The Past, Present, and Future of the Canadian Labour Movement

The Past, Present, and Future of the Canadian Labour Movement:Interrogating Insider Accounts Larry Savage (bio) Sid Ryan, A Grander Vision: My Life in the Labour Movement (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2019) Fred Wilson, A New Kind of Union: Unifor and the Birth of the Modern Canadian Union (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 2019) In recounting his working-class Irish upbringing, Sid Ryan, former president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (cupe) Ontario Division and the Ontario Federation of Labour (ofl), laments, "At times, people in the working class can be very cruel to each other."1 Perhaps unintentionally, this observation from his childhood frames much of the content of his autobiography, A Grander Vision: My Life in the Labour Movement, in which Ryan documents how he navigated a series of political struggles and internecine union leadership battles during a two-decade career in Canada's union movement. Ryan's eventual fall from grace was largely precipitated by Unifor's decision to back one of their own to replace him at the helm of the ofl in 2015. The process leading to the creation of Unifor and its tumultuous first five years as a new union are the subjects of Fred Wilson's book A New Kind of Union: Unifor and the Birth of the Modern Canadian Union. Wilson, a former director of strategic planning for Unifor, played a central role in creating Canada's largest private-sector union in 2013 through a merger of the Canadian Auto Workers (caw) and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (cep). [End Page 285] Both books reveal some fascinating insights into the inner machinations of the contemporary Canadian labour movement even if their respective political aims are at cross-purposes. Ryan's autobiography covers his whole life – describing his working-class upbringing, why and how he ended up in Canada, his tumultuous and contentious climb up the leadership ladder of the Ontario division of cupe, his first-hand accounts of internal union power struggles and political battles with governments of all stripes at Queen's Park – and concludes with a call for the labour movement to adopt a "grander vision" that embraces policy directions and political strategies that could broadly be described as social unionist. The first third of A Grander Vision, a lively look at Ryan's working-class upbringing in Dublin in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, focuses on his family's experience of poverty, his entry into the workforce as a "lounge boy," and his transition to skilled trades work. Ryan's work as a plumber eventually took him to Belfast. His time in Northern Ireland coincided with the Troubles – the decades-long conflict between Catholic nationalists and Protestant union-ists marked by "horrific crimes, brutal repression, and civil unrest."2 Ryan's experience in Belfast had a profound impact on him and unleashed a political awakening of sorts: "I was astonished by the scale of the injustices stacked against the Catholic community. I found it hard to believe that the state was complicit in blatant acts of discrimination against an entire community based solely on their religion." He writes, "I learned that the majority can behave as tyrants. These lessons stayed with me."3 Eventually, economic circumstances and the tumultuous political situation in Ireland convinced Ryan to look for opportunities in Canada, where he quickly secured work as a steamfitter at the Kendall Company factory in Toronto's east end. In short order, he was actively involved in a successful union organizing drive at the plant and became a shop steward. Shortly thereafter, Ryan made the move to Ontario Hydro's nuclear division, where he became heavily involved in his new union, cupe. A decade and a half later, he would become president of cupe Ontario, the province's largest union. Ryan was elected cupe Ontario president in 1992, having run against and defeated the candidate favoured by cupe National president Judy Darcy, kicking off a tense relationship between the National and the Ontario division that persists to this day. In fact, during the course of his decade and a half as president, Ryan recounts, he was forced to fend off several internal challenges to his leadership that

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