His thread is better - I spent some time last night trying to find his book in our house and should have spent the time reading his Bluesky account instead!

It is never going to be one strike that is the tipping point - Sefton McDowell, for example, attributes of lot of weight to the Kirkland Lake mining strike which was ultimately unsuccessful. But we need to take the opportunities we are given and it seems like something is building here. /15

Things are obviously different than they were in the 1940s -- but there are similarities: growing support for unions, more strikes, inflation -- and a more defiant (and militant) trade union response is the counterpunch that we need -https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cllpj/vol45/iss2/7/. /14

Capital fought back with restrictions on strikes and globalization and even with the Charter, labour hasn't really been able to effectively counter this approach. Which brings us to the opposition to s.107 by CUPE etc and other labour disputes like the education strike in Ontario in 2022 /13

Labour then counter punches with more militancy which in turn leads to the adoption of the Wagner model (see, for example, Sefton MacDowell - lltjournal.ca/index.php/ll...) and keeps punching with militancy post-war that gives rise to the construction industry provisions etc. /12

Not to over simplify but it is part of a long back and forth between labour and the state in Canada - as trade unions gain power in late 19th century, mechanisms like the Industrial Dispute Investigation Act (IDA, referenced by Craven above) are used to recognize unions but undercut their power. /11

Which gets us back to the argument that we are returning to a pre-1940s approach to regulating labour even if in the shadow of the Charter and Wagner model. In fact, the issue of perpetually "delayed hostilities" is what brought about the Wagner model in the first place (at least in Canada) /10

Sure -- Ford lost that strike, but not before using the notwithstanding clause to try and force workers back and to work. While its true that the Charter may provide a remedy for much of this, including the use of s.107 against CUPW, CUPE and the Teamsters -- that will be years from now... /9

The Charter superficially changes this -- there was no Charter protected right to strike in 1907 (there was no Charter), but gov'ts are finding ways around as evidenced by Ford's approach to the CUPE strike in 2020 /8

Importantly, this is all been developed by the Liberals - a party that is ostensibly allied with trade unions (or some unions) and historically more union friendly than the Conservatives -- they recognize the legitimacy of unions, but want to use the labour relations regime against them /7

In other words, the State didn't need to physically repress strikes (though they often did) they simply needed to stop strikes from even starting through mandatory meetings, reports etc. /6

Craven wrote: "[the pre-war approach] was, in the characteristic fashion of the Canadian state until the 1940s, directed "towards the ad hoc suspension of hostilities," in the context of "a generalized defense of private property rights by the capitalist state." /5

The use of s.107 is the culmination of a project by Provincial and Federal gov'ts to return to the pre-Wagner (i.e. pre-1944) of regulating strikes in Canada. This approach was summarized by Paul Craven decades ago in his book "An Impartial Umpire" /4

But the recent turn to using s.107 to stop federally regulated strikes as soon as they start (and then bog those strikes down in bureaucratic delays) is a new development which has allowed the Federal Government to bypass back to work legislation and manage strikes quickly by fiat. /3

Back to work legislation has been a staple of Canadian state regulation of unions for decades and a key means of state coercion, especially since the rise of public sector unionism in the 60s and 70s -- Panitch and Schwartz do a great job of setting this out: www.lltjournal.ca/index.php/ll... /2

Extra nice for me too because I got to go to the provincial archives to root around for some helpful materials on secondary pickets from the ‘50s and ‘60s