Introduction to Work & Labour in Canada:
1. Describe the gendered division of labour for urban working class families and its causes. How did the work experiences of women vary at different ages and circumstances of their lives?
2. When the income of the primary male wage earner was inadequate or absent, what were some strategies working class families used to survive?
3. Describe the specific strategies used by early craft unions (prior to the 1890s) to maintain control in the workplace in relation to employers.
4. What were some of the key differences between the Knights of Labour and the craft unions?
5. Describe the most important forms in which industrial firms evolved between the 1890s and 1914.
6. How did craft unions attempt to adapt to the rising power of industrial corporations?
7. What factors led the Immigration Board despite a preference for British immigrants, to recruit "agriculturalists" from central & eastern Europe?
8. Labour intensive employers were very successful in having the Federal government's immigration policy reflect their interests. Find a contemporary parallel. What's similar and what's different?
9. Why did labour recruiters prefer poorer migrants?
10. Describe the response of Canadian unions to the increasing immigration of unskilled labour and the working conditions it suffered.
11. "Between 1896 and 1914 Canadian immigration policy served, above all else the dictates of the capitalist labour market." Explain the key evidence used by the author to make this point.
12. Describe the barriers faced by itinerant unskilled immigrant workers who attempted to organize.
13. Explain how fears of wage competition from Asian workers overlapped with the racial ideologies of mainstream white trade unionists in this period. How did their racist anti-Asian rhetoric vary from other social groups at this time?
14. Assess the legacy and importance of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for the Canadian labour movement.
15. What factors contributed to the upsurge of strikes and working class mobilization and radicalism from 1917 to 1920?
16. Interpret the multiple meanings and significance of the slogans "Production for Use" and "New Democracy" in the workers' revolt.
17. Describe the key factors in the defeat of the postwar workers' revolt.