One Big Union (Canada)
| Full name | One Big Union |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1919 |
| Date dissolved | 1956 |
| Federation merger | Canadian Labour Congress |
| Members | 40,000-70,000 |
| Affiliation | Socialist Party of Canada, Syndicalism |
| Key people | Robert B. Russell |
| Office location | Winnipeg |
| Country | Canada |
The One Big Union (OBU) was a Canadian syndicalist trade union active primarily in the Western part of the country. It was initiated formally in Calgary on June 4, 1919 but lost most of its members by 1922. It finally merged into the Canadian Labour Congress during 1956.
Towards the end of World War I, labor activism in Western Canada became more radical. Western Canadian radicals protested the management of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC), the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the governments in power. Western unions were represented by only 45 of 400 delegates at the September 1918 TLC convention. Their resolutions to condemn Canada's efforts for World War I were therefore defeated easily. Moreover, the socialist TLC president James Watters, who had had this post since 1911, was replaced by the conservative Tom Moore.
In those radical times, the federal government clamped down on radical publications and organizations, outlawing 14 different organizations including the Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW). But labour activists and socialists did not allow the vision of that kind of society to die so determined to establish a new organization with the old IWW motto "The Workers of the World Unite" as their stated belief.
Western TLC unionists met annually in what became known as the Western Labor Conferences. The 1919 event was held on March 13, prior to the annual national TLC congress. The WLC conference was dominated by members of the Socialist Party of Canada, who favored secession from the TLC. The majority at the conference voted to form a new "revolutionary industrial union" separate from the AFL/TLC, to be initiated officially at a convention scheduled for June 11. The conference also approved resolutions condemning the Canadian government's practices during the war and expressing solidarity with the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Spartacist League in Germany. It was also decided to poll Canadian workers on a general strike.
...
Wikipedia