The Cold War, Alberta Labour, and the Social Credit Regime

Abstract

In the period following World War II, Alberta's Social Credit government passed several pieces of restrictive legislation which limited labour's ability to organize workers and to call strikes. The enforcement of labour law also reflected an anti-union bias. This article argues that Social Crediters, who had a penchant for conspiracy theories, believed that union militancy was the product of the manoeuverings of an international communist conspiracy. Their labour legislation was intended to foil the conspiracy's plans in Alberta and incidentally to reassure potential investors, particularly in the oil patch, of a good climate for profit-taking. But the path for such legislation was made smoother by the conservatism of one wing of the labour movement in the province and the fear of being tarnished with the communist brush by the other wing. On the whole, the Alberta experience casts a grim reflection on the theory that the post-war period provided a measure of industrial democracy for Canadian workers. Resume Dans l'epoque qui suit la deuxieme guerre mondiale, le gouvernement creditiste de l'Alberta legiferait plusieurs lois qui avaient pour but la restriction des syndicats dans leurs tentatives d'organiser et de declencher des greves. La mise en vigueur des lois concernant le travail egalement reflechissait un prejuge contre les syndicats. Cet essai soutient que les creditistes, qui appuyaient toujours sur theories conspiratrices, songeaient que le militantisme syndical provenait d'une conspiration communiste mondiale. Par consequent, ils projettaient des lois concernant le travail qui mettraient un echec aux projets de la conspiration en Alberta, tout en rassurant des investisseurs potentiels, surtout dans le secteur petrolier, que l'Alberta leur offrait un milieu securitaire pour gagner des benefices. Mais la voie qui menait a telles lois se faisait plus facile grace au conservatisme d'une aile du mouvement syndicaliste de la province et la peur d'etre etiquette communiste de l'autre aile. A tout prendre, l'experience albertaine met en cause la theorie qu'une dose de la democratie industrielle se produisait au cours de la periode apres-guerre.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.