Labour Day quick facts and quotes

Submitted by BC Building Trades and The Daily Courier staff

• In Canada, Labour Day was the result of an 1886 Royal Commission that looked at ways to ease conflicts between labour and capital. It was a difficult time for workers. Unions had only been legal for 15 years, it was common for workers to spend 12 hours a day, six days a week doing their job.

The commission made many recommendations that would have improved worker safety and reduced workplace fatalities, but the proclamation of a new holiday to honour workers was the only one accepted.

• “We have to recognize that the key to organized labour’s success is elementary and can be summed up in one word: solidarity,” said F.G. Peskett, BC Employers’ Council president in “From We Build BC: History of the BC Building Trades” by Jim Sinclair (2017).

• On May 6, 1971, 200 workers from seven unions building the TD Tower in Vancouver downed their tools because the employer was exposing them to asbestos.

• The International Labour Organization estimates that 100,000 construction workers die annually from exposure to asbestos.

• Women represent less than five per cent of workers in the construction trades.

• On April 13, 1987, thousands of B.C. workers took part in a one-day general strike protesting the Social Credit government’s anti-union bills 19 and 20.

• Labour Day, celebrated on the first Monday of September, can be traced back in Canada to 1872 when the Toronto Typographical Union held a parade, demanding a 58-hour work week.

• Canada’s best-established parade is in Grand Falls-Windsor, Nfld., dating back more than 90 years.

• Labour Day traditions in Canada include home-and-away Canadian Football Games in Hamilton/Toronto and Calgary/ Edmonton called, appropriately enough, “The Labour Day Classics.” The Wharf Rat Rally is also a major tradition in Digby, Nova Scotia.

From We Build BC: History of the BC Building Trades by Jim Sinclair, 2017