MAY 1 INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ DAY LABOUR DAY

Murphy Browne © April 30-2020

MAY 1 – INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ DAY

The first day of May is recognized as International Workers' Day. In many countries, the first day of May is also May Day, a time to celebrate with crowning of May Queens and plaiting of the Maypole. The day is also Labour Day in several countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Europe. International Workers’ Day is a celebration/recognition of the working classes that is promoted annually by the international labour movement. The efforts of labour activists ended child labour, established health benefits and provided aid to injured and retired workers.

In North America, the first workers who organized labour unions were skilled workers. These labour unions failed or refused to organize the less skilled; because many of the less skilled were racialized people, the early trade union movement was exclusively white and male. The whites-only, Order of United Machinists and Mechanical Engineers, founded on May 5, 1888, by railroad machinist, Thomas W. Talbot, in Atlanta, Georgia, was an example. Fourteen years later, in 1902, African Americans made up approximately 3% of the membership in American labour unions and most of those locals were segregated.

The history of organized labour in Canada is similar to America’s history. In her 2010 published book “North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870-1955,” African American history professor Sarah-Jane Mathieu writes: “In April 1854, the Great Western Railway declared that it urgently needed eight hundred workers to guard its tracks against stray cattle and hog crossings. Its advertisement, strategically placed in Canada's most important black newspaper of the day, the Provincial Freeman, sought African Canadians for the task. Before the turn of the century, African Canadian men laid down tracks for the transcontinental railroad and worked as cooks and dining car attendants for the Grand Trunk Railway. Black railroaders became more prominent figures on Canadian rails by the 1870s when the Pullman Palace Car Company introduced sleeping car porters to Canada.” In “North of the Color Line,” Professor Mathieu examines the life of African Canadian railway workers and the African American and African Caribbean men who immigrated to Canada to work on the railway.

White men in Canada who worked for the railway companies protested the presence of racialized workers and insisted on a segregated workforce. The all-white male union, the Canadian Brotherhood of Railroad Employees (CBRE), refused to allow the sleeping-car porters to become members. In April 1917, the sleeping car porters began to organize their own union. The Order of Sleeping Car Porters (OSCP), was the first labour union in North America for African Canadian men. The OSCP was established in Winnipeg by porters John Arthur Robinson, J.W. Barber, B.F. Jones and P. White. The OSCP was not supported by the CBRE and faced several challenges. The CBRE negotiated contracts with employers on behalf of White union members. The OSCP had to overcome the white supremacist culture of the Canadian National Railway (CNR) management, which viewed African Canadian workers as a cheap and disposable pool of labour who did not deserve job protection. The persistence of the African Canadian workers ensured that by 1919, the OSCP successfully negotiated two contracts with the CNR. The contracts improved wages and job protections for all porters, regardless of race. The OSCP also criticized the hypocrisy of White unionists who talked about class solidarity while excluding African Canadian workers.

A collective bargaining agreement was not finalized until May 1945. This was a result of African Canadians organizing with the support of the US-based Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) in 1939. Toronto born (November 18, 1918) Stanley G. Grizzle, was a sleeping car porter and an organizer with the BSPC. Grizzle, also a Civil Rights activist, was elected president of the Toronto division of the BSCP in 1946. Grizzle’s memoir, “My Name’s Not George: The Story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Canada, Personal Reminiscences of Stanley G. Grizzle,” was published in 1998. Grizzle recalled that many porters were “intelligent young Black men who had achieved a measure of education that should have guaranteed them a job befitting their academic achievements and in line with their training. But they were denied those opportunities by a racist society, and instead had to go into a line of work that forced them into that demeaning role of servant.”

During a time of prevailing White supremacist attitude which held that African Canadians were socially inferior to Whites and were meant to work in menial or subordinate positions, several African Canadian activists resisted. Stanley Grizzle was one of those activists. Grizzle also served in the Canadian military during WWII, was a candidate for political office and was appointed the first African Canadian citizenship judge. Grizzle transitioned to the ancestral realm on November 12, 2016.

Murphy Browne © April 30-2020