government only issued currency, the end of child labour, and the use of convict labour.
context_section_description: The leadership of Canadian labour was challenged at the start of the Great Depression with the establishment of the Workers' Unity League (1929–1936).  In 1935 unions that wanted to organize unskilled workers in the new mass industries of automobile, steel and rubber broke with the AFL and formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).  The latter's strategy of industrial unionism was a direct challenge to the  TLC (and AFL's) craft unionism.
  Interest in the CIO was sparked in Canada when in 1937 more than 4,000 workers at General Motors in Oshawa joined the United Automobile Workers, a CIO union, and fought a strike for union recognition.  In 1939, CIO supporters were expelled from the TLC and joined with the national All-Canadian Congress of Labour to form the rival Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL) in 1940.  The TLC continued to be the voice of skilled trades workers in the country.
  Just as the Cold War and the rise of anti-Communism led to the purge of leftists from the union CIO in the United States and the creation of the AFL-CIO 
  in 1955, the same phenomenon in Canada led to the merger of the TLC and the CCL in 1956 to create the modern Canadian Labour Congress.
caption: Thirty-fifth annual meeting of the Trades and Labour Congress, Hamilton, 1919.
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