Canadian Labour Congress

Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), nationwide association of labour unions in Canada, comprising both wholly Canadian “national” unions and “international” unions that are Canadian branches of unions based in the United States. The CLC was formed in 1956 through the merger of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada and the Canadian Congress of Labour. At the onset of the 21st century, a majority of the four million unionized workers in English-speaking Canada belonged to unions affiliated with the CLC.

Though several British unions had established affiliates in Canada by the 1850s, the pull of labour organizations south of the border proved stronger, and by the 1880s about half of all union members in Canada belonged to affiliates of U.S. unions. Founded in 1886, the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC) accepted both craft unions and industrywide unions, but its membership consisted largely of craft unions, many affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

In the first part of the 20th century, Canadian labour history was marked by a long series of disputes between those who defended craft-based organizations and those who advocated industrial unionism. Identical debates were taking place in the United States. In 1940, when the AFL expelled the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and its industrial unions, the TLC followed suit and expelled its CIO affiliates. In that same year, the ousted Canadian affiliates joined with the All-Canadian Congress of Labour (established in 1927) to form a new body of industrial unions, the Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL).

It was not long before unions experienced more mergers—first in the United States and then in Canada. In 1956 (one year after the AFL and the CIO merged), the CCL and the TLC united as the Canadian Labour Congress, with headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario. Its first elected president, Claude Jodoin, came from the TLC. Officials of the CLC were then instrumental in forming the New Democratic Party in 1961.

In 1955 about one-third of Canadian workers were members of “national” components of the CLC; another one-third belonged to unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). CLC representation reached a peak in 1980, when about 38 percent of all workers were enrolled as members of affiliated unions. By the turn of the century, however, the proportion had declined to less than one-third, while membership in AFL-CIO-affiliated unions had dropped to less than 15 percent.