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Labour Day and Unitarianism
Rev. Brian J. Kiely, Unitarian Church of Edmonton,
September 2, 2007
On August 8th we marked the 20th anniversary of my father’s death. He is probably the most admired figure in my personal pantheon. Jim Kiely left the Roman Catholic seminary during the Depression to start working in his father’s Montreal machine shop. By 1965 he had bought out his sisters and brother and was managing the 30-person firm on his own.
When I was a teen a couple of the younger mechanics were approached by union organizers — ours had always been a non-union shop. They were persuaded to start a membership drive. While Dad worried about how it might change his business, he did nothing, said nothing, tried to persuade no one. That was a legal requirement, yes, but it was also his way. This would be the men’s decision. Within a few weeks the machinists and mechanics had turned down the union flat. Years later, at Dad’s funeral, one of the most senior mechanics told me why. “Jim always treated us fairly. We had interesting work that changed all the time. We weren’t stuck making the same piece over and over again like in some union shops. He always gave the men second and third chances when they messed up and was always willing to help out someone in trouble. We might have made a little more money in a union, but then we would have had to pay union dues. We could talk to him anytime and he would listen. We didn’t need a union to do that for us.”
Having worked in the shop for a number of summers, I knew what Joe meant. Jim’s sons never got special treatment...unless it was getting first crack at the dirtiest jobs. It was a place where the men (and the one female secretary) were respected as human beings first with lives and families and other concerns, and thought of as labour only a distant second.
I suppose you could say that I learned all about our first Unitarian principle, “Respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person” working in a Catholic man’s machine shop, long before I ever heard of Unitarianism. I guess that’s where I also saw the second Principle of “Justice, equity and compassion in human relations” played out on a daily basis.
Many years later, I worked in another enterprise where management didn’t listen or explain, where the staff didn’t feel included or respected. It was an even smaller shop than my Dad’s. I was a small part of the team that negotiated the first union agreement for my frustrated workmates.
It seems to me that a lot of labour strife could be avoided by paying attention to those first two Principles of ours. Most people only want to feel respected for who they are and the work they do. They want to care for the people they work for and with and feel cared for in return. We all want to matter.
Tomorrow is Labour Day, one of Canada’s oldest public holidays dating to 1894 but with roots in the first ‘workingman’s parades’ in the 1870’s. Those were times when workers were uniting and struggling not for fringe benefits and retirement packages, but for basic human rights and dignity. The first decades of Labour Day were marked by enormous parades and demonstrations in every town and city where trade unions existed. Laws favoured employers much more than they do today. Job security was a term that did not exist. Most workers had no pensions, poor salaries, no support if they got hurt, no safety standards and no recourse to unfair treatment. The Mohawks who worked high steel used to say, “They only hire us from the neck down,” meaning employers saw them only as bodies, as workhorses. There was no “inherent worth and dignity”.
The labour movement was born when the first workers said, “We matter!”.
While there are still unfair workplaces and contentious issues between labour and management, the climate for Canadian workers is immeasurably better than it was a century and half ago. Perhaps because of that Labour Day has lost some of the cachet. These days it’s better known as the last holiday of summer and the start of the school year. Yes, there are still rallies and picnics sponsored by organized labour, but they lack the intensity of years gone by.
150 years ago, it was different. Life in the working class was one of unending labour. The only respite came because the Bible demanded that the seventh day be for God. To the industrial world that meant the other six were for work with 10 hours days the standard, 12 hour days not uncommon. Indeed it was a world best described by the adjective `Dickensian`, and let us remember that Charles Dickens was a frequent attendee at Unitarian chapel services.
When the labour movement was first finding its feet in Canada, we had major congregations only in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto. It might seem that labour justice would be an obvious issue for these new religious liberals, but it wasn’t at first.
19th century Unitarians in Montreal at least were among the economic elite, not the working class. But they were noncomformists. For example Unitarians, including the economist Francis Hincks were free traders at a time when high tarrifs were the popular national policy. Amazing how things change in 150 years eh? And while many owned factories, including Molson’s Brewery, a solid number of them advocated for a shortened work week. That was labour`s cause celebre in the 1830’s...the wild notion of only a 6 day 54 hour work week. It would take 50 more years before that became law.
Rev. John Cordner the first minister of our Montreal church, was well ahead of the national mood in the 1840`s when he preached, “The giant Accumulation, mounted on the back of humanity, rides it close to death... a man ceases to be a man when he becomes a mere labour-machine... Men want freedom and leisure from constant pressing labour, that their souls may grow a fitting growth. It is part of the wisdom of the Roman Catholic church that it has decreed holy-day after holy-day throughout the years as some relief from the pressures of labour. When the world gets wiser, it will take more leisure and more recreation.”
According to historian Phillip Hewett however, labour justice did not drive the early Unitarianism in Canada.
By the beginning of the 20th century, things were changing. More and more liberal Christians, including Methodists and some Presbyterians were preaching the “New Theology” derived from the Social Gospel. At its core it reminded listeners that Jesus had come from the poor classes. The rich were not wealthy by God’s grace as Calvinism suggested, but because of the exploitation of the people’s labour. Unitarian ministers in Ottawa and Toronto were now standing up against corporatism. Wrote Toronto’s Jabez T. Sunderland, “It (the corporation) allies itself with the liquor, gambling and other bad influences of society; it shirks taxes; it buys votes of men with money; it bribes legislature; it defies laws; it steals the people’s streets; it gains by fraud valuable franchises which belong to the people; it monoploises (sic) the source and means of public subsistence.”
Well, I’m glad that doesn’t happen anymore!
Not surprisingly, such attacks on the corporations were accompanied by praise for the labour movement. Rev. C.W. Casson in Ottawa proclaimed that there was more real religion in the average trade union hall than in the average church. He meant the faith in the cause coupled with the mutual concern of members for one another.
Perhaps the turning point came in the Spring of 1919. For more than six tense weeks, the residents of Winnipeg witnessed an unprecedented display of labour solidarity when local union and non-union workers from the private and public sectors paralyzed their city in a general strike. World War I had created a huge industrial boom and huge inflation. The end of the war meant a drop in demand for products and a great influx of returning soldiers looking for work. Meanwhile, already employed workers demanded wage hikes to keep pace with inflation. The result, in Winnipeg was a general strike. Banks, mail and food delivery, newspapers, telephones, taxis, water, power and even police and fire services were either cut off or drastically reduced. The strike was sparked by a dispute between metal workers and their bosses; it quickly spread throughout the city’s working class, fanned by deeper discontents. In the face of the strike laws were passed and thugs were hired to break the strikers. There were bloody confrontations and riots in the streets.
Today, the Winnipeg General Strike is considered a turning point for organized labour. The strikers won few concessions, but a movement was born that would shape the Canadian landscape. A few months after the strike’s end, the minister of the Winnipeg Church, Horace Westwood thundered, “Jesus himself came from a long line of social prophets...His message was a gospel to the poor! It was an invective against the rich!... He was put to death because of his revolutionary utterances.
“Since the aims of true religion and labor are one...why should not the masses make their church their own? Why not by sheer weight of numbers make it the great sword in your hands?... Religion is the greatest ally the workers possess, and since the church is the handmaid of religion, it may be made BY THE WORKERS the greatest weapon for democracy.”
Another figure who emerged from the Winnipeg strike was a former Methodist minister turned labour advocate J.S. Woodsworth, who later founded the CCF, forerunner to the NDP. Woodsworth spoke at some of the strike rallies and later was arrested for `seditious libel` for articles he published in a labour newspaper. Woodsworth never became a Unitarian, but his children did. He was often a guest in Unitarian pulpits and would work closely with Dorothy Keeler`s mother in early CCF efforts. In 1921 Labour Party candidate Woodsworth was elected to Parliament alongside his one colleague, Rev. William Irvine, the former minister of the Unitarian Church of Calgary. Together they would put the idea of unemployment insurance before the government, although it would not become law for nearly two more decades. In 1925, the Liberal government avoided defeat in the House by adopting Woodsworth`s goal of an Old Age Pension and gaining his much needed vote. This pension was the first step in building Canada`s social security system.
Most of us know that with the influence of the CCF and later the NDP, Canada would become a nation with one of the best social safety nets in the world and an enviable country to live in. And Unitarians have worked hard to ensure the building and preservation of that net. But in the 21st century the issues may have changed. First World corporations are exploiting Third World labour in the Dickensian conditions reminiscent of our nation 150 years ago. It may be that globalization is the new labour issue of today, not just for jobs lost in Canada, but for lives abused in other lands. It still comes down to a matter of respecting individual worth and believing in justice, equity and compassion.
Many in this congregation have been involved with labour for decades including a number in leadership roles like Bill Danyk, Bernie Keeler and Julius Buski. And many more have given themselves to justice and human rights movements locally and around the world. Speaking out for what we believe is a core aspect of our Unitarian faith. Our first two Principles affirming the inherent worth and dignity of everyone and pursuing justice, equity and compassion guide us and call us to keep up our awareness and concern. We have to keep speaking our views, even if nothing seems to happen. Remember, John Cordner preached a shorter work week 50 years before it came to pass. Some societal changes take generations, but they won’t happen if people don’t raise the issues.
And since labour issues are now a global matter, those of us who have gone beyond the concerns of the hourly wage could choose to be more aware of how our investment dollars are being spent. We have the option of asking where and under what conditions our food is produced, where our clothes are made, and making at least some choices that support fair trade and fair work environments.
As investors we are each business owners, and that gives us a responsibility to at least try to have some influence. 150 years ago, a few people dared to speak out for better working conditions in Canada. In time, they built a mighty movement that shifted the mindset of a nation. 30 years ago, few were concerned about environmental impacts of industry, but slowly those few convinced more and more people until again, you can see the mindset shifting. So will it be with offshore working conditions. Every little thing we choose to do can have a positive effect.
The blessing my father had was that he owned a small company where it was possible to know his employees and care for them as individuals. He lived his values in a one on one workplace. We need to find ways to apply our Principles in the places we work and in the far away workplaces we finance where we will never know the lives we touch. But those lives still matter, and we still have a first world obligation to share our abundance in constructive ways. The Labour movement today is as much in every one of us as it is in any union hall.
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