Unpaid Work Didn't Fly: how CUPE flight attendants grounded Air Canada and WestJet

This month in labour history

1-10-1741 Workers at the Royal Shipyard in Québec organize what is believed to be the first documented strike in Canadian history. [more]

6-10-2011 A first H&M retail outlet in Canada is organized in Mississauga, Ontario, where workers vote to be represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers. [more]

7-10-1969 When firefighters and police officers go on strike in Montreal, taxi drivers take action against the Murray Hill bus company. [more]

8-10-1906 At Buckingham, Québec, workers locked out for organizing a union at the MacLaren pulp mill are attacked by company police. Union officers Thomas Bélanger and François Thériault are shot dead. [more]

12-10-1973 A strike by immigrant workers at the Artistic Woodwork factory in suburban Toronto attracts strong support from political activists. The strike exposes the role of police in protecting strikebreakers. [more]

13-10-1944 The Trades and Labour Congress of Canada charters Federal Labour Union 180 at Vancouver General Hospital. This is the beginning of the Hospital Employees' Union of British Columbia, now the province's largest health care union. [more]

13-10-1973 Ontario Nurses Association is founded during an all-day meeting of 85 nurses’ associations. [more]

14-10-1976 In Canada's first country-wide general strike, one million workers join a Day of Protest against the federal government's wage controls policy. [more]

14-10-1976 Air Traffic Control Assistants who are members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada start a one-week country-wide wildcat strike over work classification. [more]

16-10-1963 More than 200 nurses start an illegal strike at the Hôpital Sainte-Justine in Montréal. They are seeking an end to overwork and recognition of their role in the health system. The thirty-day strike achieves a settlement that encourages unionization. [more]

17-10-1951 All 23 people on board a converted RCAF bomber are killed when the plane crashes into a mountain west of Nanaimo, British Columbia. The flight was carrying construction workers returning to Vancouver from Kitimat. [more]

18-10-1935 Farm labourer Nicholas Schaack, 51, dies in hospital following head injuries received on Market Square in Regina on Dominion Day, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police brought the On to Ottawa Trek of unemployed workers to a violent end. [more]

19-10-1996 When General Motors tries to break a Canadian Autoworkers strike by removing equipment, union members occupy the Oshawa plants. [more]

20-10-1904 Tommy Douglas is born in Falkirk, Scotland. In Canada he becomes a successful socialist politician and premier of Saskatchewan. He is remembered as the founder of the Canadian medicare system. [more]

22-10-1972 Feminists in Vancouver, British Columbia found SORWUC – the Service, Office and Retail Workers’ Union of Canada. They aim to represent workers in marginalised, low-paying, largely female-dominated sectors that were not priorities for established unions. [more]

23-10-1958 At Springhill, Nova Scotia, 75 men are killed in a mine disaster and 81 miners are rescued the next day. A group of twelve miners are rescued on 30 October and a final group of seven are located and brought to the surface on 1 November. [more]

25-10-1900 Some 250 soldiers are called out by the mayor of Valleyfield, Québec when striking workers block access to the Montreal Cotton Company mill. The soldiers open fire and more than a dozen workers are wounded. [more]

25-10-1917 Birth of labour activist Kent Rowley, in Montreal. He becomes Canadian director of the United Textile Workers of America in the 1940s and a founder of the Confederation of Canadian Unions in 1968. [more]

27-10-1997 More than 125,000 Ontario teachers walk out to protest the province's plans to cut school budgets and centralize control over education. The two-week protest affects two million students and is the largest teachers’ strike in North American history. [more]

29-10-1999 The Public Service Alliance of Canada wins a long-running battle with the federal government over pay equity for workers in the public service [more]

29-10-1971 A protest against a lockout at the daily La Presse in Montreal ends in a street battle between thousands of workers and police. When tear gas is used, student activist Michele Gauthier, an expectant mother, dies of suffocation. [more]