"Canada’s newly trade-driven economy will be intricately tied up with and dependent on the U.S. economy, far beyond what it is today. The potential for U.S. economic retaliation against independent Canadian policy on peace and arms reduction will render such independence virtually suicidal. We will be, in effect, the 51st U.S. state." - Nurses for Social Responsibility, February 1988 [1]
This warning, which Nurses for Social Responsibility published in their newsletter almost forty years ago, may sound eerily familiar to anyone following the current breakdown of Canada’s economic relationship with the United States. Since his inauguration in January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump has levied tariffs against Canadian industry and threatened the country with economic annexation, referring to the border as an “artificially drawn line” and repeatedly describing Canada as “the 51st state.” [2] The President's largely unprecedented (and unpredictable) foreign policy has drawn renewed public attention to Canada’s economic over-reliance on the United States.
In their 1988 article “Free Trade: Its Effects Upon Women, the HealthCare System, and the Arms Industry,” Nurses for Social Responsibility claimed that the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) would lead to “grave consequences for Canadian economy, culture, and sovereignty," and that "the Mulroney government will accelerate the polarization between the rich and the poor and erode most, if not all, of the social gains won in the past century.” [1]
Such statements feel incredibly prescient today, given that in Fall 2024 Statistics Canada reported the highest level of income inequality in recorded history, as the gap between the richest and poorest Canadians continues to widen at an alarming rate. [3] Furthermore, Nurses for Social Responsibility argued that “[Free trade] will have a particularly insidious effect upon women as a class, our health care system (as well as other social programs), and our ability to influence the arms race” due to Canada’s economic dependence on our neighbours to the south. [1]
Right: Back Cover of Nurses for Social Responsibility Newsletter, vol. 3, no. 1 (February 1988) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F2235.
Nurses for Social Responsibility were one among many diverse women’s organizations sounding the alarm on Canada's participation in free trade agreements throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. These agreements included the FTA signed between U.S. and Canadian governments in 1988; the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico in 1993; and various agreements facilitated by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), an inter-governmental forum established in 1989 to promote free trade throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Free trade faced opposition not only from mass-based national organizations such as The National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), but also from anti-imperialist activists, immigrant women’s groups, coalitions for peace and disarmament, Indigenous rights organizations, churches, and trade unions.
Many of these groups deployed research and analyses by feminist economist Marjorie Griffin Cohen, who argued that free trade could decimate industries predominantly staffed by women; create a downward pressure on wages and working conditions; undermine collective bargaining power; encourage the privatization of social programs; and gradually erode Canada’s socially democratic policies in favour of free market capitalism and neo-liberalism. In a recent article about Trump’s tariffs and the deepening global economic crisis, former NAC president Judy Rebick recalls how various Canadian organizations “united across serious differences to jointly oppose free trade,” and managed “to build a coalition against free trade at the same time as we were fighting each other in the streets over abortion” and other controversial issues. [4]
Left: Brian Mulroney Cartoon by AISLIN, originally appeared in the Montreal Gazette. The Action Canada Network, "Whats the Big Deal? Some straightforward questions and answers on free trade" (1988) Lynn Kaye fonds, 10-204-S6-F14.
The following exhibit applies a feminist lens to international trade by examining diverse records in the University of Ottawa’s Women’s Archives. How and why did opposition to free trade, a seemingly esoteric economic issue, manage to unify Canadians across vast demographic and ideological differences? How did women understand trade liberalization as an issue of gender equality? And how can one assess whether feminists were ultimately correct about the extensive negative impact of free trade?
To answer these questions, it is helpful to understand feminist analyses of women’s oppression under capitalism. While there were certainly pro-free trade women and feminist groups in Canada at this time, opposition to trade liberalization came from feminists who were deeply concerned about multinational corporations’ exploitation of women’s labour in North America and throughout the Global South. As such, special attention must be paid to immigrant women’s analyses of labour and international trade, as well as their vehement opposition to corporate imperialism.
Right: Johanne Pelletier, photographer. Participants carrying a "International Ladies' Garment Union" banner during the 1987 Toronto International Women's Day (IWD) demonstration (7 March 1987) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S3-I327
There is a deep, long-standing connection between opposition to free trade and anti-imperialist feminism. Anti-imperialist feminists often come from international solidarity movements, Marxist groups, or racialized feminist collectives, and became the first political organizations to link gender, class, race, and national oppression to global economic policies such as trade liberalization. The 1960s to 1990s were marked by the rapid expansion of industrial capitalism, followed by neoliberal capitalism facilitated through bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements on a global scale. According to anti-imperialist feminists and more recent anti-consumerist movements, free trade facilitators and regulatory bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) perpetuate an earlier colonial logic by exploiting women’s labour; appropriating countries’ natural resources; imposing financial conditions that demand cuts to essential public services; and ultimately destroying local economies.
In Canada, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s turn toward deregulation and trade liberalization in the 1980s corresponded with the emergence of a union-based feminism critical of neo-liberalism and its accompanying labour practices, including subcontracting, offshoring, and precarious work. In this context, many feminists understood free trade as an obstacle to the long-standing goal of women’s equality in the paid labour force, and a threat to hard-won public services that predominantly served women and children.
The following exhibit begins by exploring how feminists interpreted the sexual division of labour and accounted for women’s contribution to the global economy beginning in the early 1970s, including both waged and unwaged forms of “women’s work.” The second section examines women’s participation in union organizing, strike action, and other forms of working-class struggle in Canada, underscoring women as significant stakeholders in the restructuring of global economies which took place throughout the second half of the twentieth century.
Left: Photograph, Women marching in the street during the 1978 Toronto International Women's Day (IWD) rally (March 1978) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S3-I206
Following this historical context, the final sections analyze Canadian feminist opposition to free trade agreements including the FTA, NAFTA, and APEC, and their ideological overlap with immigrant women’s objections to corporate imperialism. These concluding sections examine present-day effects of free trade in relation to the stated political goals of feminist activism. Today, the fabled women’s suffrage and labour union slogan “Bread and Roses, Jobs and Justice” powerfully articulates the goal of feminist economics, at a time when multinational corporations continue to profit exponentially on the backs of the working class.
Class Struggle and the Women's Movement
“We need to consider seriously…that the structure of the system cannot tolerate genuine equality. We need to recognize that the economy as it exists now is basically incompatible with the notion of equality for women. Discrimination is not merely a matter of prejudice – an irrational practice left over from earlier economic conditions. Discrimination is profitable and the dominant interests in our society have a lot to lose by women’s liberation.” - Marjorie Griffin Cohen, “Economic Barriers to Liberation,” March 1980 [5]
On October 24th, 1975, Icelandic society ground to an astonishing halt. Schools were closed. Telephone services ceased to operate. Newspapers stopped printing. Herring factories shut down. Airline flights were cancelled. Children joined their fathers at work. Bank executives were forced to work as tellers. And massive traffic jams formed in Iceland’s normally easy-going national capital, Reykjavik, as twenty-five thousand women flooded city streets. Across the country, it has been estimated that ninety percent of Icelandic women participated in this unprecedented event which later became renowned as the Icelandic women’s general strike of 1975.
Promoted as a “Women’s Day Off,” Icelandic feminist organizations encouraged women across the country to cease all forms of paid and unpaid labour for the day. Their goal was to demonstrate women’s crucial contribution to Icelandic economic and social life. The Icelandic women’s general strike of 1975 not only protested discriminatory employment practices and wage discrepancies between women and men but also demonstrated the extent of unpaid and unrecognized labour that women performed in their homes. [6]
Photograph of Reykjavik during the Icelandic women's general strike, from Magazine of the International Wages for Housework Campaign, no. 5 (1975) Toronto Wages for Housework Committee fonds, 10-008-S6-F7
The “Women’s Day Off” was national in scope and lasted only one day before women returned to their jobs. However, the strike drew significant attention to the economic impact of women’s labour and galvanized international feminist campaigns, including The International Feminist Collective for the Campaign for Wages for Housework. Following the Icelandic women’s general strike, the Collective distributed a press release which stated that “we women spend most of our time working in the home and it is all work that we are not paid for. As the strike of women in Iceland demonstrated, without our work nobody could go out to work. Factories, offices, schools, hospitals, telephones… they would all be shut down, and the economy would come to a halt.” [7] The International Campaign for Wages for Housework thus argued that women should receive compensation from the government for work performed in the home.
The Campaign for Wages for Housework, which developed a presence in Canada through Judith Ramirez and the Toronto Wages for Housework Committee, emphasized the economic value of paid and unpaid domestic labour to advance their political critique of inequality based on race, class, and gender. Formed in 1972 by the Italian activist Mariarosa Dalla Costa, New York philosopher Silvia Federici, and Marxist factory worker Selma James, the campaign soon attracted U.S. activists Wilmette Brown and Margaret Prescod, who argued that American economic prosperity relied specifically on Black women’s unwaged and low paid labour.
Shortly thereafter, Prescod would form the autonomous Black Women for Wages for Housework, which focused on reparations for the exploitation of Black women’s labour under slavery and colonialism.
Left: Flyer, New York Wages for Housework Committee (c. 1970s) Toronto Wages for Housework Committee fonds, 10-008-S5-F1
Ultimately, Wages for Housework advanced a fundamental critique of the capitalist system and its exploitation of women’s domestic labour. According to Wages for Housework, “the fact that we are not paid for the work we do in the home is our common exploitation and the ground of our weakness in every situation.” [7] They expressed their demands in the following terms:
"We demand Wages for Housework for ALL women from the government. We want to be paid for the work we do. Once we have money of our own we will decide whether or not we want to take a second job, instead of being used as a pool of cheap labour to be forced in and out of a second job as the economy needs it; whether or not we want to have children, instead of being forced to procreate or submit to sterilization; whether or not we want to live with a man, instead of having to depend on a man for our economic survival. We want the power to make choices and for us women this means more money and less work." [8]
Wages for Housework was one of the first leftist organizations to tackle the issue of women’s unpaid work. Prior to the development Marxist feminist analysis, domestic labour had largely been ignored; traditional Marxist intellectuals considered housework as “occurring outside production” and therefore irrelevant to the dynamics of capital accumulation. According to sociologist Wally Seccombe, writing in 1973, this position historically “downplayed the impact of housewives on the economy and more particularly has dismissed their potential within the class struggle.” [9]
Rather than “occurring outside production,” Wages for Housework laid bare how domestic labour was necessary work for the perpetuation of capitalist society. Seccombe argues, for example, that the central function of domestic labour is “the restoration and renewal of labour power” through “daily maintenance of the worker,” and “the production of a new generation of labourers” through birth and child-rearing (which one can think of as the preparation of future workers).
This arrangement benefits the capitalist class because “it is clearly the pay cheque of the waged worker that must sustain both components of labour. But the wage appears to be payment for labour in only one of these parts…In this way, capital gets these two forms of labour for the price of one.” [9]
Right: Poster for "Women and the Invisible Economy: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Women's Unpaid Work" at Concordia University (Montreal: February 21-13, 1985) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S5-I287
As Wages for Housework pointed out, the housewife’s exclusion from waged labour results in her total material dependence upon her husband, creates an unequal power dynamic between husband and wife, and isolates her from fellow women with whom she might organize social revolt. This isolation results in part from the housewife’s relegation to the private sphere. Not only does the “private” character of housework render women materially dependent on their husbands, but it also creates gendered fissures within the working class. In the following passage, James and Dalla Costa offer their interpretation of the traditional marriage relationship under capitalism:
"…the figure of the boss is concealed behind that of the husband. He appears to be the sole recipient of domestic services, and this gives an ambiguous and slavelike character to housework. The husband and children, through their loving involvement, their loving blackmail, become the first foremen, the immediate controllers of this labor..."
"...If we fail to grasp completely that precisely this family is the very pillar of the capitalist organization of work…then we will be moving in a limping revolution that will always perpetuate and aggravate a basic contradiction in the class struggle, and a contradiction which is functional to capitalist development. We would, in other words, be perpetuating the error…of considering housewives external to the working class. As long as housewives are considered external to the class, the class struggle at every moment and any point is impeded, frustrated, and unable to find full scope for its action." [10]
This view is succinctly echoed by Seccombe’s later writing, in which he states that “There are no recognized bargaining units for domestic labourers which a wife can join.” [9] It is clear, then, that Wages for Housework sought to build women’s collective power by organizing housewives and other domestic labourers into something akin to a trade union or bargaining unit. They also sought to circumvent women’s economic dependence on men, and its resulting impediment to class solidarity, by pressuring governments to compensate women for the value of their domestic work.
Wages for Housework was controversial within the feminist movement, both in Canada and around the world. Some feminists argued, for example, that attainment of the demand “wages for housework” would serve to further isolate women and entrench them within the sphere of domestic labour. In fact, such a demand might undermine the gains women had made through their increasing participation in the paid workforce. In response to James and Dalla Costa’s analyses, feminists Jennifer Penney and Varda Kidd described Wages for Housework as “a formula for paralysis of the women’s movement.”
Left: Petition by the Waitresses' Action Committee, "Money for Waitresses is money for all Women" (c. 1977) Frances Gregory fonds, 10-094-S1-SS3-F1
Although Penney and Kidd acknowledged some of the revolutionary potential in housewives, they argued that “It was the huge flood of women into higher education and industrial production in the ‘60s that created the material preconditions for women’s radicalization at the end of the decade … it is mainly from within this population, rather than from the diminishing numbers of women who are still exclusively housewives, that women’s leadership will come in the years ahead.” [11] On the other hand, Wages for Housework emphasized that entrance into the workforce could only be viewed as liberating for those privileged women able to obtain higher education, given that many working women found themselves employed in the lowest paying and most exploitative jobs.
Accordingly, working women suffered from their structural position as an “industrial reserve army” to be shunted in and out of the paid labour force as needed. In the words of a Windsor Wages for Housework Committee flyer published circa 1975:
“Because we get no money for work we do in the home, we often are forced to take a second job outside the home. But because we work for free at home, they can afford to pay us pennies on the ‘second shift.’ And most of the time, we are still doing housework on that second job – waitressing, nursing, cleaning, clerical work, looking after people.” [13]
Even within the waged labour force, jobs considered “women’s work” were historically underpaid and undervalued. Whether or not one agrees with Wages for Housework and its overarching political strategy, 1970s debates about “women’s work” stimulated workers’ struggles throughout the following decades, from the kitchen to the office to the factory floor.
Collective Power and “Women’s Work”
"This economic system cannot survive without the work of millions of women. We operate the telephone system, we punch the computer cards that control companies and government, we type the letters, file the orders, and serve customers in restaurants, departments stores, and supermarkets. The employer can say he doesn’t need us because there are lots of women out there looking for work. But he does need women workers as a pool of cheap labour." - The Working Women’s Association, Women’s Work: A Collection of Articles by Working Women, 1972 [14]
The 1970s in Canada would see “women’s work” becoming more and more of a central feminist concern. In Vancouver, for example, an organization called Working Women’s Workshop (WWW) formed out of the Vancouver Women’s Caucus in January 1970. Shortly thereafter, the WWW began demonstrating and leafleting in support of women’s strikes and other labour struggles. In April 1971, for example, Tilden Rent-A-Car workers went on strike citing discrimination in wages and job advancement for women; WWW members joined them on the picket line.
In addition to providing support for picketing strikers, the WWW assisted working women through public education and through organizing boycott and public solidarity campaigns. [15] In May 1971, for instance, twelve women workers at the CH Hosken warehouse (owned by Cunningham Drugs) went on strike for job security, for wage parity with other Cunningham workers, and for the right to bargain collectively. By September of that year, the WWW had organized a Cunningham Drugstore boycott campaign in support of these workers, who were members of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Workers Union (RWDSU). WWW members leafleted and picketed Cunningham’s drug stores across Vancouver, encouraging consumers to shop elsewhere.
While Cunningham Drugs attempted to break the strike using "scab labour," the WWW argued that “[The Hosken strikers’] struggle affects all of us. 85% of working women in B.C. are without any union protection. Women are used as cheap labour (the average woman makes 40% of the wages of a man with the same education) [and] We are told that trade unionism is something men do. It isn’t ladylike to stand up for your rights.” [16] In many instances, women workers that the WWW supported were only recently unionized and were in the process of negotiating their first collective agreement.
In addition to mounting pressure on Cunningham drugs, the WWW leafleted the BC Federation of Labour offices to demand support for the boycott. At this time, unionized women who raised concerns about sex discrimination in the workforce often felt dismissed or patronized by labour leaders.
Jean Rands and Jackie Ainsworth, former members of the WWW, recollect the untenable situation that women workers faced in the early 1970s:
"There was no human rights legislation, very little labour standards legislation, and no accountability for the Labour Relations Board. In unorganized workplaces, workers could be fired for any reason or no reason at all. Advertisements for jobs were divided between 'Help Wanted Male' and 'Help Wanted Female.' Sexual harassment was everywhere and seemed to be an acceptable perk for men who worked in areas where women were a majority. We were treated as part of the decor. There were arbitrary, management-imposed dress codes. Women were required to wear skirts or dresses or, in a big breakthrough, “pantsuits” so long as the top and the pants were made of the same fabric and the jacket was long enough to cover our butts. We were treated like children…"
"We knew that in order to win our demands, we needed economic power. We needed the right to strike. But when we met with union representatives to talk about organizing our workplaces, they looked and acted a lot like our bosses. They were patronizing, disrespectful and seemed more interested in flirting with us than listening to us. The union reps talked about how women were hard to organize because we were only working for pin money and only working until we found a husband." [17]
Of course, this is not to say that labour unions did not have women members or women in leadership. The number of female trade unionists had exploded in the 1960s, and women’s caucuses were beginning to address issues of sexism in the workplace and in the labour movement. Nevertheless, women still struggled to attain leadership roles and to gain support for “women’s issues” such as wage discrimination and protections for part-time workers. Recognizing that women had to foster their own forms of collective power, the WWW hoped to expand the trade union movement into as yet unorganized fields which were predominantly staffed by women, such as retail, service, and clerical work.
The WWW became the Working Women’s Association (WWA) in 1971 and strongly believed that both the traditional labour movement and the women’s liberation movement had neglected or failed to organize working women so as to increase their collective power. This critique eventually led to the formation of The Service, Office, and Retail Workers' Union of Canada (SORWUC) in October 1972. Though markedly different from the Wages for Housework movement in their target demographic and their tactics, SORWUC similarly argued that gender oppression was rooted in class inequality.
Right: SORWUC, National Union Constitution (1972) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3053
Historian Julia Smith contends that SORWUC was primarily “a working-class organization based on the principle that women could exercise power over their lives through collective control of their labour, and by utilizing collective bargaining and strikes to achieve social change.” [18] SORWUC approached unionization differently than the mainstream labour movement, in part through their direct address to social transformation and because the union deliberately organized workers in banks, offices, bars, restaurants, day-care centres, retail shops, and other workplaces that the traditional movement claimed could not be organized. [18] In addition to “bargaining collectively on behalf of the members to bring about fair wage standards, to reduce the differences between the lowest and highest rates, and to assure equal pay for comparable work for all regardless of sex, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, religion, or national origin,” SORWUC’s founding constitution made the following promise to union and community members alike:
Left: SORWUC Flyer, "How Much Overtime do you do?" (c. 1979-1984) Wendy McPeake fonds, 10-032-S4-F4
"The Union will strive to improve the working conditions of members, to maximize the opportunities for personal fulfillment in the work situation of all members, and to reduce working hours and eliminate overtime so that each member may have the opportunity of enjoying proper leisure, recreation, and cultural development. The Union will work to ensure job security for all members and to end discrimination in hiring and promotion. Within the community, the union will work for the establishment of political and social equality, for free parent-controlled childcare centres, for community control of schools, for community health services, and against price and rent increases which erode the gains made through collective bargaining." [20]
In this way, despite organizing workplaces with few employees, SORWUC gained support from the wider women’s liberation movement in B.C. who participated in boycotts and joined striking members on the picket line. Ultimately, SORWUC sought to maintain a non-hierarchical, grassroots organization and to resist the bureaucracy that had taken hold in some of the larger, international labour unions.
Prior to the formation of SORWUC, the WWA were already involved in union drives and boycott campaigns at several Vancouver restaurants including Smitty’s Pancake House, Pizza Patio, Denny’s, and the University of B.C. By 1976, four years after its formation, SORWUC had organized the workers in four-day care centres, five social service units, one legal office, one student society office, and a tuxedo rental store. [21] That summer, SORWUC began organizing bank workers across Vancouver and British Columbia, beginning with the Victory Square branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). According to union members and organizers, writing in 1979, “Within a month of the first application, 104 bank workers joined the union” and shortly thereafter became the United Bank Workers, Local 2. Their union certification was unprecedented, given that no union in Canada had been able to organize bank workers in the decades prior. By February 1977, SORWUC had certified 17 branches.
In the late 1970s, clerical workers at Canada’s major banks were not paid a living wage, and experienced tellers were required to train young men for promotion above them into management positions. At the same time, SORWUC continued to organize restaurant and retail workers in Local 1, striking at Mallabar Tuxedo Rentals, organizing Lifestream Health Food Store, and applying for certification at Bimini neighbourhood pub and three outlets of Church’s Chicken.
At SORWUC conferences, members of the United Bank Workers Local 2 reported that “it was exciting to get the whole union together and discover how much we had in common with waitresses who were organizing into Local 1. The fight at Bimini sounded just like what we were up against in the banks.” [21] Like the bank employees of Local 2, the waitresses and service workers of Local 1 were fighting for higher wages, non-disciplinary scheduling practices, recognition of seniority, job security, and benefits including sick leave and leave of absence without pay for personal reasons. Members also noted gender discrimination in promotions and a basic lack of respect for women workers.
Until the union’s dissolution in the mid-1980s, the women of SORWUC engaged in many contentious and protracted labour struggles. Some of these struggles succeeded and won fair contracts for women members as in, for example, SORWUC’s negotiation on behalf of workers at Sundance Daycare in 1984. Other organizing drives, such as SORWUC’s bold attempt to stand up against the banks, floundered in the face of strike breaking and other anti-union activity, as well as pro-management decisions by the Canadian Labour Relations Board (CLRB). The union faced similar issues at Bimini’s neighbourhood pub and at another high-profile strike against Muckamuck Restaurant in Vancouver which lasted over five years, from 1978 until 1983.
The Muckamuck Restaurant, owned by white Americans, advertised “authentic” First Nations cuisine and was predominantly staffed by Indigenous women workers. These employees reported that they faced racism from management, and they were often “fined” for making mistakes by having money deducted from their paycheques. [22]
In addition to standard issues of unfair scheduling, disciplinary procedures, lack of job security, wage deductions, and lack of lunch or coffee breaks, the Muckamuck workers faced racial discrimination as First Nations women. Workers reported, for example, that owner Doug Chrismas forced them to wear First Nations jewelry that was difficult to afford on their minimum wage salaries. [22] They also noted that “none of the profits made from the sale of native culture were put into the native community,” and that Chrismas frequently treated them with derision.
After joining SORWUC, several Muckamuck employees were fired, harassed, or forced to quit. [22] While on legal strike, picketers outside Muckamuck were subjected to sexist and racist harassment by strikebreakers. The following passage from SORWUC member Helen Potrebenko’s poem, “Two Years on the Muckamuck Line,” narrates her experience of the lengthy strike as she picketed in solidarity with the Muckamuck workers:
After five long years, by the time the Labour Relations Board ruled in favour of the Muckamuck workers, Chrismas had already closed the restaurant and left the country. This was a common struggle for SORWUC, as lengthy legal battles against largely non-unionized industries gave owners and managers significant time to engage in anti-union activities. [23]
While the union struggled financially and ultimately dissolved in the mid-1980s, SORWUC had definitively disproven the myth that women clerical and service workers could not be organized. By the late 1970s, more and more women workers were beginning to see themselves as essential to a functioning economy. As SORWUC wrote in June 1977:
“For working women, recognizing our economic power means recognizing the contribution we make to the economy – and to our employers’ profits; and recognizing that our concentration in certain industries, while they are called ‘unskilled,’ is also a source of economic power. Social power is what we will have when we recognize and organize on the basis of that economic power.” [19]
Women were no longer content to serve capital as a pool of cheap labour and instead demanded wages and working conditions that reflected the necessity of their work.
Left: Women's Committee, Thunder Bay and District Labour Council, Conference Brochure, "Women in Unions: Participation, Power, Pay Off" (11-13 March 1988) Lisa Bengtsson fonds, 10-055-S1-F32
The years 1978-1979 would see significant labour struggles in the textile and small manufacturing industries. One such struggle was the Fleck Manufacturing Strike which began on March 6, 1978.
In Centralia, Ontario, around 80 workers—mostly low-income women—went on strike at Fleck Manufacturing, an auto parts factory. They demanded decent wages, better working conditions, and recognition of their union certification with Local 1620 of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), which they had obtained in October 1977. The conflict lasted several weeks and was marked by brutal repression: the strikers faced mass arrests and police violence while picketing in front of the plant. Profiling the Fleck Strike for This Magazine, Ellen Tolmie connected striking women workers with wider conversations surrounding women’s labour:
"The working conditions that led to unionization are a classic case in management disregard for basic safety and health: old machinery without proper safeguards, rats, filthy washrooms, overloaded garbage bins and plant temperatures that required overcoats in winter and were simmering in summer. It is apparent that the survival of these conditions in the 1970s is related to the exploitation of women as a secondary labour force with fewer expectations and so fewer rights." [24]
Various reports on the strike note that the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) tried to intimidate workers even before the strike had gotten fully underway. The Fleck manufacturing strike lasted for five months, during which the OPP spent over $2 million dollars in taxpayer money to prevent 80 women workers from obstructing strike-breakers entering the plant. OPP provided a daily escort to the bus of strike-breakers crossing the picket line, and the striking women were subjected to daily harassment and surveillance by law enforcement.
By the strike’s second week, law enforcement numbers exceeded 100 officers, and workers reported that police had beaten them and thrown them into snowbanks. United Auto Workers (UAW) representatives were also targeted and arrested. [24]
United Auto Workers (UAW) button, "Fleck: It's Everyone's Fight" (1978) CWMA Colelction, 10-001-S4-I258
On March 30th tensions boiled over when 328 OPP officers arrived at Fleck, most of whom were equipped with riot gear. While 70 Fleck strikers and 70-80 UAW supporters blocked the plant’s entrance with their vehicles, over 100 OPP officers charged the barricades. Throughout April and May, tensions continued to rise as the number of OPP officers grew, reaching an apex of 500 officers on April 10-13. According to Tolmie, after strikers were attacked by police in riot gear on May 24th, “reporters describe them knocking down men and jabbing women in the breasts or stomach. Three women were taken to a doctor, one UAW supporter was clubbed unconscious, and others testify to similar personal injuries.” [24] In response, hundreds of men from nearby UAW-organized auto manufacturing plants vowed to support striking Fleck workers on the picket line. UAW threatened to shut down the nearby Ford manufacturing plant if it continued to purchase supplies from Fleck. The strike also caused significant controversy at Queen’s Park, given that the plant was half-owned by the family of Ontario’s Deputy Minister of Immigration and Tourism, James Fleck.
Right: Excerpt from "In Solidarity: Fleck Strike," SORWUC News (Summer 1978) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3055
The Fleck manufacturing strike became a powerful symbol of women's union organizing in Canada, exposing persistent inequalities in the industry and highlighting women's resistance to exploitation in rural and isolated workplaces. In the end, the conflict was resolved in favour of the strikers and the UAW, who won a significant wage increase, improved working conditions, and union security. [24] Fleck not only showed that women trade unionists could be just as militant as men but also demonstrated the power of a broad coalition between women workers, trade unionists, and feminist activists who joined the Fleck strikers on “women’s solidarity days.”
Later that same year, another significant women’s strike took place at Puretex Knitting Co., a textile manufacturing plant in Toronto. On November 13th, 1978, the plant’s 220 employees, most of whom were immigrant women, went on strike over wages, working conditions, and seniority rights. Workers, who were members of the Canadian Textile and Chemical Union (CTCU), also objected to nine closed circuit television cameras which had been installed at the plant, one of which pointed directly at the women’s washroom.
Left: "Spy Cameras Out at Puretex," Canadian Union News, vol. 8, no. 1 (July 1979) Gay Bell fonds, 10-117-S3-F31
After three months, the striking workers won better wages, and “women cutters won substantial adjustments, cutting the cap in pay with male cutters, though not yet closing the gap.” [25] They also won improved seniority rights including greater protections against lay-offs and greater opportunities for retraining. The camera aimed at the women’s washroom was removed, and a neutral arbitrator ordered the removal of most remaining “spy cameras” over the following months. [25] The Puretex strike would later be described by scholars as a “flashpoint” around which Canadian feminists rallied to support and mobilize exploited immigrant women in the textile industry.
Employees at the Radio Shack in Barrie, Ontario faced similar obstacles to the women who had unionized at Fleck, including police repression and a virulently anti-union company. In August 1979, workers at Radio Shack launched a unionization campaign with the United Steelworkers (USW) to demand better wages, increased protections, and less precarious working conditions in the retail sector. Faced with the employer's categorical refusal to recognize their demands, they went on strike and launched a public boycott. According to Vivian McCaffrey writing for the feminist publication Upstream, “Radio Shack chose Barrie for its warehouse location because it is known to be a weak area for unions. The company was also seeking marginal female labour to work its so-called ‘housewife’ or part-time shift in order to keep wages down to a bare minimum.” [26]
United Steelworkers button, "Boycott Radio Shack, Turn it Off!" (1979) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S4-I74
Throughout the conflict, multiple strike supporters were arrested, and the company was repeatedly charged with unfair labour practices including failure to comply with Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) orders, interference with trade union activities, and failure to reinstate workers who were fired for promoting the union. [27] Despite this repression, Radio Shack workers were inspired by the recent UAW strike, with one worker reportedly stating that “management saw us as just a bunch of women, but if Fleck can do it, so can we.” [27] Like the Fleck strikers, women workers at Radio Shack benefited from solidarity in the wider women’s liberation and trade union movements. By 1981, Radio Shack was ordered to pay $330,000 to the United Steelworkers for bargaining in bad faith.
In the mid-1980s, women workers in both the retail and textile manufacturing sectors became increasingly militant and determined to organize their industries. A high point in women’s mobilization in the Canadian retail sector, the Eaton’s saleswomen’s strike at the Toronto Eaton Centre pitted unionized employees against store management for nearly two years, from 1984-1985. These workers, mostly women, demanded higher wages, better working conditions, and respect for union rights.
The dispute highlighted tensions surrounding collective bargaining in the Canadian retail sector and had a significant impact on union recognition in the industry. While the strikers did eventually win a first contract with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Stores Union (RWDSU), it included few improvements and the six bargaining units at Eaton’s shopping centres across Toronto eventually decertified. [28] Nevertheless, the strike gained significant publicity for the struggles of retail workers across Canada and demonstrated the necessity of rights and protections for part-time workers.
One of the most significant and successful women’s labour strikes in Toronto was initiated by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) in 1986, when nearly 1,000 workers at 18 Toronto clothing manufacturers shut down the fashion district for four days. These workers, comprising three locals of the ILGWU, went on strike for better wages and to prevent the planned reduction and gradual elimination of their pension fund. According to ILGWU business manager Herman Stewart, speaking to The Globe and Mail in 1986, the workers “are mainly immigrant women – Chinese, Portuguese, Vietnamese, East Indian, West Indian, and Italian – who are prime targets for exploitation.” [29] The workers, however, were defiant. Many of the cutters and sewers on Spadina Avenue had toiled in the garment industry for decades surviving at or near the poverty line, having more than earned their promised pensions.
Left: International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) Ontario Council, Cover of Union Fabric, vol. 2, no. 3 (August 1987) Gay Bell fonds, 10-117-S3-F31
Striking ILGWU member Irene Haines, quoted in the Toronto Star, stated that she was prepared to go hungry before she would back down: “We have to stick to our guns, and we have to go all the way – no matter what. I may lose a couple of pounds, but if we can close the owners down for any length of time, they will lose… This is the biggest season they’ve got, and if they don’t make it now, they might as well close their doors.” [30] After four days of walking the picket lines on Spadina Avenue, workers returned to manufacturers with better pay, better benefits, and a guaranteed pension.
This victory was achieved not only due to the workers’ determination and militancy, but also because the ILGWU were dedicated to educating members about their rights in multiple languages. The ILGWU general strike of 1986 strike brought visibility to the hidden struggles of immigrant and racialized women in low-wage industries and contributed to broader conversations about economic justice, immigration, and intersectionality in labour organizing.
However, following the implementation of free trade agreements including the FTA in 1988 and NAFTA in 1994, thousands of workers lost their unionized jobs in the garment industry, where women accounted for 90% of the labour force. As free trade agreements ushered in an era of neoliberal capitalism, corporations were afforded remarkable global mobility and new legislative tools for undermining workers’ collective bargaining power.
Free Trade and Corporate Imperialism
"We question the quality of the economic development the Conservative government says will accrue from the deal. This development will benefit only the interests of the profit-making sector. A development based on the violation of Canadian peoples’ rights, the elimination of hard-won social services, the sell-out of our natural resources, and the sacrifice of human resources is the kind of development that does not benefit working-class people at all." - Women Working with Immigrant Women (WWIW) Position Paper on the FTA (c. 1987-1988) [31]
In September 1985, The Macdonald Commission, established by Pierre Trudeau’s government in 1982, published its final report recommending a major shift in Canadian society toward significantly closer economic ties to the United States through free trade, market deregulation, and reducing the state’s role in social services and economic planning. Presented as a response to the unemployment crisis of the late 1970s, this report laid the groundwork for the 1987 Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which came into effect in 1989. Canadian economists and feminist groups criticized the report for failing to address the impact of these policies on women, and especially on those employed in precarious jobs in the public service and manufacturing sectors.
As the feminist economist Marjorie Griffin Cohen wrote in 1985, “It seems to me that both the economic and social positions advocated would worsen women’s position in Canada: the economic changes would increase women’s unemployment substantially and the social policies would not only retard women’s rate of progress but would actually leave them in a worse position than they are at present.” [32]
Put simply, both the FTA and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) eliminated trade barriers between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, meaning that corporations manufacturing their products in Canada could now more easily move their factories to Mexico or to the U.S. South in pursuit of lower wages and far less stringent labour laws. Additionally, companies manufacturing their products in Canada would face stiffer competition from imports which could now move more freely across borders.
Illustration from Action Canada Network booklet, “Free Trade and the Public Sector” (1989) Judy Rebick fonds, 10-049-S2-F29
The MacDonald Report’s ideological shift paved the way for neoliberal policies that weakened trade unions and undermined social protections. Following the Macdonald Report, free trade became the most important economic goal of Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government from 1984-1993. In response, The National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) and other interested groups began to form provincial and national Coalitions Against Free Trade.
In 1988, Toronto’s Women Against Free Trade warned that in addition to losing thousands of well paid, unionized jobs, Mulroney’s trade deal would yield the following results: 1) A steady decline in working conditions and the decimation of organized labour 2) An increase in part-time, low waged, non-unionized jobs 3) Loss of Canada’s fragile cultural sovereignty, and 4) Enrichment of the wealthiest Canadians on the backs of working people.
Most importantly, Women Against Free Trade warned that “the more economically and culturally dependent on the U.S. we become, the less political autonomy we actually have,” jeopardizing Canada’s potential for taking politically independent positions on global issues. Even domestically, Mulroney’s trade deals hamstrung the country’s ability to implement new public programs if such programs effected the “competitiveness” of corporations, requiring either permission from Canada’s trading partners or government compensation to the private sector. [33]
Free trade therefore had an adverse effect on housewives and on waged women workers; the former were impacted by cuts to public programs in favour of privatization and deregulation, while the latter experienced a downward pressure on wages and working conditions, thereby undermining the gains that women had achieved through collective bargaining and strike action over the previous decade. Of course, while women were disproportionately affected, working people in general stood to suffer from the impacts of free trade. The Action Canada Network (ACN), formed in 1987, was a national coalition against free trade that included the Assembly of First Nations, trade unions, feminist organizations, immigrant women’s groups, peace and disarmament activists, and churches, all of whom sought to warn Canadians about the long-term effects of trade liberalization.
According to the ACN, writing in 1989, the Mulroney-Reagan trade deals committed Canada “to an economic program in which the role of government is sharply reduced and the role of big business is sharply expanded.” [34] In other words, free trade gave unprecedented economic power to multinational corporations:
"Instead of sticking to public enterprise, the Mulroney Tories believe all profitable enterprises should be in the hands of the private sector (To be more accurate, they think private interests should take the profits from public institutions where Canadians have paid the upfront costs) ... The Mulroney Tories delight in looting the public treasury through privatization, contracting out, and tax concessions to corporations and wealthy individuals. They say they have to sell assets and cut services because of the debt. In fact, 44% of the national debt is due to tax subsidies for the rich." [34]
The ACN also launched the Action Canada Caravan in 1993, which drove across the country to educate citizens about free trade and to support protests planned in small towns and cities. In the long term, free trade certainly contributed to Canada’s economic growth over the following decades. Speaking out against the Caravan, supporters of the Mulroney Tories argued that free trade would mean short-term pain for long-term gain: a period of high unemployment followed by cheaper goods and better jobs outside of the manufacturing sector. Members of the ACN, however, were concerned about those who stood to profit versus those who stood to lose under free market trade liberalization with the United States.
Left: Gary Hebbard, "NAFTA protest travelling country," The Evening Telegram (St John's, NL: 24 April 1993) Judy Rebick fonds, 10-049-S2-F29
Women Working with Immigrant Women (WWIW), for example, was founded in 1974 as an umbrella advocacy group for immigrant women’s issues. Though originally created by women working for immigrant services organizations, immigrant women took over the leadership of WWIW soon after its founding. In the late 1980s, WWIW joined the Coalition Against Free Trade and argued that free trade would further entrench immigrant women’s exploitation by capital, while preventing them from obtaining rights and protections under Canadian labour laws:
“Under the FTA, the admission of temporary workers to meet fluctuating unskilled and semi-skilled labour needs may increase. These workers are not covered by labour legislation, and it is not possible to organize them. The increase of temporary unorganized workers will create a pool of cheap labour and the exploitation of these workers will intensify.” [31]
As noted by various domestic workers’ rights organizations throughout the 1980s, temporary work permits were precarious and left immigrant workers open to human rights abuses under threat of deportation.
Moreover, even those who immigrated to Canada and became permanent residents would face harsher conditions under free trade: WWIW pointed out that the pro-free trade solution of “retraining” workers for better paying jobs effectively excluded immigrant women because most of these programs were inaccessible to them due to language barriers and a steady decline in public funding. For WWIW, free trade’s shift toward privatization and deregulation could only serve to exacerbate this decline. And, given that racialized and visible minority workers received only one job offer for every three jobs offered to white Canadians, the unemployment crisis sold to Canadians as “short term pain” would intensify this racial discrimination. [31] Following the implementation of free trade agreements in 1989 and 1994, thousands of jobs were lost in the textile manufacturing sector predominantly staffed by immigrant women.
WWIW claimed that beyond harming immigrant women, free trade was detrimental for the working-class throughout Canada and the Global South. The National Farmers’ Union (NFU), writing to the Special Joint Committee on Canada’s International Relations in July 1985, were similarly concerned about Canada’s international human rights role and free trade’s empowerment of multinational corporations:
"Barter, now generally referred to as countertrade, has become a growing means of exchange between currency-short Third World countries and east-bloc countries for a number of years. It has enabled them to avoid high costs of credit during periods of inflation. Its possibilities should not continue to be ignored in our future trading relationships...We believe our government has a moral obligation to protect developing countries from exploitation by national and multinational corporations using Canadian resources and on the Canadian market. Canada should immediately establish the necessary agencies which would deal directly with developing countries for goods we import from them and pay them a price satisfactory to their requirements in order that the benefit would serve their people." [35]
As the NFU were painfully aware, the increased mobility of multinational corporations threatened both small family farms in Canada as well as community farming and subsistence agriculture throughout the Global South. Additionally, the NFU believed Canada had a moral responsibility to ensure that its associated corporations were not fuelling conflict or benefiting from anti-union military dictatorships. [35] A decade later, the 1990s would see the anti-free trade movement morph into a union-based and youth-based movement against corporate globalization.
As the negative effects of free trade grew more apparent, activists became increasingly concerned about neoclassical economic theory that proposed wealth creation as the ultimate good. These activists argued that corporate globalization destroyed the natural environment and eroded global well-being in the interest of infinitely increasing profits for the ultra-wealthy.
Bread and Roses, Jobs and Justice
"…who is more exploited? Our purpose here is not parallels. We are seeking to describe that complex interweaving of forces which is the working class; we are seeking to break down the power relations among us on which is based the hierarchical rule of international capital. For no man can represent us as women any more than whites can speak about and themselves end the Black experience. Nor do we seek to convince men of our feminism. Ultimately, they will be 'convinced' by our power. We offer them what we offer the most privileged women: power over their enemies. The price is an end to their privilege over us." - Selma James, Sex, Race, and Class (February 1975) [12]
On May 26th, 1995, over 800 Québécoise demonstrators set off from Montréal, Longueuil and Rivière-du-Loup and converged on Québec City over the course of a ten-day march that sought to combat poverty and all forms of social exclusion. The Bread and Roses March (Marche du pain et des roses), an initiative of the Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ), alluded to a strike slogan popularized by 20,000 female textile industry workers in the town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912. This slogan has been used by feminist and labour movements since the early twentieth century. While bread symbolizes the fulfillment of basic needs such as food and shelter, roses represent dignity, human rights, and quality of life.
Of all Canadian provinces, Quebec was one of the hardest hit by trade liberalization and the subsequent loss of Canada’s manufacturing sector in the early 1990s as they entered a deep economic recession. According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, the province had “a record unemployment rate of 13.2 per cent in February 1993,” with “20 per cent of Québec households…living below the poverty line.” On three separate routes, Quebecoise women marched for days against these injustices. [36]
As the NAC had predicted, “The economic status of single women and single-parent families headed by women deteriorated more than any other group” in this period. Lead by FFQ president Françoise David, marchers demanded that the Quebec provincial government immediately increase to the minimum wage, freeze tuition, implement adequate pay equity laws, increase funding for social support programs, legislate fair wages for immigrant women, reduce spousal sponsorship times, and improve the collections process for child support payments.
Button, "First Nations Women, Third World, Quebecers" (c. 1992) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S4-I641
In fact, most of these demands were met; in response to this unprecedented mass movement of Quebecoise women, the provincial government agreed to raise the minimum wage by 45 cents, to freeze tuition indefinitely, to build 1200 social housing units, and to spend $225 million over five years on a social infrastructure program to create jobs for women. They also agreed that no one working should be paid less than the minimum wage, that spousal sponsorship time for immigrants should be reduced, and that child support payments should be collected via direct deductions. These decisions put Quebec far ahead of other provinces in terms of women’s economic issues including pay equity and subsidized childcare. [37]
The 1995 Bread and Roses March was an impressively effective mass mobilization of women against the general impoverishment of the population through neoliberal economic policymaking. Significantly, participants marched to achieve progressive economic reforms for both rural and immigrant women, both of whom were disproportionately impacted by free trade. “For Bread and Roses, Jobs and Justice” became a rallying cry for the Women’s March Against Poverty the following year, organized by The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the NAC. Two caravans left the west and east coasts of Canada on May 14 and spent a month travelling and visiting over 90 communities across the country. The caravans converged in Ottawa on June 15 for the largest women’s demonstration in Canadian history. [36]
The solidarity expressed at the 1995 Bread and Roses March and the 1996 Women's March Against Poverty inspired the World March of Women in 2000, which “connected roughly 6,000 non-governmental organizations across more than 160 countries.” Originally organized by the FFQ’s Bread and Roses coordinator Diane Matte and mobilization officer Manon Massé, the World March of Women now takes place every five years across five continents. The World March of Women expanded international solidarity and North-South alliances in the women’s movement and increased public attention to inequities and discrimination experienced by racialized, immigrant, and Indigenous women. [38] Nevertheless, the global economic structures that solidified at the end of the last century have proven incredibly resilient to dissent and difficult to upend or counteract.
In 1997, Vancouver activists demonstrated against an Economic Leaders’ meeting of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). APEC was organized in 1989 an intergovernmental forum to promote free trade between 18 countries, including Canada, in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the North American coalition group No to APEC! (Network Opposed to Anti-People Economic Control), trade blocs such as NAFTA and APEC “are instruments to keep remaking the world in the image of Finance to keep profit rates up.” [39]
Protests at the 1997 APEC Economic Leaders Meeting at the University of British Columbia ended with 49 student protesters arrested by the RCMP and many more attacked with pepper spray. Student activists, numbering 2,000, were particularly concerned by APEC’s inclusion of Indonesia’s authoritarian President Suharto who played a leading role in his country’s anti-communist purges from 1964-1965. [40] These purges, which were conducted by the Indonesian military and various paramilitary death squads, targeted communists, trade unionists, ethnic Chinese, atheists, and alleged leftists with support from Western governments including the UK and the US. According to conservative estimates, between 500,000 and one million people were killed.
Left: Photographer, Rick Eglinton, "Protesters hit APEC meeting, The Toronto Star (10 June 1997) Elizabeth Shepherd fonds, 10-043-S5-F10
The RCMP arrested members of the East Timor Alert Network when they crossed into a secure zone in an attempt conduct a citizens’ arrest of Suharto. For anti-APEC activists, trade blocs such as APEC were deeply connected with the history of Cold War foreign policy in North America. Following the Second World War, the Cold War period is characterized by U.S.-backed coups throughout Asia and Latin America undertaken as a means of securing and maintaining U.S. access to global markets, often leading to the empowerment of paramilitaries and right-wing dictatorships.
Protesters were particularly appalled when Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien told a press conference “I don't think that APEC will ever have human rights on its agenda.” [41] This statement epitomized the protesters’ claim that large-scale economic decisions were being made without any concern for social well-being. At the same time, ecologists warned that the doctrine of infinite economic growth was unsustainable and advocated for “a new economic model that accepts the notion that economies do affect the environment and that the consumption and waste they generate are eating away at global well-being.” [42]
At its core, the slogan “Bread and Roses, Jobs and Justice” represents a call to consider the interests of labour and global well-being above the interests of corporations and profit-making. The movement against global impoverishment grew out of women’s labour struggles throughout the second half of the twentieth century and greatly increased women’s international solidarity. In the late 1980s, Women Against Free Trade argued that Canada should plan its trade partnerships keeping both social and economic goals in mind. Like the National Farmers Union, they also suggested the international diversification of trade as an alternative to the continental trade bloc, a proposition that our country is just beginning to take seriously.
Right: "Greed at the Top" (20 September 1997) Elizabeth Shepherd fonds, 10-043-S5-F10
As Canada responds to the U.S. President’s unprecedented trade war, feminists familiar with the impact of economic downturns have urged us to ensure that our internal divisions are not magnified by the enrichment of wealthy over working people.
As this exhibit has demonstrated, even prior to global trade agreements, women workers were at a disadvantage against multinational corporations and anti-union policies. While many have risen in mass movements around the world over the past decades, the owners of capital continue to rake in unprecedented profits and amass the lion’s share of global wealth on the backs of women and the working class. Labour struggles and mass mobilizations from the final decades of the twentieth century provide lessons in the forms of militancy and coalition building that might meet this challenge head on.
The Feminist Economy: Women's Perspectives on Trade and Labour invites you to consider the following: How and why did the issue of free trade generate widespread solidarity between the women's movement and other interested groups? What is the relationship between opposition to free trade and anti-imperialist activism? How did feminists of the 1970s to 1990s understand wealth inequality as a "women's issue"? And finally, how do these historical struggles illuminate our current moment of economic uncertainty?
This exhibit is but a snapshot of the trade and labour struggles that appear in our collections. To view more of this material, please visit us in person at the Archives and Special Collections in Morisset Library, Room 039.
Researched and Written by: Meghan Tibbits-Lamirande, Archives and Special Collections, with special thanks to Marie Noël
***Permission to display and share the content of items for which we do not have copyright has been obtained where possible, however, the University of Ottawa does not represent or guarantee this to be the case for every individual item. You agree that any use of this content will be at your sole risk, and that the University of Ottawa will not be responsible or liable for any damages that may occur dur to your use. If you are the owner of content that you believe has been improperly attributed or is being used without permission, please get in touch by email: arcs@uottawa.ca. You can also fill out the Request for Takedown of Library Materials and Archives.
Works Cited
[1] Newsletter of Nurses for Social Responsibility, vol. 3, no. 1 (February 1988) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F2235.
[2] Maimann, Kevin, Is Donald Trump right when he says the border is just an 'artificially drawn line'? | CBC News (7 May 2025).
[3] Major, Darren, Income inequality in Canada rises to the highest level ever recorded: Statistics Canada | CBC News (10 October 2024).
[4] Rebick, Judy, “They should have listened to us about free trade,” Rabble (30 January 2025) https://rabble.ca/columnists/they-should-have-listened-to-us-about-free-trade/
[5] Cohen, Marjorie Griffin, “Economic Barriers to Liberation,” presentation at NAC Conference, Feminist visions for the future: the economy (2 March 1980) National Action Committee on the Status of Women fonds, 10-024-S2-SS1-F19.
[6] Rennebohm, Max, “Icelandic women strike for economic and social equality, 1975,” Global Non-Violent Action Database (15 November 2009) https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/icelandic-women-strike-economic-and-social-equality-1975
[7] Statement by the International Feminist Collective for the Campaign for Wages for Housework (October 1975) Toronto Wages for Housework Committee fonds, 10-008-S2-F3.
[8] Press Release from the International Feminist Collective for the Campaign for Wages for Housework (October 1975) Toronto Wages for Housework Committee fonds, 10-008-S2-F3.
[9] Copy of Seccombe, Wally, “The Housewife and her Labour Under Capitalism,” originally published by New Left Review (February 1974) Frances Gregory fonds, 10-094-S1-SS2-F1.
[10] Dalla Costa, Mariarosa and James, Selma, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (Bristol, UK: Falling Wall Press, 1972) 19.
[11] News clipping, Penney, Jennifer and Kidd, Varda “Selma James: A formula for paralysis of the women’s movement” and “Selma James Part 2: The strategic implications” (c. 1970s) Frances Gregory fonds, 10-094-S1-SS2-F1.
[12] James, Selma, “Sex, Race, and Class” (Bristol, UK: Falling Wall Press, 1975) Pamphlet, RiseUp! Digital Feminist Archive, https://riseupfeministarchive.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/doc-wagesforhousework-sex-race-class-pamphlet-1975-OCR.pdf
[13] Windsor Wages for Housework Flyer (c. 1975) Frances Gregory fonds, 10-094-S1-SS1-F4.
[14] Working Women’s Association, Women’s Work: A Collection of Articles by Working Women (May 1972) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F2672.
[15] “Working Women Timeline,” Vancouver Women’s Caucus: A Women’s Liberation History Project, https://www.vancouverwomenscaucus.ca/women-workers/chronology/.
[16] Flyer by Working Women’s Workshop, “At Cunningham’s we care… about profits! Boycott Cunningham’s” (1970) https://arcabc.ca/islandora/object/slais%3A635.
[17] Rands, Jean and Ainsworth, Jackie, “Toward Women’s Unions,” Vancouver Women’s Caucus: A Women’s Liberation History Project, https://www.vancouverwomenscaucus.ca/women-workers/toward-womens-unions/.
[18] Smith, Julia, “An ‘Entirely Different’ Kind of Union: The Service, Office, and Retail Workers' Union of Canada (SORWUC), 1972–1986,” Labour / Le Travail, vol. 73 (Spring 2014): 23-65, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24244245.
[19] SORWUC, “Statement on Principles” (June 1977) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3047.
[20] SORWUC, “Founding Constitution” (1973) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3053.
[21] The Bank Book Collective, An Account to Settle: The Story of the United Bank Workers (SORWUC) (Vancouver, BC: Press Gang Publishers, 1979) https://www.vancouverwomenscaucus.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Account-To-Settle2_Part1.pdf
[22] Nicol, Janet Mary, “‘Unions Aren't Native’: The Muckamuck Restaurant Labour Dispute, Vancouver, B.C. (1978-1983)” Labour/Le Travail, vol. 40 (Fall 1997) 235-251. file:///C:/Users/mtibbits.UOTTAWA/Downloads/aupress-admin,+llt40rr03.pdf
[23] SORWUC Newsletter (January 1981) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3054.
[24] Tolmie, Ellen, “Fleck: Profile of a Strike,” This Magazine, vol. 12, no. 4 (October 1978) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3340.
[25] Canadian Textile and Chemical Union (CTCU), Letter to Supporters (6 March 1979) National Action Committee on the Status of Women fonds, 10-024-S2-SS5-F8.
[26] Shannon, Esther and McCaffery, Vivian, “Radio Shack, Blue Cross: Union contracts on the line,” Upstream (December 1979) https://riseupfeministarchive.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Upstream-04-01-Dec-1979.pdf
[27] Bernando, Beverley, “Radio Shack – another Fleck,” Socialist Voice (1 October 1979) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3349.
[28] Carleton, Sean and Smith, Julia, “Here We Come A-Picketing! Christmas Carols, Class Conflict, and the Eaton’s Strike, 1984-85,” Active History (18 December 2014) https://activehistory.ca/blog/2014/12/18/here-we-come-a-picketing-christmas-carols-class-conflict-and-the-eatons-strike-1984-85/
[29] Delacourt, Susan, “Garment workers shed their quiet image,” The Globe & Mail (16 September 1986) Gay Bell fonds, 10-117-S3-F17.
[30] Henton, Darcy, “Garment striker’s call: ‘Let’s stick to our guns,” The Toronto Star (September 1986) Gay Bell fonds, 10-117-S3-F17.
[31] Women Working with Immigrant Women, Position Paper on the FTA, 10-058-S8-SS5-F5.
[32] Cohen, Marjorie Griffin, “The MacDonald report and its implications for women,” for the National Action Commitee on the Status of Women (NAC) (November 1985) Lois Bédard fonds, 10-181-S2-F107.
[33] Women Against Free Trade Manifesto (c. 1987-1988) CWMA Collection, 10-001-S1-F3789.
[34] Action Canada Network booklet, “Free Trade and the Public Sector” (1989) Judy Rebick fonds, 10-049-S2-F29.
[35] National Farmers Union, Submission to the Special Joint Committee on Canada’s International Relations (July 1985) National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) fonds, 10-024-S2-SS12-F2.
[36] Lavallée, Josiane, “Bread and Roses March,” The Canadian Encyclopedia (22 May 2015) https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/marche-du-pain-et-des-roses
[37] Canadian Labour Congress, “Quebec Women March for ‘Bread and Roses’” (13 October 2017) https://canadianlabour.ca/twlh-may-4/
[38] See Women's March Against Poverty 1996 and World March of Women 2000 fonds, 10-048.
[39] No to APEC! Flyer (1997) Elizabeth Shepherd fonds, 10-043-S5-F1.
[40] “Aftermath of 1997 APEC Economic Leaders Meeting,” Digitizer’s Blog (29 August 2023) University of British Columbia Library, https://digitize.library.ubc.ca/digitizers-blog/aftermath-of-1997-apec-protest/
[41] “When protest met pepper spray at the 1997 APEC conference,” CBC Archives (25 November 2019) https://www.cbc.ca/archives/when-protest-met-pepper-spray-at-the-1997-apec-conference-1.5358298
[42] Hall, Joseph, “Ecologists fear ‘suicidal’ economics” (June 1997) Elizabeth Shepherd fonds, 10-043-S5-F10.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Bashevkin, Sylvia. "Second-Wave Women's Movements as Foreign Policy Actors: Assessing Canadian Feminist Interventions before 1995." Canadian Journal of Political Science 55.2 (2022) 1-22.
Choudry, Aziz, Hanley, Jill, Jordan, Steve, Shragge, Eric, and Stiegman, Martha. Fight Back: Workplace Justice for Immigrants. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing, 2009.
Cohen, Marjorie Griffin. Free Trade and the Future of Women's Work. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1987.
Cohen, Marjorie Griffin. "Rethinking Global Strategies" in Globalization and its Discontents. Edited by Stephen McBride and John Wiseman. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.
Cornish, Mary and Ritchie, Laurell. Getting Organized, Building a Union (Toronto, ON: Women's Press, 1980).
Davis, Angela. Women, Race, and Class. New York, NY: Random House, 1981.
Silvera, Makeda. Silenced: Talks with Working Class West Indian Women about Their Lives and Struggles as Domestic Workers in Canada. Toronto, ON: Sister Vision Press, 1984.