Agreement and Conditions of Work: Acme Workers 1941 - Steel Workers Organizing Committee

Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project

See the end of this post for details on the project.

Leaflet: Agreement and Conditions of Work: Acme Workers 1941 - Steel Workers Organizing Committee

A fascinating flashback to a part of Canadian labour history, this small leaflet contained the first agreement won by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) from the Acme Screw and Gear company in Toronto, 1941 during the war.

The leaflet begins by outlining the struggle that the agreement grew out of which included two strikes and the intervention of the government. The efforts of the union had been opposed all along the way by Acme's President, N. P. Peterson, who had proudly declared that he was "running a workhouse".

As the union was new to the workplace the SWOC wanted the workers to be aware of all of its terms such as seniority, filing a grievance, work hours, etc. It points out that these victories had not yet been won for workers in non-union shops.

We have also included a photo from a strike in the 1960s at the Acme plant on Weston Rd. in Toronto. The workers were represented by the United Autoworkers at that point.

The leaflet ends by noting "Don't forget...you and your fellow employees fought hard for these rights and benefits...Make Sure You Use Them and KEEP them."

Indeed.

(click on scans to enlarge)

Acme workers on strike, Toronto 1960s

When The Left Chapter began part of what I wanted to do on the blog was to show and highlight vintage public leftist election/political leaflets and booklets. While many of these have been offered with commentary to date, a very large collection of hundreds of them from several different sources remains and to preserve these often quite rare documents we will be posting them on a regular (almost daily) basis now often without or with minimal commentary so that people may have access to them as quickly as possible as an historical resource.

While these will all be leaflets from a variety of different leftist viewpoints and countries, they are being posted as an historical/study resource and the views or opinions expressed in them do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog or blogger.

All of these posts (as well as posts made to date) will be listed on the page: Vintage Communist/Socialist Leaflets (which is still being updated with past posts).

If you have any public, vintage leaflets or booklets you would like to contribute to this project please contact us via theleftchapter@outlook.com