Fighting the sweatshop in Depression Ontario: Capital, labour and the Industrial Standards Act

The judicial and political failure of Prime Minister R.B. Bennet's New Deal legislation shifted the struggle to reconstitute capitalism to the provinc ial and municipal levels of the state. Attempts to deal with the dislocatio ns of the Depression in Ontario focused upon the "sweatshop crisis" which c ame to dominate political and social discourse after 1934. Ontario's Indust rial Standards Act (1935) was designed to bring workers and employers toget her under the auspices of the state to establish minimum wages and work sta ndards. The establishment of New Deal style industrial codes was premised o n the mobilisation of organized capital and organized labour to combat unfa ir competition, stop the spread of relief-subsidized labour, and halt the p redations of sweatshop capitalism. Although the ISA did not bring about ext ensive economic regulation, it excited considerable interest in the possibi lity of government intervention. Workers in a diverse range of occupations, from asbestos workers to waitresses, attempted to organize around the poss ibility of the ISA. The importance of the ISA lies in what it reveals about the nature of welfare, waged labour, the union movement, competitive capit alism, business attitudes to industrial regulation, and the role of the sta te in managing the collective affairs of capitalism. The history of the ISA also suggests that "regulatory unionism," as described by Colin Gordon in his work on the American New Deal, may have animated key developments in Ca nadian social, economic and labour history.