Why Does Labour Matter?
The Past, Present, and Future of Labour
and Labour Studies
Race, Ethnicity, and the Canadian Labour Movement, 1920-1982
Interwar Asian immigrant and Indigenous workers on the West Coast
Jane Komori
This presentation will focus on the political organizing of Asian immigrant and Indigenous workers on the West Coast in the interwar period. Focusing on and comparing the structures, politics, and aims of the Native Brotherhood, the Japanese Camp and Mill Workers Union, the Chinese Labour Association, and the Ghadar Movement, the presentation will illuminate the way that each of these groups took up and adapted the structures of labour unions and leftist political organizations to forward their unique agendas. In particular, the presentation will argue that each of these organizations did not only respond to the intense moment of labour militancy and leftist activity of which they were a part; but that they also exerted important influence on the unions, organizations, and political parties more often studied and understood to constitute the region’s leftist political landscape during the interwar period.
Human rights campaigns and organized labour in 1940s revisited
David Goutor
This presentation will revisit the interaction between human rights campaigns and organized labour in 1940s Canada. Ross Lambertson, Ruth Frager and Carmella Patrias have shown how human rights activists successfully campaigned against discrimination, and won the support of many interest groups, including unions. Goutor’s paper will take a deeper look at the politics behind labour’s shift from constant hostility towards immigrants and racialized workers to joining what Stephanie Bangarth calls the “human rights community” in Canada. It will particularly examine how human rights campaigns convinced union leaders that in the new political context of the 1940s, becoming part of the human rights community was in labour’s interest.
A Time to Rise: Labour and feminist organizing in the South Asian diaspora in Canada following the Emergency in India (1975–1977).
Sajdeep Soomal
This presentation, will discuss Anand Patwardhan and Jim Munro’s 1981 labour documentary A Time to Rise (Uthan da Vela), which depicts the struggles of Punjabi farmworkers in British Columbia and their efforts to unionize, leading to the formation of the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) in 1980. To mark the film’s 40th anniversary, Sajdeep organized a public screening in June 2021, featuring a talkback with filmmaker Anand Patwardhan and key figures from the film and union movement. This event highlighted the intersection of guerilla filmmaking, labour organizing, and diasporic South Asian political thought in the 1970s and 1980s. This presentation revisits the making of A Time to Rise, exploring the political engagement of South Asian activists in Canada following the Emergency in India (1975–1977), and their involvement in labour and feminist organizing.
Biographies
Jane Komori is Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Labor, Migration, and Racial Capitalism in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on the labor history and self-organization of Asian immigrant and Indigenous workers in western Canada’s primary resource industries from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Jane’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Labour/Le Travail, Radical History Review, Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory, Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, Critical Ethnic Studies, Asia-Pacific Journal, and Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as a number of public-facing venues, including Viewpoint Magazine, The Globe and Mail, Ricepaper Magazine, Matrix Magazine, GUTS Canadian Feminist Magazine, and The Bulletin/Geppo. She is managing editor of Long-Haul, a quarterly magazine of worker writing.
David Goutor is the Director of the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University. He teaches a wide range of courses on the history of labour and the left, how unions operate in the 21st century, theory, and technology and the future of work. His historical research focuses on unions, immigration, human rights campaigns, and international leftist political activism. In addition to Guarding the Gates, his publications include a volume on the history of human rights in Canada, Taking Liberties (Oxford University Press), and A Chance to Fight Hitler (Between the Lines), a biography of Canadian veteran of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.
Sajdeep Soomal is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto, where he writes about chemistry, colonialism and governmentality in 19th century Canada. His dissertation project, The Chemicalization of Substance, looks at how modern chemistry altered the way that settler colonists imagined and engaged with the environment in 19th-century settler colonial Canada. He works on related curatorial projects about the politics of chemical visualization with artists who are re-imagining, playing with and altering our synthetic surround. Sajdeep serves as a board member of InterAccess, Sanghum Film and Foundation Chamar and is affiliated with the Technoscience Research Unit (TRU) at the University of Toronto. He holds a BA in History from McGill University and an MA in History from the University of Toronto.
Kirk Niergarth is co-editor of Labour/Le Travail and an Associate Professor of History at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. He is the author of ‘The Dignity of Every Human Being’: New Brunswick Artists and Canadian Culture Between the Great Depression and the Cold War (UTP 2015). His work on interwar Canadian cultural, social, political and immigration history has been featured in a variety of collections and journals including International History Review, International Journal, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, Journal of Canadian Studies, Acadiensis, and Labour/Le Travail. He served as President of the CCLH between 2017 and 2021.