Speaking of Class in the Québec Labour Movement: Interpreting the Relationship Between Class and Identity in the Québec Labour Movement 1850-2010

An examination of Quebec labour unions and French Quebec's nationalist movement, which the author argues evolved together over a 200 year period. The author devotes one chapter to the "second wave of unionisation that washed over employees at Concordia University in the mid-1980s." During this period the university experienced the creation of approximately half a dozen unions over the span of a very few years in an institution that was comparatively lightly touched by the union experience previously. The author devotes another three chapters to the successive historical periods as they apply to the evolution of the labour movement in Quebec. One of these chapters deals with the first embryonic forms of working class representation couched within the context of "working men's associations," "benevolent societies" and the like, to genuine trade and labour unions after 1872 when the act of combination was decriminalised in Canada. Reference is made to English-speaking associations and societies during this early period, such as Quebec City's Ship Labourers' Benevolent Society, founded in 1857, by Irish workers. The author concludes with an examination of the cultural and linguistic divisions within Quebec's union movements.

PhD dissertation

Concordia University

Montreal

2010

en