 The Winnipeg General Strike, 15 May-25 June 1919, was Canada's best-known general strike. Massive unemployment and inflation, the success of the Russian
Revolution (1917), a wave of strikes across Canada and rising Revolutionary Industrial Unionism all contributed to postwar labour unrest. In Mar 1919 in Calgary western labour leaders met to discuss the creation
of One Big Union. In Winnipeg on May 15, when negotiations broke down between management and labour in the building and metal trades, the
Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council called a general strike.
At stake were the principle of collective bargaining, better wages and the improvement of often dreadful working conditions.
Within hours almost 30 000 workers had left their jobs. The almost unanimous response by working men and women closed the
city's factories, crippled its retail trade and stopped the trains. Public-sector employees such as policemen, firemen, postal
workers, telephone operators and employees of waterworks and other utilities joined the workers of private industry in an
impressive display of working-class solidarity. The strike was co-ordinated by the Central Strike Committee, composed of delegates
elected from each of the unions affiliated with the WTLC. The committee bargained with employers on behalf of the workers
and co-ordinated the provision of essential services.Opposition to the strike was organized by the Citizens' Committee of
1000, created shortly after the strike began by Winnipeg's most influential manufacturers, bankers and politicians. Rather
than giving the strikers' demands any serious consideration, the Citizens' Committee, with the support of Winnipeg's leading
newspapers, declared the strike a revolutionary conspiracy led by a small group of "alien scum." The available evidence failed
to support its charges that the strike was initiated by European workers and Bolsheviks, but the Citizens' Committee used
these unsubstantiated charges to block any conciliation efforts by the workers. Afraid that the strike would spark confrontations
in other cities, the federal government decided to intervene; soon after the strike began, Senator Gideon Robertson, minister
of labour, and
Arthur Meighen, minister of the interior and acting minister of justice, went to Winnipeg to meet with the Citizens' Committee. They refused
requests from the Central Strike Committee for a similar hearing. On their advice, the federal government swiftly supported
the employers, and federal employees were ordered to return to work immediately or face dismissal. The Immigration Act was
amended so that British-born immigrants could be deported, and the Criminal Code's definition of sedition was broadened. On
June 17 the government arrested 10 leaders of the Central Strike Committee and 2 propagandists from the newly formed One Big
Union. Four days later, a charge by Royal North-West Mounted Police into a crowd of strikers resulted in 30 casualties, including
one death. "Bloody Saturday" ended with federal troops occupying the city's streets. Six of the labour leaders were released,
but Fred Dixon and
J.S. Woodsworth were arrested. Faced with the combined forces of the government and the employers, the strikers decided to return to work
on June 25.
The General Strike left a legacy of bitterness and controversy. In a wave of increased unionism and militancy across
Canada, sympathetic strikes erupted in centres from Amherst, NS, to Victoria, BC. Seven of the arrested leaders were unfairly
convicted of a conspiracy to overthrow the government and sentenced to jail terms from 6 months to 2 years; the charges against
J.S. Woodsworth were dropped. Almost 3 decades passed before Canadian workers secured union recognition and collective bargaining.
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