CANADIAN LABOUR CONGRESS

(CLC) nationwide association of labour unions in Canada, including wholly Canadian national unions and international unions that are Canadian branches of unions based in the United States. The CLC was formed in 1956 in the merger of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC) and the Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL). In the late 20th century a majority of the four million unionized workers in English-speaking Canada were members of unions affiliated with the CLC. Though several British unions had established affiliates in Canada by the 1850s, the pull of labour organizations south of the border proved stronger, and by the 1880s about half of all union members in Canada belonged to affiliates of U.S. unions. The Trades and Labour Congress of Canada was founded in 1886; and, though from the start it accepted both craft unions and industry-wide unions, its membership consisted largely of craft unions, many affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AF of L) in the United States. As in the United States, Canadian labour in the following decades underwent a long series of battles between defenders of craft-based organizationswho dominated the TLCand those workers who advocated industrial unionism. In 1940, when the AF of L expelled the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) and its industrial unions, the TLC followed suit and expelled its CIO affiliates. In that same year, these ousted affiliates joined with the All-Canadian Congress of Labour (established in 1927) to form a new body of industrial unions, the Canadian Congress of Labour. In 1956 (one year after the AF of L and the CIO merged), the CCL and the TLC united as the Canadian Labour Congress, with headquarters in Ottawa and with the first elected president, Claude Jodoin, coming from the TLC. Officials of the CLC were instrumental in forming the New Democratic Party in 1961. About 55 percent of the CLC's international unions are affiliated with the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) of the United States.