Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics

Follows the evolution of the Canadian Auto Workers union.

In the decades after the Second World War, autoworkers were at the forefront of the labor movement. Their union urged members to rally in the streets and use the ballot box to effect change for all working-class people. But by the turn of this century, the Canadian Auto Workers union had begun to pursue a more defensive political direction. Shifting Gears traces the evolution of CAW strategy from transformational activism to transactional politics. Class-based collective action and social democratic electoral mobilization gave way to transactional partnerships as relationships between the union, employers, and governments were refashioned. This new approach was maintained when the CAW merged with the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union in 2013 to create Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union. Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage explain how and why the union shifted its political tactics, offering a critical perspective on the current state of working-class politics.

Stephanie Ross is associate professor in the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University and the founding president of the Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies.

Larry Savage is professor in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock University. They are the coauthors of Building a Better World: An Introduction to the Labour Movement in Canada and coeditors of Public Sector Unions in the Age of Austerity, Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada, and Labour under Attack: Anti-Unionism in Canada.