The cultural and legal framework within which tradesmen (called "mechanics" in the period) contracted for work, and hired men was similar to that of Great Britain. These immigrants quickly sought to establish and regulate the basic institutions of the trades: Friendly societies, the house of call and apprenticeship. Friendly societies were worker controlled mutual insurance organizations. They provided an income in the case of strike, injury or economic downturn. Their association with specific trades also made them useful vehicles for trade union organization.
Master tradesmen were the skilled workers who would contract to perform large building projects. They depended upon their apprentices, "tradesmen in training," and those apprentices who had graduated, the independent journeymen.
Apprenticeship was the means by which tradesmen acquired their skills and controlled access to their trade. It was a seven-year contract in which the master agreed to train the apprentice and frequently board him in his own home as well. The apprentice would be paid for part of their service, but at a much reduced rate compared to journeymen. Apprentices were indentured under the "Law of Master & Servant" and hence subject to significant penalties for breach of contract should they abandon their masters. Journeymen in contrast, were supposed to be independent subcontractors. As will be seen, their actual independence was constrained by the common practice of keeping them in debt. They couldn't change masters without the fear of losing their owed wages.
In 1830, Reform politicians John Lesslie and William Lyon Mackenzie helped form the York (later Toronto) Mechanics' Institute, based upon their experience with the "Dundee Rational Institute" in Scotland, and the London Mechanics Institute. This was an early attempt to provide more general working class education for apprentices. "Common schools" received little government support compared to the "grammar schools" that taught a classical education to the elite Family Compact bound for university. The Institute built up a lending library, and held weekly lectures. The Mechanics Institute was closely bound to the Reform movement, and shared quarters with their political organization, the Canadian Alliance Society, in the second market buildings. A Mechanics Institute was also started in Kingston.
After completing their apprenticeship, workers joined the ranks of journeymen. Like their bosses, the masters, they performed the same tasks and had the same terms of employment (on contracts). They differed from masters who were more stabile (having a shop) and willing to take on large contracts and to subcontract. Over time, as he gained skill and capital, a journeyman could begin to sub-contract larger projects and eventually take apprentices and become a master himself.
Friendly Societies were democratically organized self-help community insurance organizations designed to alleviate tragedies arising from accident, sickness and old age. Regular contributions to a common fund entitled the society member to relief when sick or unemployed, providing that member an income in the face of calamity. Legislation had been passed in Britain in 1793 giving the Friendly Societies legal standing while confirming the illegality of other forms of popular organization. Their association with specific trades also made them useful vehicles for trade union organization, which was otherwise illegal under the Combination Act of 1799.
Houses of call
Friendly Societies representing specific trades would meet at taverns, their "house of call." Journeymen looking for work could register at these taverns, and masters looking for men could find them there. Journeymen were mobile, and could rarely count on long-term employment. Only apprentices were hired for any length of time, usually the period of their seven-year indenture to learn the trade.
Jobbing and tramping
Having served an apprenticeship, journeymen owned their own tools and could be hired by the task (piecework), by the "job," or by time. "Jobbing" was a form of sub-contracting, in which the worker provided not only his own tools, but also his own materials. Journeymen thus had a range of flexible employment options which entailed frequent short-term stints of work and equally frequent periods of "tramping" looking for jobs. When tramping, they might travel a circuit of towns visiting their Houses of Call. If they were members of a trade-based Friendly Society, they might appeal to its members for aid during these periods of unemployment.
Trade unions were illegal in Britain until 1825. Their legal standing in Upper Canada is uncertain. However, as the Owenite socialist movement in England and America gathered steam in 1834 they created Grand Trade Unions bringing tradesmen of many professions in one union in both continents. A similar movement took place in Upper Canada. A builders union emerged in 1834, followed by a typographers union shortly thereafter. By 1836, the tradesmen (called "mechanics" then) formed a petitioning organization, the "Mechanics Association," in order to further the political issues important to workers - the use of prison labour in particular.[1]
In Britain, the "Combination Act" of 1799 made labour unions "criminal conspiracies," illegal until 1825, when the Act was finally repealed. Some have argued that the Combination Act never applied in Upper Canada; English criminal law applied in Upper Canada because the House of Assembly accepted all English criminal statutes as of 17 September 1792, seven years before the Combination Act was passed. However, other acts passed after the reception date were subsequently accepted as law. If the Combination Act was taken as received, its repeal in 1825 was a separate issue again. As the matter was never settled in the higher courts in this period we can only point to the general "indefinite area of toleration" for such combinations evidenced in the magistrates' manuals for Upper Canada. W.C. Keele's "The Provincial Justice, or Magistrate's Manual... compiled and inscribed by permission, to His Majesty's Attorney General" was published in 1835 and stated without qualification that any justice of the peace could have any striking worker jailed,[2] its untested formal legality notwithstanding.
Third Parliament Buildings of Upper Canada (1834)Chewett Building, designed And built by John George Howard
The drive to form labour unions in Upper Canada resulted from a fundamental change in the way building projects in Toronto were contracted. The change to general contracting happened first in government construction projects, then private ones, leading to labour strife.
General contracting was introduced in the building trades in the 1820s in Britain. General contracting reorganized the bidding process by which construction contracts were awarded, and in so doing, challenged the master-journeyman system. General contracting began in the British "Office of Public Works" during the Napoleonic Wars; they obtained competitive tenders for the whole project by a single builder at fixed cost for the first time. This was a means by which they could limit their liability for cost overruns. By 1825, the system became common in the northwest of England, resulting in a steep fall in wages.[3] General contracting was introduced in Upper Canada in the construction of public works such as the new parliament buildings in Toronto, beginning in 1829.[4] This placed the project in the hands of a single master builder who subcontracted portions of the project to the other trades. Rather than "job" the work to a subcontractor, the general contractor would provide his own building materials, hiring masters and their journeymen as labour only. By limiting "jobbing," the general contractors also eroded the traditional measures by which these jobs were costed. This gave the general contractor more profit, and the masters less.
John George Howard, architect & general contractor
The general contractors had no interests in perpetuating the master-journeyman system and its traditional standards of payment, and abused the apprenticeship system by hiring unqualified workmen. General contracting was clearly an issue in Toronto as early as 1831 when the members of the United Amicable Trade and Benefit Society of Journeymen Bricklayers, Plasterers and Masons rejected the general contracting system.[5]
The general contractors used debt to bind workers to them. Workers complained of "great delay in obtaining payment" in June 1833, when the friendly society of carpenters and joiners called on their employers "for more punctual payments than what we have had in time past." They demanded "$5 per week on account, and a settlement at the end of each month." According to an anonymous "Master Builder" (contractor), "they receive from 3 to 5 dollars per week, at an average; and a settlement when the employer gets in his money, or obtains installments upon his contracts, when the Journeymen are often paid from £5 to £20 of arrears."[6]
Thomas Dalton, editor of the Patriot, retorted:
It is indeed incomprehensible, how laboring mechanics generally, can by possibility live in comfort, or decency, with arrears of wages due to them, to the amount of £20... However scarce money may be, and however long credit may be expected, it is very absurd to expect such credit from Journeymen who ordinarily can only supply their families from hand to mouth. It is the rich alone who can afford long credits... Is it just, to put the laborer in the predicament of being fleeced when his toil has actually won the fleece?[7]
These workers could not easily change jobs when those general contractors owed them substantial back-wages.
The tension between general contractors and the building tradesmen came to a head in 1833 with the construction of Chewett's block by general contractor John George Howard. Chewett's building, was a "splendid block of lofty brick houses is erecting on King and York Streets, to comprise eight or ten tenements for stores or dwelling houses, with an extensive hotel at the corner... "[8] Its designer and general contractor was a new British emigrant, John George Howard. Howard was to become one of Toronto's most famous architects and builders: besides Chewett's building, he built 4 large houses in Toronto the year he arrived and predicted he would build twenty of the one-hundred houses that would be built the next year.
Just before Christmas, the workers on Chewett's block went on strike after Howard refused to pay them their wages in full. The workers now refused to work for "any person whatever, other than a Master of their respective Trades, except it be direct for the Owner or Proprietor of Buildings." Howard's intermediary role as general contractor was clearly a point of contention. The striking workmen were up against the Family Compact. James G. Chewett was not only the deputy surveyor general of the province, but also a magistrate. Chewett, building owner and magistrate, had William Jarvis, sheriff of the Home District and elected representative for the city lay charges against the men. This is Toronto's first major strike. No court records survived of the case, but 6 weeks after they first struck for the payment of back wages they received £85.
This incident appears to have emboldened the masters and their journeymen to petition their member of the Legislative Assembly, Sheriff William Jarvis (the man who had arrested them for striking) to prepare for a "lien law somewhat similar to an act of that name now in force in New York, by which the wages of the workmen employed in buildings are very adequately protected." The law required the commissioner of a building to withhold labourers' wages from installment payments made to contractors, and to pay those labourers directly. The Assembly prepared a "Mechanics Protection Bill," but as William Lyon Mackenzie correctly predicted, "Nothing will be done on it this parliament. It may pass the next, if the legislative council be new modelled."[9]
The Typographical Union
The city's 20 journeymen printers in the Typographical Union of Toronto struck in October 1836, for higher wages and a limit on the number of apprentices per shop.
The Mechanics Association and prison labour
These craft-based friendly societies organized themselves as a "Mechanics Association" in 1836, with branches in Kingston, Toronto, and Dundas. It was first organized in Kingston in 1833 as a result of opposition to the use of convict labour in the new penitentiary. The artisans argued that convict produced goods would compete with their own, lowering prices, and impoverishing them. As the penitentiary neared completion in 1835, the mechanics of Kingston again petitioned the legislature. A similar public meeting was called in Toronto in March. By August 1836 they formed a Mechanics Association. Key to coordinating the associations were Charles Sewell, a Kingston watchmaker who moved to Toronto that year; and William Lesslie, a Kingston storekeeper in a family business with branches in Toronto and Dundas, who moved to Toronto in 1835.[10] Sewell went on to become the secretary of the new association. In explaining the need for such an innovation, they stated
whilst all other classes have some methods of co-operation sufficient for their purpose, the Mechanical interest, for such purpose were wholly unrepresented: that the Commercial interest through their Board of Trade, and from the constant intercourse of the merchants in the Reading Room have immediate notice of any matter affecting their interests, which can be instantly attended to, and quietly remedied, without any person except themselves knowing of its existence - whereas the Mechanical interest in similar cases, have hitherto had no other method of making known their complaints, but by public meetings, generally an inefficient instrument for that purpose, and moreover cannot be resorted to very frequently, and not at all by those who may perhaps be the greatest sufferers (Courier, 17 August 1836).
The formation of a "political union" for the purpose of organizing petitions was the primary form of political activity of the era, and had resulted in the "Great Reform Act" of 1832 in Britain.[11] The new Association was intended to politically represent the "mechanical interest" only – that is, masters and their journeymen – "either by petition to the Legislature, or to any other branch of Government, for any alteration or extension of duties, by inforcing the law against such as may violate it to their injury, by addresses to the public or its own members."[12] As such it is similar to the National Union of the Working Classes (founded in 1831) in London, which was to instigate the Chartist movement in 1838, or the American Workingmen's party in New York.
Notes
↑ Schrauwers, Albert (2010). "The Gentlemanly Order & the Politics of Production in the Transition to Capitalism in Upper Canada". Labour/Le Travail. 65 (1): 32–40.
↑ Cooney, E.W. (1955). "The Origins of the Victorian Master Builders". The Economic History Review. 8 (n.s.) (2): 167–176. JSTOR2590985.
↑ Appendix to Journal of the House of Assembly of Upper Canada of the first session of the twelfth provincial Parliament ... Toronto: Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada. 1835. pp.No. 124, 13–17.
↑ Schrauwers, Albert (2010). "The Gentlemanly Order & the Politics of Production in the Transition to Capitalism in Upper Canada". Labour/Le Travail. 65 (1): 36–7.
↑ Patriot (Toronto). 28 June 1833.{{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
↑ Dalton, Thomas (14 June 1833). Patriot (Toronto).{{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
↑ Canadian Courant (Montreal). 12 October 1833.{{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
↑ Schrauwers, Albert (2010). "The Gentlemanly Order & the Politics of Production in the Transition to Capitalism in Upper Canada". Labour/Le Travail. 65 (1): 41–2.
↑ Palmer, Bryan (1980). "Kingston Mechanics and the Rise of the Penitentiary, 1833-1836". Social History/Histoire Sociale. XIII (25): 7–32.
↑ Wilton, Carol (2000). Popular politics and political culture in Upper Canada, 1800-1850. Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press.
↑ Walton, George (1837). The City of Toronto and Home District Commercial Directory and Register with Almanack and Calendar for 1837. Toronto. p.47.
Related Research Articles
The Province of Upper Canada was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, to govern the central third of the lands in British North America, formerly part of the Province of Quebec since 1763. Upper Canada included all of modern-day Southern Ontario and all those areas of Northern Ontario in the Pays d'en Haut which had formed part of New France, essentially the watersheds of the Ottawa River or Lakes Huron and Superior, excluding any lands within the watershed of Hudson Bay. The "upper" prefix in the name reflects its geographic position along the Great Lakes, mostly above the headwaters of the Saint Lawrence River, contrasted with Lower Canada to the northeast.
Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study. Apprenticeships may also enable practitioners to gain a license to practice in a regulated occupation. Most of their training is done while working for an employer who helps the apprentices learn their trade or profession, in exchange for their continued labor for an agreed period after they have achieved measurable competencies.
Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. Carpenters traditionally worked with natural wood and did rougher work such as framing, but today many other materials are also used and sometimes the finer trades of cabinetmaking and furniture building are considered carpentry. In the United States, 98.5% of carpenters are male, and it was the fourth most male-dominated occupation in the country in 1999. In 2006 in the United States, there were about 1.5 million carpentry positions. Carpenters are usually the first tradesmen on a job and the last to leave. Carpenters normally framed post-and-beam buildings until the end of the 19th century; now this old-fashioned carpentry is called timber framing. Carpenters learn this trade by being employed through an apprenticeship training—normally four years—and qualify by successfully completing that country's competence test in places such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Australia and South Africa. It is also common that the skill can be learned by gaining work experience other than a formal training program, which may be the case in many places.
A journeyman is a worker, skilled in a given building trade or craft, who has successfully completed an official apprenticeship qualification. Journeymen are considered competent and authorized to work in that field as a fully qualified employee. They earn their license by education, supervised experience and examination. Although journeymen have completed a trade certificate and are allowed to work as employees, they may not yet work as self-employed master craftsmen.
An electrician is a tradesperson specializing in electrical wiring of buildings, transmission lines, stationary machines, and related equipment. Electricians may be employed in the installation of new electrical components or the maintenance and repair of existing electrical infrastructure. Electricians may also specialize in wiring ships, airplanes, and other mobile platforms, as well as data and cable lines.
The Family Compact was a small closed group of men who exercised most of the political, economic and judicial power in Upper Canada from the 1810s to the 1840s. It was the Upper Canadian equivalent of the Château Clique in Lower Canada. It was noted for its conservatism and opposition to democracy.
The Bank of Upper Canada was established in 1821 under a charter granted by the legislature of Upper Canada in 1819 to a group of Kingston merchants. The charter was appropriated by the more influential Executive Councillors to the Lt. Governor, the Rev. John Strachan and William Allan, and moved to Toronto. The bank was closely associated with the group that came to be known as the Family Compact, and it formed a large part of their wealth. The association with the Family Compact and its underhanded practices made Reformers, including Mackenzie, regard the Bank of Upper Canada as a prop of the government. Complaints about the bank were a staple of Reform agitation in the 1830s because of its monopoly and aggressive legal actions against debtors.
Owenism is the utopian socialist philosophy of 19th-century social reformer Robert Owen and his followers and successors, who are known as Owenites. Owenism aimed for radical reform of society and is considered a forerunner of the cooperative movement. The Owenite movement undertook several experiments in the establishment of utopian communities organized according to communitarian and cooperative principles. One of the best known of these efforts, which was unsuccessful, was the project at New Harmony, Indiana, which started in 1825 and was abandoned by 1827. Owenism is also closely associated with the development of the British trade union movement, and with the spread of the Mechanics' Institute movement.
William Warren Baldwin was a medical doctor, businessman, lawyer, judge, architect and reform politician in Upper Canada. He, and his son Robert Baldwin, are recognized for having introduced the concept of "responsible government", the principle of cabinet rule on which Canadian democracy is based.
James Lesslie was an Ontario bookseller, reform politician and newspaper publisher. His career was closely associated with - and somewhat overshadowed by - William Lyon Mackenzie, the Reform agitator, mayor of Toronto, and Rebellion leader. However, as a leader himself, Lesslie took a prominent role in founding the Mechanics Institute, the House of Refuge & Industry, the Bank of the People, as well as the political parties known as the Canadian Alliance Society and Clear Grits. In many way, he defined the Reform movement in Upper Canada without having reverted to the violent methods of Mackenzie. His legacy may thus have lasted longer.
Ottawa Trades Council was the first local labour central body established to unite workers in the city of Ottawa, Canada.
The history of labour law in the United Kingdom concerns the development of UK labour law, from its roots in Roman and medieval times in the British Isles up to the present. Before the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of mechanised manufacture, regulation of workplace relations was based on status, rather than contract or mediation through a system of trade unions. Serfdom was the prevailing status of the mass of people, except where artisans in towns could gain a measure of self-regulation through guilds. The law of the land was, under the Act of Apprentices 1563, that wages in each district should be assessed by justices of the peace. From the middle of the 19th century, through acts such as the Master and Servant Act 1867 and the Employers and Workmen Act 1875, there became growing recognition that greater protection was needed to promote the health and safety of workers, as well as preventing unfair practices in wage contracts.
The Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers, Shipwrights, Blacksmiths and Structural Workers (ASB) was a trade union in the United Kingdom. Many of its members worked in shipbuilding, in which industry it was the leading trade union, while over time it also developed strength in engineering and construction.
The Reform movement in Upper Canada was a political movement in British North America in the mid-19th century.
The Farmers’ Storehouse was Canada's first farmers' cooperative, founded in Toronto and the Home District in 1824. It stood at the centre of a broad economic and political reform movement that, in its essentials, was not greatly different from contemporary movements such as the Owenite socialists in Britain, as well as much later cooperative movements such as the United Farmers of Alberta in the early twentieth century.
There were two types of corporations at work in the Upper Canadian economy: the legislatively chartered companies and the unregulated joint stock companies. These two business forms had different legal standing; chartered corporations had a "separate personality" - they were a legal person quite distinct from its members or shareholders, a legal fiction which protected those shareholders with limited liability. In contrast, joint stock companies were made illegal by the English Bubble Act 1720. Joint stock companies were considered extensive partnerships under common law, and English legislation limited these to a maximum of six partners. Without incorporation, the company was not considered a "separate personality." It could not hold property; this was held by trustees, who usually had to provide a bond or security. Without incorporation, the company could neither sue nor be sued at law. And without incorporation, shareholders were personally responsible for the debts to the company to the full extent of their personal property; shareholders were not protected by limited liability. There were, then, significant legal hurdles that made the joint stock company an unwieldy form of partnership.
The Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) was a major British trade union, representing factory workers and mechanics.
William Allan was a British trade unionist.
The International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART) is a North American labor union headquartered in Washington, DC, which was chartered by the AFL–CIO in 2013. The product of a merger between the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association (SMWIA) and the United Transportation Union (UTU), SMART represents over 210,000 sheet metal workers, service technicians, bus operators, engineers, conductors, sign workers, welders, and production employees, among others, throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada. The Transportation Division represents employees on Class I railroad, Amtrak, and regional and short line railroads; bus and mass transit employees on some 45 transit systems; and airline pilots, flight attendants, dispatchers and other airport personnel. The Division's 500 local unions organize conductors, brakemen, switch men, ground service personnel, locomotive engineers, hostlers, and railroad yard masters, as well as bus drivers and mechanics.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Ontarioportal 
