US EPA

6865394 

Journal Article 

The asbestos strike of 1949 and the task of labor reform. How employers defended their management rights 

Rouillard, J 

2000 

46 

307-342 

CCC:000167173100009 

The asbestos strike of 1949 is without a doubt the labour conflict which has most deeply marked Quebec's historical consciousness. Since the 1956 publication of a volume on the strike, edited by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the conflict has been interpreted as a success and a signal event in the social history of Quebec. New research in various archival collections, however, leads us to revise this interpretation and to argue that the conflict was a serious defeat for the unions, and could have been even worse had it not been for the help of the clergy. In addition, our research highlights a neglected aspect of the strike-the project of enterprise reform(co-management, co-ownership, profit-sharing) brought forward by young clerics enamoured of ideas popular among Catholic intellectuals in Europe and who had found a sympathetic ear with certain Quebec bishops. These demands were taken up in turn by Catholic unions in Quebec, including the asbestos unions in 1948 and 1949. The mining companies were strongly opposed, and accused the unions of attempting to infringe on management rights. The Canadian Johns Manville Company insisted on adding a long paragraph on management rights to the collective bargaining agreement of 1950. The question was of interest as well to l'Association professionnelle des industriels, an employers' organisation founded in 1943 to bring together Catholic employers. This organisation fought strongly against the idea of co-management, complaining to religious authorities. But the final word belonged to the Pope who, in 1950, saw a danger of a slide toward socialist ideas. The promotion of enterprise reform was then abandoned by the clergy and back-burnered by the Catholic unions.