The_Winnipeg_General_Strike

The Winnipeg General Strike In the Canadian labour movement’s long and continuing history of struggles to establish its trade-union rights, no episode was more spectacular, explosive or meaningful than the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. General strikes by definition involve working-class confrontations with authority and produce a massive disruption of society while paralysing economic life. They are “cataclysmic events [and] by their nature, unlikely to be created in a day.”1 The Winnipeg General Strike had many roots, including class polarization, working conditions and socialist ideas. The labour relations conflict was compounded during World War I and intensified when the war ended. On May 15, 1919, the labour conflict reached its climax as the whole productive life of the city ground to a halt and thousands of workers joined the union members in walking off their jobs, commencing the General Strike. In many ways Winnipeg was at war with itself. The city was divided socially, economically, geographically, and ethnically. 2 While labour and business battled for power, there was also an ethnic prejudice problem that plagued the city. Winnipeg was divided into two main groups: people of British origin and the more recent immigrants (who were labelled aliens), who were mostly from Eastern Europe. These immigrants workers, strike, labour, winnipeg, general, war, conditions, unions, government, believed, industrial, city, business, better, bercuson, views, union, living, between, working, wages, soldiers, socialist, canada, world, working-class, need, leaders, jobs, immigrants, civic, yet, within, while, unemployment, toronto