Cause And Effect Of The Winnipeg General Strike In Canada

The Winnipeg General Strike, which occurred from May to June 1919, became a vocal point between for the clash between Unions and Government. While the strike occurred for little more than a month, its after effects were far reaching. The Strike only served to increase ethnic, and religious tensions across the prairie provinces. While this moderately nullified during the 1920s, due to increased economic activity, the racism that occurred during the general strike was magnified during the Great Depression in the 1930s. However this racism was not only found in Winnipeg during the Great Depression; it was also found in the rest of Western Canada during the Great Depression. As a result, while the racism that was found in the Winnipeg during the

General Strike impacted, this racism continued unabated across Western Canada after the General Strike and continued into the latter half of the Great Depression. However the Great Depression was so economically devastating to the ethnic majority that it allowed a class consciousness to emerge that transcended religious affiliation or ethnicity: the same class consciousness that the Union leaders had hoped to foster with the General Strike in 1919.

Racism manifested itself into the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike even before the strike commenced. While the majority of the Unions were working class, these Unions also actively discriminated against certain elements of the working class population. This was due to a strongly ingrained social hierarchy, that continued unabated even until the Great Depression. Wealth notwithstanding, at the top were what were known as the "WASPs," the White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, which were the dominant group among the organized Labour movement and society in general. This dominance was due to the fact that these groups found solidarity in the Labour movements that were also widely popular in both the United States and Great Britain, both being countries which shared a dominant population that was the same as Canada's dominant population. As a result, when the Winnipeg manifested itself, and while it was led by Unions, which the ruling business class denounced as Communists, these Unions represented only a small subsection of the Winnipeg working class. This was due primarily to a rigid social hierarchy, even within the working class, that enabled the traditional WASP dominant population, to assume the leadership positions among these Unions. As a result, many issues, such as racial discrimination in the and religious discrimination when it came employment, the union leadership largely ignored. Instead, the Unions, and particularly the Industrial Unions focused on improving safety conditions in the workplace, increasing pay for their work, and a shorter workweek. The main view and contention that despite popular perception, there was not equal pay and opportunity for even males in the workplace. The prevailing social hierarchy was so entrenched in hiring practices which resulted in men that were perceived to be of a "lower" ethnic background and would either be forced to accept a lower pay rate for the same job as a WASP employee, or would either be passed over for the job entirely if a WASP applicant could be found, even if the WASP employee had lower qualifications than the employee that was racially disadvantaged.
While the Winnipeg General Strike was motivated, among the Union leadership, out of a concern for workers' rights the strike also had the unintended consequence of increasingly racial tensions between the WASP majority and the socially disadvantaged racial minorities.

This was due entirely to the economic disparities between WASPs and the minorities that had manifested itself across the prairies for decades before the general strike despite the One Big Union attempting to reach across the ethnical divide. As a result, when the strike broke, after the business owners found themselves unwilling to either accede to the strikers demands, or to even negotiate, the business owners turned to these racial minorities and WASP women to fill these jobs. This debate over minority hirings exposed the division within the unions.This notion, among the union leadership, was further reinforced when the companies, which initially hired the minority workers as a temporary measure due to the Strike, decided to keep many of these workers on as permanent employees which were still paid less than the workers who had previously occupied these positions, and therefore improved the employer's profit margin. As a result, keeping the ethnic minorities in certain positions also served to undermine Union solidarity, in attempting to bargain collectively for better working conditions and pay. This was due to the fact was now a distinct minority within the unions that was content with their positions and

cost of living. Therefore, these racial minorities did not have the motivation that the Union leadership did about pushing for greater workers' rights. This discrepancy served to undermine working-class solidarity.
However, due to the fact that the vast majority of the racial minorities found themselves pushed out of the jobs, with there being exceptions of course, after the strikers agreed to return to work, the racial tensions were largely nullified and remained so during the 1920s. This was due to the fact that during the 1920s, while the great leaps in financial capacity were confined to the WASP business owners, there was still an increase in financial capacity among the lower to middle class WASP population in Winnipeg. This opulent lifestyle was reflected in other parts of Western Canada. However, much of the optimism was due investment in the stock market and the expectation that the stock market would keep rising exponentially and as a result a majority of these lower to middle class WASPs had invested all their savings into the market. While the racial minorities did not have the money to invest in the market, they to felt some of optimism as the increased opportunities for employment led to rising wages, although the minorities were still paid less than the WASP majority for the same work. The minorities, due racial prejudices, were also actively prevented from seeking upper-level positions; but constituted such a small portion of Winnipeg's population that it was difficult to make their voices and opinions heard.
The racial discrimination was not only focused on ethnic minorities: Caucasians were also targeted albeit for different reasons. Catholics were targeted across the prairies as many WASPs, particularly the Klu Klux Klan, as a threat to the traditional belief system. Immigrants, especially from Germany, other parts of Eastern Europe, and Russia. The hatred towards the Germans for the First World War, which ended less than a year prior to the strike, was still fresh and was extended to German immigrants. Following the Russian Revolution this distrust and prejudice was also extended to Eastern Europeans and Russians due to the fact the business classes regarded anyone from the region as a "Communist." Indeed, the primary way the business leaders across Canada were able to prevent the Strike, and sympathy strikes, from becoming a serious threat was to mount a massive public relations campaign to convince the Canadian population that Communism was a serious threat to Canadian society and values, which damaged the Unions' credibility.
The racial tensions between the WASP majority and other racial and religious minorities once again came to the forefront with the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression's onset in 1929. Winnipeg and Manitoba, with its more diversified economic base, was initially not as affected by the Great Depression as the other prairie provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, which were more dependant on agriculture while Winnipeg was large enough to have a sizeable manufacturing and financial services base. However, because the WASP majority that was able to invest was significantly financially over-extended due to the collapse of the stock market, it resulted in large bankruptcies among the WASP population. While initially the layoffs across the prairie provinces, and Winnipeg in particular, were initially confined to the racial and religious minorities, due to entrenched social hierarchy and pressures from the Union leadership on employers to keep layoffs to a minimum. While this pattern initially repeated itself across the prairie provinces, as the Depression worsened, and crop failures gradually decreased the all important agricultural yields, the layoffs mounted. Companies, in an effort to survive, had to undertake drastic cuts to their work forces. Failing to maintain any sort of profit companies were also declaring outright bankruptcy, which the Unions and Union leadership had no power to prevent. As a result, the WASP employees found, for the first time since the turn of the century, that their employment opportunities were declining in the same manner as the employment opportunities for the racial and religious minorities had declined early in the Depression.
Therefore, it took until the worst of the Depression, from 1935 onward, for a working-class mentality to develop that transcended religious affiliation and ethnicity. Although racism continued to persist, it was this working class consciousness that the Union leadership had tried to develop during the General Strike in 1919. However, it took the WASP majority feeling the same, very limited, employment opportunities that the racial and religious minorities had felt since the turn of the century for a class consciousness to emerge that superseded ethnic and religious barriers. Among the workers, both blue collar and white collar in Winnipeg and across the prairie provinces, there was a sense of dissatisfaction with the capitalist system and its seeming inability to solve not only the problems that resulted from the Depression but the problems that created the Depression in the first place. While the state did attempt to step in to alleviate the worst of the crisis, because the individual provinces administered social programs, and all the prairie provinces were essentially bankrupt, there was little the prairie provinces could do but help the portion of the population that was absolutely destitute.
It was this systemic distrust of the system that made the Depression politics different from the General Strike due to the fact that the reasons for strike were the unions, and the union leadership, becoming frustrated with the slow pace of economic advancement, and improved working conditions for their members.

However the strike's criticism was mostly confined to a few business owners in Winnipeg and across the country while the criticism that emerged in Winnipeg, and elsewhere across the prairies, was directed at the entire capitalist socioeconomic model. Once the WASP majority's economic situation became serious enough that they became concerned about their physical survival, rather than economic advancement, their racial and religious prejudices become of secondary importance as they attempted to increase their basic quality of life. As a result, the WASP majority now identified with the religious and ethnic minorities and the struggles they were facing. In stark contrast, the ethnic and religious minorities never identified with the WASP majority during the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919 and the WASPs demands for higher wages and better working conditions. This created ethnic and religious tensions between the WASP majority, which enjoyed greater opportunities for economic advancement, than the religious minorities. As a result, it took until the 1930s, with the WASP majority losing a significant amount of their material wealth, until the WASP majority began to

develop the class consciousness that the Union leadership was hoping to create with the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919.