Trades and Labour Congress of Canada

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The Trades and Labour Congress of Canada was a Canada-wide central federation of trade unions from 1883 to 1956. It was founded at the initiative of the Toronto Trades and Labour Council. It was the second national labour federation to be formed in Canada and succeeded the Canadian Labour Union which existed from 1873 to 1877.

The TLC was originally called the Canadian Labour Congress but its name was changed at its second convention in 1886. The most important trade union in the TLC was the Knights of Labor.

The TLC was an Ontario based federation at its founding but expanded across the country by 1900. Its role as the umbrella for the entire labour movement ended in 1902 when it expelled all unions in Canada affiliated with the American Federation of Labor.

In the twentieth century the TLC faced rivals on the left in the form of syndicalist or socialist movements such as the Industrial Workers of the World and the One Big Union movement splitting the TLC in 1919 in the face of an upsurge of industrial actions and militancy in developments such as the Winnipeg General Strike.

In the 1920s and 1930s the TLC faced militant challenges in the form of the Communist Party of Canada's Workers Unity League and the emergence of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The latter's strategy of industrial unionism was a direct challenge to the TLC (and AF of L's) craft unionism. In 1939, CIO supporters were expelled from the TLC and founded the rival Canadian Congress of Labour in 1940.

Just as the Cold War and the rise of anti-Communism led to the purge of leftists from the union CIO in the United States and the creation of the AFL-CIO in 1955, the same phenomenon in Canada led to the merger of the TLC and CCL in 1956 to create the modern Canadian Labour Congress.