Book Launch: Shifting Gears – Canadian Autoworkers

Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics

Authors Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage in conversation with Luke Savage.

In the decades following the Second World War, autoworkers were at the forefront of the labour movement. Their union mobilized members to rally in the streets for social change and make their voices heard at election time. But by the turn of this century, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union had begun to pursue a more defensive political direction.

Shifting Gears traces the evolution of the union’s strategy from transformational activism to transactional politics. Postwar autoworkers played a leading role in the fight for redistributive socio-economic policies for all working-class people. Class-based collective action and social democratic electoral mobilization gave way to transactional partnerships at the bargaining table and the ballot box, however, as relationships between the union, employers, and governments were refashioned. This new approach was maintained when the CAW merged with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union in 2013 to create Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union.

Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage draw on primary sources and in-depth interviews with politicians, union leaders, staff, and activists to explain how and why the union shifted its political tactics. Their critical perspective on the state of working-class politics highlights the challenges faced by unions in a changing economic and political landscape.

Stephanie Ross is an associate professor in the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University and the founding president of the Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies. Larry Savage is a professor in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock University. They are the co-authors of Building a Better World: An Introduction to the Labour Movement in Canada and co-editors of Public Sector Unions in the Age of Austerity, Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada, and Labour Under Attack: Anti-Unionism in Canada.

0:00 Introduction with Luke Savage
4:45 Q+A with Luke and the authors
35:50 Q+A with the audience

Recorded in Toronto, 20 September, 2024.