Sexism in British Columbia
Trade Unions, 1900 - 1920
MARIE CAMPBELL
INTRODUCTION

Women have always had an uphill battle to wage on their own behalf in the labour
movement. Union practices have been used successfully to exclude or “properly
integrate” working class women into male dominated unions.1 The roots of the
constraints on women’s participation in the union movement in British Columbia can be
found in the first two decades of the twentieth century.2 The analysis being presented
here highlights sexism in the labour movement at that time.
Sexism in this context has a particular meaning and is identified in a specific
3
way. When union practices differentially affect women workers, thereby creating or
maintaining disadvantages for women, these practices are sexist. It is these kinds of
practices which are identified and their context of use explored in this essay. Evidence
will be introduced to show how sexism featured in the relations set up and enforced by
union practices, and beyond that, how unions used sexist practices as a means, along
with racist practices, (see below), of differentiating among competitors for privileged
positions in the labour force.
Trade unions developed to protect their members from excessive exploitation by
employers. To accomplish this, working men formed associations which, by replacing
competition with cooperation helped them gain more control over their working
conditions. The competition which unions wanted to exclude was that of workers who
would work for less money or in bad conditions. Union membership was at that time the
prerogative of skilled workers, since scarce skills were the basis of a worker’s
bargaining power. At first, therefore, union members were men with special training,
who formed themselves into like groups to support each other in demands for better
working conditions. Workers without training, e.g., women, children and native people
were without this prerequisite for union organization. With adequate numerical strength,
a union could force an employer to hire only union members, excluding from the work
force non-union workers in this way. The union “closed shop” was an important device,
gaining benefits for union members from employers.
Asian immigrant labour was being brought into British Columbia during this time
to provide work at substandard rates. Organized labour’s attempts to fight the resulting
competition were aimed at exclusion of these immigrant workers, and manifested
themselves as racist practices.4 Asian and native men and women, and white women
were forced into work for which little training was required and which was undesirable in
some way. It was always low paid and frequently dirty or demeaning. The labour
movement avoided seeing women as a legitimate part of the work force early in the 20th
century, although significant numbers of women always had to work outside their homes
to make ends meet, and some of these women were unionized.5
In addition to being relegated to the kind of work not organized by unions, women
were prevented from participating equally with men in the labour movement when they
worked in unionized jobs. The union movement from early days in British Columbia was
dominated by white men and was attentive and responsive to priorities related to a

white male labour force. However, it is important to this analysis to understand that the
labour organizations and labour policies did not remain static during this period.
The union movement began, during the first two decades of the 20th century, to
be integrated with other institutions into a “ruling apparatus” through which the
harmonious development of the capitalist economy could be organized.6 As this
happened, among other serious consequences for working class cohesion, was union
adoption through their own policies and practices of ruling class ideas about women.7
Protection of women’s virtue, sanctity of the home and of women’s dependent status as
wife and mother took precedence over the concrete needs of working class women for
adequate pay, provision of child care, unemployment benefits, safe and healthful
working conditions, equal access to good jobs, and more importantly, the solid support
of organized male workers in women’s labour disputes.
1.

HOW UNIONS ORGANIZED WOMEN

In the first decades of the 20th century women in British Columbia worked as domestics,
laundresses, chambermaids, garment-makers, milliners, telephone operators, cigarmakers, waitresses, book-binders, shop-assistants, candy-makers, fish-plant workers,
cooks as well as nurses, teachers and clerical workers. As the first world war depleted
the supply of male workers, women moved into more occupations and the total number
of working women increased. Many of these women workers remained unorganized.
Scattered references to union activities in women’s occupations reveal some of the
organizational disadvantages faced by women in unions.
Prior to an organizing effort at the time of the first world war, (see section three)
trade unions had organized women primarily in furtherance of particular policies of their
own, for example, exclusion of Orientals. The Labour Gazette recorded that the
Vancouver Trades and Labour Council assisted in organizing a waitresses’ union and in
having the following agreement signed by the hotel and restaurant proprietors:
We, the undersigned, do hereby agree to employ
union waitresses and to apply to the secretary of the
waitresses’ union when there is a vacancy in my
place, all of which I agree to do for a term of one year
from Sept. 1, 1910.
The waitresses’ union, in
consideration of the signature herein contained, do
promise the support of the local unions and the
central bodies in Vancouver to support houses
displaying the card of the Waitresses’ Union, Local
766, Vancouver.8
The intention of this agreement was to exclude Orientals from restaurant and hotel
work, a continuing union objective. This was made clear by another action taken by the
Trades and Labour Council, said to be “in furtherance of [the waitresses’ agreement]”:
It was resolved by the central body to interview the
licensing commissioners, in order to have a clause
inserted in hotel and restaurant licenses providing
that no Orientals be employed on these premises.9

Not only did male union policy not meet women’s specific needs but it actually
had an untoward effect on some women workers, as in the case of the restricted
immigration policy and the Home and Domestic Employees. The Trades and Labour
Council had played an instigating role in the Domestic Workers’ initial organizing work at
a time when labour was also actively lobbying for restriction of immigration of artisans.10
The Domestics’ Union actively dissociated itself from organized labour’s antiimmigration policy, seeing that the objectives of its group - to raise the status of
domestic work - required that more, not fewer, trained domestics be available.11 This
union was exceptional in pursuing objectives specific to their own members. Most of
the women’s organizations followed orthodox male union policy.
This was true of the Waitresses’ Union. These women worked six and a half or
seven days a week for low wages, but their union’s demands did not reflect this
problem.12 The influence of the Trades and Labour Council actually steered women
away from action on issues of importance to them and towards the interests of the male
union movement. How this kind of male domination of policy in a women’s union was
accomplished is suggested in the following anecdote.
In 1905, Vancouver and New Westminster female telephone operators organized
themselves into a Ladies’ Auxiliary of the International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers.13 The IBEW had previously organized the linemen and had concluded
successful negotiations for a union shop. The Brotherhood accepted the male
telephone operators into its regular body and offered guidance to the women in forming
their own organization. One entry in the minutes of the IBEW meetings notes the
striking of a committee of men to “whip the girls into line”.14 Another records that the
men sent a letter to the women requiring them to change their night of meeting to allow
some of the men to attend to help them.15 Not only does this suggest overbearing and
paternalistic attitudes on the part of the union men, but points to the way maleperceived issues and male decision-making practices would have been integrated into
the women’s organization.
When the operators went on strike in February, 1906, having been threatened by
the company to give up their new union organization or be fired, the irregular status of
the Women’s Auxiliary became a problem. The IBEW men did not know how to conduct
themselves during the disagreement and sent for their International organizer to instruct
them, and to help the women. Although some of their own members, the male
operators, were on strike, the IBEW linemen did not go out with the operators.16 The
strike dragged on and on, with the company refusing to recognize the women’s
organization. The IBEW provided some strike pay but this became a burden shortly; the
minutes record hassles over how it should be raised and eventually it was left to a
voluntary contribution.17 The striking women were replaced and the union was broken,
a comment on the lack of support provided for a separate women’s organization by men
in an associated union. The IBEW was in a relatively strong position with the
Telephone Company at that time, able to win contract after contract.18 But the strength
of the men’s organization did not benefit the women who were treated by the men’s
union as “other” than themselves.
Women who were organized into men’s unions suffered different effects as a
result of being seen as a separate category of workers, a less worthy one. Agreements
signed by unions which had male and female membership reflected the low evaluation

placed on women’s work, which made belonging to a union less attractive to women
than to men. In Victoria, in 1913, the local union of the hotel and restaurant Employees’
International Alliance negotiated an agreement in which waiters in unionized restaurants
were to make not less than $10.50 weekly, while waitresses were to get not less than
$8.00.19 Even wider disparities were commonplace.
In 1918, the Hotel and Restaurant Employees’ Union claimed “as a big victory” a
strike settlement which still paid chambermaids less than a living wage.20 The demands
which the union had made were vastly different for its male waiters and the
chambermaids:
A scale of $15 to $18 per week for the waiters, which
is an increase of 50¢ per day, and the scale for the
chambermaids is $25 per month, being an amount of
17¢ per day over the old wage.21
The “big victory” referred to the wage settlement of $22.50 per month won by the
women, a war-time wage which was only half the amount estimated to be a living wage
in 1913. While the report acknowledged that the settlement was not good enough, it
pointed out that the employer (the Hotel Vancouver) had promised a better meal for the
women while they were on duty.22
The same practices which organized female union participation around male
unionists’ objectives and which ensured the domination of male ideas about how unions
were to be run prevented the emergence of indigenous female leadership. Helena
Gutteridge is the only woman whose name is consistently associated with union work
during this time. Although given prominence (she was on the executive of the
Vancouver Trades and Labour Council for many years, and she wrote for the B.C.
Federationist) her influence was limited. Her work suffered from the handicap of her
sex; her authority both within and outside the trade union movement was undermined in
the same way as other working women’s. When she testified about women’s working
conditions before the Royal Commission on Labour Conditions in B.C., her report was
concise and factual, the product of first hand experience.23 She had not been invited to
sit on the committee drawn up by the Trades and Labour Council to formulate
recommendations about women workers, whereas middle-class women were. They
were questioned extensively by the Commissioners and had a chance to express their
opinions while Gutteridge’s testimony was eventually overlooked24 (see next section).
Appointed “woman organizer” by the Trades and Labour Council in 1918, she
held the post for only a few months before she resigned.25 No reason is recorded in the
TLC executive minutes, but Gutteridge was involved in a strike of laundry workers at the
time; this strike did not go well and the women strikers eventually lost their jobs.26 One
can speculate that frustration in her organizing role, including lack of support for this
strike, may have led to her leaving the post so precipitously. This speculation is
supported by the record of a disagreement she had with other members of the council
over how union women could be involved in policy decisions affecting them. On this
occasion, Gutteridge was forced to withdraw a proposal to bring women together from
different unions to discuss the 8-hour day, the minimum wage for women, and mothers’
pensions.27 Her idea had been “to get women working for themselves now that they
would have the ballot”.28 The male members of the Trades and Labour Council
objected to this special treatment for women, saying the minimum wage for men should

be taken up as well.29 They also raised objections to any irregular arrangement which
drew women together, their position being that elected delegates were the only people
who rightfully could represent their unions, even for discussions. They declared that an
existing committee (of men) should handle the policy questions in the established way.30
This anecdote illustrates how rigid attitudes of male unionists interfered with
Gutteridge’s organizing efforts. It also shows how the established practices of the
central labour body were used to maintain control over the knowledge women workers
needed to become politically aware. Such established practices prevented access to
the channels through which women might otherwise have expressed their own priorities
for action. The structure of the trade union movement, its methods and organizational
forms, excluded informed participation by women and maintained policy domination by
men.
2.

WORKING WOMEN IGNORED BY LABOUR

Rather than organizing women, the labour movement’s more usual response to
working women was to ignore them. When this happened the exploitation of women
workers was unchecked by any working class effort. In addition, the lack of attention
male trade unionists paid to the actual situation of working women, and the lack of
authority they accorded to working women on any subject meant that union men didn’t
“see” women’s problems clearly. When working women’s social problems became too
public an issue to ignore any longer, trade union men characteristically turned to middleclass women’s groups to provide help.31
For instance, when the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council was asked by the
Royal Commission on Labour Conditions in British Columbia to provide suggestions for
legislation to control the working conditions of female shop and office workers, the
labour body turned to middle-class groups for advice. They invited representatives from
the Local Council of Women, as well as the Board of Trade to sit on a committee with
the trade union men to formulate recommendations.32 The trade union leader, James
Wilton, who shared the committee did some investigation on his own, visiting stores and
talking to their proprietors; no reference is made in his testimony before the Commission
suggesting that he ever talked to working women.33 The committee compromised on
the following wage recommendation: they asked that girls aged 14 - 16 be started at
wages of $5.00 per week, with increases every six months until they reach $10.00.34
James Wilton testified verbally that he believed that although $16.50 was a reasonable
wage for a working woman, and $10.00 was barely adequate, his committee had
decided to accept the $5,00 figure that the Local council of Women was recommending
as a minimum wage.35
Also at the urging of the women’s group, a clause was inserted in the union brief
recommending that Caucasian women not be permitted to work in establishments with
Asiatics, due to the feeling that the morality of the women would be endangered.36 The
brief asked for a woman inspector of places of employment and seats for female
employees.37 These latter recommendations were incorporated into the final report of
the Commission, while “unfavourable consideration was given” the request for a
minimum wage for women.38 Rather than better pay

the commission [was] of the opinion that more [could]
be done in the interests of women and girls by the
appointment of women inspectors with the authority to
see that working conditions in shops [were]
satisfactory.39
It was the aspect of protection of working women which was picked up by the
Commissioners, rather than the need for improved wages. The Royal Commission’s
recommendations protected business interests, while the interests of working women
were not attended to adequately. The Commission had heard plenty of testimony about
wages too low to live on being paid to Vancouver shop assistants and concern about
prostitution, yet the Trades and Labour Council, having sought help from middle-class
groups, was committed to supporting the recommendations they made.
What women’s groups focused their attention on in their work with working
women was that was available for them to see from their position in society. In
Vancouver, Local Council of Women members moved in social circles occupied by
businessmen and government officials. Their meetings were held in the Vancouver
Board of Trade offices.40 Their members were appointed to government posts and were
received by cabinet ministers.41 Local politicians and socialites addressed their
meetings.42 These women’s ideas were developed through relations of this sort and
through a communication network with their own groups across the country which
allowed the viewpoints of women in one city to influence the thinking and action in
another.43 For instance, consider how Federal Minister of Labour Crothers’ address to a
Montreal group would have communicated the government’s concept of the working
class and shaped women’s thinking. These excerpts from his speech illustrate the kind
of influence exerted on middle-class women by men in dominant positions. Crothers
said:
“The great aim of labour legislation [is] the
establishment of the home on a solid basis. Every
effort must be made to keep the mother in the home,
she being the natural and primary factor in education
and in the development of good citizenship.”44
Crothers went so far as to instruct the women “to interest employees in the output of
business” and to dwell, in their contacts with working women, on the idea that “capital
and labour rate interdependent”.45 This kind of message took on new importance when
it went out to women to whom trade unionists turned when they needed someone to
speak for working women. It was with this kind of consciousness that influential women
in local communities defined problems and established programs for working women.
The following account whose how consequential was the lack of a “working
woman’s perspective” in the work on the Local Council of Women Brief to the Royal
Commission previously mentioned. Mrs. William Forbes Macdonald was a doctor’s wife
who presented her group’s brief to the Commissioners. She said, in testimony, that she
was concerned to present a balanced account of the problems of shop-assistants.46 In
her opinion young and inexperienced girls did not do enough work to entitle them to a
living wage during their first few years of work in spite of working as much as sixty-six
hours per week in a store.47 She said

Hotel Vancouver Switchboard.

Varnishing cans in a B.C. cannery

“Now, if we are going to deal with this question, we must look at it from both
sides, the employer’s side as well as the employee’s side.”48
She referred to her desire to “be fair to employers as well as the employee” as the
reason that the Local Council reduced its recommended minimum wage for women to
$5.00 from the amount, $7.50 per week, they had decided was the bare minimum a
woman would need to support herself.49 The balance Mrs. Macdonald tried to find was
tipped in favour of the businessman, a mistake she would not have made if she had to
live on a sub-minimum income herself.
The provision of unemployment relief during the 1914 - 15 depression was
another example of trade union insensitivity to working women’s needs. Women’s
suffering was brought to the attention of the Local Council of Women who organized a
mass meeting to discuss the problem.50 A program of action was decided upon, but the
Local Council gave priority to a fund-raising campaign for the war effort (which was
going on concurrently) and this restricted the effort they could put into raising money for
unemployed women.51 Instead of a door-to-door canvas, which had been discussed,
the women decided to concentrate on finding employment for those out of work.
Various schemes were tried, none too successfully. Members were urged to make
room in their homes for live-in domestics, and an employment agency was set up to find
daily domestic work for unemployed women. An ambitious program in which working
women’s handicrafts were sold from a storefront was organized. It failed to provide the
hoped for return.52
The provision of child care became seen as charity in the same way as did
unemployment relief. Instigated by people not personally involved in its use, and with
funding, housing and staffing arrangements erratic, its service to children was open to
criticism.53 While the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council officials thought the effort
to put into unemployment relief by the Local Council of Women was commendable,
there was no indication at all that the labour movement saw the need for provision of
child care for working mothers.54 Assistance with child care was left to government
officials who were concerned about mounting expenditures for public relief, this being
the only alternative available for many women who had to support themselves and their
children.55
If the union movement had not excluded women, women’s actual working
arrangements could have been considered as the basis for union policy concerning
women. What working class women needed could have been included in union
bargaining, rather than being overlooked entirely or provided as second-rate charitable
services. But working women were not consulted about their needs. Trade union men,
schooled in discounting the voices of their wives and daughters, listened instead to the
more authoritative voices of middle-class women. These women recommended
women’s suffrage and female voters’ pressure for a legislated minimum wage as the
best way to improve women’s conditions of work. The trade union papers supported
this position and urged working women to attend meetings of the Minimum Wage
League.56
But legislated solutions for women eventually proved an unsatisfactory substitute
for organized collective action as had the charitable undertakings of the middle-class
women’s groups. Helena Gutteridge reiterated the need for the organization of women
workers. Just after the passage of the Minimum Wage Law she wrote:

The principle of collective bargaining is a greater
protection to [women] than is at the present time
legislation on the statute books, that is not enforced,
and never will be enforced for the benefit of the
workers so long as the reins of government are held
by the representatives of the employing class.57
From its inception, the Minimum Wage Board, made up of J.D. McNiven, the Deputy
Minister of Labour, Helen Gregory MacGill, a prominent Vancouver woman, and
Thomas Mathews, a businessman, seemed to bear this out.58 The Board implemented
its recommendations slowly, to give employers time to adjust to the idea
that while they are in appearance paying more, they
are getting more stable conditions, and better
service.59
There were problems in the method by which the Board operated which biased its
action against working women.
The Board had the right to demand from employers
what wage they paid any woman or girl; in case it was
too low, they could call a conference of employees
and employers to work out what was an honest, fair
minimum wage…, the aim being to avoid arbitrary
strong-arm methods.60
The Retail Clerks Union objected to the total discretion allowed the Board in the
appointment of employee representatives to these employer-employee hearings, feeling
that the Board’s choice might not be a suitable representative of the worker’s case.
(The union had been left out of the decision-making process.)61
Decisions made by the Board were not always satisfactory and interfered with
union organizing. The example of the Board’s involvement with the Laundry Workers is
instructive in this regard. These workers had been unionizing in spite of harassment
from employers.62 A difficult strike had been waged in which strikers had lost their jobs.
After the strike was called off, the Board, without consulting the union, made its
recommendations, which included wages “practically re-establishing the inadequate
wage existing before the strike”, and a new lower pay scale for workers under 18 years
of age.63 This latter recommendation was seen as contravening the Minimum Wage
Act, since it did not provide a living wage.64 The union said that the Board’s
recommendation for sub-minimum wages for young women would lead:
to girls over the age of 18 years being eliminated from
the industry.65
Mrs. MacGill was particularly castigated for her part in this decision. She replied when
questioned about it, that the girls “would have parents to help them”.66 She wasn’t able
to answer when asked about the case of the girl without parents.67 Her ideas, like those
of Mrs. Macdonald, referred to earlier in this paper, suggest that Mrs. MacGill was
incapable of providing the advocacy which working women needed for proper
implementation of Minimum Wage Regulations.
3.

UNIONS MOBILIZE AGAINST WOMEN

While not an adequate solution to working women’s needs, the Board’s shortterm help for women and its long-term promises probably eased the return of many
women workers to their traditional place in female occupations after the war. This was
an issue in which trade unions played a prominent role since increased participation by
women in the labour force had become a threat to men’s work and wages. The basis of
the threat posed by women at this time was their willingness to work for less than men.
Having proven that they could do men’s jobs, it was feared that employers would keep
them on after the war, displacing men who had left work to go to war. The labour press
was filled with speculation about the problem and how it should be handled.68 Writers
expressed resentment against women as in this article:
Women have worked for less than men… and women
will continue to work for less than men. Employers
have had a taste of cheap labour and will be loathe to
part with their feminine employees at the close of the
war. When the “heroes” return… they will have to
seek jobs. The women will insist on staying where
they are in the industrial field. The “heroes” will have
to accept employment at such work and wages as the
employers see fit to give. The work of the trades
union for the past fifty years will have to [be] done all
over again.69
Unions attempted to circumvent the potential problem women might cause by protecting
jobs for male workers. For instance, the Postal Clerks decided at their annual
convention in 1918 to recommend only temporary employment of women so that their
jobs would be available to returning soldiers.70 The Canadian Trades and Labour
Congress recommended that the federal government regulate the employment of
women in industry, as this report indicates:
We called upon the government for the protection of
women who enter industries to replace men, and
suggested that they should only be placed there after
full investigation had proven that all available
manpower had been absorbed. Inspection of working
conditions should be carried out… and reports… as to
the advisability of women undertaking any class of
work (with the view of their responsibility towards the
nation as mothers of our future citizens), should be
contingent conditions of their employment in any
industry. Equal pay for women employed in work
usually done by men, as men are receiving or were
receiving for the same work, will be insisted upon.71
The TLC was preparing legal routes by which women could be removed from particular
jobs, and to ensure that women would not have a competitive edge by virtue of their
cheap labour.
The following excerpt from the B.C. Federationist probably represented general
opinion among trade unions when it suggested that women should be returned to the

home. It pointed out that “considerable tact” would be required to get the women out
and the men back into the industrial process once the war was over, but that
if this army of gallant and efficient men [were] taken
from the battlefield and munitions factory and set… to
work upon the fields and in the factories producing
the useful and indispensable things of life, it would not
be necessary for the rest of the family to do anything
at all.72
Trade unionists seemed to agree that failing the complete removal of women from the
occupations considered to be a male prerogative, or until such time as they were
removed, women should be unionized, to reduce competition.
We will not only benefit [women] by helping them to
secure equal pay for equal work but we shall…
prevent our own wages and conditions from being
drawn down to the lower standard by any successful
efforts of the employers to use female labour at a
lower price.73
This writer identified an additional self-interest union men had in organizing women - an
important development in thinking of B.C. trade unionists, showing the penetration of
“business union” ideas:
We have another interest [in organizing women]; that
they are all purchasers of our production. We want
them to be union purchasers and large purchasers,
that is to say, we want them to earn the highest
[wages possible].74
CONCLUSION
Although the research reported in this paper does not focus directly on the ideological
directions taken by the British Columbia union movement during this period, it does
show, coincidentally, the development of working relations between union leaders and
representatives of government and industry. This cooperation affected the decisions
unions were making about women workers. Discussions were taking place about
women’s working conditions, their involvement in the war effort and potential
unemployment caused by more women in men’s jobs after the war. At the same time
the central union bodies were being influenced to see industrial harmony as the means
to strengthen capitalist development from which certain segments of the working class,
the unionized workers, would benefit. Women workers and their organizations suffered
from being “outsiders” in the labour movement. Leaders of the labour movement in B.C.
consistently treated the women workers they organized, like the unorganized women,
as “other” than real workers who rightfully belonged in unions. While treating women
workers differently in practice (i.e., in the effort expended on organizing them, in the
kind of wage settlements they demanded for them, in matters of job tenure, and so on)
they also prevented union structure and regulations from being modified to
accommodate women’s special needs. The frequently enunciated objectives of the
union movement to get equal pay for women never materialized. Rather, union

practices helped to maintain the low-status, low-paid and poorly organized (i.e., sexsegregated) female labour force. This was a solution to the threat women posed to
men’s jobs, as well as providing a pool of cheap labour to aid capitalist growth.
Identification of sexist practices in trade unions is not a total indictment of the
union movement. Rather, it is an attempt to clarify what happened and how, the better
to enlighten women’s on-going struggles for equality to contemporary settings. Sexism
has been called into use in the past as it still is today, to further particular causes. It has
a history about which we can read and from which we can learn.
Footnotes

An earlier version of this paper “Women and Trade Unions in British Columbia, 1900 1920: The Social Organization of Sex Discrimination” was prepared for the Vancouver
Women’s Research Centre, July, 1978. I am grateful to Alison Prentice for reading and
commenting on the earlier paper. J. Muller and R. Ng also provided helpful suggestions
for improvements to this version, prepared for publication in In Her Own Right.
1
Alice Kessler-Harris’s research on the history of women workers in United States has led her to reject as
insufficient the explanation typically advanced to account for their low rate of unionization, i.e., women’s
traditional place in the family and in the workforce. Finding Kessler-Harris’s argument persuasive, this
essay beings from her reformulated research question, “When we stop asking why women have not
organized themselves, we are led to ask how women were, and are, kept out of unions.” Kessler-Harris,
“Where are the organized women workers?” Feminist Studies 3:1 (2) Fall, 1975, pp. 92 - 110.
2
Sources of data include the Labour Gazette, (LG), a monthly government publication which published
information about Canadian labour conditions; the B.C. Federationist (BCF), a weekly newspaper
published by the B.C. Federation of Labour from 1911 on; (it represented the left-wing of organized labour
in B.C. during most of the period under study); the proceedings of the Royal Commission on Labour
Conditions in British Columbia (RCLC), 1912 - 1914, housed in the Provincial Archives, Victoria; the
minutes of meetings of the executive of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council (VTLC), and of
Vancouver Local Council of Women (LCW), Special Collections, UBC library; records of the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), in their local office, Burnaby; various reports of Vancouver City
Council, Vancouver Public Library.
3
Not to be confused with “attitudes” of people, which are often taken to be the “cause” of women’s
disadvantage vis-à-vis men. Julie White examines the attitudinal studies of women and unions and finds
them wanting as an adequate explanation of why women are not as unionized as men today. White,
Women and Unions. The Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, Hull, Que; Canadian
Government Publishing Centre, 19890, pp. 29 - 50.
4
The Vancouver correspondent of the LG reported that twenty-seven Japanese carpenters applied for
membership in the Moulder’s union and were refused. The same report gives an indication of how unions
were able to keep contracts from (non-unionized Chinese) tailors; the Trades and Labour council
demanded of the city authorities that the contract for police clothing be union made. LG 10, p. 1126.
5
In 1901, 238,000 Canadian women are shown as in the female labour force by the census. This is 13%
of the total labour force; White, Ibid., p. 38. Statistics on unionization are not available for early in the
century. By 1913 in Vancouver female telephone operators had been unionized; IBEW, May - Dec. 1905;
one exclusive women’s union was in operation - the Waitresses and Lady Cooks Union, and there were
female members of the Garment Workers’ and Bookbinders’ Unions, LG, Female Correspondent, 1913.
6
Dorothy E. Smith uses the term “ruling apparatus” in a paper “A Sociology for Women” presented at the
conference “Prism of Sex: Towards an Equitable Pursuit of Knowledge”, Madison, Wisconsin, Oct., 1977,
mimeo, p. 6. The significance of organized labour’s involvement in a ruling apparatus is discussed by R.
Mahon in L. Panich, The Canadian State: Political Economy and Political Power, pp. 165 - 198, and by
Panich in “Trade Unions and the Capitalist State: Corporatism and its Contradictions”, presented at the
conference “State and the Economy”, Erindale College, Toronto, Dec., 1979.

7

An early instance of these working alliances between trade union leadership and government and
business interests is referred to in this paper, p. 9 and was developed more fully in my article “Unlocking
Women’s Experience: A Method for Using Historical Sources” Our Generation Vo. 13, No. 3, pp. 11 - 15,
1979.
8
LG 11, Oct. 1910, p. 421.
9
Ibid.
10
LG 13, Apr. 1913, p. 1080, LG 14, Mar. 1914, p. 1070.
11
Ibid.
12
LG 14, Feb. 1914, p. 954.
13
IBEW, May 1905.
14
Ibid., Dec. 1905.
15
Ibid., May, 1905.
16
Ibid., Feb. 1906.
17
Ibid., May 1906, June, 1906.
18
LG 6, June, 1906, p. 1383
19
LG 13, Apr., 1913, p. 1072.
20
LG 5, Oct., 1904.
21
BCF, Aug., 9, 1918, p. 1.
22
BCF, Aug. 2, 1918, p. 1.
23
RCLC, IV, p. 124.
24
Ibid., p. 13.
25
BCF, July 19, 1918, p. 1; VTLC, Nov. 5, 1918.
26
VTLC, Oct. 28, 1918; Dec. 6, 1918; Jan. 6, 1919; Jan. 13, 1919.
27
BCF, Apr., 1917, p. 1.
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid.
31
RCLC IV, p. 13.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid., p. 20 - 22.
34
Ibid., p. 13.
35
Ibid., p. 21.
36
Ibid. This was not a new idea to trade unionists; a resolution passed at the 27th annual convention of
the Canadian Trades and Labour Congress read: “Whereas, it has come to light from time to time,
especially in our coast cities, that Chinese employing white girls have used their positions as employers
to seduce and destroy all sense of morality…therefore be it resolved…[to] impress on the Federal
government the necessity of passing legislation making it a criminal offense for Orientals to employ white
girls in any capacity” LG 12, Oct. 1911, p. 344.
37
RCLC, p. 13
38
LG 14, Apr. 1914, pp. 1189 - 91.
39
Ibid.
40
LCW.
41
e.g., Helen MacGill, appointed to the Minimum Wage Board; National Council of Women
representatives had a yearly audience with the Federal Cabinet to put forward their concerns and
recommendations.
42
LCW; e.g., Vancouver’s mayor addressed the group’s annual convention in 1914; Lady Tupper
addressed the group on Aug. 10, 1914.
43
LCW; reports from groups across the country were read at meetings routinely.
44
LG 14, April. 1914, pp. 1157 - 8.
45
Ibid.
46
RCLC IB, p. 3
47
Ibid., p. 17, 13.
48
Ibid., p. 3.
49
Ibid., p. 13.
50
LG 14, Feb. 1914, p. 901; LG 15, Oct. 1914, pp. 467 - 9.

51

LCW, Sept. 1914.
LG 15, pp. 800, 927, 1062.
53
Report from the Relief Officer to Medical Health Officer, 1912, mentions funds from city council going to
the Associated Charities of Vancouver (whose management was composed of businessmen) for
establishment of a crèche. This group had interests which included other charitable work such as
establishing an old people’s home. The LG mentions women’s groups being involved in organizing a
crèche earlier than this. In 1913, the ACV turned the crèche over to the city to operate. After 1916, it was
financed through the Relief Department of the city. In 1914, LCW records criticism of the child care given
at the crèche.
54
LG 15, Oct. 1914, pp. 467 - 9.
55
Relief Officer report to Medical Health Officer, City of Vancouver Annual Report, 1912.
56
BCF, May 16, 1913, p. 3; Jan. 4, 1918, p.1.
57
BCF, Aug. 30, 1918, p. 16.
58
BCF, May 23, 1919, p. 7.
59
BCF, Nov. 29, 1918, p. 5.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid.
62
BCF, Aug. 2, 1918, p. 1: “the management [of the Cascade Laundry] is making it so uncomfortable for
anyone prominent in the organizing movement that they quit.”
63
BCF, Mar. 14, 1919. p. 1.
64
BCF, June 20, 1919, p. 1.
65
BCF, Mar. 14, 1919. p. 1.
66
BCF, June 20, 1919, p. 2.
67
Ibid.
68
For example, BCF, editorial, Aug. 16, 1916, p. 2; BCF, Apr. 5, 1918, p. 1.
69
BCF, Aug. 11, 1916, p. 1.
70
BCF, Aug. 2, 1918.
71
LG 18, Oct. 1918, p. 833.
72
BCF, Aug. 26, 1916, p. 2.
73
BCF, Sept. 6, 1918, p. 7.
74
Ibid.
52