Divided Province by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780773554733
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2018-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

Figure 9.1 | Ontario unemployed and discouraged workers, annual average (%), 1947–2016 (Source: Statistics Canada (2018), CANSIM series 282-0086)

THE LIMITS OF ONTARIO’S POSTWAR BOOM

Ontario’s postwar Keynesian “golden age” was driven primarily by exports in primary and secondary manufacturing. While this growth model excluded large numbers of workers (women and most service workers), it did produce relatively stable levels of employment. As figure 9.1 illustrates, between 1947 and 1975 unemployment averaged only 3.5 per cent (Ontario 1986, 660).

The province’s low unemployment levels occurred because of the staggering rate of postwar growth, with gross provincial product (GPP) increasing by an average of 5 per cent a year over the period (Foot 1974, 5–7; MacDermid and Albo 2001, 166). Aided by a growing labour force, two sectors drove the postwar boom. Throughout the North, the processing sectors in lumber, pulp, and metals provided raw materials for southern manufacturing plants. Primary and secondary manufacturing factories scattered mostly around Lake Ontario – including those in auto, steel, rubber, textiles, appliances, clothing, and food – were all closely tied to production networks in the US. By the mid-1970s, the manufacturing sector employed over 850,000 workers, many of whom belonged to large international unions (Rea 1985). The decline in well-paid jobs that emerged out of the restructuring of the 1970s and 1980s was disastrous for Ontario workers. In fact, by the end of the 1990s, Statistics Canada was tracking “unemployment fatigue,” in which thousands of workers had simply stopped looking for permanent employment.

The OLRA created a standardized legal form of collective bargaining in unionized workplaces throughout the private sector. After a one-day walkout by teachers and other public sector workers in 1973, the same collective bargaining system was slowly extended to the Ontario Public Service (OPS), although these same workers were denied the ability to legally strike until 1993. Worker unrest in Ontario was compounded by the severe economic crises of the 1970s, which placed significant strain on the Conservative government of William Davis. The recession brought increasing hardship to Ontario workers, who were faced with plant closures, high levels of unemployment, double-digit inflation, and rising energy and food prices (Drummond 1983, 243). The ensuing employment restructuring led to a series of labour conflicts in the public, mining, auto, and building trades, as well as the trucking sectors. In dealing with the crisis, Davis used a series of temporary measures to limit wage increases in the public sector, including fines and criminal charges for workers engaged in public sector strikes. The most restrictive policy adopted by the Davis government was the 1982 Inflation Restraint Act, which capped public sector wage increases to 5 per cent.

WORK AND CHANGE AT QUEEN’S PARK, 1985–95

The economic challenges of the 1980s weakened the political base of the province’s forty-three-year Conservative dynasty, eventually leading to a Liberal minority government that was propped up by the NDP in 1985. The agreement that sustained the Liberal government, known as the Liberal NDP Accord, promised sweeping reforms on a series of issues, including: government accountability, pay

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