Shifting Gears
Shifting Gears
Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics
In the decades following the Second World War, autoworkers were at the forefront of the labour movement. Their union mobilized members to rally in the streets for social change and make their voices heard at election time. 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 the union’s strategy from transformational activism to transactional politics. Postwar autoworkers played a leading role in the fight for redistributive socio-economic policies for all working-class people. Class-based collective action and social democratic electoral mobilization gave way to transactional partnerships at the bargaining table and the ballot box, however, 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 draw on primary sources and in-depth interviews with politicians, union leaders, staff, and activists to explain how and why the union shifted its political tactics. Their critical perspective on the state of working-class politics highlights the challenges faced by unions in a changing economic and political landscape.
This richly detailed and comprehensive analysis of the shifting dynamics of Canadian labour politics will be invaluable to scholars and students of labour history, industrial relations, and political science. It will also find a wider audience among labour movement leaders, activists, and union members.
As labour movements struggle with renewal, this in-depth study of a once-iconic union couldn’t be more timely. Addressing what went right and wrong in Unifor, it offers invaluable insights into the general complexities linking agency and structures in unions.
Shifting Gears is a masterful study of the transformation of the Canadian autoworkers from UAW to CAW to Unifor. Ross and Savage’s analysis of the challenges and decisions that moved the union politically is essential reading for anyone interested in unions and politics in Canada.
How unions approach working-class politics has always been contentious, and CAW/Unifor is no exception. Shifting Gears explores the union’s changing strategy from its inception. It should be read by all looking to advance the interests of workers through the political process.
Succinctly written and deeply researched, Shifting Gears offers an important, lively, and timely re-examination of the Canadian autoworkers from the UAW to Unifor – Canada’s largest and most influential private sector union – and how the labour landscape’s dramatically shifting dynamics have had a tremendous impact upon politics, the economy, and ordinary working Canadians’ lives.
Shifting Gears is an excellent read and rich in detail. It does a superb job of providing a historical background and setting the stage for the reader to understand the CAW’s political strategy over the last forty years.
Stephanie Ross is an 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 a professor in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock University. They are the co-authors of Building a Better World: An Introduction to the Labour Movement in Canada and co-editors of Public Sector Unions in the Age of Austerity, Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada, and Labour under Attack: Anti-Unionism in Canada.
1 Shifting Gears: An Introduction
2 In the Driver’s Seat: The Birth of the CAW and the Promise of Social Unionism
3 Back-Seat Driver? The CAW as Left Critic, 1988–95
4 Winding Road: Rebuilding the Left, 1995–2003
5 A Fork in the Road: The CAW Turns to Economic and Political Defensiveness, 2003–12
6 Merge Ahead: The Birth of Unifor and the Consolidation of Transactional Politics, 2013–21
7 Head-On Collision: The Fall of Jerry Dias and the Future of Unifor
8 The Road Ahead: Unifor and the Changing Landscape of Working-Class Politics
Notes; Selected Bibliography; Index
Rising Up
The Fight for Living Wage Work in Canada
Edited by Bryan Evans, Carlo Fanelli, and Tom McDowell
